The Sylvan Cabin: a Centenary Ode on the Birth of Lincoln, and Other Verse

Part 1

Produced by K Nordquist, Diane Monico, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)

THE SYLVAN CABIN

EDWARD SMYTH JONES

THE SYLVAN CABIN

A CENTENARY ODE ON THE BIRTH OF LINCOLN

AND OTHER VERSE

BY EDWARD SMYTH JONES

WITH INTRODUCTION BY WILLIAM STANLEY BRAITHWAITE

BOSTON SHERMAN, FRENCH & COMPANY

1911

Copyright, 1911

SHERMAN, FRENCH & COMPANY

THE HON. ARTHUR P. STONE

Justice of the Third District Court

Cambridge, Massachusetts

Edward Smyth Jones Boston, Mass.

INTRODUCTION

A poet that comes through a unique experience, as so many poets have, and very recently as the author of this volume has, arrives through his personality rather than his work at a precipitate sort of fame that may serve his talents well or serve them ill. To know that a man was sent to jail as the consequence of a passionate desire to go to college, and that that desire involved the tramping of dusty and hungry miles, adds to the interest to the man that cannot fail in some significant way to set a glamor upon the poet. Poetry is made out of experience--the experience of dreams, of action, of desires and hopes baffled on the inexplicable sea of circumstance; in these latter the dream is as the spirit, and the man whose art becomes an expression of all he has realized in living, his experiences become something more than art, they are the subtle rendering reality that is truth.

In these poems of Mr. Jones' it is that which gives them a unique value because they are in a deeply essential manner the rendering of a human document, as all poems must be, of an individual who speaks universally. I emphasize this quality first because art registers its worth by the vitality of its substance. If the substance be vital, then its embodiment is artistically successful to the degree in which the maker has felt his experiences. These poems, then, will come to many readers with a freshness, with the appeal for a certain sympathy that will compel attention. The opening poem which celebrates the centenary of Lincoln's birth, with its fine imaginative sweep, is as good as any poem I have seen which that occasion called forth. In it is poetry that ought to assure Mr. Jones' future if circumstances permit him to cultivate an art for which nature has so obviously endowed him. "The Sylvan Cabin" in spirit may be said to characterize the author's book; that upward striving toward the ideal, which taking a personal expression in his own experience, in his own hopes, has also a larger significance in voicing the aspirations of those for whom, as is shown in many other poems, he becomes a voice, a representative.

Mr. Jones' work has already won for him the approbation of many literary people, his poems having appeared from time to time in various publications; this fact not only justifies his gathering them together in this volume, but being so recognized must fill him with a certain assurance for the future. To this I can only add that, good as these are, they give us the hope for better from one who ought certainly to go on and upward.

WILLIAM STANLEY BRAITHWAITE.

Boston, April 5, 1911.

CONTENTS

PAGE

THE SYLVAN CABIN 9

LIFE IN A DREAM 22

THE MORNING STAR 24

TO ESTELLE 25

Part 2

A SONG OF THANKS 27

NOT YET A POET 32

A BOUQUET 33

AN ODE TO THE SOLDIERS' AND SAILORS' MONUMENT 34

TO A FADED FLOWER 37

DAINTY DORA 39

THE VIOLIN 40

WOMAN 41

THE BACHELOR'S SONG 45

PUT NOTHING IN ANOTHER'S WAY 47

FLOATING WITH THE GALE 50

LULA JOHNSON'S SONG 53

A TRIBUTE TO DUNBAR 57

WERE I A BIRD 59

AN ODE TO ETHIOPIA 62

TO J. S. B. 72

THE MAYOR'S RING 73

WHAT'S THE USE? 74

O GOD, WILT THOU HELP ME IN SCHOOL? 76

BEHIND THE BARS 84

HARVARD SQUARE 86

THE END 96

THE SYLVAN CABIN

A CENTENARY ODE ON THE BIRTH OF LINCOLN

O, fairest Dame of sylvan glades, We come to pay thee homage due, Embrace thee softly and to kiss Thy lovely, long-forsaken cheeks; To smooth thy flowing silver locks And bind about thy snowy neck A necklace golden studded full With rarest gems and shining pearls. Our eyes, though sometimes dimmed with tears, In purer lustre sparkle forth Whene'er they fall agaze on thee! Our ears attuned to thy sweet lay Catch every flowing, cadent note And bear it ever safe within Our rapturous hearts, which gladly leap Whene'er thy name is called! Deep in our souls the quenchless fire Of love full brightly burns upon The sacred altar, set apart For sprite commune and sacrifice; Whose high-priest tends with loving care, And unto thee sweet incense burns. Our tongues most gladly sing thy praise, And from it ne'er shall cease--till all The land be free!

A century lonely hast thou stood Here all forsaken and forgot! All men failed thee to visit save Some idle lover of sylvan haunts Who trod, perchance, this hallowed spot, And cast a pensive eye upon This lovely glade, thy sole abode (Full lost in these continuous woods), And brooding o'er thy lowly lot, Oft thus did muse: "This cabin lone Here stands to tell the tale of him, Back-woodsman brave, who having scaled The mystic mountains ne'er returned To them, though loved yet left behind; But here he chose his last abode, These gloomy woods whose blackness stands Up hard against horizon's slope; Grim, spectral, dreaded, and untrod Save monsters great of savage mien, That prowled, or crouched upon their prey; Sent forth a vicious roar that fairly shook Old Sylvia far and near, from vale Through crag to mountain peak! Upon this spot the redskin oft Has danced his 'War dance' and his 'Feast,' His face a reddish hue aglow-- Long locks with eaglets' plumes bedecked; His bow and never-failing dart, And scalper dangling at his side. More brightly gleamed his wary eye, As braves the war-whoop loudly yelled-- A sight more like the fiery fiends From Pluto's ghastly shore returned Than human blood and bone! They all have gone and left no tale But woe which hurled them ever hence To that shore whence no bark returns. Old Cabin, thou, a land-mark art, Of human progress' steady march!"

III

Of thee Thus has time passed with naught more said; For man in his pedantic art Soars far in feeble flights of song From Nature's heart, and thus he fails With Nature's God to hold commune! The bard has slept, dreamed many a dream, But failed to dream one dream of thee. High hangs his lyre on willow reed, And sitting 'neath yon shady nook, He fails to catch one note of thy Immortal song that fills the air. Awake, O bard, from sleep so deep! Attune thy lyre; let Nature breathe In her immortal breath of song; Then wilt thou sing a song most sweet, The song by Nature's vesper choir, Through all the countless ages sung,-- And still is singing day by day. Then all the world will join thy sweet Refrain in praise and ardent love Of this fair forest Dame!

Part 3

The nations all their day shall have; Yet each in turn shall rise and fall, As falls the dark brown autumn leaf; Or as those dread sky-kissing tides, Which toss frail barks high upon Some ghastly, frowning storm-beat shore,-- Though slowly, yet quite surely ebb away. --Aye! Egypt fair once spread the Nile, And green-bay-tree-like proudly flourished; Her snowy sails sea-ports bedecked, And deeply ploughed the rolling main, Or clave the placid lakes, as does The gentle swan, when some soft breeze The bulrush stirs, flings its perfume Upon the rippling silver waves! Fair cities dotted here and there Her vast domain. Her royal line Of Pharaohs held the sceptre gold Upon her all-emblazoned throne. Now Egypt fair is wreck and ruin. For, as fled on the flight of years, The unrelenting Hand of time Wiped her sweet visage off the globe! Naught save the grim, grey pyramid, Sublimest work of man, yet stands To greet the rosy morn, with proud Uplifted head, expanded chest-- A death defiant scoff at time! Yet hoary Time in his wild rage Of wreck and ruin, like Jove shall hurl His fiery bolts upon the head Of pyramid with ire, and crush And raze it to its base with scorn!

Next Greece, the fairest nymph that trod This belted globe upon, once shone As shines the Morning Orb, long ere The Dawn the rosy East has kissed; High reared her sacred temples in Olympia's shady groves, and built There sacred altars to her gods. Old Zeus and Phoebus oft here sat In council with their fellow gods. And Homer, fiery bard, was first To smite the chords of nature's lyre; Sweet sang he till the earth was filled With rarest strains of rapturous song! Then art and letters blew and blushed, The fairest flowers of ages past, Whose essence, spilled upon the breeze, Is wafted still forever on The twin deft with the flight of years; And man in calm delight inhales The fragrance of pure classic lore! But Greece is gone! Her statues fair Are mingled with the dust; each god Has flown some fairer clime to rule, Or, subdued, walks the dark abyss.

Continue reading The Sylvan Cabin: a Centenary Ode on the Birth of Lincoln, and Other Verse free in the Wunder reader →