I have never found a poem which more truly pictures the Christ and how he comes to human beings than this one of Markham"s. Conrad the cobbler had a dream, when he had grown old, that the Master would come "His guest to be." He arose at dawn on that day of great expectations, decorated his simple shop with boughs of green and waited:
"His friends went home; and his face grew still As he watched for the shadow across the sill; He lived all the moments o"er and o"er, When the Lord should enter the lowly door-- The knock, the call, the latch pulled up, The lighted face, the offered cup.
He would wash the feet where the spikes had been; He would kiss the hands where the nails went in; And then at last he would sit with him And break the bread as the day grew dim."
The Shoes of Happiness.
But the Master did not come. Instead came a beggar and the cobbler gave him shoes; instead came an old crone with a heavy load of f.a.ggots. He gave her a lift with her load and some of the food that he had prepared for the Christ when he should come. Finally a little child came, crying along the streets, lost. He pitied the child and left his shop to take it to its mother; such was his great heart of love. He hurried back that he might not miss the Great Guest when he came. But the Great Guest did not come. As the evening came and the shadows were falling through the window of his shop, more and more the truth, with all its weight of sadness, bore in upon him, that the dream was not to come true; that he had made a mistake; that Christ was not to come to his humble shop. His heart was broken and he cried out in his disappointment:
"Why is it, Lord, that your feet delay?
Did you forget that this was the day?"
The Shoes of Happiness.
Then what sweeter scene in all the lines of the poetry of the world than this that follows? Where is Christ more wonderfully and simply summed up; his spirit of love, and care?
"Then soft in the silence a voice he heard: "Lift up your heart, for I kept my word.
Three times I came to your friendly door; Three times my shadow was on your floor.
I was the beggar with bruised feet; I was the woman you gave to eat; I was the child on the homeless street!""
The Shoes of Happiness.
One is reminded here of Masefield"s "The Everlasting Mercy," wherein he speaks as Markham speaks about the child:
"And he who gives a child a treat Makes joy-bells ring in Heaven"s street; And he who gives a child a home Builds palaces in Kingdom Come; And she who gives a baby birth Brings Saviour Christ again to earth."
The Shoes of Happiness.
"Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of one of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me," another great-hearted Poet once said; and these words Markham, in "How the Great Guest Came," has made real.
"SCRIPT FOR THE JOURNEY"
"Script for the Journey" is all that it claims to be. Markham is not doing what Lindsay did. Lindsay started out on a long journey with only his poems for money. He meant to make his way buying his food with a verse. And he did that very thing. But Markham had a different idea, an idea that all of us need script for that larger journey, script that is not money and script that does not buy mere material food, but food for the soul. He means it to be script that will help us along the hard way. And he who has this script is rich indeed, in his inner life.
"THE PLACE OF PEACE"
One would pay much for peace at any time, but especially when one on the journey of life is wearied unto death with sin, and bickering, and trouble and hurt and pain. Life holds so much heartache and heartbreak. Markham has herein the answer:
"At the heart of the cyclone tearing the sky, And flinging the clouds and the towers by, Is a place of central calm; So here in the roar of mortal things, I have a place where my spirit sings, In the hollow of G.o.d"s palm."
The Shoes of Happiness.
And when we learn to put our business ventures there as Abbey has his Sir Galahad do in the Vigil panel of "The Search for the Holy Grail,"
in Boston Library; and when we have learned to put our homes, and our children, and our souls "In the hollow of G.o.d"s palm," there will be peace on the journey of life. Yes, that is good script.
"ANCh.o.r.eD TO THE INFINITE"
What a lesson the poet brings us from the great swinging bridge at Niagara, as he tells of the tiny thread that was flown from a kite from sh.o.r.e to sh.o.r.e; and then a larger string, and then a heavy cord, and then a rope, and finally the great cable, and the mighty bridge.
And this he applies to life!
"So we may send our little timid thought Across the void out to G.o.d"s reaching hands--Send out our love and faith to thread the deep-- Thought after thought until the little cord Has greatened to a chain no chance can break, And--we are anch.o.r.ed to the Infinite."
The Shoes of Happiness.
Who does not need to know how simple a thing will lead to infinite anchorage? Who does not need to know that just the tiny threads of love and faith will draw greater cords and greater, stronger ropes until at last the chasm between man and G.o.d on the journey is bridged, and we may be anch.o.r.ed to him forever. This indeed is good script for the journey of life G.o.dward.
"THERE IS NO TIME FOR HATE"
The world is full of hate these days. War-mad Germany produced "The Hymn of Hate," the lowest song that ever was written in the history of the world. It seems impossible that a censorship so strict could ever let such a ma.s.s of mire out to the world. But when one reads this Markham poem, he somehow feels that life is so big, and yet so brief, that even in war we are all brother-men and, as the opening lines say,
"There is no time for hate, O wasteful friend: Put hate away until the ages end.
Have you an ancient wound? Forget the wrong.
Out in my West, a forest loud with song Towers high and green over a field of snow, Over a glacier buried far below."
The Shoes of Happiness.
And if all the world would learn the meaning of this great phrase, "There is no time for hate," the world would happier be. Good script for the journey? The best there is, is to know "There is no time for hate."
II
VACHEL LINDSAY, POET OF TOWN; AND CITY TOO [Footnote: The poetical selections appearing in this chapter are used by permission, and are taken from the following works: The Congo, and General William Booth Enters Into Heaven, Published by the Macmillan Company, New York.]
A STUDY OF CHRISTIAN INFLUENCES IN VILLAGE AND CITY; ON TEMPERANCE, MISSIONS, AND RACES
Vachel Lindsay is not only a poet but he is also a preacher. I do not know whether he is ordained or not, but in a leaflet that he recently sent me, he says, "Mr. Lindsay offers the following sermons to be preached on short notice and without a collection, in any chapel that will open its doors as he pa.s.ses by: "The Gospel of the Hearth," "The Gospel of Voluntary Poverty," "The Holiness of Beauty.""
His truly great book, "The Congo," that poem which so sympathetically catches the spirit of the uplift of the Negro race through Christianity, that weird, musical, chanting, swinging, singing, sweeping, weeping, rhythmic, flowing, swaying, clanging, banging, leaping, laughing, groaning, moaning book of the elementals, was inspired suddenly, one Sabbath evening, as the poet sat in church listening to a returned missionary speaking on "The Congo." Nor a Poe nor a Lanier ever wrote more weirdly or more musically.
[Ill.u.s.tration: VACHEL LINDSAY]
The poet himself, Christian to the bone, suggests that his poetry must be chanted to get the full sweep and beauty. This I have done, alone by my wood fire of a long California evening, and have found it strangely, beautifully, wonderfully full of memories of church. I think that it is the echo of old hymns that I catch in his poetry. Biblical they are, in their simplicity, Christian until they drip with love.
CHRIST AND THE CITY SOUL
I think that no Christian poet has so caught the soul of the real city.
One phrase that links Christ with the city is the old-fashioned yet ever thrilling phrase, "The Soul of the City Receives the Gift of the Holy Spirit."
An electrical sign suggests prayer to him. It is a unique thought in "A Rhyme About An Electrical Advertising Sign," the lines of which startle one almost with their newness:
"Some day this old Broadway shall climb to the skies, As a ribbon of cloud on a soul-wind shall rise.
And we shall be lifted rejoicing by night, Till we join with the planets who choir their delight.