Eugene Field

“ From one who with the bauble sends
A love that can't be spoken.
MARY SMITH Away down East where I was reared amongst my Yankee kith,
There used to live a pretty girl whose name was Mary Smith;
And though it's many years since last I saw that pretty girl,
And though I feel I'm sadly worn by Western strife and whirl;
Still, oftentimes, I think about the old familiar place,
Which, someway, seemed the brighter for Miss Mary's pretty face,
And in my heart I feel once more revivified the glow
I used to feel in those old times when I was Mary's beau. ”

“ Peter neglected his chores; therefore that outcry for Peter;
Therefore the neighbors allowed evil would surely befall him—
Yes, on account of these things, ruin would come upon Peter!
Surely enough, on a time, reading and lazing and dreaming
Wrought the calamitous ill all had predicted for Peter;
For, of a morning in spring when lay the mist in the valleys—
"See," quoth the folk, "how the witch breweth her evil decoctions!
See how the smoke from her fire broodeth on woodland and meadow!
Grant that the sun cometh out to smother the smudge of her caldron! ”

“ But the spectre stood in that yonder gloom,
And these were the words it spake,
"Tick-tock, tick-tock"—and they seemed to mock
A heart about to break.
'T is new-year's eve, and again I watch
In the old familiar place,
And I'm thinking again of that old time when
I looked on a dear one's face.
Never a little one hugs my knee
And I hear no gleeful shout—
I am sitting alone by the old hearthstone,
Watching the old year out.
But I welcome the voice in yonder gloom
That solemnly calls to me:
"Tick-tock, tick-tock!"—for so the clock
Tells of a life to be ”

“ In a snug little nook of that strawstack kept house!
When the cricket went "chirp," Miss Mousie would squeak
"Come in," and a blush would enkindle her cheek!
She thought—silly girl! 't was a beau come to woo,
But I guess it was only the cricket, don't you?
So the cricket, the mouse, and the motherly bird
Made as soothingsome music as ever you heard
And, meanwhile, that spider by means of his swings
Achieved most astounding gyrations and things!
No wonder the little folk liked what they saw
And loved what they heard in that parlor of straw! ”

“ We double discount Christendom on sunshine and on stoves.
Dear land of mine! I come to you from months of chill and storm,
Blessing the honest people whose hearts and hearths are warm;
A fairer, sweeter song than this I mean to weave to you
When I've reached my lakeside 'dobe and once get heated through;
But, even then, the burthen of that fairer song shall be
That the land of stoves and sunshine is good enough for me.
A DRINKING SONG Come, brothers, share the fellowship
We celebrate to-night;
There's grace of song on every lip
And every heart is light! ”

“ The women-folk have been in love with us bald-headed men!
A HEINE LOVE SONG The image of the moon at night
All trembling in the ocean lies,
But she, with calm and steadfast light,
Moves proudly through the radiant skies,
How like the tranquil moon thou art—
Thou fairest flower of womankind!
And, look, within my fluttering heart
Thy image trembling is enshrined!
UHLAND'S "CHAPEL" Yonder stands the hillside chapel
Mid the evergreens and rocks,
All day long it hears the song
Of the shepherd to his flocks.
Then the chapel bell goes tolling—
Knelling for a soul that's sped ”

“ Of that surpassing trophy, the golden oriole's nest.
And, last of all those visions that come back from long ago,
The pretty face that thrilled my soul when I was Mary's beau.
Hush, gentle wife, there is no need a pang should vex your heart—
'T is many years since fate ordained that she and I should part;
To each a true, maturer love came in good time, and yet
It brought not with its nobler grace the power to forget. ”

“ Peter!"
So, when the mornings were hot, under the beech or the maple,
Cushioned in grass that was blue, breathing the breath of the blossoms,
Lulled by the hum of the bees, the coo of the ring-doves a-mating,
Peter would frivol his time at reading, or lazing, or dreaming.
"Peter!" his mother would call, "the cream is a'ready for churning!"
"Peter!" his father would cry, "go grub at the weeds in the garden!"
"Peter!" and "Peter!" ”

“ We'll drink a health to good old friends
And good friends yet to come.
Clink, clink, clink!
To fellowship we drink!
And from the bowl
No genial soul
In such an hour will shrink.
Clink, clink, clink!
Merrily let us drink!
There's fellowship
In every sip
Of friendship's brew, we think.
THE LIMITATIONS OF YOUTH I'd like to be a cowboy an' ride a fiery hoss
Way out into the big an' boundless west;
I'd kill the bears an' catamounts an' wolves I come across,
An' I'd pluck the bal' head eagle from his nest! ”

“ God bless ye for the faculty that tops all human arts,
The good ol' Yankee faculty of Truth!
CHRISTMAS HYMN Sing, Christmas bells!
Say to the earth this is the morn
Whereon our Saviour-King is born;
Sing to all men—the bond, the free,
The rich, the poor, the high, the low—
The little child that sports in glee—
The aged folk that tottering go—
Proclaim the morn
That Christ is born,
That saveth them and saveth me! ”

“ She changed all those folk into birds and shrieked with demoniac venom:
"Fly away over the land, moaning your Peter forever,
Croaking of Peter, the boy who didn't believe there were hoodoos,
Crooning of Peter, the fool who scouted at stories of witches,
Crying of Peter for aye, forever outcalling for Peter!"
This is the story they tell; so in good sooth saith the legend;
As I have told it to you, so tell the folk and the legend.
That it is true I believe, for on the breezes this morning
Come the shrill voices of birds calling and calling for Peter ”

“ The tender fire of old;
And the words of love he told me
And the songs he sung me then
Come crowding to uphold me,
And I live my youth again!
For when love's feet have tinkled
On the pathway women go,
Though one be old and wrinkled,
She's not forgetful—no! ”

“ I'd nod assent to every yarn involving piscine game—
I'd cross my heart and make my affidavit to the same;
For what is friendship but a scheme to help a fellow out—
And what a paltry fish or two to make such bones about!
Nay, Sentiment a mantle of sweet charity would fling
O'er perjuries committed for John Lyle King.
At night, when as the camp-fire cast a ruddy, genial flame,
He'd bring his tuneful fiddle out and play upon the same ”

“ Forgotten all vexations and all vanities shall be,
As we cast our cares to windward and our anchor to the lee;
Anon the minnow-bucket will emit batrachian sobs,
And the devil's darning-needles shall come wooing of our bobs;
The sun shall kiss our noses and the breezes toss our hair
(This latter metaphoric—we've no fimbriae to spare!) ;
And I—transported by the bliss—shan't do a plaguey thing
But cut the bait and string the fish for John Lyle King!
Or, if I angle, it will be for bullheads and the like,
While he shall fish for gamey bass, for pickerel, and for pike ”

“ That I can't help wishing that I knew a half what Stoddard knows.
And so we sit for hours and hours, praising without restraint
The people who are thoroughbreds, and roasting the ones that ain't;
Happy, thrice happy, is the man we happen to admire,
But wretched, oh, how wretched he that hath provoked our ire;
For I speak emphatic English when I once get fairly r'iled,
And Stoddard's wrath's an Ossa upon a Pelion piled.
Out yonder, in the alcove, a lady sits and darns,
And interjects remarks that always serve to spice our yarns;
She's Mrs. Stoddard ”

“ The two little skeezucks assured their king
That what he surmised was true;
That the Fair would have been a different thing
Had it only been held in Boo!
"The folk over there in no wise compare
With the folk of the southern seas;
Why, they comb out their heads
And they sleep in beds
Instead of in caverns and trees!" ”

“ For the folk in the little straw parlor, don't you?
And down from a rafter a spider had hung
Some swings upon which he incessantly swung.
He cut up such didoes—such antics he played
Way up in the air, and was never afraid!
He never made use of his horrid old sting,
But was just upon earth for the fun of the thing!
I deeply regret to observe that so few
Of these good-natured insects are met with, don't you?
And, down in the strawstack, a wee little mite
Of a cricket went chirping by day and by night ”

“ Nearly every morning I don that necktie and go out and twist the supersensitive tail of our intelligent imported burro until the profane beast burthens the air with his ribald protests. I shall ask the holy father—Pere —— to bring you with him when he comes again to pay a parochial visit to my house. I have a fair and gracious daughter into whose companionship I would fain bring so circumspect and diligent a young man as the holy father represents you to be. Therefore, without fear or trembling accompany that saintly man whensoever he says the word. ”

“ As we our earthly debts forgive—by Thee be all forgiven;
When tempted or by evil vexed, restore Thou us again,
And Thine be the Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory, forever and ever;
amen.
WITH BRUTUS IN ST. JO Of all the opry-houses then obtaining in the West
The one which Milton Tootle owned was, by all odds, the best;
Milt, being rich, was much too proud to run the thing alone,
So he hired an "acting manager," a gruff old man named Krone—
A stern, commanding man with piercing eyes and flowing beard,
And his voice assumed a thunderous tone when Jack and I appeared ”

“ He had a still greater estimate of the importance of the fact that Jesus of Nazareth came and lived as a child; and the dream of the last year of his life was to write, in the mood of the Holy-Cross tale, a sketch of the early years of the Little Galilean Peasant-Boy. This vision drifted its light into all his pictures of children at the last. He knew the "Old Adam" in us all, especially as he reappeared in the little folk. "But I don't believe the depravity is total, do you?" ”

“ CHRISTMAS HYMN A PARAPHRASE OF HEINE THE CONVALESCENT GRIPSTER THE SLEEPING CHILD THE TWO COFFINS CLARE MARKET A DREAM OF SPRINGTIME UHLAND'S WHITE STAG HOW SALTY WIN OUT THE SINGING IN GOD'S ACRE Out yonder in the moonlight, wherein God's Acre lies,
Go angels walking to and fro, singing their lullabies.
Their radiant wings are folded, and their eyes are bended low,
As they sing among the beds whereon the flowers delight to grow,—
"Sleep, oh, sleep! ”

“ That pitiful, petulant call, that pleading, expostulant wailing,
That hopeless, monotonous moan, that crooning and droning for Peter.
Some say the witch in her wrath transmogrified all those good people ”

“ With sunshine such a rarity, and stoves esteemed a sin,
What wonder they are wedded to their fads—catarrh and gin?
In Germany are stoves galore, and yet you seldom find
A fire within the stoves, for German stoves are not that kind;
The Germans say that fires make dirt, and dirt's an odious thing,
But the truth is that the pfennig is the average Teuton's king,
And since the fire costs pfennigs, why, the thrifty soul denies
Himself all heat except what comes with beer and exercise.
The Frenchman builds a fire of cones, the Irishman of peat ”

“ It is one of his own confessions that he was fond of clergymen. Most preachers are supposed to be helplessly tied up with such a set of limitations that there are but a few jokes which they may tolerate, and a small number of delights into which they may enter. Doubtless many a cheerful soul likes to meet such of the clergy, in order that the worldling may feel the contrast of liberty with bondage, and demonstrate by bombardment of wit and humor, how intellectually thin are the walls against which certain forms of skepticism and fun offend. Eugene Field did not belong to these. ”

“ And F.M.B.A. shepherd-folk, with Sockless Jerry leading them,
Will swamp that corporation line 'twixt Jaffa and Jerusalem.
HUGO'S "POOL IN THE FOREST" How calm, how beauteous and how cool—
How like a sister to the skies,
Appears the broad, transparent pool
That in this quiet forest lies.
The sunshine ripples on its face,
And from the world around, above,
It hath caught down the nameless grace
Of such reflections as we love.
But deep below its surface crawl
The reptile horrors of the night—
The dragons, lizards, serpents—all
The hideous brood that hate the light ”

“ Who are very, very circumspect and very happy may;
The people wondered why,
As the years went gliding by,
They never heard him once complain or even heave a sigh!
The women of the province fell in love with genial Ben,
Till (may be you can fancy it) the dickens was to pay
Among the callow students and the sober-minded men—
With the women-folk a-cuttin' up that way! ”

“ Religion, as the Christian life, was not less sacred to him because he knew how poorly men achieve the task of living always at the best level, nor did the reality of the soul's approach to God grow less noble or commanding to him because he knew that too seldom do we lift our voices heavenward. ”

“ Read between the lines and the love there will comfort you more than my faulty words can.
I have often thought, as I saw him through his later years espousing the noblest causes with true-hearted zeal, of what he once said in the old "Saints' and Sinners' Corner" when a conversation sprang up on the death of Professor David Swing. His words go far to explain to me that somewhat reckless humor which oftentimes made it seem that he loved to imitate and hold in the pillory of his own inimitable powers of mimicry some of the least attractive forms of the genus parson he had seen and known. ”

“ When fields are green, and posies gay are budding everywhere,
And there's a smell of clover bloom upon the vernal air;
When by the pond out yonder the redwing blackbird calls,
And distant hills are wed to Spring in veils of water-falls;
When from his aqueous element the famished pickerel springs
Two hundred feet into the air for butterflies and things—
Then come again, O gracious muse, and teach me how to sing
The glory of a fishing cruise with John Lyle King!
UHLAND'S WHITE STAG. Into the woods three huntsmen came,
Seeking the white stag for their game. ”

“ Why, the robins in the maples an' the blackbirds round the pond,
The crickets an' the locusts in the leaves,
The brook that chased the trout adown the hillside just beyond,
An' the swallers in their nests beneath the eaves—
They all come troopin' back with you, dear Uncle Josh, to-day,
An' they seem to sing with all the joyous zest
Of the days when we were Yankee boys an' Yankee girls at play,
With nary thought of "livin' way out West"! ”

“ I am permitted to copy this one letter addressed to a clerical friend, at a time when Eugene Field responded to the call of that undying puritanism in his blood:
DEAR, DEAR FRIEND: I was greatly shocked to read in the Post last night of your dangerous illness. It is so seldom that I pray that when I do God knows I am in earnest. I do not pester Him with small matters. It is only when I am in real want that I get down on my wicked knees and pray. ”