Here are the needles. See that he dies
While the effects of the drug endure.

What is the question he asks with his eyes?—
Yes, All-Highest, to God, be sure.]

ET DONA FERENTES

1896

IN EXTENDED observation of the ways and works of man, From the Four-mile Radius roughly to the Plains of Hindustan:

I have drunk with mixed assemblies, seen the racial ruction rise,

And the men of half Creation damning half Creation's eyes.

I have watched them in their tantrums, all that pentecostal

crew,

French, Italian, Arab, Spaniard, Dutch and Greek, and Russ and Jew,

Celt and savage, buff and ochre, cream and yellow, mauve and white;

But it never really mattered till the English grew polite;

Till the men with polished toppers, till the men in long frock

coats,

Till the men who do not duel, till the men who war with votes, Till the breed that take their pleasures as Saint Lawrence took

his grid,

Began to "beg your pardon" and—the knowing croupier

hid.

Then the bandsmen with their fiddles, and the girls that bring the beer,

Felt the psychologic moment, left the lit casino clear;

But the uninstructed alien, from the Teuton to the Gaul, Was entrapped, once more, my country, by that suave, decep tive drawl.

As it was in ancient Suez or 'neath wilder, milder skies,
I "observe with apprehension" when the racial ructions rise;
And with keener apprehension, if I read the times aright,
Hear the old casino order: "Watch your man, but be polite.

"Keep your temper. Never answer (that was why they spat and swore).

Don't hit first, but move together (there's no hurry) to the door.

Back to back, and facing outward while the linguist tells 'em how

"Nous sommes allong ah notre batteau, nous ne voulong pas

un row."

So the hard, pent rage ate inward, till some idiot went too

"Let 'em have it!" and they had it, and the same was merry

war.

Fist, umbrella, cane, decanter, lamp and beer-mug, chair and

boot

Till behind the fleeing legions rose the long, hoarse yell for

loot.

Then the oil-cloth with its numbers, like a banner fluttered

free;

Then the grand piano cantered, on three castors, down the

quay;

White, and breathing through their nostrils, silent, systematic, swift

They removed, effaced, abolished all that man could heave or

Oh, my country, bless the training that from cot to castle

runs

The pitfall of the stranger but the bulwark of thy sonsMeasured speech and ordered action, sluggish soul and unperturbed,

Till we wake our Island-Devil-nowise cool for being curbed!

When the heir of all the ages "has the honour to remain," When he will not hear an insult, though men make it ne'er so plain,

When his lips are schooled to meekness, when his back is bowed to blows

Well the keen aas-vogels know it-well the waiting jackal

knows.

Build on the flanks of Etna where the sullen smoke-puffs float

Or bathe in tropic waters where the lean fin dogs the boatCock the gun that is not loaded, cook the frozen dynamiteBut oh, beware my Country, when my Country grows polite!

THE HOLY WAR

1917

("For here lay the excellent wisdom of him that built Mansoul, that the walls could never be broken down nor hurt by the most mighty adverse potentate unless the townsmen gave consent thereto."-BUNYAN'S Holy War.)

A TINKER out of Bedford,

A vagrant oft in quod,

A private under Fairfax,
A minister of God-

Two hundred years and thirty
Ere Armageddon came
His single hand portrayed it,
And Bunyan was his name!

He mapped for those who follow,
The world in which we are—
"This famous town of Mansoul"
That takes the Holy War.
Her true and traitor people,
The gates along her wall,
From Eye Gate unto Feel Gate,
John Bunyan showed them all.

All enemy divisions,

Recruits of every class,
And highly-screened positions
For flame or poison-gas;
The craft that we call modern,

The crimes that we call new,
John Bunyan had 'em typed and filed
In Sixteen Eighty-two.

Likewise the Lords of Looseness
That hamper faith and works,
The Perseverance-Doubters,

And Present-Comfort shirks,
With brittle intellectuals

Who crack beneath a strainJohn Bunyan met that helpful set In Charles the Second's reign.

Emmanuel's vanguard dying
For right and not for rights,
My Lord Apollyon lying

To the State-kept Stockholmites,

The Pope, the swithering Neutrals,
The Kaiser and his Gott-

Their rôles, their goals, their naked souls—
He knew and drew the lot.

Now he hath left his quarters,
In Bunhill Fields to lie,
The wisdom that he taught us
Is proven prophecy-

One watchword through our Armies,

One answer from our Lands:

"No dealings with Diabolus

As long as Mansoul stands!"

A pedlar from a hovel,
The lowest of the low,
The Father of the Novel,
Salvation's first Defoe,
Eight blinded generations
Ere Armageddon came,
He showed us how to meet it,
And Bunyan was his name!

FRANCE

1913

BROKE to every known mischance, lifted over all
By the light sane joy of life, the buckler of the Gaul;
Furious in luxury, merciless in toil,

Terrible with strength that draws from her tireless soil;
Strictest judge of her own worth, gentlest of man's mind,
First to follow Truth and last to leave old Truths behind-
France, beloved of every soul that loves its fellow-kind!