In Bohemia

Front matter

In Bohemia

John Boyle O'Reilly

In Bohemia:

Songs That Are Not Sung

IN BOHEMIA.

SONGS THAT ARE NOT SUNG.

Do not praise: a smile is payment more than meet for what is done; Who shall paint the mote's glad raiment floating in the molten sun? Nay, nor smile: for blind is eyesight, ears may hear not, lips are dumb; From the silence, from the twilight, wordless but complete they come.

Songs were born before the singer: like white souls awaiting birth. They abide the chosen bringer of their melody to earth.

Deep the pain of our demerit: strings so rude or rudely strung, Dull to every pleading spirit seeking speech but sent unsung;

Round our hearts with gentle breathing still the plaintive silence plays, But we brush away its wreathing, filled with cares of common days.

Ever thinking of the morrow, burdened down with needs and creeds, Once or twice, mayhap, in sorrow, we may hear the song that pleads; Once or twice, a dreaming poet sees the beauty as it flies. But his vision who shall know it, who shall read it from his eyes? Voiceless he,—his necromancy fails to cage the wondrous bird; Lure and snare are vain when fancy flies like echo from a word. Only sometime he may sing it, using speech as 'twere a bell. Not to read the song but ring it, like the sea-tone from a shell. Sometimes, too, it comes and lingers round the strings all still and mute, Till some lover's trembling fingers draw it living from the lute.

Still, our best is but a vision which a lightning-flash illumes, Just a gleam of life elysian flung across the voiceless glooms.

Why should gleams perplex and move us? Must the soul still upward grow To the beauty far above us and the songs no sense may know?

A Lost Friend

A LOST FRIEND.

My friend he was; my friend from all the rest; With childlike faith he oped to me his breast; No door was locked on altar, grave or grief; No weakness veiled, concealed no disbelief; The hope, the sorrow and the wrong were bare, And ah, the shadow only showed the fair.

I gave him love for love; but, deep within, I magnified each frailty into sin; Each hill-topped foible in the sunset glowed. Obscuring vales where rivered virtues flowed. Reproof became reproach, till common grew The captious word at every fault I knew. He smiled upon the censorship, and bore With patient love the touch that wounded sore; Until at length, so had my blindness grown. He knew I judged him by his faults alone. Alone, of all men, I who knew him best, Refused the gold, to take the dross for test!

Cold strangers honored for the worth they saw; His friend forgot the diamond in the flaw.

At last it came—the day he stood apart, When from my eyes he proudly veiled his heart; When carping judgment and uncertain word A stern resentment in his bosom stirred; When in his face I read what I had been, And with his vision saw what he had seen.

Too late! too late! Oh, could he then have known, When his love died, that mine had perfect grown; That when the veil was drawn, abased, chastised, The censor stood, the lost one truly prized.

Too late we learn—a man must hold his friend Unjudged, accepted, trusted to the end.

In Bohemia

IN BOHEMIA.

I'd rather live in Bohemia than in any other land; For only there are the values true, And the laurels gathered in all men's view. The prizes of traffic and state are won By shrewdness or force or by deeds undone; But fame is sweeter without the feud, And the wise of Bohemia are never shrewd. Here, pilgrims stream with a faith sublime From every class and clime and time, Aspiring only to be enrolled With the names that are writ in the book of gold; And each one bears in mind or hand A palm of the dear Bohemian land. The scholar first, with his book—a youth Aflame with the glory of harvested truth; A girl with a picture, a man with a play, A boy with a wolf he has modeled in clay; A smith with a marvellous hilt and sword, A player, a king, a ploughman, a lord— And the player is king when the door is past. The ploughman is crowned, and the lord is last!

I'd rather fail in Bohemia than win in another land; There are no titles inherited there, No hoard or hope for the brainless heir; No gilded dullard native born To stare at his fellow with leaden scorn: Bohemia has none but adopted sons; Its limits, where Fancy's bright stream runs; Its honors, not garnered for thrift or trade. But for beauty and truth men's souls have made. To the empty heart in a jeweled breast There is value, maybe, in a purchased crest; But the thirsty of soul soon learn to know The moistureless froth of the social show; The vulgar sham of the pompous feast Where the heaviest purse is the highest priest; The organized charity, scrimped and iced, In the name of a cautious, statistical Christ; The smile restrained, the respectable cant. When a friend in need is a friend in want; Where the only aim is to keep afloat. And a brother may drown with a cry in his throat. Oh, I long for the glow of a kindly heart and the grasp of a friendly hand. And I'd rather live in Bohemia than in any other land.

A Tragedy

A TRAGEDY.

A soft-breasted bird from the sea Fell in love with the light-house flame; And it wheeled round the tower on its airiest wing, And floated and cried like a lovelorn thing; It brooded all day and it fluttered all night, But could win no look from the steadfast light.

For the flame had its heart afar,— Afar with the ships at sea; It was thinking of children and waiting wives, And darkness and danger to sailors' lives; But the bird had its tender bosom pressed On the glass where at last it dashed its breast. The light only flickered, the brighter to glow; But the bird lay dead on the rocks below.

Wendell Phillips

WENDELL PHILLIPS.

What shall we mourn? For the prostrate tree that sheltered the young green wood? For the fallen cliff that fronted the sea, and guarded the fields from the flood? For the eagle that died in the tempest, afar from its eyrie's brood?

Nay, not for these shall we weep; for the silver cord must be worn, And the golden fillet shrink back at last, and the dust to its earth return; And tears are never for those who die with their face to the duty done; But we mourn for the fledglings left on the waste, and the fields where the wild waves run. From the midst of the flock he defended, the brave one has gone to his rest; And the tears of the poor he befriended their wealth of affliction attest.

From the midst of the people is stricken a symbol they daily saw, Set over against the law books, of a Higher than Human Law; For his life was a ceaseless protest, and his voice was a prophet's cry To be true to the Truth and faithful, though the world were arrayed for the Lie.

From the hearing of those who hated, a threatening voice has past; But the lives of those who believe and die are not blown like a leaf on the blast. A sower of infinite seed was he, a woodman that hewed toward the light. Who dared to be traitor to Union when Union was traitor to Right!

"Fanatic!" the insects hissed, till he taught them to understand That the highest crime may be written in the highest law of the land. "Disturber" and "Dreamer" the Philistines cried when he preached an ideal creed,

Till they learned that the men who have changed the world with the world have disagreed; That the remnant is right, when the masses are led like sheep to the pen; For the instinct of equity slumbers till roused by instinctive men.

It is not enough to win rights from a king and write them down in a book. New men, new lights; and the fathers' code the sons may never brook. What is liberty now were license then: their freedom our yoke would be; And each new decade must have new men to determine its liberty. Mankind is a marching army, with a broadening front the while: Shall it crowd its bulk on the farm-paths, or clear to the outward file? Its pioneers are the dreamers who fear neither tongue nor pen Of the human spiders whose silk is wove from the lives of toiling men.

Come, brothers, here to the burial! But weep not, rather rejoice. For his fearless life and his fearless death; for his true, unequalled voice, Like a silver trumpet sounding the note of human right; For his brave heart always ready to enter the weak one's fight; For his soul unmoved by the mob's wild shout or the social sneer's disgrace; For his freeborn spirit that drew no line between class or creed or race.

Come, workers; here was a teacher, and the lesson he taught was good: There are no classes or races, but one human brotherhood; There are no creeds to be outlawed, no colors of skin debarred; Mankind is one in its rights and wrongs—one right, one hope, one guard. By his life he taught, by his death we learn the great reformer's creed:

The right to be free, and the hope to be just, and the guard against selfish greed. And richest of all are the unseen wreaths on his coffin-lid laid down By the toil-stained hands of workmen—their sob, their kiss, and their crown.

The King's Evil

THE KING'S EVIL.

They brought them up from their huts in the fens, The woful sufferers gaunt and grim; They flocked from the city's noisome dens "To the Monarch's throne to be touched by him. "For his touch," they whisper, "is sovereign balm, The anointed King has a power to heal." Oh, the piteous prayers as the royal palm Is laid on their necks while they humbly kneel!

Blind hope! But the cruel and cold deceit A rich reward to the palace brings: A snare for the untaught People's feet. And a courtier's lie for the good of Kings. But the years are sands, and they slip away Till the baseless wall in the sun lies bare; The touch of the King has no balm to-day. And the Right Divine is the People's share.

The word remains: but the Evil now Is caused, not cured, by imperial hands,— The lightless soul and the narrow brow, The servile millions in armed bands; The sweat-wrung gold from the peasant's toil Flung merrily out by the gambling lord. Who is reckless owner of serf and soil. And master of church and law and sword.

But the night has receded: the dawn like a tide Creeps slow round the world, till the feet of the throne Are lapped by the waves that shall seethe and ride Where the titles are gulfed and the shields overblown. Our Kings are the same as the Kings of old. But a Man stands up where there crouched a clown; The Evil shall die when his hand grows bold, And the touch of the People is laid on the Crown!

A White Rose

A WHITE ROSE.

The red rose whispers of passion, And the white rose breathes of love; Oh, the red rose is a falcon. And the white rose is a dove.

But I send you a cream-white rosebud With a flush on its petal tips; For the love that is purest and sweetest Has a kiss of desire on the lips.

The Word and The Deed

THE WORD AND THE DEED.

The "Word was first, says the revelation: Justice is older than error or strife; The Word preceded the Incarnation As symbol and type of law and life. And always so are the mighty changes: The Word must be sown in the heart like seed; Men's hands must tend it, their lives defend it. Till it burst into flower as a deathless Deed.

The primal truth neither dies nor slumbers. But lives as the test of the common right, That the laws proclaimed by the sworded numbers May stand arraigned in the people's sight. The Word is great, and no Deed is greater, When both are of God, to follow or lead; But, alas, for the truth when the Word comes later, With questioned steps, to sustain the Deed.

Not the noblest acts can be true solutions; The soul must be sated before the eye, Else the passionate glory of revolutions Shall pass like the flames that flash and die. But forever the gain when the heart's convictions, Rooted in nature the masses lead; The cries of rebellion are benedictions When the Word has flowered in a perfect Deed.

A Builder's Lesson

A BUILDER'S LESSON.

"How shall I a habit break?" As you did that habit make. As you gathered, you must lose; As you yielded, now refuse. Thread by thread the strands we twist Till they bind us neck and wrist; Thread by thread the patient hand Must untwine ere free we stand. As we builded, stone by stone, We must toil unhelped, alone, Till the wall is overthrown.

But remember, as we try, Lighter every test goes by; Wading in, the stream grows deep Toward the centre's downward sweep; Backward turn, each step ashore Shallower is than that before.

Ah, the precious years we waste Levelling what we raised in haste; Doing what must be undone Ere content or love be won! First across the gulf we cast Kite-borne threads, till lines are passed, And habit builds the bridge at last!

The Priceless Things

THE PRICELESS THINGS.

Those are vulgar things we pay for, be they stones for crowns of kings; While the precious and the peerless are unpriced symbolic things.

Common debts are scored and cancelled, weighed and measured out for gold; But the debts from men to ages, their account is never told.

Always see, the noblest nations keep their highest prize unknown; Chæronea's deathless lion frowned above unlettered stone.

Ah, the Greeks knew! Come their victors honored from the sacred games, Under arches red with roses, flushed to hear their shouted names;

See their native cities take them, breach the wall to make a gate! What supreme reward is theirs who bring such honors to their state?

In the forum stand they proudly, take their prizes from the pries: Little wreaths of pine and parsley on their naked temples pressed!

We in later days are lower? When a manful stroke is made. We must raise a purse to pay it—making manliness a trade.

Sacrifice itself grows venal—surely Midas will subscribe; And the shallow souls are gratified when worth accepts the bribe.

But e'en here, amidst the markets, there are things they dare not prize; Dollars hide their sordid faces when they meet anointed eyes.

Lovers do not speak with jewels—flowers alone can plead for them; And one fragrant memory cherished is far dearer than a gem.

Statesmen steer the nation safely; artists pass the burning test; And their country pays them proudly with a ribbon at the breast.

When the soldier saves the battle, wraps the flag around his heart, Who shall desecrate his honor with the values of the mart?

From his guns of bronze we hew a piece, and carve it as a cross; For the gain he gave was priceless, as unpriced would be the loss.

When the poet sings the love-song, or the song of life and death. Till the workers cease their toiling with abated wondering breath;

When he gilds the mill and mine, inspires the slave to rise and dare; Lights with love the cheerless garret, bids the tyrant to beware;

When he steals the pang from poverty with meanings new and clear, Reconciling pain and peace, and bringing blissful visions near;—

His reward? Nor cross nor ribbon, but all others high above; They have won their glittering symbols—he has earned the people's love!

A Dead Man

A DEAD MAN

The Trapper died—our hero—and we grieved; In every heart in camp the sorrow stirred. "His soul was red!" the Indian cried, bereaved; "A white man, he!" the grim old Yankee's word.

So, brief and strong, each mourner gave his best— How kind he was, how brave, how keen to track; And as we laid him by the pines to rest, A negro spoke, with tears: "His heart was black!"

Silence, Not Death

SILENCE, NOT DEATH.

I start! I have slept for a moment; I have dreamt, sitting here by her chair— Oh, how lonely! What was it that touched me? What presence, what heaven-sent air?

It was nothing, you say. But I tremble; I heard her, I knew she was near— Felt her breath, felt her cheek on my forehead— Awake or asleep, she was here!

It was nothing—a dream? Strike that harp-string; Again—still again—till it cries In its uttermost treble—still strike it— Ha? vibrant but silent! It dies—

It dies, just as she died. Go, listen— That highest vibration is dumb. Your sense, friend, too soon finds a limit And answer, when mysteries come.

Truth speaks in the senseless, the spirit; But here in this palpable part We sound the low notes, but are silent To music sublimed in the heart.

Too few and too gross our dull senses, And clogged with the mire of the road, Till we loathe their coarse bondage; as seabirds Encaged on a cliff, look abroad

On the ocean and limitless heaven. Alight with the beautiful stars. And hear what they say, not the creakings That rise from our sensual bars.

O life, let me dream, let her presence Be near me, her fragrance, her breath; Let me sleep, if in slumber the seeking; Sleep on, if the finding be death.

The Unhappy One

THE UNHAPPY ONE.

"He is false to the heart!" she said, stern-lipped; "he is all untruth; He promises fair as a tree in blossom, and then The fruit is rotten ere ripe. Tears, prayers and youth, All withered and wasted! and still—I love this falsest of men!"

Comfort? There is no comfort when the soul sees pain like a sun: It is better to stare at the blinding truth: if it blind, one woe is done. We cling to a coward hope, when hope has the seed of the pain: If we tear out the roots of the grief, it will never torment again. Ay, even if part of our life is lost, and the deep-laid nerves

That carry all joy to the heart are wounded or killed by the knife; "When a gangrene sinks to the bone, it is only half-death that serves; And a life with a cureless pain is only half a life.

But why unhealed must the spirit endure? There are drugs for the body's dole; Have we wholly lived for the lower life? Is there never a balm for the soul? O Night, cry out for the healer of woe, for the priest-physician cry, "With the pouring oil for the bleeding grief, for the life that may not die!

"He is false to the heart!" she moaned; "and I love him and cannot hate!" Then bitterly, fiercely—"What have I done, my God, for such a fate?"

"Poor heart!" said the Teacher; "for thee and thy sorrow the daily parables speak. Thy grief, that is dark, illumes for me a sign that was dim and weak.

In the heart of my garden I planted a tree—I had chosen the noblest shoot: It was sheltered and tended, and hope reached out for the future's precious fruit. The years of its youth flew past, and I looked on a spreading tree All gloried with maiden blossoms, that smiled their promise to me. I lingered to gaze on their color and shape—I knew I had chosen well; And I smiled at the death that was promise of life as the beautiful petals fell. But the joy was chilled, though the lip laughed on, by the withered proof to the eye: The blossoms had shielded no tender bud, but cradled a barren lie. Before me it lay, the mystery—the asking, the promise, the stone; The tree that should give good fruit was bare—the cause unseen, unknown!

But I said: Next year it shall burgeon, my part shall be faithfully done; My love shall be doubled—I trust my tree for its beautiful strength alone.

But tenderness failed, and loving care, and the chalice of faith was dried When the next Spring blossoms had spoken their promise—smiled at the sun and lied; The heart of the petals was withered to dust. Then, for duty, I trusted again; For who should stand if God were to frown on the twice-told failures of men? Unloving I tended, with care increased, but never a song or smile; For duty is love that is dead but is kept from the grave for a while.

The third year came, with the sweet young leaves, and I could not fear or doubt; But the petals smiled at the sun and lied,—and the curse in my blood leaped out! "This corpse," I cried, "that has cumbered the earth, let it hence to the waste be torn!" That moment of wrath beheld its death—while to me was a life-truth born: The straight young trunk at my feet lay prone; and I bent to scan the core. And there read the pitiful secret the noble sapling bore.

Through the heart of the pith, in its softest youth, it had bored its secret way, A gnawing worm, a hideous grief,—and the life it had tortured lay Accursed and lost for the cruel devil that nestled its breast within. Ah, me, poor heart! had I known in time, I had cut out the clinging sin, And saved the life that was all as good and as noble as it seemed!"

He ceased, and she rose, the unresigned, as one who had slept and dreamed; Her face was radiant with insight: "It is true! it is true!" she said; "And my love shall not die, like your beautiful tree, till the hidden pain is dead!"

Ensign Epps, The Color-Bearer

ENSIGN EPPS, THE COLOR-BEARER.

Ensign Epps, at the battle of Flanders, Sowed a seed of glory and duty That flowers and flames in height and beauty Like a crimson lily with heart of gold, To-day, when the wars of Ghent are old And buried as deep as their dead commanders.

Ensign Epps was the color-bearer,— No matter on which side, Philip or Earl; Their cause was the shell—his deed was the pearl. Scarce more than a lad, he had been a sharer That day in the wildest work of the field. He was wounded and spent, and the fight was lost; His comrades were slain, or a scattered host. But stainless and scatheless, out of the strife. He had carried his colors safer than life. By the river's brink, without weapon or shield, He faced the victors. The thick-heart mist

He dashed from his eyes, and the silk he kissed Ere he held it aloft in the setting sun, As proudly as if the fight were won. And he smiled when they ordered him to yield.

Ensign Epps, with his broken blade. Cut the silk from the gilded staff, "Which he poised like a spear till the charge was made. And hurled at the leader with a laugh. Then round his breast, like the scarf of his love, He tied the colors his heart above, And plunged in his armor into the tide, And there, in his dress of honor, died.

"Where are the lessons your kinglings teach? And what is text of your proud commanders? Out of the centuries, heroes reach "With the scroll of a deed, with the word of a story, Of one man's truth and of all men's glory. Like Ensign Epps at the battle of Flanders.

Grant—1885

GRANT—1885.

Blessed are Pain, the smiter, And Sorrow, the uniter! For one afflicted lies— A symboled sacrifice— And all our rancor dies!

No North, no South! O stern-faced Chief, One weeping ours, one cowléd Grief— Thy Country—bowed in prayer and tear— For North and South—above thy bier!

For North and South! Soldier grim, The broken ones to weep for him Who broke them! He whose terrors blazed In smoking harvests, cities razed; Whose Fate-like glance sent fear and chill; Whose wordless lips spake deathless will— Till all was shattered, all was lost—

All hands dropped down—all War's red cost Laid there in ashes—Hope and Hate And Shame and Glory!

Death and Fate Fall back! Another touch is thine; He drank not of thy poisoned wine, Nor blindly met thy blind-thrown lance, Nor died for sightless time or chance— But waited, suffered, bowed and tried, Till all the dross was purified; Till every well of hate was dried; And North and South in sorrow vied, And then—at God's own calling—died!

The Cry of The Dreamer

THE CRY OF THE DREAMER.

I am tired of planning and toiling In the crowded hives of men; Heart-weary of building and spoiling, And spoiling and building again. And I long for the dear old river, Where I dreamed my youth away; For a dreamer lives forever, And a toiler dies in a day.

I am sick of the showy seeming Of a life that is half a lie; Of the faces lined with scheming In the throng that hurries by. From the sleepless thoughts' endeavor, I would go where the children play; For a dreamer lives forever, And a thinker dies in a day.

I can feel no pride, but pity For the burdens the rich endure; There is nothing sweet in the city But the patient lives of the poor. Oh, the little hands too skilful. And the child-mind choked with weeds! The daughter's heart grown wilful, And the father's heart that bleeds!

No, no! from the street's rude bustle. From trophies of mart and stage, I would fly to the woods' low rustle And the meadows' kindly page. Let me dream as of old by the river, And be loved for the dream alway; For a dreamer lives forever. And a toiler dies in a day.

Ireland—1882

IRELAND—1882.

"Island of Destiny! Innisfail!" they cried when their weary eyes First looked on thy beauteous bosom from the amorous ocean rise.

"Island of Destiny! Innisfail!" we cry, dear land, to thee. As the sun of thy future rises and reddens the western sea!

Pregnant as earth with its gold and gems and its metals strong and fine, Is thy soul with its ardors and fancies and sympathies divine.

Mustard seed of the nations! they scattered thy leaves to the air. But the ravisher pales at the harvest that flourishes everywhere.

Queen in the right of thy courage ! manacled, scourged, defamed, Thy voice in the teeth of the bayonets the right of a race proclaimed.

"Bah!" they sneered from their battlements, "her people cannot unite; They are sands of the sea, that break before the rush of our ordered might!"

And wherever the flag of the pirate flew, the English slur was heard, And the shallow of soul re-echoed the boast of the taunting word.

But we—O sun, that of old was our god, we look in thy face to-day. As our Druids who prayed in the ancient time, and with them we proudly say:

"We have wronged no race, we have robbed no land, we have never oppressed the weak!" And this in the face of Heaven is the nobler thing to speak.

We can never unite—thank God for that! in such unity as yours, That strangles the rights of others, and only itself endures

As the guard of a bloodstained spoil and the red-eyed watch of the slave; No need for such robber-union to a race free-souled and brave.

The races that band for plunder are the mud of the human stream. The base and the coward and sordid, without an unselfish gleam.

It is mud that unites; but the sand is free—ay, every grain is free. And the freedom of individual men is the highest of liberty.

It is mud that coheres; but the sand is free, till the lightning smite the shore. And smelt the grains to a crystal mass, to return to sand no more.

And so with the grains of our Irish sand, that flash clear-eyed to the sun, Till a noble Purpose smites them and melts them into one.

While the sands are free, O Tyrants! like the wind are your steel and speech; Your brute-force crushes a legion, but a soul it can never reach.

Island of Destiny! Innisfail! for thy faith is the payment near: The mine of the future is opened, and the golden veins appear.

Thy hands are white and thy page unstained. Reach out for the glorious years, And take them from God as His recompense for thy fortitude and tears.

Thou canst stand by the way ascending, as thy tyrant goes to the base: The seeds of her death are in her and the signs in her cruel face.

On her darkened path lie the corpses of men, with whose blood her feet are red; And the curses of ruined nations are a cloud above her head.

O Erin, fresh in the latest day, like a gem from a Syrian tomb, The burial clay of the centuries has saved thy light in the gloom.

Thy hands may stretch to a kindred world: there is none that hates but one; And she but hates as a pretext for the rapine she has done.

The night of thy grief is closing, and the sky in the East is red: Thy children watch from the mountain-tops for the sun to kiss thy head.

O Mother of men that are fit to be free, for their test for freedom borne. Thy vacant place in the Nations' race awaits but the coming morn!