Breakers and granite / by John Gould Fletcher [electronic text]

AMERICAN SYMPHONY

IN THE CITY OF NIGHT

(To the Memory of Edgar Allan Poe)

City of night, Wrap me in your folds of shadow.

City of twilight, City that projects into the west, City whose columns rest upon the sunset, city of square, threatening masses blocking out the light: City of twilight,Wrap me in your folds of shadow.

City of midnight, city that the full moon overflows, city where the cats prowl and the closed iron dust-carts go rattling through the shadows: City of midnight, Wrap me in your folds of shadow.

City of early morning, cool fresh-sprinkled city, city whose sharp roof peaks are splintered against the stars, city that unbars tall haggard gates in pity,

City of midnight, Wrap me in your folds of shadow.

City of rain, city where the bleak wind batters the hard drops once and again, sousing a shivering, cursing beggar who clings amid the stiff Apostles on the cathedral portico; City where the glare is dull and lowering, city where the clouds flare and flicker as they pass upwards, where sputtering lamps stare into the muddy pools beneath them; City where the winds shriek up the streets and tear into the squares, city whose cobbles quiver and whose pinnacles waver before the buzzing chatter of raindrops in their flight; City of midnight, Drench me with your rain of sorrow.

City of vermilion curtains, city whose windows drip with crimson, tawdry, tinselled, sensual city, throw me pitilessly into your crowds. City filled with women's faces leering at the passers by, City with doorways always open, city of silks and swishing laces, city where bands bray dance-music all night in the plaza,

City where the overscented light hangs tepidly, stabbed with jabber of the crowd, city where the stars stare coldly, falsely smiling through the smoke-filled air, City of midnight, Smite me with your despair.

City of emptiness, city of the white façades, city where one lonely dangling lantern wavers aloft like a taper before a marble sarcophagus, frightening away the ghosts;City where a single white-lit window in a motionless blackened house-front swallows the hosts of darkness that stream down the street towards it; City above whose dark tree-tangled park emerges suddenly, unlit, uncannily, a grey ghostly tower whose base is lost in the fog, and whose summit has no end. City of midnight,Bury me in your silence.

City of night, Wrap me in your folds of shadow.

City of restlessness, city where I have tramped and wandered,

City where the herded crowds glance at me suspiciously, city where the churches are locked, the shops unopened, the houses without hospitality, City of restlessness, Wrap me in your folds of shadow.

City of sleeplessness, city of cheap airless rooms, where in the gloom are heard snores through the partition, lovers that struggle, couples that squabble, cabs that rattle, cats that squall, City of sleeplessness, Wrap me in your folds of shadow.

City of feverish dreams, city that is being besieged by all the demons of darkness, city of innumerable shadowy vaults and towers, city where passion flowers desperately and treachery ends in death the strong: City of night, Wrap me in your folds of shadow.

February, 1915.

AMERICA

1916

From the sea-coast, from the bleak ravines of hills that lift their bare escarpments towards the sky that pours down pitiless threads of sunlight, whirls over chill clinging tentacles of rain, smashes hard buffets of huge wind, sifts fine quivering drifts of snow, thrashes with thunder and with hail, uncurls its great sodden flapping curtains before the gale — from the marshlands, from the banks of slow rivers, from the still brown plateaus, from the midst of steaming valleys, from the wide bays ringed with peaks — a thousand cities reek into the sky. Through a million vents the smell of cookery overflows. It rises upwards day and night in strange tragic black rows of smoke that glow and make the stars quiver, and dance and darken the sunlight.

Green billows of corn, golden seas of wheat, white lakes of cotton meet and fuse and intercross. Cattle string across in frightened procession; multitudes on multitudes of horses, black, dun, grey, gallop away after them, jarring the earth with their

hoofs, beating up dust in heavy fluffy clouds. Far away the sun lies still over broad. patches of silence, sparsely green, where an eagle hovers or an antelope starts up or a sly half-starving coyote is seen. The sun looks into yellow castles wedged in the cliff that were old when the first explorers saw them, and on white bulging palaces tinselled with marble and gold. The sun sees engines that rattle and cough, black derricks that wave their arms in circles aloft, crazy log cabins toppling into the marsh. On every side are symbols of man's desire made with his hands, hurried, glorious, sordid, tragic, clashing, insane; the sun looks down and does not understand but pours over them its heat, and cold, and rain, and light, and lightning, always the same.

Immense machines are clamouring, rattling, battling, wheeling, screaming, heaving, weaving. The wheels moan and groan and roar and waver and snap — and go on as before. Between the cities, over plain and hill, reel double paths of shining steel, where screaming locomotives pass like black shuttles leaving grey trails of smoke amid the wheat, the cattle, the corn, the cotton, the sordid, hideous factory-shafts, the fleet masses of plunging and galloping stallions. Their force is never spent or tired or nervously above them, earth is laced

and wired with crackling, chattering, singing, whispering, electricity. They fly from city to city, and the sky is scribbled above them with childish grey gigantic scrawls amid which the sun wabbles and crawls. And over all shoot backwards and forwards words that walk in the air, and perhaps not for long will the upper spaces be still and bare, but will soon be filled with racing lines of strong blackbird-machines bearing men on their backs. Purring autos squawk and squeal and spray and flutter, pale flashes through the rack. Red and black and yellow the earth takes on its coat of colours, from the struggle of a hundred million hands. It is a palimpset which no one reads or understands, which none has time to heed, a loom-frame woven over with interspersed entangled threads, of which the meaning is lost, from which the pattern is not yet freed.

Amid all this men struggle, surge, call out, fall choking, toil with backs bent over the earth in black arcs. Crowds of them clatter, scramble, bustle, push, and drift away. They creep, black, greasy masses out of the earth like ants; they swing out on great frozen blocks of steel or marble over space; they saunter in some forgotten place; they yawn with the weariness of little towns. Men, brown, black, yellow, pallid with fatigue, ruddy with

gluttony, blotched with disease, swarm and waver back and forth, east, west, south, north. Crackling twigs of sombre dripping forest mark their feet. Red wet furrowed plains receive their pains. Grey hungry factory towns bellow out through steam-filled lungs for them each morning. Prison gates grate slowly, hospital beds spread stateliness, insane asylums gibber through their windows. They hustle and shovel, piling heaps of hovels, and now and then as if in mockery some coppery tower that seems as if it would split the sky with its majesty. They are a great shallow sea, crinkling uneasily as if some giant's body were wallowing beneath. Some single impulse creeps through them, pouring its breath out of the chimneys, scattering itself over the fields, closing itself in behind the doors. It is one great vague inchoate organism, scarcely feeling its pulse as yet, rolling in the belly of the world, waiting its hour of birth. Earth is heaped about it; still it eats the earth away, red covering after red covering, day on day. Now it half timidly peeps out, now withdraws itself again. And still the sky pours on it heat and rain and wind and light and lightning and hail, shaping it, making it less frail, more fit to wake and take its place in the world.

But over there, beyond the seas, where for years the war flags have been stacked and furled, comes the crack of a pistol followed by faint cheers. And now a smeary gloom appears, it seems to swell from out the earth; it emerges in greenish folds above the horizon, and in its depths are flashes from far-off guns. Suddenly from the heart of the cloud, which the cowed world watches holding its breath, ome thick insensate hammer blows that split the core of earth asunder—the iron cannon unleashed for the dance of death. Deeper and deeper the noise unrolls in a vast salute to the new world from the old. It rises higher and higher covering the sea with its tumult and filling the sky with gouts and spatters of crimson fire. North, south, east, west, all the craters are emptying out their vitals upon earth's breast. But the immensity of the troubled continent stirs not nor gives to the world the life that is restlessly heaving beneath it.

The centuries sit with hands upon their wearing on weary foreheads the stamp of their destinies. The sun glares, the rain spatters, the thunder tramples his drums, the wind, rushing, hums its scorn—but the being—the thing that will master all the ages—still refuses to be born. The great derricks, black and frozen, lift their arms in mid-air;

the locomotives hoot and mutter with despair; the shuttles clatter and clamour and hammer at the woof day and night. The black flight of priceless instants reels and rebounds and shivers and crawls while without the uproar of the cannon calls like black seas battering the earth, grinding, sweeping, flickering, pounding, pounding, pounding in the in- increasing throes of birth. But still the thing will not arrive—still it refuses at the very gates of life. America! — America!—blood-stained and torn with choked, convulsive sighs, perhaps too late thou shalt arise, perhaps in vain shalt seek to rule the earth!

Spring, 1916.

THE POEM OF MIST

Mist on the Atlantic coast. Wind that whistles driving the blue, steel-cut sea steadily inland, past dark headlands. Sand and granite, trap-rock and scrub. Beyond these, mile after mile, a continent of forests, out of which twelve great rivers, Merrimac, Connecticut, Hudson, Delaware, Susquehanna, Potomac, James, Roanoke, Peedee, and Santee, Savannah and Altamaha, rise and pour their waters into the ocean. A coast unvisited by men, though now and then some lithe, smooth-bodied Indian paddles a canoe through a blue backwater, fringed with reeds, while a fleet of sea-gulls, their bodies oscillating, wheel and dance above it. A coast that is then silent for eternity.

Suddenly through the blue-grey mist, loom three high-pooped shells, the caravels. Far off to sea, beyond sight they drift, going southward. The mist parts to let them through, and they float the flag of Spain into a tropic ocean. Cathay is lost, but a continent is gained, and the copper-bodied paint-stained natives look sufficiently like the inhabitants

of, the East to justify their names. The news travels to Europe, where people have feasted on tales of isles of spice and gold for generations, and every shipmaster polishes up his chart and writes Terra Nova on the other side of the Atlantic. The blazing red cross of Spain, the golden lilies of France, the red lion of Holland, the red-white-and-blue-barred Union Jack of England advance, stand and fly on American soil—desolate hemlock forests, wild rice savannahs where the muskrat swims, dim snow-drifted northern plains, woods where the wolf howls all night, all these salute them. Thousands on thousands of men go out to the new found world to die. In Massachusetts Puritans fight with famine; in Virginia Cavaliers struggle with fever. Was there ever a new world not born through death, horror, desolation? As yet the new world belongs to no nation nor will it be free for itself until the dead are drifted deep and the red men sleep and the buffalo tide flows away from the plains and the old world breaks its agelong chains.

Mist is drifting in from the Atlantic, curling, whirling, waiting, gyrating. Mist drifts in over colonial towns and block houses, over frontier-posts and red-coat soldiery. Northward and eastward looms the blazing fair star of France, southward

and westward the dead red planet of Spain. But, in between, blue, blue, floats the mist and it brings with it a breed, a speech, a tradition. Men sit reading King James' Bible in wigwams on the barren lands where caribou stamp, and in the damp sweltering heat amid mournful cypress-swamps men sit at their ease, smoking and quoting Shakespeare. The mist fades out and the sky is clear, clear to the west where the sun hangs red, lighting up plain after plain that dips down from the Appalachians to the Mississippi River, rising slowly westward again to the Rockies afar. The star of France and the star of England have met and set, and out of them is born a new world.

Guns that thunder on a sweltering August day around Yorktown. For three months the British are cooped in, thanks to the French command of sea and land; then when September burns out the embers of autumn, and winter is at hand, they surrender. Squire Washington, who has waited with patience for this moment, since the day, over five, years ago, when he drew his sword in command of his country, rides homewards; and in December, a treaty is signed at Paris, whereby thirteen petty and rebellious colonies are allowed to go their way in peace. Rochambeau and Lafayette, to whom the

release is greatly owing, sail for France; and ten years later, the rotten fabric of aristocracy there collapses, and the people dance the Carmagnole around the guillotine. Slowly the American scene changes, the people pressing steadily westward. Generation after generation conquer the hard path to the Mississippi, the way across the prairie, towards the setting sun.

Mist hangs heavily on the Atlantic and a great three-masted ship waits off the shore, her topsails rattling and slapping in the faint puffs of breeze. Men abroad her are taking soundings and the Skipper stands anxiously at the wheel. Slowly from afar steal the clouds, crawling above the mist invisibly, coming with cohorts of thunder. Lightning strikes at the sea and the ship staggers with the first faint shock of the gale, nosing her way out to seaward, while the crew swarm aloft and furl the sail—crying we'll roll—ay—we'll furl—ay—we'll pay Paddy Doyle for his boots. Far away at the roots of the sea, a hurricane is rising, sweeping with surprising fury at the mist, tearing it away, heeling clippers homeward, driving them on to concealed reefs and shoals. The great ship, gleaming with brass and paint, under bare poles, rolls horribly in the tempest.

War rises like a dark cloud, shrouding the young exultant country in its folds. For three years Lee keeps the North at bay. General after General is defeated—McClellan at the Peninsula, Burnside at Fredericksburg, Hooker at Chancellorsville. Lincoln sitting like a tragic king in the White House, kneels and prays in his homely way that the Lord will spare the North another disaster. Gettysburg and Vicksburg is the answer, and the South, defeated, reels heavily. But when the last battle is fought and the last bullet is sped, Lincoln, too lies dead. And the victorious North, its conquest done, dreams of nothing better than of filling the continent with prosperity from the factories of the East to the coast of the setting sun. Prosperity spells dollars for the coffers of the few; cheap immigrant labour for the many; any corrupt government for the new Union either South or North. The word is gone forth that in God and the dollar we trust and any other régime is relegated to the forgotten past, and its dust.

Mist is blown by the wind across the coast of New England every summer, trailing inland, vanishing among sterile farms laid out among granite boulders, where grey decaying colonial farmhouses gaze hopelessly over junipers and mossy rotten

orchards, and fallen stone fences half overgrown. Mist blows and as it goes it whispers echoes of the past. Old crazy faces creep to windows and peer out to listen to it as it whispers to them of ships—ships of Portland, of Salem, of Newport, and New Bedford, clipper-ships and whalers, privateers and Cape Horn limejuicers, bringing gold, ivory, spices and fruit. Old hands smooth tremulously faded silks, old eyes peer hopelessly into Bibles. The age of ships is gone, the age of iron begun. Mills whirl their spindles, railroads carry the grain of the West to ports. The New England farms lie fallow and deserted and over their loneliness the red and yellow leaves of Autumn looming through the mist light torches, flashing in despair to the black hemlocks over there, like a group of Indians watchful and ready. Time flies steadily on, to the tune of the looms, and millions flow into New England's thrifty portals. But the energy, the vitality, is sapped and gone.

Squadrons are moving, grey through the mists of spring, on their way to France. Squadrons of troopships, guarded by cruisers, going forth into the unknown, into the battle the Allies cannot gain, into the dark ominous future. The din of cheering

dies down to a whisper, the salutes of tooting tugs to a sigh. Has the new world joined the old at last? Will there be row on row of new low crosses on the blood-soaked soil of France to mark that America was willing to take her chance with the rest of the World? Soon enough the answer is heard—the thunder of guns proclaiming the armistice. Germany gives up the struggle and all is over. All? Ah, but the mists hover and curl, advancing, retreating over the low eastern coast, silencing every cry, every boast, every peal of victory!

Mist hangs flat and sluggish, unstirring, unshaken. Underneath its touch the country will not waken. Fat and prosperous, it will slip easily to sleep, though discontent smoulders, though rebellion mutters at its gates. The fates have sent it too easy a task, to spin dreams out of mist, to weave ropes of foam and sand. It has forgotten the past of Athens, of Persia, of Crete, of Carthage, of Egypt, of Rome, of many a great empire that laid its trust only on material good. Though food be scarce and drink be lacking, though labour be in revolt and trade be declining, it will go on, finding its visions in the mist that hangs unstirring; though through and beyond it comes the loud crash of waves shaking

the granite, beating like inexorable drums of fate, sounding with boom on boom: —each one a sombre minute-gun to mark the years that must elapse before the moment of its doom.

June, 1920.

LINCOLN

I

Like a gaunt, scraggly pineWhich lifts its head above the mournful sandhills; And patiently, through dull years of bitter silence, Untended and uncared for, starts to grow.

Ungainly, labouring, huge,The wind of the north has twisted and gnarled its branches; Yet in the heat of mid-summer days, when thunder clouds ring the horizon, A nation of men shall rest beneath its shade.

And it shall protect them all,Hold everyone safe there, watching aloof in silence;Until at last, one mad stray bolt from the zenithShall strike it in an instant down to earth.

II

There was a darkness in this man; an immense and hollow darkness, Of which we may not speak, nor share with him nor enter; A darkness through which strong roots stretched downwards into the earth, Towards old things;

Towards the herdman-kings who walked the earth and spoke with God, Towards the wanderers who sought for they knew not what, and found their goal at last; Towards the men who waited, only waited patiently when all seemed lost, Many bitter winters of defeat;

Down to the granite of patience, These roots swept, knotted fibrous roots, prying, piercing, seeking, And drew from the living rock and the living waters about it, The red sap to carry upwards to the sun.

Not proud, but humble,Only to serve and pass on, to endure to the end through service, For the axe is laid at the roots of the trees, and all that bring not forth good fruit Shall be cut down on the day to come and cast into the fire.

III

There is a silence abroad in the land to-day, And in the hearts of men, a deep and anxious silence; And, because we are still at last, those bronze lips slowly open, Those hollow and weary eyes take on a gleam of light.

Slowly a patient, firm-syllabled voice cuts through the endless silence,Like labouring oxen that drag a plough through the chaos of rude clay-fields; "I went forward as the light goes forward in early Spring,

But there were also many things which I left behind.

"Tombs that were quiet; One, of a mother, whose brief light went out in the darkness, One of a loved one, the snow on whose grave is long falling, One only of a child, but it was mine.

"Have you forgotten your graves? Go, question them in anguish, Listen long to their unstirred lips. From your hostages to silence Learn there is no life without death, no dawn without sun-setting, No victory but to him who has given all."

The clamour of cannon dies down, the furnace-mouth of the battle is silent, The midwinter sun dips and descends, the earth takes on afresh its bright colours. But he whom we mocked and obeyed not, he whom we scorned and mistrusted, He has descended, like a god, to his rest.

Over the uproar of cities,

Over the million intricate threads of life weaving and crossing, In the midst of problems we know not, tangling, perplexing, ensnaring, Rises one white tomb alone.

Beam over it, stars, Wrap it 'round, stripes—stripes red for the pain that he bore for you— Enfold it forever, O, flag, rent, soiled, but repaired through your anguish; Long as you keep him there safe, the nations shall bow to your law.

Strew over him flowers:Blue forget-me-nots from the north and the bright pink arbutus From the east, and from the west rich orange blossom, But from the heart of the land take the passion-flower;

Rayed, violet, dimWith the nails that pierced, the cross that he bore and the circlet,

And beside it there lay also one lonely snow-white magnolia, Bitter for remembrance of the healing which has passed.

April 19th, 1916.