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Prelude

Alas! upon some starry height,

The Gods of Excellence to please,

This hand of mine will never smite

The Harp of High Serenities.

Mere minstrel of the street am I,

To whom a careless coin you fling;

But who, beneath the bitter sky,

Blue-lipped, yet insolent of eye,

Can shrill a song of Spring;

A song of merry mansard days,

The cheery chimney-tops among;

Of rolics and of roundelays

When we were young … when we were young;

A song of love and lilac nights,

Of wit, of wisdom and of wine;

Of Folly whirling on the Heights,

Of hunger and of hope divine;

Of Blanche, Suzette and Celestine,

And all that gay and tender band

Who shared with us the fat, the lean,

The hazard of Illusion-land;

When scores of Philistines we slew

As mightily with brush and pen

We sought to make the world anew,

And scorned the gods of other men;

When we were fools divinely wise,

Who held it rapturous to strive;

When Art was sacred in our eyes,

And it was Heav’n to be alive.…

O days of glamour, glory, truth,

To you tonight I raise my glass;

O freehold of immortal youth,

Bohemia, the lost, alas!

O laughing lads who led the romp,

Respectable you’ve grown, I’m told;

Your heads you bow to power and pomp,

You’ve learned to know the worth of gold.

O merry maids who shared our cheer,

Your eyes are dim, your locks are grey;

And as you scrub I sadly fear

Your daughters speed the dance today.

O windmill land and crescent moon!

O Columbine and Pierrette!

To you my old guitar I tune

Ere I forget, ere I forget….

So come, good men who toil and tire,

Who smoke and sip the kindly cup,

Ring round about the tavern fire

Ere yet you drink your liquor up,

And hear my simple songs of earth,

Of youth and truth and living things;

Of poverty and proper mirth,

Of rags and rich imaginings;

Of cock-a-hoop, blue-heavened days,

Of hearts elate and eager breath,

Of wonder, worship, pity, praise,

Of sorrow, sacrifice and death;

Of lusting, laughter, passion, pain,

Of lights that lure and dreams that thrall …

And if a golden word I gain,

Oh, kindly folks, God save you all!

And if you shake your heads in blame …

Good friends, God love you all the same.

From “Book One: Spring”

I

MONTPARNASSE,

April 1914.

All day the sun has shone into my little attic, a bitter sunshine that brightened yet did not warm. And so as I toiled and toiled doggedly enough, many were the looks I cast at the three faggots I had saved to cook my evening meal. Now, however, my supper is over, my pipe alight, and as I stretch my legs before the embers I have at last a glow of comfort, a glimpse of peace.

My Garret

Here is my Garret up five flights of stairs;

Here’s where I deal in dreams and ply in fancies,

Here is the wonder-shop of all my wares,

My sounding sonnets and my red romances.

Here’s where I challenge Fate and ring my rhymes,

And grope at glory — aye, and starve at times.

Here is my Stronghold: stout of heart am I,

Greeting each dawn as songful as a linnet;

And when at night on yon poor bed I lie

(Blessing the world and every soul that’s in it),

Here’s where I thank the Lord no shadow bars

My skylight’s vision of the valiant stars.

Here is my Palace tapestried with dreams.

Ah! though tonight ten sous are all my treasure,

While in my gaze immortal beauty gleams,

Am I not dowered with wealth beyond all measure?

Though in my ragged coat my songs I sing,

King of my soul, I envy not the king.

Here is my Haven: it’s so quiet here;

Only the scratch of the pen, the candle’s flutter;

Shabby and bare and small, but O how dear!

Mark you — my table with my work a-clutter,

My shelf of tattered books along the wall,

My bed, my broken chair — that’s nearly all.

Only four faded walls, yet mine, all mine.

Oh, you fine folks, a pauper scorns your pity.

Look, where above me stars of rapture shine;

See, where below me gleams the siren city …

Am I not rich? — a millionaire no less,

If wealth be told in terms of Happiness.

From “Book Two: Early Summer”

The Philistine and the Bohemian

Last night MacBean introduced me to Saxon Dane the Poet. Truly, he is more like a blacksmith than a Bard — a big bearded man whose black eyes brood somberly or flash with sudden fire. We talked of Walt Whitman, and then of others.

“The trouble with poetry,” he said, “is that it is too exalted. It has a phraseology of its own; it selects themes that are quite outside of ordinary experience. As a medium of expression it fails to reach the great mass of the people.”

Then he added: “To hell with the great mass of the people! What have they got to do with it? Write to please yourself, as if not a single reader existed. The moment a man begins to be conscious of an audience he is artistically damned. You’re not a Poet, I hope?”

I meekly assured him I was a mere maker of verse.

“Well,” said he, “better good verse than middling poetry. And maybe even the humblest of rhymes has its uses. Happiness is happiness, whether it be inspired by a Rossetti sonnet or a ballad by G.R. Sims. Let each one who has something to say, say it in the best way he can, and abide the result.… After all,” he went on, “what does it matter? We are living in a pygmy day. With Tennyson and Browning the line of great poets passed away, perhaps forever. The world today is full of little minstrels, who echo one another and who pipe away tunefully enough. But with one exception they do not matter.”

I dared to ask who was his one exception. He answered, “Myself, of course.”

Here’s a bit of light verse which it amused me to write today, as I sat in the sun on the terrace of the Closerie de Lilas:

She was a Philistine spick and span,

He was a bold Bohemian.

She had the mode, and the last at that;

He had a cape and a brigand hat.

She was so riante and chic and trim;

He was so shaggy, unkempt and grim.

On the rue de la Paix she was wont to shine;

The rue de la Gaîté was more his line.

She doted on Barclay and Dell and Caine;

He quoted Mallarmé and Paul Verlaine.

She was a triumph at Tango and teas;

At Vorticist’s suppers he sought to please.

She thought that Franz Lehar was utterly great;

Of Strauss and Stravinski he’d piously prate.

She loved elegance, he loved art;

They were as wide as the poles apart:

Yet — Cupid and Caprice are hand and glove —

They met at a dinner, they fell in love.

Home he went to his garret bare,

Thrilling with rapture, hope, despair.

Swift he gazed in his looking-glass,

Made a grimace and murmured: “Ass!”

Seized his scissors and fiercely sheared,

Severed his buccaneering beard;

Grabbed his hair, and clip! clip! clip!

Off came a bunch with every snip.

Ran to a tailor’s in startled state,

Suits a dozen commanded straight;

Coats and overcoats, pants in pairs,

Everything that a dandy wears;

Socks and collars, and shoes and ties,

Everything that a dandy buys.

Chums looked at him with wondering stare,

Fancied they’d seen him before somewhere;

A Brummel, a D’Orsay, a beau so fine,

A shining, immaculate Philistine.

Home she went in a raptured daze,

Looked in the mirror with startled gaze,

Didn’t seem to be pleased at all;

Savagely muttered: “Insipid Doll!”

Clutched her hair and a pair of shears,

Cropped and bobbed it behind the ears;

Aimed at a wan and willowy-necked

Sort of a Holman Hunt effect;

Robed in subtile and sage-green tones,

Like the dames of Rossetti and E. Burne-Jones;

Girdled her garments billowing wide,

Moved with an undulating glide;

All her frivolous friends forsook,

Cultivated a soulful look;

Gushed in a voice with a creamy throb

Over some weirdly Futurist daub —

Did all, in short, that a woman can

To be a consummate Bohemian.

A year went past with its hopes and fears,

A year that seemed like a dozen years.

They met once more.… Oh at last! At last!

They rushed together, they stopped aghast.

They looked at each other with blank dismay,

They simply hadn’t a word to say.

He thought with a shiver: “Can this be she?”

She thought with a shudder: “This can’t be he?”

This simpering dandy, so sleek and spruce;

This languorous lily in garments loose;

They sought to brace from the awful shock:

Taking a seat, they tried to talk.

She spoke of Bergson and Pater’s prose,

He prattled of dances and ragtime shows;

She purred of pictures, Matisse, Cezanne,

His tastes to the girls of Kirchner ran;

She raved of Tschaikowsky and Caesar Franck,

He owned that he was a jazz band crank!

They made no headway. Alas! alas!

He thought her a bore, she thought him an ass.

And so they arose and hurriedly fled;

Perish Illusion, Romance, you’re dead.

He loved elegance, she loved art,

Better at once to part, to part.

And what is the moral of this rot?

Don’t try to be what you know you’re not.

And if you’re made on a muttonish plan,

Don’t seek to seem a Bohemian;

And if to the goats your feet incline,

Don’t try to pass for a Philistine.

II

A SMALL CAFÉ IN A SIDE STREET,

June 1914.

The Bohemian Dreams

Because my overcoat’s in pawn,

I choose to take my glass

Within a little bistro on

The rue du Montparnasse;

The dusty bins with bottles shine,

The counter’s lined with zinc,

And there I sit and drink my wine,

And think and think and think.

I think of hoary old Stamboul,

Of Moslem and of Greek,

Of Persian in a coat of wool,

Of Kurd and Arab sheikh;

Of all the types of weal and woe,

And as I raise my glass,

Across Galata bridge I know

They pass and pass and pass.

I think of citron trees aglow,

Of fan-palms shading down,

Of sailors dancing heel and toe

With wenches black and brown;

And though it’s all an ocean far

From Yucatan to France,

I’ll bet beside the old bazaar

They dance and dance and dance.

I think of Monte Carlo, where

The pallid croupiers call,

And in the gorgeous, guilty air

The gamblers watch the ball;

And as I flick away the foam

With which my beer is crowned,

The wheels beneath the gilded dome

Go round and round and round.

I think of vast Niagara,

Those gulfs of foam a-shine,

Whose mighty roar would stagger a

More prosy bean than mine;

And as the hours I idly spend

Against a greasy wall,

I know that green the waters bend

And fall and fall and fall.

I think of Nijni Novgorod

And Jews who never rest;

And womenfolk with spade and hod

Who slave in Buda-Pest;

Of squat and sturdy Japanese

Who pound the paddy soil,

And as I loaf and smoke at ease

they toil and toil and toil.

I think of shrines in Hindustan,

Of cloistral glooms in Spain,

Of minarets in Ispahan,

Of St. Sophia’s fane,

Of convent towers in Palestine,

Of temples in Cathay,

And as I stretch and sip my wine

They pray and pray and pray.

And so my dreams I dwell within,

And visions come and go,

And life is passing like a Cin-

Ematographic Show;

Till just as surely as my pipe

Is underneath my nose,

Amid my visions rich and ripe

I doze and doze and doze.

From “Book Four: Winter”

IV

A Lapse of Time and a Word of Explanation

THE AMERICAN HOSPITAL, NEUILLY,

January 1919.

Four years have passed and it is winter again. Much has happened. When I last wrote, on the Somme in 1915, I was sickening with typhoid fever. All that spring I was in hospital.

Nevertheless, I was sufficiently recovered to take part in the Champagne battle in the fall of that year, and to “carry on” during the following winter. It was at Verdun I got my first wound.

In the spring of 1917 I again served with my Corps; but on the entry of the United States into the War I joined the army of my country. In the Argonne I had my left arm shot away.

As far as time and health permitted, I kept a record of these years, and also wrote much verse. All this, however, has disappeared under circumstances into which there is no need to enter here. The loss was a cruel one, almost more so than that of my arm; for I have neither the heart nor the power to rewrite this material.

And now, in default of something better, I have bundled together this manuscript, and have added to it a few more verses, written in hospitals. Let it represent me. If I can find a publisher for it, tant mieux. If not, I will print it at my own cost, and anyone who cares for a copy can write to me —

STEPHEN POORE,

12 bis, RUE DES PETITS MOINEAUX,

PARIS.

Michael

“There’s something in your face, Michael, I’ve seen it all the day;

There’s something quare that wasn’t there when first ye wint away.…”

“It’s just the Army life, mother, the drill, the left and right,

That puts the stiffinin’ in yer spine and locks yer jaw up tight.…”

“There’s something in your eyes, Michael, an’ how they stare and stare —

You’re lookin’ at me now me boy, as if I wasn’t there.…”

“It’s just the things I’ve seen, mother, the sights that come and come,

A bit o’ broken, bloody pulp that used to be a chum.…”

“There’s something on your heart, Michael, that makes ye wake at night,

And often when I hear ye moan, I trimble in me fright.…”

“It’s just a man I killed, mother, a mother’s son like me;

It seems he’s always hauntin’ me, he’ll never let me be.…”

“But maybe he was bad, Michael, maybe it was right

To kill the inimy you hate in fair and honest fight.…”

“I did not hate at all, mother; he never did me harm;

I think he was a lad like me, who worked upon a farm.…”

“And what’s it all about, Michael; why did you have to go,

A quiet, peaceful lad like you, and we were happy so? …”

“It’s thim that’s up above, mother, tit’s thim that sits an’ rules;

We’ve got to fight the wars they make, it’s us as are the fools.…”

“And what will be the end, Michael, and what’s the use, I say,

Of fightin’ if whoever wins it’s us that’s got to pay? …”

“Oh, it will be the end, mother, when lads like him and me,

That sweat to feed the ones above, decide that we’ll be free.…”

“And when will that day come, Michael, and when will fightin’ cease,

And simple folks may till their soil and live and love in peace? …”

“It’s coming soon and soon, mother, it’s nearer every day,

When only men who work and sweat will have a word to say;

When all who earn their honest bread in every land and soil

Will claim the Brotherhood of Man, the Comradeship of Toil;

When we, the Workers, all demand: ‘What are we fighting for?’ …

Then, then we’ll end that stupid crime, that devil’s madness — War.”