III Genoese boy of the level brow, Lad of the lustrous, dreamy eyes Astare at Manhattan's pinnacles now In the first, sweet shock of a hushed surprise; I catch the glow of a wild surmise That played on the Santa Maria's prow Four centuries gone, When a world from the wave began to rise. When Italy's dreams Spread wing and sweep into the skies. Caesar dreamed him a world ruled well; Dante dreamed Heaven out of Hell; Angelo brought us there to dwell; And you, are you of a different birth?— You're only a "dago," and "scum o' the earth"! IV Stay, are we doing you wrong Calling you "scum o' the earth," Man of the sorrow-bowed head, Of the features tender yet strong, Man of the eyes full of wisdom and mystery Mingled with patience and dread? Have not I known you in history, Sorrow-bowed head? Were you the poet-king, worth Treasures of Ophir unpriced? Were you the prophet, perchance, whose art Foretold how the rabble would mock That shepherd of spirits, erelong, Who should carry the lambs on his heart And tenderly feed his flock? Man-lift that sorrow-bowed head. Lo! 'tis the face of the Christ! The vision dies at its birth. You're merely a butt for our mirth. You're a "sheeny”—and therefore despised V Countrymen, bend and invoke For that we spat on these marvelous folk, Our peers, and more than our peers. The lips so ready for sneers At the sons of our ancient more-than-peers. Mercy for us who dare despise Men in whose loins our Homer lies; Mothers of men who shall bring to us The glory of Titian, the grandeur of Huss; Newcomers all from the eastern seas, In the wealth of the richest bloods of earth. Robert Haven Schauffler FROM "THE NEW WORLD" Celia was laughing. Hopefully I said: "How shall this beauty that we share, This love, remain aware Beyond our happy breathing of the air? How shall it be fulfilled and perfected? . . . If you were dead, How then should I be comforted?" But Celia knew instead: "He who finds beauty here, shall find it there." A halo gathered round her hair. I looked and saw her wisdom bare The living bosom of the countless dead. . . . And there I laid my head. Again when Celia laughed, I doubted her and said: "Life must be led In many ways more difficult to see Than this immediate way For you and me. We stand together on our lake's edge, and the mystery Of love has made us one, as day is made of night and night of day. Aware of one identity Within each other, we can say: 'I shall be everything you are.' We are uplifted till we touch a star. We know that overhead Is nothing more austere, more starry, or more deep to understand Than is our union, human hand in hand. But over our lake come strangers—a crowded launch, a lonely A mile away a train bends by. In every car Like ours. Celia, Celia, why should there be To trim this little circle that we tread, To set a bar To strangers and forbid them!-Are they not as we, How can we shut them out and let stars in?" She looked along the lake. And when I heard her speak, The sun fell on the boy's white sail and her white cheek. "I touch them all through you," she said. "I cannot know them now. Deeply and truly as my very own, except through you, Except through one or two Interpreters. But not a moment stirs Here between us, binding and interweaving us, The sunlight fell in glory on her hair. . . . And then said Celia, radiant, when I held her near: "They who find beauty there, shall find it here." And on her brow, When I heard Celia speak, Cities were populous With peace and oceans echoed glories in her ear And from her risen thought Her lips had brought, As from some peak Down through the clouds, a mountain-air To guide the lonely and uplift the weak. "Record it all," she told me, "more than merely this, More than the shine of sunset on our heads, more than a kiss, More than our rapt agreement and delight Watching the mountain mingle with the night. Tell that the love of two incurs The love of multitudes, makes way And welcome for them, as a solitary star Brings on the great array. Go make a lovers' calendar," She said, "for every day." And when the sun had put away His dazzle, over the shadowy firs ... The solitary star came out. . . . So on some night To eyes of youth shall come my light And hers. Witter Bynner PATRIOTISM AND THE GREAT WAR Courage is the fundamental biological virtue, the necessary virtue without which the human race could never have survived on this planet. Long before people discussed the virtues and classified their names as abstract nouns, courage was a concrete and definite thing. If he would eat, the man of the stone age must have courage in hunting and fishing and fighting. If she would protect her young, the woman of the stone age must have courage to stand before them in the door of her cave. Therefore courage is probably planted deeper in us than any of the virtues acquired later in the history of the race and is probably the most common of all virtues. Certainly, whenever it is demanded of them, men and women with no very unusual qualities of any other kind manifest courage in a remarkable degree. And in almost all normal human beings, as the great war has proved, is a capacity for courage, even for heroism. In spite of the fact that many of us never rise very high above our sins and follies, it can be said justly that few of us are cowards. Much of the power of the social and racial passion called patriotism is to be found in the fact that it calls upon the common woman and man to exercise this ancient virtue. It affords an opportunity for transfiguration. No matter what his faults may have been, when the time comes a man will be a man-and, in the same sense, a woman will be a woman. For once they will be godlike, giving everything, facing and enduring all things for the sake of the dear soil of the mother land, for the streets of the home town, and for the civilization in which they have been bred, which, in spite of all the criticisms leveled against it in times of peace, probably suits them better than any other which might be imposed upon them. For it is the glory of poor errant human nature to love the |