Part 3

MARTHA GILBERT DICKINSON BIANCHI

THE RIOT

You may think my life is quiet. I find it full of change, An ever-varied diet, As piquant as ’tis strange.

Wild thoughts are always flying, Like sparks across my brain, Now flashing out, now dying, To kindle soon again.

Fine fancies set me thrilling, And subtle monsters creep Before my sight unwilling: They even haunt my sleep.

One broad, perpetual riot Enfolds me night and day. You think my life is quiet? You don’t know what you say.

GAMALIEL BRADFORD

HUNGER

I’ve been a hopeless sinner, but I understand a saint, Their bend of weary knees and their contortions long and faint, And the endless pricks of conscience, like a hundred thousand pins, A real perpetual penance for imaginary sins.

I love to wander widely, but I understand a cell, Where you tell and tell your beads because you’ve nothing else to tell, Where the crimson joy of flesh, with all its wild fantastic tricks, Is forgotten in the blinding glory of the crucifix.

I cannot speak for others, but my inmost soul is torn With a battle of desires making all my life forlorn. There are moments when I would untread the paths that I have trod. I’m a haunter of the devil, but I hunger after God.

GAMALIEL BRADFORD

EXIT GOD

Of old our father’s God was real, Something they almost saw, Which kept them to a stern ideal And scourged them into awe.

They walked the narrow path of right Most vigilantly well, Because they feared eternal night And boiling depths of Hell.

Now Hell has wholly boiled away And God become a shade. There is no place for him to stay In all the world He made.

The followers of William James Still let the Lord exist, And call Him by imposing names, A venerable list.

But nerve and muscle only count, Gray matter of the brain, And an astonishing amount Of inconvenient pain.

I sometimes wish that God were back In this dark world and wide; For though some virtues He might lack, He had his pleasant side.

GAMALIEL BRADFORD

ROUSSEAU

That odd, fantastic ass, Rousseau, Declared himself unique. How men persist in doing so, Puzzles me more than Greek.

The sins that tarnish whore and thief Beset me every day. My most ethereal belief Inhabits common clay.

GAMALIEL BRADFORD

JOHN MASEFIELD

MASEFIELD (HIMSELF)

God said, and frowned, as He looked on Shropshire clay: “Alone, ’twont do; composite, would I make This man-child rare; ’twere well, methinks, to take A handful from the Stratford tomb, and weigh A few of Shelley’s ashes; Bunyan may Contribute, too, and, for my sweet Son’s sake, I’ll visit Avalon; then, let me slake The whole with Wyclif-water from the Bay.

A sailor, he! Too godly, though, I fear; Offset it with tobacco! Next, I’ll find Hedge-roses, star-dust, and a vagrant’s mind; His mother’s heart now let me breathe upon; When west winds blow, I’ll whisper in her ear: “Apocalypse awaits him; call him John!”