SPIDER-WEBS IN VERSE

A COLLECTION OF

LYRICS FOR LEISURE MOMENTS

SPUN AT IDLE HOURS

BY

CHARLES WILLIAM WALLACE

Professor of Rhetoric and Literature Western Normal College

LINCOLN, NEB.:

STATE JOURNAL COMPANY, PRINTERS.

1892.

Copyright 1892

BY

C. W. WALLACE

[iii]

TO

JUDGE T. D. WALLACE

AND

MRS. OLIVE WALLACE.

My Dear Father and Mother:

No word, no act, no consecrated gift of mine, how great or slight soever it may be, can ever repay the beneficence and love of you to whom I owe life and whatever of prosperity has been granted me.

As my eyes glance in retrospect along the fading perspective of years and lose themselves in the dim days of the cradle, and thence to the present look forwards to the distant peaks of hope that rise above unknown mists and shadows and horizons, I hear the counseling words of a father, and feel the ever-present touch of a mother’s hand, as both guide me with love into the dim unknown of life. Though I pass onwards with a father’s “God-speed,” and a mother’s lingering embrace and loving kiss, and leave you both fondly looking after me, still your presence in my memory is ever a guiding reality that even now directs this good right hand of mine to inscribe these dedicatory words of filial affection.

If in the days agone I ever seemed unheeding of that counsel of a father, and unmindful of that dearest love of a cherished and cherishing mother, I can but say that[iv] both that counsel and that love reach through those moulding and shaping years of my life and take hold on my heart with a firmness and a gentleness that nothing else of all the years can boast.

It is but right and just, therefore, that in these your later days I should likewise be your guide and your stay in so far as my hand may let;—that I should reach out my strong young arm and steady the tottering years that throng around you.

Withal, if I can afford you even one slight pleasure, it is my heart’s desire so to do. It is, therefore, with somewhat more than filial love that I dedicate this little volume to you, my Father and my Mother, both together my counselor and guide, still mercifully spared to your children; and in doing so, I can but express the hope that your years may yet be many and happy; that the iris struck by a New Sun from the crystals of the whitened and whitening wintry years may be as full of beauty and joy as were the early spring blossoms of love and hope that you pressed to your bosoms in youth.

Your Son,

CHARLES.

[v]

BY THE WAY.

As the presentation of these collected verses in their present printed form has been induced largely by the request of many of my former college students and by the importunities of my most intimate friends, and as this volume has consequently been prepared chiefly for their pleasure, it is hoped that those into whose hands the book may fall are already so well acquainted with the author that the selections themselves need no formal introduction to make them agreeable company and engaging companions.

In justice, I should here say that this collection contains only a few out of the vast number of good, bad, and indifferent pieces of verse that I have been making at odd hours of a busy life, ever since my boyhood, for my own pastime, pleasure, and literary and linguistic improvement, with no thought nor distant dream of ever permitting them thus to invade the domains of the sovereign public.

That the little book that thus modestly goes forth will attain either a large circulation or great popularity I neither expect, nor attempt to bring about; but that men and women with hearts that love and souls that look above may find much quiet pleasure and satisfaction in the following pages I do sincerely hope.

It is neither my desire nor befitting to my work to lay claim to any degree of excellence in the verses[vi] herein presented. Quite to the contrary, I see and regret many defects which I can now neither remove nor repair. But, however defective they may be in form or in spirit, I have ever thought that little else than the interpretation of the relations of the human soul to life, here and hereafter, and the presentation of the good, the beautiful, and the true of the human heart is worthy of serious effort.

As a consequence, most of these pieces are dual in meaning—one, in plain view, the reality; the other, less distinct, the finer ideality, the reflection, or mirrored image of the first.

It is this second, this finer and often, at first, obscure meaning that, in my judgment, is the essential—the preserving salt—of any poem. Certainly if not this meaning but the apparent one, the one on the surface, is the basis of judgment on these poems, they will fall far below the estimate accorded that poetry which is deemed worthy of existence.

I wish here to return my thanks for the hearty reception accorded the few selections of the prospectus, and to express the hope that the completed volume will equal whatever expectations the recipients of the prospectus may have.

Also, I cannot pass without noting the fact that a large share of the first edition of this volume was engaged nearly six months before it went to press, even before I had determined what productions I should use, and that, too, upon the mere announcement that the publication was contemplated for the present summer.

I wish, therefore, thus publicly to thank those who have given this substantial earnest of their appreciation.

[vii]

Any opinion or criticism, favorable or unfavorable, or any suggestion or correction on thought, arrangement, typography, or other point, that the reader may see fit to express, is not only invited and encouraged, but will be most gratefully received and carefully considered.

One word more. If a selection will not bear a second reading, or a third, a fourth, or a fiftieth reading; if it does not grow better and better at each reading; if it does not lift the soul to a higher plane, a nobler aim, a purer life, and a grander view; if at each successive reading something does not come out of it and enter the heart, and then pass back into the poem again, and thus again and again, each beautifying and ennobling the other, like a sunset halo among the clouds and the liquid, translucent image thereof in the mirroring lake, then it is no true poem, and should be cast aside.

The only proof of the excellence of a poem is that it makes the heart larger and the soul nobler for having read it, and that at each successive reading both the poem and the reader grow better and better.

Believing, as I do, that poetry is nothing less than the interpretation of the Divine in the human heart (whether in the mood of tears or of laughter), I can but hope, in entrusting these “children of the brain” to the care of others, that in the heart of each little waif some good may be found, some song may be heard, some beauty be revealed, some experience be verified.

C. W. W.

Lincoln, 22 June, 1892.

[viii][ix]

CONTENTS.

[1]

SPIDER-WEBS IN VERSE.

A CHORAL OF SUNSET.

[2]

THE POET’S PRAYER.

UPS AND DOWNS.

THE OLD BENONI TREE.

A SLUMBER RHAPSODY.

BAREFOOT AFTER THE COWS.

GIFT AND GIVER.

Not what we give, but what we share.—Lowell.

Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind.—Shakespeare.

[9]

A SORTO’ PLAYED-OUT OL’ BOUQUET.

DOWN TO THE CANDY-MAN’S SHOP.

Return.

LIFE TO LOVE. A Triolet.

[12]

COME TO THE SHADOWS. A Pantoum.

SOUL OF MY SOUL.

MINCE PIE.

TEARS AND LAUGHTER.

MIST-WING.

THE COMMON LOT. Choriambic.

[18]

ECHO SONG.

[This last he hears in after years.

THE HAUNTED HOUSE.

[23]

SONNETS OF LIFE.

II.

[24]

SYMBOLS IN SONNETS OF LIFE.

On submitting this poem to critics, I find that various ideas are gleaned. Some take it as a literal description of night and day, or light and darkness! Others think that it celebrates the victory of truth over error, right over wrong, virtue over vice, or possibly the triumph of learning over ignorance, or civilization over barbarism. This is not so surprising; for I confess it does, indeed, admit various interpretations. Some say that in its obscurity, though in nothing else, it somewhat resembles the work of some great poet. The only consolation that I can squeeze out of all these various opinions is that obscurity and occultness synchronously attend upon and are concomitant with both iconographic delineations and symbolical phraseology. ’Tis said ’tis so,—and so ’tis sad!

“Sing a song o’ six-pence, pocket full of rye, four and twenty black-birds baked in a pie,” etc., is comparatively meaningless, tho’ pleasing, unless we know what is symbolized. The “pie” is the day, the “four and twenty black-birds” are the twenty-four hours of the day, etc., etc. The symbols thus completed give a new beauty to that old jingle. In fact, it was that identical jingle with its symbols that suggested Sonnets of Life.

As the title and staring Carlylean capitals throughout suggest, I intended this poem to be a sort of Analogue of Life. In consequence of all the foregoing, and for the delectation of those who care to read the piece a second time, I have subjoined these

Symbols and Notes.

I.

II.

This may aid somewhat. Too close an interpretation cannot be permitted in any poem: ’twould make some of the most exquisite poetic thought of literature ridiculous and nonsensical. The true poetic nature never needs more in the interpretation of any poem than the title and the naked poem itself to suggest thoughts and images infinitely more beautiful than explanation can possibly make them.

A MODERN TRAGEDY AVERTED. He (in despondency).

She (faithfully).

He (joyously).

She (flippantly).

He (bitterly and sadly).

She (tauntingly).

He (in despair).

She (in fear, imploringly).

THE HUMAN HEART. Birth.

Joy on Account of Birth.

Sorrow on Account of Death.

Soul Passes Beyond.

L’Envoy.

[30]

THE NIGHTMARE.

[32]

“FALSE WOMANKIND!” ON READING A SLUR THAT WAS MADE ON HER BY THE LACK-LOVE GAY, OF QUEEN ANNE’S DAY.

LONELY! TO —— (LONG AGO DEAD.)

I’SE SEEN A LIGHT IN DE SKY. (A PLANTATION MELODY.)

Chorus.

Chorus.

Chorus.

FAMILY OF THE EPHEMERA.

(To be read in connection with the following poem, “Shut In.”)

Somewhere, sometime, I know not when or where, I have heard a strangely beautiful and beautifully strange and altogether wonderful story—a story of a pygmy people.

In the long, long ago that has slipped into the lethal tide of the flow of Time where even the years have forgotten the rolling chime that they used to sing to the shore of a heavenly clime (and where poets don’t ever, nor ever, nor ever rhyme), whence even Tradition, asleep, forgets to climb, so long ago that I don’t know but that the time still antedates all dates, there lived the Family of the Ephemera.

As the sun came up in the morning, the race came into existence. During the night, a toad-stool of wonderful dimensions had sprung up, and beneath this over-shadowing phenomenon, built by the genii of darkness, the first glint of the new day’s sun kissed the first born of a new race—the Adam and Eve of the Family called Ephemera.

[37]

As the sun arose, and ere, e’en years ere it showed its lower disk, the family increased most startingly. The whole of their known world was peopled. They developed the resources of their vast little land. They cultivated the soil. They delved in the mines for gold. They carried on commerce with their widely scattered selves. They built homes and cities. Their cities were magnificent, their houses built of exquisitely carved and polished stone quarried from a grain of sand. Each window was made of the filmy iridescence of a single sunbeam, and curtained with richly embroidered tapestries woven from threads of the delicate shadow cast by a single ray of spectral purple. Their tables were filled with all the rich and dainty micros of the land. Withal, they were a happy, though barbarous people.

The sun arose. Men of the present generation had already grown gray-headed, while myriads of their posterity were just starting on their paths. Generation after generation had already come and gone, each leaving the wealth of its history, its experience, its scientific researches, its learning to the inheritants of the next.

Centuries to them came and went, governments grew old, decayed, and passed into tradition, while others sprang up in their places;—for to this strange and fast-living people, our moments were days, our seconds were months, our minutes were years, our hours were centuries, and our days were ages untold that lap the two ends of time into one unbroken eternity.

The sun was mid-forenoon. The Family of the Ephemera had grown old and wise. They pointed with vaunting pride to their intelligence and prosperity, to[38] their grand achievements reaching down the long, fretted colonnades of history and vanishing in the dim perspective of tradition’s mystery. They looked upon all around, beneath, and above them, and rejoiced that all was for them. Their wise philosophers pointed to the sun and said, “All for us!” They told and taught how that great sun had always remained in its present place; for even in the memory of the oldest inhabitants no one had ever known the sun to be in other place than now. Nay, even history knew it not. They said, however, that there was a tradition, but not authenticated by history nor by later scientific investigation, that the sun long, long æons ago had occupied a position nearer the horizon. They showed how and why all things were made for them; how the great toad-stool, towering an immeasurable distance above them, had been placed on earth for them,

and them alone, and philosophized how it was impossible for another to exist in the universe. They rejoiced that their little world was created, and endowed with all its richest blessings, for none other than them. They were a happy people, and prosperous. Their want of wisdom made them more happy and more prosperous.

Centuries came and went. The sun stood in the zenith. So stood the race of Ephemera. Wiser philosophers than those of the mid-forenoon of their existence still pointed toward the great red sun, and said, “It was always there; it was made for us!” Crowns crumbled. New nations arose as from chaos, flourished, and died. Others took their places. Schools had always been tolerated. They were now fostered. They pointed their telescopes toward the mighty fret-work of[39] the toad-stool above them, and computed the number of huge radial beams that supported its broad outer rim. The students of the universities and colleges delved deep into the lore of their ancestral nations. They studied history; they read their poets; they reasoned and computed with their mathematicians; they looked down into the earth and up into the heavens with their philosophers, and, withdrawing to their own narrow cells, they said, “All for us, all for us!”

The sun passed the zenith, declining to the west. The race declined! Still, philosophers said, pointing to the sun, “’Twas alway thus; ’twas made for us!”

They said Time was for them, and them alone. They could not conceive another similar or a different people. With prophecy, they looked into the future. They claimed that, also: for a hope and a faith, placed in their hearts at their creation, had grown and strengthened, that they should all meet again in another world, a brighter and a better world, all for them, all for them. The gods, with whom they peopled all things, watched over and guarded them, and them alone.

The sun sank low. The lower limb touched the horizon. With the going down of the sun, the race decayed in its old age. As the last ray of sun passed over the land of the Ephemera, only two of this strange Family, wandering hand in hand, old and lone, turned their eyes to the waning light of the west, and sank to rest as the ray shot up and out into the unfathomed sky beyond, and glinted its gold on the clinking stars, the beautiful golden gates of the sable and iron-bound night!

Thus passed away the Family of the Ephemera. Strange, strange story! A race wrapped up in them[40]selves, never dreaming that there might be innumerable other realms like their little own; that there might be peoples on peoples beyond their ken in worlds unknown as superior to them as the gods of Olympus were superior to the Romans.

A strange, strange story!—for we are looking through an inverted microscope, the large end at the eye, and the small end turned upon Time, Events, and the Human race!

SHUT IN. I.

II.

III.

IV.

[42]

SONG OF THE STARS.

I WONDER.

IF SO, PEACE TILL NEXT NEW-YEAR. (A DIRGE.)

MY DEFEAT.

THERE’S A LAUGH.

[49]

TO SLEEP.

WHEEL AND SHUTTLE.

Spin: God will send thee flax.—Proverb.

[Although differing slightly from his literal experience, nevertheless to the boy, long ago grown to manhood, who used to cling to his mother’s dress, and fretfully toddle back and forth as she patiently sent the big wheel whirring and then ran backwards with her lengthening thread, then forwards, and so on, hour after hour, spinning threads for the home-loom, this poem, with its application to life, has in it the pleasing scent of the roses of recollection, intoxicating even to sadness.]

THE PRESS OF PENURY.

HALLOWEEN. AN INVITATION SENT TO A LADY, OCT. 31.

[52]

LIFE.

BORROWING BRAINS.

SLEEP.

TO A WILD-ROSE BOUQUET.

[56]

SONG ON THE SEA.

[57]

WOODLAND LAY.

[58]

IN THE ANGELS’ KEEP.

THOUGHT.

Thought alone is eternal.—Young.

WHITE-ENTHRONED ABOVE ME. (ON A SMALL WHITE-ROSE BOUQUET PRESENTED BY A LADY AND PLACED IN PALGRAVE’S “GOLDEN TREASURY,” OPPOSITE “THE SLEEPING BEAUTY.”)

THE LONE WAYSIDE WILD ROSE.

TWENTY.

BEAUTIFUL MAY.

[65]

DEEP UNTO DEEP. A DOUBLE THRENODY.

A HUMPTY-DUMPTY IDIOTIC CHAP.

GOOD-NIGHT. A SONG OF THE CLOSE OF LIFE.

Infant.

Child.

Youth.

Man.

All.

TO FANCY.

[71]

GOOD-NIGHT, MY LOVE.

THROUGH REVERENT EYES.

WHAT IS POETRY?

Proper conception and appreciation of the poetic, whether in objects of nature or in the mirror of words reflecting the human heart, presupposes a delicate and divinely wrought nature tuned to the touch of the Maker’s hand. Only such a beauty-loving soul finds responsive a chord to the soul of beauty that dwells in the bodying words of poetry. The finer the soul, the finer the music. To possess this light-receiving and radiant Divinity is to possess at once both the highest attainment of human culture and aspiration and the greatest gift of God. It is thus at the same time both a growing seed and the seed’s growth. That is, the poetic soul is both a gift divine and a cultivation of it consecrated to the Divine Giver. Or, in other words, the poet is both born and made. Poeta nascitur non fit—the poet is born, not made—is true in this sense and in no other; for the feelings, the gifts of the poet, are the gifts of every human soul in greater or less degree. Else the proverb is not true, and we must say, Poeta nascitur et fit; which would, no doubt, be equally

misunderstood. But Poeta nascitur non fit is true; and if, instead of being translated literally, it is rendered in an explanatory way, it means simply:—“The poet possesses the same faculties that others do; but the poetic faculty in[77] him at birth is more highly developed than it is in others, and is consequently susceptible of a higher degree of cultivation. If the poetic faculty is naturally slight or insignificant at birth, no amount of cultivating and polishing can create, or make, a poet of its possessor.” This is the ancient meaning, and the only sensible meaning, the meaning accepted by all who understand the subject.

To see it from a different angle. The true poet has both genius and talent—or rather, genius has the poet and compels the poet to have talent. Genius is the divine gift; talent is the cultivation. Genius—poetic genius—, the highest harmonious union of the feelings, is the part of the poet that is born; talent, the ability to reveal that genius, is the part that is cultivated, or made. Genius is power; talent is skill. The man of poetic genius cannot help writing; the man of poetic talent can help it, but won’t. That’s the main difference.