ROBERT BURNS, 
 COLONEL WESTNEDGE, 
 
 AND 
 
 WAIFAGE. 
 
 E. M. IRISH. 
 
 Printed for Private Circulation. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Page 
 
 Robert Bums 3 
 
 Colonel Westnedge 49 
 
 Waiting For a Sail 55 
 
 The Maine 56 
 
 A Nap in the Saddle 58 
 
 Magdalena — A Picture 82 
 
 Reminisce i 84 
 
ROBERT BURNS, 
 COLONEL WESTNEDGE. 
 
 AND 
 
 WAIFAGE. 
 
 %^ 
 
 
 Printed /or Private Circulation. 
 

 Copyright February ip20 
 
 by 
 
 E. M. IRISH 
 
 Kalamazoo, Mich. 
 
 All Rights Reserved 
 
 Published January ip20 
 
 JAN 3C 1920 
 
 2)GI.A5GI65n 
 
 *Vv<; I 
 
<5r 
 
 U) 
 
 ROBERT BURNS 
 
 Mr. Toastmaster; — Ladies and Gentlemen; — 
 
 I have received a very kind invitation to come to 
 this banquet to-night : — It was to talk to the emigrant ex- 
 iles of Scotland about Robert Burns. 
 
 So much has been said of him in the last hundred 
 years that Scotchmen as well as others have the Burns 
 habit. People and critics say over and over: — what a 
 poet Burns was, and what a pity he had so many faults as 
 a man. 
 
 Now it is a universal custom for people when they 
 meet their friends in good weather, to tell them what a 
 pleasant day it is — only it looks like rain after a little. 
 
 This is because such a day is one of nature's richest 
 gifts : — common as it is we cannot help talking about it. 
 
 But suppose we had lived in some icy region of the 
 pole, and had never seen a spring morning : — then a ship- 
 load of us were suddenly landed in one of earth's fertile 
 valleys. 
 
 We should walk in green meadows — or through the 
 blooming heather. For the first time we should see the 
 sunny mist drift from the dew, and the dawn turning 
 Westward over forest lake and river. 
 
 We should listen to the skylark's song: — see buds 
 and flowers and bloomage of orchards. We should 
 breathe the balsam of the spring. 
 
 (Delivered before the Burns Society of Kalamazoo, Jan. 25, 
 1919, and Jan. 27, 1920.) 
 
The da3dight would dally with the gloaming till the 
 buttons of the stars were pressed. Then instead of a glit- 
 ter on the ice-pack, we should see the curfew planet 
 blink — and watch the Maytime rising of the Pleiades. 
 
 If through all these moving pictures we saw man 
 and maid a-journey — now in joy and then in trouble: — 
 how could we find language to tell each other what a 
 wonderful day it was? 
 
 Now suppose we were all together just as we are 
 to-night — onl}' we had never heard of Robert Burns. 
 
 The toastmaster might arise and say we had with us 
 a wandering minstrel, who would tell us of lad and lass 
 and nature : — tell us of sunlight and shadow and star- 
 shine, as he saw it in Bonny vScotland over a hundred 
 years ago ; — and tell it in language fresh with the vernal 
 beauty of his own song. 
 
 Then the astral of a plow-boy would step down to 
 the table. ITis great dark eyes would look out at us from 
 the old-time falling clusters of his hair: — and the genius 
 of Robert Burns would dawn on us, as once it dawned on 
 that rugged country of the Northland. 
 
 He would tell us in the rich broguey rhythm of the 
 lowlands, about Tam O' Shanter's rolic tilt with imps and 
 witches: — how he rode his good gray Maggie to the cab- 
 aret from Tunket — the Devil's dance at Alloway's auld 
 haunted kirk. The bagpiper who led the orchestra you 
 will remember, had a hyphenated foot, and a Nick in his 
 name. But he was naturalized, — and Scotland was just 
 like home to him. 
 
 If the old preachers were right, — Nick had quite a 
 clan of Scotchmen among his summer boarders, too. 
 
 Then after the devil's toe-spinner — his premiere 
 danseiise — had flown away with poor Maggie's tail, — the 
 music would play lower on the side : — the spirits of evil 
 
would be laid with the story of the Cotter's Saturday 
 Night, and the white haired father's prayer. 
 
 He would tell us of sunny braes of heather and 
 dark mountain tarns : — of the mavis and the laverock's 
 song: — of limping hare and panicy field mouse. We 
 should hear of Ben Lomond and the Lowlands : — of 
 Bonny Doon and Highland Mary. 
 
 Through his song would slide the music of rivers 
 and rocky burns : — the murmur of Afton : — the youth of 
 the hill-land Clyde : — the gurgle of the hermit Ayr. He 
 would make us see the clear wind of Devon, and the 
 drumly Logan water ;^and hear the surging of the 
 stormy Forth. 
 
 Then our thoughts of the day: — of sunny sky and 
 twinkling night: — of home and happy lovers, would 
 have found a voice. 
 
 Now the spirit of Robert Burns walks the earth to- 
 day. It comes with his song to banquet and ingle-side. It 
 tells the story of heart and home — of love and memory — 
 to boy and girl and man and woman. 
 
 While we read. — some vagabond fiddler viols on be- 
 tween the rhymes. He stole his trick where the birds and 
 the rivers found tunes; and then wised the kitten- 
 string's guile about the tavern taps. 
 
 Robert Bums was a poet: but if that were all, we 
 should not remember him. 
 
 Songs are sung and we listen. Tomorrow they grow 
 old and are forgotten. They die in the silence of the 
 past 
 
 Only a few send their carillons out with music time 
 cannot hush. 
 
If we would know why a song has come to Hve, and 
 why Burns is not forgotten, — we must look deeper. 
 
 This plow-boy was born in Scotland one hundred 
 and sixty years ago to-night. 
 
 He has been accused of being a common drunkard: 
 — of mocking religion and the church : — of using lan- 
 guage that was unco plain ; — and of being a free lance of 
 Lover s Lane. 
 
 Even his admirers are wont to apologize for what 
 they call his unhappy failings. 
 
 The most we know about these angles in his story, — 
 he tells us by writing himself into his poems. 
 
 He wrote from his own observation and his own ex- 
 perience and imagination ; and he dared to tliink out loud. 
 Most of the great cloud of poets write echoes from what 
 they have read in books that other poets have written. 
 Some of them try to echo Burns. Real poetry doesn't 
 come from books. It sometimes gets into them. 
 
 Oliver Wendell Holmes focused Burns in one line 
 when he spoke of 
 
 "His wasteful self surrender," 
 
 Ralph Waldo Emerson said that : — 
 
 "Not Latimer nor Luther struck more telling 
 blows against false theology than this brave 
 singer. The Confession of Augsburg, the Dec- 
 laration of Independence, the French Rights of 
 Man, and the Marseillaise, are not more weighty 
 documents in the history of freedom than the 
 songs of Burns." 
 
 6 : 
 
But do you suppose that any man could have written 
 Tarn O' Shanter and the Jolly Beggars: — poems that 
 ruffle the river of melody with Minnehaha rapids: — do 
 you think any one could have written them who had never 
 been drunk himself? And not only that, — but been out 
 with the boys when the other fellows were full too? 
 
 Burns is his own confessor. He seems to own up to 
 nearly all the faults he had time to think of. 
 
 Other noted men of his time got drunk at their 
 clubs, and at private parties. They were taken care of by 
 their valets and trundled quietly home in their carriages 
 and put to bed. 
 
 If Burns dropped into a country tavern in the even- 
 ing — to get a cock-crow highball — and walk home to 
 breakfast: — people who were eager to believe, were sure 
 that Rab the Rhymer — who v/rote the drinking songs — 
 had been on a corking rouse. 
 
 It was not much for a Scotchman to get full in those 
 days. 
 
 To-day, if he wanted to tap a jag-juice tree and draw 
 a noggin of cussaline sap, — he would'nt always know 
 where the sugar-bush was. 
 
 Burns is often publicly drunk in his own poems and 
 fesses up like Topsy to things he never did. 
 
 Nance Tinnock who kept the tavern at Mauchline com- 
 plained that he never drank three half pints in her house: 
 — "Whatever he might say in his lying poems." 
 
 But let us think for a minute. He lived only thirty- 
 seven and a half years. He did his own work on small 
 farms, and helped out his income by being a guager. 
 Think of measuring all the liquor the Scotchmen of ten 
 parishes drank. 
 
 He had to work long days the most of his life : — yet 
 
he found time to write nearly six hundred poems. Be- 
 sides these he re-wrote and improved more than a hun- 
 dred old Scotch songs. The world will not let them die. 
 
 Now where did he find the over-time to be a drunk- 
 ard? 
 
 Napoleon said that history is an agreed fable. If a 
 man is talked about at all in a small town, almost every- 
 thing people say is tinged with fable. Dame Rumor nev- 
 er had a good repuation for truth and veracity. 
 
 If Burns could do the life work he did, and keep his 
 mental edge while full of Scotch Whiskey: — then there 
 must be something in the advice Martin Luther once gave 
 to a young theological student He came to him in a 
 brain fog because he could not reconcile the doctrine of 
 free will and predestination. Luther told him to go and 
 get good and drunk. 
 
 Moreover a Scotch tavern was not thought to be a 
 very bad place. 
 
 It was often kept by somebody like, 
 
 "Lady Onlie, honest I,ucky, 
 
 Who brewed guid ale at shore of Bucky." 
 
 There is a yarn about an old Scotch couple who got 
 into a quarrel one evening at their own ingle-gleed — fire- 
 side: — the kind of domestic felicity they called in the 
 highlands, — having a smoky chimney. 
 
 Finally the good wife said : — "I wish I was through 
 and up in Heaven.'' 
 
 The man said : — "I wish I was down at the tavern 
 with the boys." 
 
 She said : — "That's just like you, — you always did 
 want the best of everything." 
 
If Burns had lived fifty years earlier, he would not 
 have written much about the kirk. 
 
 Because if he had started in, there would have been 
 nothing left of him. 
 
 It was a sin of itself to write poetr}". He would 
 have been excommunicated, and his own mother could 
 not have sheltered him. 
 
 Today, no one but some student of history — some 
 midnight prowler in musty alchoves of old libraries — 
 could restore the fossil imps of Scotland's fierce theology 
 in the 17th Century. 
 
 In the time of Burns it was physically safe to be a 
 heritic, but not socially safe. The shadow of the old 
 regime still clouded intellectual liberty. 
 
 Only instead of the old gloom, — they called it the 
 "Auld ijght." 
 
 In the 17th century the clergy had made the people 
 believe that they held the keys of life and death: — of 
 Heaven and Hell. 
 
 They could cause people to die when they willed, and 
 send them where they belonged. 
 
 It w^as a sin to laugh out loud on week days, and to 
 smile on Sunday. 
 
 God was a wizard of vengeance who had doomed all 
 but the fev/ elect to an eternal hell from the beginning of 
 time. 
 
 This ?Teil wasn't the kind of sulphur spring where 
 you go just to mope, and get toned up with a course of 
 the blues — and then resign. 
 
 The miserable sinners were slung up by their tongues 
 and sizzled in incandescent brimstone. It smelt like fumi- 
 gating sin. 
 
 Short sermons about the bottomless pit were from 
 two, up to five hours long; and often the preaching was 
 
done by relays, and the people had to take it all day — no 
 eight hour day at that. 
 
 Infant damnation was one of their most cheerful 
 hobbys. 
 
 The devil was out all the time with his staff of imps. 
 They could hear him in the night bellowing like a bull. 
 
 Sometimes he made up as a preacher; and sprung 
 secular antics to queer the clergy. 
 
 This however was a blessing in disguise to the 
 preachers: — for if they did fall for one of his tempta- 
 tions — and got caught — the devil himself had to stand for 
 it. 
 
 This was fair enough to Satan. Turn-about is fair 
 play ; and theology was advertising his resort and sending 
 him trade. He challenged publicity. 
 
 Old cloven foot Clutie used to carry people away by 
 their hair. 
 
 The saints who were saved, were allowed to lean 
 over the battlements of Heaven and look on at the goat 
 barbecue. 
 
 They enjoyed the prospect of this movie show im- 
 mensely. 
 
 Also the pleasant bowlings of their dam.ned old 
 neighbors would help to make Heaven joyous. 
 
 Even mothers were to grow so saintly as to feel a 
 holy joy at seeing their wicked babies fried in the Devil's 
 skillet. Wasn't it all the mess of that horrid Eve any- 
 way? 
 
 The Spanish inquisition alone equalled that era of 
 superstition. 
 
 Its hypocracy was beyond belief. 
 
 In the time of Bums it still retained a tyranny over 
 the mind. 
 
 It was this theology that he trimmed. 
 
 10 
 
Instead of being a scoffer at religion, he turned out 
 to be a reformer of the church, and did much to make it 
 temperate. 
 
 In his time in Scotland, when the sacrament was 
 administered, it was the custom to put up a tent outside 
 the meeting-house and have preaching throughout the 
 day. Sermons were roared out, with prayers that Burns 
 said were "Three miles long." 
 
 The people young and old came from all the country 
 round to attend these — "Holy Fairs" — as they were 
 called. 
 
 They brought lunches of bread and cheese and en- 
 tertained each other. 
 
 Ale and whiskey flowed like the Doon in Tarn O' 
 Shanter. 
 
 A Scotch lassie was supposed to take a nice lunch 
 along and invite a "Billie", to pair off with her. A girl 
 that couldn't take the cheese, and a lad that didn't get a 
 lass was in hard luck. 
 
 An employer was considered real Scotch mean, who 
 wouldn't let a poor girl who worked out, draw on the 
 larder for a can of bait to catch a laddie with. 
 
 The scandals and drunkenness at these sacred sheep- 
 folds, would make an old fashioned camp meeting blush 
 carnation. 
 
 At Mauchline the tent was in the church yard, and 
 had a back entrance that led to Nance Tinnock's tavern. 
 
 It wasn't any trouble to get a congregation to turn 
 out. And they took up a good collection at the portal flap. 
 
 A tent in the daytime without modern electrics, had 
 but "Dim religious light." It was almost as snug for the 
 boys and girls as a back parlor with the gas turned down. 
 
 On a cloudy day the tent would be as full of little 
 devils as Kirk Alloway was when Tam saw it. 
 
 11 
 
Then Burns wrote his "Holy Fair", and drew the 
 show as it was. 
 
 He finished with an envoy that pictured the conse- 
 quences with a reahsm Gustave Dore and Hogarth would 
 have envied. 
 
 Three hundred years before, — T^eonardo Da Mnci 
 painted his picture of the "Last Supper" on the convent 
 wall at Milan. 
 
 Long afterwards a squadron of Napoleon's cavalry 
 stabled in the convent, — and the cinocolo was marred 
 with the rude retouch of war. 
 
 Strange travesties ; — the grotesque carnival by the 
 banks of Ayr, and the hallowed fresco from the renais- 
 sance of Italy. One with the aroma of cheese and whis- 
 key for incense, — and the medieval marvel pelted with 
 the stable middens : — the Galilean's picture over the 
 mangers smutted by the graceless troopers. 
 
 Of the flock that went home at night across the 
 moors, — the poem runs : — 
 
 "There's some are full of love divine, 
 There's some are full of brandy." 
 
 It ends with some words you can find in a Scotch 
 glossary. But my dears you m.ustn't look them up. 
 
 Burns is said to have recited this poem to the crowd 
 over at Nancy's reception. 
 
 It edified them more than the limbo gas and depth 
 bombs exploding in the tent across the way. 
 
 They saw a reel of themselves taken by a vivid cam- 
 era. 
 
 12 
 
He had said nothing irreverent ahout the sacrament 
 itself. 
 
 But the kirk was in an uproar, and gave liim a ticket 
 marked — good for a sulphur bath. 
 
 The result was tliat these annual reunions of saints 
 and sinners were sent through the laundry. 
 
 A w*ay was found to commemorate the Lord's supper 
 without getting drunk and hugging the girls. 
 
 "The Holy Fair" was the best sermon on Scotland's 
 Merry Hell : — on religion and temperance and sex mor- 
 ality, preached in that generation. 
 
 The preacher was full of his subject, and talking to 
 fellow sinners. 
 
 Burns tells us more in his poems that is said to re- 
 flect on his morality. 
 
 Again he is his own confessor. 
 
 In one of Guy De Maupassant's stories, a Paris lov- 
 er went at midnight to the cemetery of Peer I^a Chaise — 
 the Westminster Abbey of France : — or dreamed that he 
 did. There he read the epitaphs, the flattery of friends 
 had traced on the marbles. 
 
 Then it seemed to him that all the ghostly populace 
 of that hillside arbor, rose up and re-wrote on their monu- 
 ments in luminous letters, — the truth about themselves. 
 
 If everyone in this room to-night were to write the 
 secret history of their hves — and print it: — or if the 
 stenographer of the recording angel were called before 
 the grand jury with her minutes : — how many of us 
 would be left to cast stones at the memory of Burns ? 
 
 His songs are his monument, and into them he has 
 written in spirit fire his honest epitaph. 
 
 But many people who read them, do so with the 
 gossip idea of the righteous old lady. She hoped to be re- 
 
 13 
 
warded with a front seat at the day of judgment where 
 she could Hsten comfortably to everybody's secrets ; — 
 and then go out calling in Heaven and talk things over. 
 
 Ithuriel must have been Burns' good angel and 
 loaned him the frog-spear he frisked the toad with — 
 
 "Lang vSyne in Eden's bonny yard." 
 
 The false is unmasked and the real shines out in 
 these poems. There! 
 
 The more T think it over this Ithruiel touch is correct. 
 Besides ; — it sounds literary and Miltonic. 
 
 Satan hops out so often in Burns and looks so devil- 
 ish natural. 
 
 There is the same tingle of electric steel that flicked 
 off his toadskin domino in the orchard. There he was: — 
 reciting Burns to Eve. and making her think she had to 
 get some kilts for the family. This was when little Eva 
 was quite young too. 
 
 Burns wrote about a mouse, a rabbit and a sheep, — 
 also a calf and a louse ; — but a toad — never. 
 
 His devil wears full evening dress — the spike-tail 
 and some horns, and he puts his second best foot for- 
 ward. 
 
 It is a good honest Scotch Devil that wouldn't play 
 toad if it could — not when the spear was in sight. 
 
 The experience Burns wrote from was genuine — the 
 kind that comes to the everyday life of man and woman — 
 not the sort that epitaphs relate. 
 
 Benvenuto Cellini wrote an autobiography that is one 
 of the wonders of literature. 
 
 If he v;as half as tough as he made himself out to be 
 
 14 
 
(which I doubt), — he was the bad man of Italy. Yet I 
 
 suppose he was not worse than the men about him who 
 
 masked their lives. 
 
 Saul of Tarsus claimed to be "Chief of vSinners." 
 He doubtless intended this in the poetical sense. — not 
 
 as a plea of guilty at the bar of biography. 
 Goethe wrote of poets : — 
 
 "None in prose confess an error, 
 But we do so void of terror 
 In the Muses' silent groves." 
 
 John G. Whittier — the Quaker poet of New England 
 — wrote a very pretty poem about Burns. But in it he 
 regrets and apologizes. 
 
 He speaks of 
 
 "The evil strain" 
 "The discord and the staining." 
 "The ribald line" 
 "While falls the shade between 
 the erring one and Heaven." 
 
 John G. Whittier was a good man. But he could not 
 understand Bums. Of course not. He never took a 
 drink of Scotch whiskeAT — never kissed a pretty girl: — 
 never had a good time in his life. 
 
 He was a nice lady-like old bachelor v/ho needed a 
 shock absorber. So he made his jingle and gave us a 
 naughty little musical Burns, — who should be forgiven, 
 because some of his poems were really sweet and proper. 
 
 H you would know the difference between the two 
 men : — open W^hittier's book. Reading the rhymes is like 
 taking a quiet buggy ride behind a docile old gelding. 
 
 15 
 
You will not be run away with, nor tipped over.. 
 You shall not get a jolt. 
 
 Take up Burns and you open a nature's wonder 
 book. You might as well try to harness a wild stag of the 
 Highlands — like the one the Knight of Snowdown steep- 
 le-chased in Lock Kathrine's rocky glens. 
 
 The black St. Hubert hounds were bushed: — his gal- 
 lant gray fell dead : — Fritz James himself was love-struck 
 — (He was a Scotchman) : — ^but the stag is there yet — 
 where Walter vScott left him. 
 
 All your neat bundles of conventionality will be 
 smashed to Anders, and kicked down the mountain 
 losses. 
 
 If Burns had been given Whittier's chance at slavery, 
 — he would not have written decorus moral essays in 
 rhyme. The world Avould have roared slavery downi 
 when it read the Holy \^'^il1ie stufif he would have pulled. 
 
 Yet in those lines, Whittier probably expresses the 
 popular opinion of Burns : — that is among those who 
 think they could have improved nature's handiwork if 
 they had the making of him : — the ones who would grade 
 Mt. Blanc down to a city park, — and tame a splendid wild 
 am'mal like Bobby in its zoo. 
 
 He tries to reach up to Burns' shoulder and pat him 
 on the back. 
 
 .It is the conventional way of looking at Burns. But 
 conventional spectacles never focus well. The lenses are 
 never acromatic. False colors and reflected lights tinge 
 and distort the image. 
 
 Through them we cannot see the honest manhood. 
 
 We miss the glint of the springy whinyard that 
 pinked the joints of hyprocricy's armor. 
 
 We lose sight of the bold strokes tliat fell on relig- 
 ion's tyranny. 
 
 16 
 
Nor do we see the brave boy father. 
 And then we lose sight of the inspiration he was to 
 others. 
 
 Over a hundred years ago, in a log cabin in an 
 American wilderness, — another rugged independent boy 
 was born. 
 
 He read by pitch-pine candle power, and the hearth- 
 log's fitful glow. Only here and there could he find a 
 book. But one of them was the poems of Burns. It had 
 an influence over him that helped to shape his life and 
 mould his gift of deep poetic language. 
 
 The heart of Scotland spoke to the child of the 
 Western clearing; and he grew up another of nature's 
 men, — to stand for truth and right and liberty. 
 
 The one who spoke was Robert Burns. 
 
 The one who read was Abraham Lincoln. 
 
 It w^ould have been worth something to the Scotch 
 plow-boy if he could have known in his lifetime that his 
 song was to be inspiration to another boy poor as himself, 
 — who was to become the greatest president in the history 
 of republican liberty. 
 
 But Burns is criticized for some of his love songs. 
 
 Civilization brings boy and girl, and man and woman 
 together. 
 
 But it cannot still the tide that nature set a-throb in 
 their arteries. 
 
 Civilization is garrulous as a m.agpie mob about trust- 
 ing the people. But it does it with cash registers and se- 
 cret ballots — and non-refillable Scotch Whiskey bottles. 
 
 Of all things that it does not trust, — is love itself. 
 
 It loads it with conventional chains, and trys to make 
 it walk in fetters. 
 
 17 
 
These chains never were strong enough to hold. 
 They are continually broken. Then society lets the man 
 go free and damns the girl and brands the offspring. 
 Down in our hearts we all know this is wrong. 
 
 Unmarried motherhood rocked the cradles of Homer 
 and Boccacio ; — of Leonardo Da Vinci, and Alexander 
 Hamilton. Their laurels will not fade. 
 
 There is a long line of others whose names the world 
 has placed in its treasury. A longer line has been ban- 
 ished to social waifdom. 
 
 This so called civilization has made a holy impulse 
 that was meant to summ.on a spirit from the deeps. — the 
 foxy joke of the centuries — and their dreary tragedy. 
 
 As those mothers — over whose marriage no ritua! 
 was ever chanted — sang their lonely lullabys : — Shakes- 
 peare and Burns and Hawthorne saw the light that never 
 faileth — the mystery light the infinite made to dawn in 
 the mother eyes before a ritual was ever dreamed of. 
 
 Walter Scott saw it shining when he wrote the story 
 of Effie Deans in the Heart of Mid Lothian. 
 
 It looks out through the pathos of Bonny Doon. Tn 
 some of Burns' other poems it fires with a world defiiant 
 glance — like a tigress at bay with her kitten. 
 
 But civilization came — with the parish penance stool 
 and the scarlet letter. 
 
 Now if Burns were here to-night: — would you look 
 into the daring eyes of Scotland's troubador, and qui;te 
 that pious cant of Whittier's ? Would you say : — you 
 wrote some pretty rhymes : — but you ought to be 
 ashamed, — because you made some songs to the brave 
 mothers of the age's splendid wastrels ? 
 
 H a higher civilization ever dawns on this rude bar- 
 barian planet : — if charity of the heart ever means what 
 the angels sang over the manger of Bethlehem: — no one 
 
 18 
 
of Nature's mothers will sit as an out-cast beside her cra- 
 dle. 
 
 She who guards the slumber of an exile — washed 
 ashore from tides of the ether — should find a Red Cross 
 in all the world. 
 
 As evolution turns the mill-wheel of the gods, it 
 sometimes gives us a type of immortal youth. 
 
 Right here it seems as if a small lantern balloon 
 
 o 
 
 should be cut loose. One lit with a classical jack would 
 come handy with the spear. 
 
 O yes ! The type of course comes fresh from prime- 
 val woodlands, where Goat- foot Pan — the dean of bag- 
 pipers — played to fauns and satyrs: — piped them till the 
 jocund earth went reeling underfoot and kicked like the 
 floor at a Highland fling. 
 
 Along with them, forest nymphs in artless innocence 
 romped — sans rompers — a-down the glades of Arcady 
 
 This is proved beyond question by some of the finest 
 paintings in the garners of art. 
 
 We feel sure they were done from life. 
 
 Now a rough h-u-r-r-r grew thick in the Lowlands — 
 the Lallands — that at one time was not well understood. 
 But it seemed it could be fashioned into rustic Pan-pipes 
 that tuned an unblown melody in their fluty chanters. 
 
 And skippers were ready for the fandango. There 
 were fauns and stayrs that could dance on cloven hoofs. 
 Besides the notch-foot drolls from Hades, — these were 
 nags and calves and even sheep. For memory grieves in 
 elegy over poor Mailie — the matron ewe. It recalls the 
 sweet maternal heart that blessed onto her children the 
 priceless legacy of virtue. 
 
 For elves, — came bunnies with long silky ears, and a 
 field mouse. 
 
 19 
 
This was no happy home gimlet-eye, that expects to 
 have its cheese toasted — and then served with a kick in it. 
 The meadow-mouse has a patrician air and is beauti- 
 ful. The ladies need not get on a chair when they see 
 one. If it wants to hide — it retires in a refined way into 
 an underground ainbush. 
 
 For nymphs tliere were bonny Jeans and Anna with 
 the golden hair. There was Nannie, who wasn't away 
 all the time ; — and then Clarindas and Peggies and Phillis 
 and Chloris. Kppie Macnab was "Down in the yard 
 a-kissin the Laird," and Tibbie Dunbar came in her coatie. 
 They were not all country lassies. 
 When the liigh-kick was on the lawn. — Jenny Gor- 
 don — Castle Gordon's frolic Duchess took the bannock. 
 Jenny 
 
 "kilted up iier kirtle weel 
 To show her bonny cutes so small, 
 And walloped about tlte reel 
 The lightest louper o' them all." 
 
 Of shepherd wags there Vv^ere plenty: — Duncan Gray 
 and Davie, and Jumpin John and Jockie. 
 
 There was Willie Wastle whose wife was a joke with 
 a clapper tongue. 
 
 The joke is an old one. Other fellows have heard it. 
 
 Holy Willie was also a goat — the best one ever. But 
 this Capricorn — like all Willie-goats — is kind o' smelly. 
 
 What flingers to spin the Maypole dizzy! 
 
 The piper who blew the goblin music for the reels 
 and waltzes was a plow-boy who made the glens of Ayr a 
 wild sweet A ready. 
 
 So far as J know Burns is the only minstrel of the 
 people, who with nature's abandon has played this Lang- 
 Syne I^yriad down the years and held the stage. 
 
 20 
 
What other poet is given a reception every year? 
 
 Tom Moore wrote verses he tried to suppress. They 
 were artificial attempts to pose as a witty rake. 
 
 But an expurgated edition of Burns would not go on 
 the market. People know the difference between A ready 
 and Walt Whitman. 
 
 If Burns steps over the bound of conventionality, it 
 is the call of the wild — the mating of the skylark in the 
 purple heather. 
 
 It drops down from the blue 
 
 "and thinks nae shame 
 To woo his bonny lassie 
 When the kye comes hame." 
 
 Scotland's laverock you shall not cage : — 
 
 "His lay is in Heaven ; 
 His love is on earth.'' 
 
 If Emerson could say Burns struck blows like those 
 of Latimer and Luther against the dismal theology of 
 Scotland : — so may we say, that he sang the hope songs 
 of mortals for the v/ayfarer and the out-cast. 
 
 It is easy to say that Burns wrote many a jingle that 
 is not poetry. So have all the poets. A poet like other 
 artists is known by his best efforts — not by his worst. It 
 is as if we should go to hear a great pianist like Pade- 
 rewski play. We should listen spellbound to the magian 
 touch on the keys. Then a phonograph might be brought 
 in, and we compelled to hear the records of his early 
 piano practice and crude experiments. 
 
 We often listen to the Burns' victrola. 
 
 21 
 
"The very sweepings of his desk,"' were gathered up 
 after his death and pubHshed. 
 
 Besides the old Scotch songs that he revised, the 
 world has 562 poems that he wrote — perhaps a few more, 
 in his h'fe-time he pubHshed and edited only 88 of them. 
 
 He has been called unthrifty for not getting the otl.ver 
 474 on the market. 
 
 Unthirfty he was no doubt. When the poet's saddle 
 liorse has to v/ork for its board, — the wings are always 
 getting snarled with the belly-band. 
 
 But the evident reason why he did not publish, — is 
 that a poem is generally an evolution that goes through 
 many stages from crude to finish. 
 
 There were writings he had not finished and put in 
 shape for publication. 
 
 He threw off careless rhymes and passed them out to 
 friends, which he never intended to publish. 
 
 Quite a number of poems are attributed to him which 
 he never wrote. 
 
 We do not have a Burns' book as we have a Tenny- 
 son — revised and polished by a long-lived author. 
 
 If he had lived, much would have been suppressed 
 and much changed. 
 
 It is the tarrying re-touch of the artist's burin that 
 cunnings a marble of Praxitiles — an easel of Leonardo; 
 — or a page where the Linden bees of Virgil tree. 
 
 So of the rhymer's song-pad. 
 
 Burns wrote; — ''I glower and spell." 
 
 The impromptu rhymes are muffled, by him who 
 knows the flavor of the ripened song. 
 
 When we come to his letters: — The British Islands 
 have been swept for scraps of paper. Thoughtless letters 
 
 22 
 
— some of them written when he was a boy — were bought 
 up and published. 
 
 Many of them are garbled. Many indicate only the 
 trouble or whim of the moment. 
 
 Writers on Bums often show a guileless innocence 
 of satire and humor when they construe som.e of the pass- 
 ages literally, and sort out trifles for sermon texts. 
 
 They are like a skipper who would steer by floating 
 islands and meteors, instead of by rocky headlands aud 
 the stars. 
 
 Who could pass the ordeal of having every letter he 
 ever wrote put m print and discussed by people who could 
 not — would not — understand. 
 
 Who would care to receive friendly letters written to 
 be published? 
 
 Skilled anatomists dissect men's bodies after death. 
 
 Writers with little knowledge of human nature have 
 carved the heart of Burns with dull scalpels. 
 
 But then ! One must have faith to read biography — 
 and charity. As for hope : — leave it all behind — ye who 
 are lilieiy to get caught in a write-up. 
 
 If some sybil would burn the music lessons of all 
 the poets — and leave us their successes — we could save 
 some valuable paper in these times. 
 
 There would be no striking printers — only striken 
 poets. 
 
 Put where are the magi of literature wise enough to 
 be trusted? We differ among ourselves, and each genera- 
 tion differs, as to what is best and worst. 
 
 The seers of the future will think they know more 
 than al! the past. 
 
 If we took up a newspaper or a magazine, and saw 
 a funny caricature from an artist's pencil, — one that 
 
 23 
 
turned like a search light on to some error of today : — \Vp 
 should all recoQjnize it as a caricature. We should realize 
 its force. No one would say that the picture was wron;^ 
 because it was not true. The drawing would show the 
 truth like a microscope by magnifying some part of the 
 subject. 
 
 Hut people read Bums and Dickens and do not real- 
 ize that they are continually drawing caricatures. 
 
 They lind fault with both these authors. And yet 
 the prose author the people read the most is Dickens, — 
 and the poet they know the best is Burns. Many know 
 Burns who never read one of his poems. Sayings and 
 snatches of his songs pass in everyday conversation often 
 without a thought of where they came from. 
 
 The ideas and plans of his poems have been worked 
 over by minor rhymesters with many a scrannel note. 
 
 In the war of the rebellion, funny cartoons by 
 Thomas Nast were worth regiments to the Union cause. 
 
 The ca'-toonists of today have been equal to fresh 
 army corps for the allies. 
 
 Selfish wrong and hypocracy fell before the novels of 
 Dickens and the poems of Burns. 
 
 No one with a classical education that isolated him 
 from everyday life, and the everyday thought and talk of 
 the people, could have written these poems No one 
 who was not a wine bibber and a friend of publicans and 
 sinners could have written them. 
 
 The Stmday School teacher asked little Mayme what 
 we must first do in order to have our sins forgiven. 
 M.-iyme sai(i :-- -"We must first sin." 
 
 A man who has been a good executive sinner him- 
 self, is all the better at helping other people. 
 
 24 
 
Bums had sympathy for those who shared his lot of 
 toil. Pie had the hatred of canting hypocracy, and the 
 independence to speak out. 
 
 Now who was he to associate with? 
 
 Holy Willie and the solemn hide-bound elders? 
 
 Should it be with men on whom the fear chill rested, 
 and who not only did not dare to speak, but were afraid 
 to listen? 
 
 No! Tlicre was another Willie, — who 
 
 "brewed a peck of malt 
 And Rob and Allan came to pree. 
 Three blither hearts that lee-lang night 
 Ye vvad'na find in Christendie.'' 
 
 The Willie was William Nicol — a teacher of classics 
 in the Edinburgh High School. 
 
 Allan was Allan Masterton — a music teacher in the 
 same school. He was a poet himself, and composed the 
 airs to some of Burns' songs, including this one. 
 
 The Rob was Burns. 
 
 As the glasses clinked, they skoke out, and said what 
 they thought. They told the truth from their heart-deeps. 
 
 The celestial thrill of the Scotch whiskey was like 
 the sting of the wide-winged angel's lance. 
 
 In every foam bead that reveled on the jorum there 
 lurked a pawky imp with a fancy or a rhyme. The sup- 
 pressed thoughts of the day danced on the bubbles of 
 night. 
 
 Doubtless at the familiar touch the Tam O' vShanter 
 piper, — came also, and played some good tunes on the 
 side. They say he always did have the best ones. 
 
 John Barleycorn is a freebooter of ideas. He cov- 
 ered Scotch territory. 
 
 25 
 
Where he went men talked out loud. 
 
 Hell was adjourned 
 
 Scotland began to stop roasting babies : — or at least 
 didn't cook them as well done as it could ; — and stopped 
 making unfortunate girls get on a stool at church. 
 
 Much of what the purist critics call coarse in Burns 
 was not considered so in his times. We change our words 
 with each generation in the effort to get smooth glossy 
 ones that don't mean quite as much as the old ones. 
 
 As use makes their meaning plain again, and they 
 no longer conceal thought, — they must be covered with 
 new camouflage. 
 
 Those whose primsie noses perk up at plain talk are 
 generally the ones who need it most. 
 
 The old Scotch songs of the time of Burns were rank 
 and smutty even for those days. The ones that he re- 
 wrote are refined and tempered. 
 
 Instead of being coarse, — he was finer than his age. 
 
 If we criticise his language we reflect on our own 
 personal ancestors who lived in his generation. 
 
 At times his rhythm is like a mellow Cremona. At 
 others it is rugged and whacks like a stout cudgel. 
 
 The strolling fiddler had tasted the blood of the 
 T'^ibelungen dragon, and kept its talisman — the gift to 
 know what the wild folk- music tells. 
 
 To him the babble of birds and rivers and the jungle 
 ululu — came like the patois of the hamlet — the burry 
 lingo of the Lallands. 
 
 Burns was the poet of everyday people and used 
 their language. But he proved to be the poet of all classes 
 and taught them to know his language. 
 
 When the kilted regiments, — "The Ladies from 
 
 26 
 
Hell", — as the enemy called them — went over the top to 
 the tune of Scots that bled with Wallace : — even the Ger- 
 mans could understand the ululu of the North. 
 
 For their onset harked to the olden day, — when the 
 Highland claymores lit with battle lumin, and the pi- 
 brochs keened the winds of Killiecrankie. 
 
 Then as Aytoun wrote : — 
 
 "Like a tempest down the ridges 
 Swept the hurricane of steel, 
 Rc^e the slogan of Macdonald, — 
 Flashed the broadsword of Locheill. 
 
 "And the evening star was shining 
 
 On Schelhallion's distant head, 
 When they wiped their bloody broadswords. 
 
 And returned — to count the dead." 
 
 The story of Burns has been told in patchwork quilt 
 style by many biographers and editors. It is checkered 
 with contradictions and their quarrels with each other. 
 The seams are puckered with moral homilies and the 
 rivalry of publishers. Mosaics are not the happiness of 
 art. 
 
 The Burns we read about is in many ways a myth- 
 man — much in the class with King Arthur and Robin 
 Hood. 
 
 The dark-room negatives from different cameras 
 make a composite photograph. 
 
 There are three kinds of fiction: — novels, history, — 
 and then most fabulous of all — biography. 
 
 He is fabled in fantastic slander — the libel that stabs 
 behind the mask of half truth. 
 
 27 
 
Robert Burns was born on the 25th day of January 
 1759 at the hamlet of AUoway in the county of Ayr in 
 Southwestern Scotland. 
 
 His father was a small tenant farmer. In those days 
 most of rural Scotland was tilled by tenants. 
 
 We are often told that Robert was born in a hovel. 
 It was what was called a "Clay Cottage." It was built by 
 his father, and was a better home than most of the neigh- 
 bors had. To be sure part of a gable end blew in when 
 the boy was a week old. But "Winds frae aff Ben Lo- 
 mond blaw," and are often rough with gables and things. 
 
 Daniel Webster, Abe Lincoln, and many prominent 
 Americans of generations later than Burns were born in 
 log cabins. 
 
 Log houses and clay cottages were the family man- 
 sions where the old folks lived. 
 
 They were not considered hall-marks of poverty and 
 hardship. They belonged to the democratic order of ar- 
 chitecture. It was not Corinthian — not Doric. Perhaps 
 it was like the residence a man of moderate means put up. 
 He said it was "Queen Ann front, and ^Tary Ann at the 
 back." 
 
 It is a common statement that Burns was not edu- 
 cated. 
 
 Professor Wilson — the famous Christopher North 
 of Scottish literature — says that "Not a boy in Scotland 
 had a better education than Burns." 
 
 His father and some of the neighbors clubbed to- 
 gether and hired a good schoolmaster to teach their 
 children. The father also taught his family at home. 
 
 At the age of eleven Robert was considered an ex- 
 pert in English grammar, and soon was apt in mathema- 
 tics. 
 
 28 
 
But it makes the chronicle sound democratic to say 
 that he was an ignorant boy born in a hovel. 
 
 In Abe Lincoln's case it adds zest to tell that yarn 
 about the log house he was born in, having only three 
 sides. Logs were plenty, and a fellow would have hard 
 work to build such a house without all the sides to hold 
 np the notclied log-ends. 
 
 Biographers are almost always architects — of the 
 other fellow's fortune. 
 
 Those of Burns made some very blue prints of his 
 character. 
 
 He read every book he could get hold of. The love 
 of reading builds education. Without it a boy can be 
 standardized through a college and a professional school 
 and not be educated. 
 
 There were not many books in those days. Now we 
 have too many. 
 
 \Vhen quite young he read Pope and Shakespeare, 
 Locke and Allan Ramse)\ 
 
 He even read a theological treatise on the Doctrine 
 of Original Sin. 
 
 H anything would make a boy an expert in sin, — 
 that ought to qualify him. 
 
 He worked on a farm. Not a bad thing for a young- 
 ster. The one who never did, has skipped a branch of 
 liberal education. 
 
 He worked for seven pounds a year and his board. 
 That would be about thirty-five dollars of our money: — 
 In tliose times equal to about $245.00 now. Not the ran- 
 som of an American citizen caught in Mexico, — but very- 
 well for a boy learning to be a farmer. 
 
 He also vexed his father and some other good people 
 by going to a dancing school. 
 
 29 
 
You need not expect the ghost of the elder Burns at 
 the party to-night. 
 
 He went to a good scientific school at Kirkoswald to 
 study mathematics mensuration and surveying. 
 
 This was near the smuggling coast of Scotland. The 
 smugglers did not run goods in with automobiles. They 
 used sailing vessels. 
 
 There were white sails above the deck, but 
 
 "Sometimes she wobbled, for be it told, 
 Casked in the dark of her roomy hold. 
 Gurgied the liquor of pleasant sin, 
 Rum of Jamaica and Holland gin." 
 
 Ihe smugglers were a bold and hardy crew. They 
 were quite popular with people who drank. In those days 
 that meant almost everybody — including the preachers. 
 
 But the preachers said such long graces before the 
 can was tossed, that the whiskey got old enough to start 
 Auld Lang Syne. 
 
 Their blessings made time between drinks as long 
 as war time prohibition. 
 
 To-dav. — 'time turns backward in -its flight', — and it 
 is Longfellow whiskey. It has found its Lost Youth, and 
 is too yotmg to love 
 
 One swig, — and a fellow says O My * * * ! — well 
 he says — "Deleted" — instead of — Halleluiah ! 
 
 The sailors believed in the old Indian's maxim that- 
 — "Too much rum is just enough." They showed folks 
 how to combine tax dodging with pleasure. 
 
 If the people had no revenue liquor or contraband 
 goods, tb.ey used home made brands. The art of home- 
 brewed ale Avas well known. 
 
 We talk about dandelion wine. 
 
 30 
 
Robert Louis Stevenson wrote ' ' 
 
 "From the bonny bells of heather 
 They brewed a drink long-syne 
 Was sweeter far than honey 
 Was stronger far than wine." 
 
 The young Burns was attracted to the jolly smuggler 
 parties. He learned to be a mixer where their social glass 
 went round. Among them he said he made great progress 
 in the knowledge of mankind. At the same time he did 
 good work at school. 
 
 It was at the smuggler's taverns he met some of the 
 characters he wove into Tam O' Shanter and the Jolly 
 Beggars. 
 
 Burns went back to his home and mingled in the rural 
 life of Scotland. 
 
 What was it? 
 
 The people were mostly tenants — many of them poor 
 — and with large families. There was little pleasure for 
 the young people except as they found it where they could. 
 
 Boys and girls worked together in the harvest field. 
 They were much together in the evening. They fell in love 
 like other boys and girls and were too poor to marry. 
 Then as an old vScotch woman said : — "The quickest way 
 to get rid of temptation is just to yield to it" 
 
 The world long ago found out that the most fascinat- 
 ing of all sports is hunting for temptation with intent to 
 make it unanimous. 
 
 Odd customs grew up. 
 
 It never was the Anglo Saxon common law that a 
 ceremony was necessary in order to make a valid mar- 
 riage. 
 
 31 
 
A contract between the parties — even a verbal one — 
 if carried out, made tlie marriage legal. This was the law 
 of Scotland. This is the law of Michigan today. 
 
 Such a marriage may be difficult to prove : — it may 
 make the parties liable to penalty, but the marriage is 
 valid and the children legitimate. 
 
 The prestige of ceremony however, was strong. To 
 comply with it, customs were invented which would co- 
 caine almost any docile conscience. 
 
 One of them was called — "Handfasting." If a boy 
 and girl squeezed hands with the right grip and promised, 
 — it was considered a marriage. There was no reason 
 why it should not be, — if the parties were competent to 
 make any marriage. 
 
 But there is a moral to this story. If a girl's hands 
 get cold, — she ought to be wise and wary about the kind 
 of muff she picks out to warm them. 
 
 There is a Scotch spinster song that runs like this ; — 
 
 "Now, lads, and there's ony amang ye 
 
 Wad like just upon me to ca, 
 Ye'll find me no ill to be courted, 
 
 For shyness I hae put awa'. 
 And if ye should want a bit wifie 
 
 Ye'll ken to what quarter to draw ; 
 And e'en should we no mak' a bargain 
 
 We'll aye get a kissie or twa." 
 
 These customs led to some laxity and confusion in 
 forming the marriage relation. It was often necessary to 
 set back the almanac. 
 
 They led to near marriages. 
 
 They were like near beer, — only about one and a half 
 per cent matrimony. 
 
 32 
 
In near beer the foam indeed is willing but the spirit 
 is weak. 
 
 We have no statistics of illigimate births that go back 
 to those times. We know there were more of them than 
 there are now. The Scotch percentage among the poorer 
 people is large today. 
 
 Scotland would not tolerate a foundling hospital. 
 
 Where poverty and stringent statutes curb open mar- 
 riages the laws of nature enforce themselves. 
 
 The old laws were barbarous. At one time an un- 
 fortunate mother was drummed through the town to the 
 whipping post. 
 
 The church assumed to deal with the question. The 
 parties who were caught had to stand up — or get on a 
 stool — at Sunday meeting. Then they had to listen to a 
 personally conducted Jeremiad from the preacher — that 
 is the poor did. Those who were rich, or belonged to the 
 nobility were allowed to compound with a fine. They sat 
 in the audience and heard their humbler neighbors, — 
 ^'admonished." 
 
 The preacher whetted his whittle edge till the melted 
 sulphide flew like sparks from an emery wheel. 
 
 The landlords looked on with Chessy cat grins and 
 clinked the plate with coin the tenant farmers paid their 
 stewards. 
 
 An entertainment of this kind drew a full house, — 
 and that meant a good collection. 
 
 It was as good a show as bear-baiting, or a badger 
 fight. It gave the congregation a taste of Heaven on 
 earth to see the other animals — verberated. 
 
 Lots of people would like to go to such a function 
 today. 
 
 Those talks were too long. Five gentle words — 
 
 33 
 
floated across the ages from the misty hills of Gallilee^ — 
 would have sufficed. 
 
 But the words had grown dim in the fogs of theology. 
 
 Are they clear today? 
 
 There was really a great deal of sympathy in the 
 community for those who had met with casualties. 
 
 They had so many friends — and fellow sufferers, 
 that there grew up in that society a sentiment of Bohemia, 
 — a loosely defined order of outlaws that mingled in the 
 daily, life around them. 
 
 It was something like the Bohemia Robin Hood and 
 his merry-men found in the oaklands of Sherwood forest. 
 
 Robin's rurals had also been caught at deer stealing. 
 
 It is not always a help to make laws and grow cus- 
 toms that strike at results instead of causes. 
 
 Build dykes and dams as you will, — the Mississippi 
 will break onward to the Gulf. Nature's flood goes on to 
 the ocean of posterity. 
 
 These accidents were often the result of sincere af- 
 fection blended with discouraging poverty. 
 
 The immaculate — and those who claimed to be — 
 were as usual loudest in condemning. 
 
 Bohemians are found from one cause or another in 
 all the walks of life. 
 
 John Boyle O' Reily wrote — 
 
 "I'd rather live in Bohemia than in any 
 
 other land ; 
 For only there are the values true, 
 And the laurels gathered in all men's 
 
 view. 
 Oh, I long for the glow of a kindly heart, 
 
 and the grasp of a friendly hand, 
 And I'd rather live in Bohemia than in 
 
 any other land." 
 
 34 : 
 
It was tlie natural thing that Robert Burns with his 
 genial nature — his talents and social qualities, — should 
 drift to this border land. 
 
 Circumstances helped to get him there. 
 
 A young woman was working as a servant in his 
 father's family. Little is known of her, except that she 
 was somewhat masculine in nature, — a person able to take 
 care of herself. There was no love aflfair, but trouble 
 came. Rob was half to blame — no more. 
 
 We can see now what a real man did under such cir- 
 cumstances. 
 
 Burns took the little girl baby — claimed her openly 
 as his daughter, and had her brought up in the family 
 with his mother, and his brothers and sisters. (His father 
 was then dead.) 
 
 He loved her with a father's love, and gave her a 
 good education with his other children. She grew up a 
 good woman and married well. He was much attached to 
 her from infancy, and shelo him. 
 
 He had to stand up in church and be rebuked by the 
 Rev. William Auld. This was the famous "Daddie 
 Auld." He was exceptionally gifted with zeal, and could 
 repent fervently — of other people's sins. 
 
 When he had the cork out of a bottle of whiskey, the 
 liquor never got much older. To be good collateral for 
 him, it had to be a sight draft without the three days 
 grace. 
 
 Burns was roasted on both sides by church and com- 
 munity. But this farm boy — then v^^ithout money or prop- 
 erty — would not disown his little natural daughter. 
 
 This was the child he called his : — 
 
 "Sonsie smirking dear bought Bess." 
 "His "Bonny sweet wee lady." 
 
 35 
 
That means his jolly luckie smiling Bess. 
 
 When they teased him "In country clatter," — he 
 wrote a poem of welcome to her. This poem has been 
 fiercely criticised, and is supposed to show what a bad 
 man Burns was. 
 
 Read it ! Read it with an open heart, and vision un- 
 clouded by the prejudice and conventionality of this age, 
 or of a little island planet — in a provincial solar system. 
 
 While it is witty, — it is deep with genuine feeling, 
 and pledged to the little one a father's care and affection. 
 
 This was no empty sentiment of a witful rhymer. 
 The little Bess never failed of that father's love and care 
 until the toiling hand that penned the poem fell cold and 
 listless from the clasp of Death. 
 
 And the bright cheery song! It is worth more to 
 humanity than all the soul-smart that was ever ladled over 
 a broken hearted girl : — posed on a stool before the con- 
 gregation for the edification of the saints : — then crushed 
 like a mountain daisy under the plowshare of cant. 
 
 Today people rail at Burns and prate of the moral 
 laxity of brave old rural Scotland. 
 
 But can our generation fan with the white wings of 
 the immaculate? 
 
 Where lies now the Bohemian hover where lusty 
 youth and buxom beauty dally ? 
 
 Look on the back seats of automobiles parked along 
 the country roads at night — that is, — if you can locate 
 them with the glims doused. 
 
 Ask the Old Boy in the moon : — he who peers from 
 the dim disk that rims young Luna's crescent. 
 
 Long ago he spied down on the banks of Ayr. Now 
 he is grinning wiser wrinkles into his ancient mug. 
 
 In founding hospitals and orphan asylums, Henry 
 Ford wil be known as the Father of his country. 
 
 36 
 
Later when Burns was about twenty-six years old, he 
 fell genuinely in love with a Scotch lassie — Jean Armour, 
 — the "Bonny Jean'' of his songs. 
 
 Her father was a well to do man who would not lis- 
 ten to their marriage. Burns was then poor, and the girl 
 did not care to bolt her family platform. 
 
 But they were much together, and soon a cloud 
 loomed on the horizon. It looked as if Burns might have 
 to write another nursery rhyme — and he did. 
 
 The young people drew up a written document of 
 marriage and both signed it. 
 
 Eminent Scotch and English lawyers who have ex- 
 amined this writing, have pronounced it a valid marriage. 
 
 The cloiTd burst was twins. 
 
 Jean Amour's father was a stern Scotch parent. He 
 would not accept a marriage between his daughter and a 
 yokel like Burns. 
 
 He coerced his daughter. She gave him the marriage 
 paper and he destroyed the signatures. He supposed this 
 would render the document invalid. Then he had a war- 
 rant issued for Bobby. 
 
 Now a contract cannot be canceled except by the con- 
 sent of both parties. A marriage contract cannot be set 
 aside except b)^ the arm of a court. The destruction of 
 documents only makes proof more difficult. 
 
 It shows how lightly such matters were regarded in 
 that Scotch community, when the father thought his 
 daughter's reputation was not sufficiently at stake to make 
 it expedient for her to be married to the father of her 
 children. 
 
 Burns had no trade — no business. He had little 
 Sonsie Bess to support. His father was dead. He was 
 helping to care for his mother, and to educate his sisters. 
 
 2>7 
 
But he was willing to do anything to support his fam- 
 ily and wished the marriage made public. 
 
 The Armour family forbad him the house, and 
 turned him from the door. The girl sided with her family 
 and repudiated her husband. 
 
 This seems to have been the most trying time of his 
 life. All the world was against him. He was the spot- 
 light target for the fun-mongers : — especially on account 
 of the former escapade and the catch of twins. 
 
 The law, and the gospel — and the society reporters 
 were keen on his trail. 
 
 He wrote the poem called the ''Lament." It is full of 
 sadness and distraction. In it among other things, he 
 grieves because he is an outcast from his twin babies. 
 
 As a despairing resort he decided to sail for Jamacia, 
 and try to make his fortune. But in order to sail he must 
 have a passport. In it he must be described either as a 
 married man or a bachelor. 
 
 If the notary had asked him if he was married or 
 singled, — Burns must have answered, — Yes sir I am. 
 
 The authorities decided he could have a bachelor's 
 passport if he would stand up in church and be "ad- 
 momshed." 
 
 Perhaps they thought another wigging would cure 
 Burns of falling in love. 
 
 Here he was : — married by the laws of nature : — mar- 
 ried by the law of Scotland : — married by the ties of off- 
 spring. Yet he was refused a way to make a living, and 
 a providence for those dependent upon him except by dis- 
 owning his marriage. 
 
 Deserted by his wife — poor and friendless — he de- 
 cided to stand up ; and had to do it seven times before the 
 unction of Daddie Auld was exhausted. 
 
 38 
 
His Reverence played the Devil's game and hauled 
 Burns over the glowing coals by his hair. 
 
 We can see an ignoble plow-boy standing in the Ayr- 
 shire church that far-off day. 
 
 We can hear the anathemas of the bigot — who knew 
 he was married; — yet was willing to part him from the 
 rocker where his babies crooned. 
 
 And the social martyr — standing in the bear-garden 
 — winked at by friends, and gloated over by Basilisk san- 
 ctimony : — was Robert Burns — the poet the English lands 
 have crowned with laurel of liberty and song. 
 
 Beyond the seas lay the Indian Isle, — where the lover 
 of liberty — who loved his native hills of Scotland, and the 
 near ones of his they nestled — must live an exile and a 
 slave driver. 
 
 And Daddie Auld was pronouncing the farewell ora- 
 tion of Scotland to Robert Burns — the maledictory. 
 
 But Bobby got even later on. The Domine found 
 that his congregation were much interested in admoni- 
 tions writen in rhyme, — and there didn't seem to be any 
 strike on, that was making hot coals scarce. 
 
 Before it was time to sail, Burn's publishers succeed- 
 ed in launching an edition of his poems, and he received 
 money enough to relieve his present embarrassment. 
 
 While he was thus left alone, he became acquainted 
 with Mary Campbell — Highland Mary. 
 
 They were promised in marriage. 
 
 Soon she was stricken with a fever and died. 
 
 Her story and the poems Burns wrote about her, will 
 haunt the years with the lyric pathos that lingers round 
 the hawthorn glens. 
 
 39 
 
"Ye banks and braes and streams around 
 
 The castle o' Montgomery 
 Green be your woods, and fair your flowers, 
 
 Your waters never drumlie : 
 There Simmer first unfalds her robes, 
 
 And there the langest tarry ; 
 For there I took the last Fareweel 
 
 O' my sweet Highland Mary. 
 
 "Plow sweetly bloom'd the gay, green birk. 
 
 How rich the hawthorn's blossom. 
 As underneath their fragrant shade, 
 
 I clasp'd her to my boosm 
 The golden Hours on angel wings. 
 
 Flew o'er me and my Dearie ; 
 For dear to me, as light and Hfe, 
 
 Was my sweet Highland Mary. 
 
 "Wi' mony a vow, and lock'd embrace. 
 
 Our parting was f u' tender : 
 And, pledging aft to meet again. 
 
 We tore oursels asunder ; 
 But oh fell Death's untimely frost. 
 
 That nipt my Flower sae early. 
 Now green's the sod, and cauld's the clay, 
 
 That wraps my Highland Mary. 
 
 "O pale, pale now, those rosy lips, 
 
 I aft hae kiss'd sae fondly 
 And clos'd for ay, the sparkling glance 
 
 That dwelt on me sae kindly 
 And mouldering now in silent dust. 
 
 That heart that lo'ed me dearly 
 But still within my bosom's core 
 
 Shall live my Highland Mary." 
 
 40 
 
Afterwards Robert and Jean became reconciled and 
 lived together until his death. But this did not come with- 
 out bickerings, and until Jean was practically deserted by 
 her friends. 
 
 The story that they settled this trouble by an after 
 marriage is not true. They were never married again. 
 It was not necessary. They made a public acknowledge- 
 ment of the written marriage, and this has been fixed up 
 into a story, — but it is only a fable of biography. 
 
 Their life for the most part was a happy one. He 
 wrote not less than seventeen different poems to his Bon- 
 ny Jean. Allusions to her are found in many a glowing 
 line. 
 
 When he wrote his songs, she sang the airs and tried 
 the tunes until he was satisfied he had done his best. 
 
 Was it strange the independent nature of Robert 
 Burns made him chief in Bohemia? 
 
 Was it strange that he trimmed up the apostles of 
 devilology ? 
 
 The Scotch Robin loosed his minstrel long-bow, and 
 the shafts of raillery whistled their merry tunes into the 
 living targets. 
 
 How their harp-twang stings down the wind of 
 story! 
 
 Like Percy's bow-boy in the ballad of Chevy 
 Chase : — 
 
 "An Arrow of a clothyard long 
 
 Up to the head drew he. 
 
 Against Sir Hugh Montgomerye 
 
 So right the shaft he set, 
 
 The white swan-wing that was ther'eon 
 
 Was in his heart's blood wet." 
 
 41 i 
 
Afterwards he was appointed a giiager of liquors, 
 and travelled round the different parishes in his district. 
 
 When he was about twenty-seven years old his busi- 
 ness took him often to Dumfries, and he was much at the 
 Globe Tavern. 
 
 There seems to have been a temporary misunder- 
 standing between Burns and Jean at this time. Nobody 
 explains it. Certainly not the biographers with their sur- 
 mises. 
 
 Burns became acquainted with Ann Park — neice of 
 the landlady of the Globe. She was bar maid and wait- 
 ress at the tavern, and the "Anna of the Golden Locks," — 
 no artless lass of Arcady. 
 
 Another casualty resulted — Burns' daughter Eliza- 
 beth. 
 
 This was in some way arranged in the family. The 
 child was taken to the Burns home. Jean laid it in the 
 same cradle with a little stranger of her own that had just 
 discovered Ayr Shire. 
 
 Her old father came to see her, and seeing two in the 
 crib asked if twins had come again. Jean told him one 
 was a neighbor's child and its mother was sick. ("It's a 
 neebor's bairn who is unweel.") This was the exact truth. 
 
 Jean deserved the red cross medal — "For distin- 
 guished service — in time of war." Some married ladies 
 would have been fussy. But her experience had taught 
 her the kindly credo of Bohemia. She became much at- 
 tached to the child. 
 
 The cradle song of Bonny Jean must have floated 
 down to her mother heart from some star with kinder 
 skies than ours. 
 
 This child like the other was brought up and educat- 
 ed with the children of the family. Rob and Jean were 
 
 42 
 
both good fellows and ran their own family. Biograph- 
 ers and other folks had better leave it to them. 
 
 Of course a rhyme went with the occasion. Some 
 people think it the worst of Burns. 
 
 The passion song to Anna is shell-shock to the Whit- 
 tier school. But it sings like the goose-wing arrow over 
 the Scotch and English lands. 
 
 When it is clipped from the scroll of Burns, the same 
 committee of censors will burn the Odes of Horace and 
 the roundelays of Beranger. They will cremate whole 
 scenes of Shakesphere, and several naughty poems of Ella 
 Wheeler Wilcox. Walt Whitman and Billy Sunday will 
 be caught in the altogether and barbecued. 
 
 Also the Song of Solomon may have to go in the dis- 
 card. 
 
 The Creator made many races of animals on the pla- 
 net ploygamous, — so they could be fruitful and multiply 
 and replenish the earth. Ours is one of them. 
 
 We have not come like the trees that Tennyson 
 says : — 
 
 "But languidly adjust 
 Their vapid vegitable loves 
 With anthers and with dust." 
 
 The race is not surviving today through stock-farm 
 eugenics. The red heart-wave of Cro-Magnon cave man 
 has borne it on. 
 
 "Almost everybody is an accident." 
 
 The child of Anna of the Norseland hair made a 
 good woman. She married and her descendants are said 
 to transmit the strain of Burns with more prepotence than 
 those of his other children. 
 
 43 
 
Where is the posterity of Whittier? 
 Anthers and pollen failed to register the blood-pres- 
 sure of Scotland and Burns. 
 
 This Scotch Bohemia was real to the Bohemians who 
 lived by the banks of Ayr. 
 
 Many a man has stood fair before the world because 
 he wasn't caught, — and perhaps had money and influence. 
 Many another escapes who deserted mother and child, — 
 or perhaps sent the innocent down the dark way of the un- 
 born. 
 
 The life of Burns was not the story of pathos and 
 dispair that Carlyle and some of the others, go into tribu- 
 lations over. 
 
 Ups and downs he had like other men. But on the 
 whole he took life as a cheery stunt. He was a bright 
 companion and a sincere friend. 
 
 Like other bright spirits he was at times dispondent. 
 
 It is not a sad Burns: — but the gloomy sphinx of 
 Carlyle — couchant on the desert sands — that spreads the 
 shadow. 
 
 Carlyle's essay is a dreary dirge keyed to the sub-bass 
 of a church organ. From beginning to end there is not a 
 flick of a smile — not a patch of sunshine on the heather. 
 
 All must feel sad at the poverty and distress that 
 came upon Bums at the end of his life. 
 
 He had helped his mother, and helped his sisters. He 
 prided himself on the appearance of his own family and 
 kept his wife and children well dressed. He had loaned 
 money to his brother that he badly needed, — equal to 
 abou $8,000.00 now. It could not be returned. 
 
 44 
 
They made him keeper of the vineyards, but his own 
 vineyard did he not keep. 
 
 The story that his sickness and death were caused by 
 a night exposure after a drunken spree is not true. 
 
 But he died in financial distress. A warrant was 
 out for him. Imprisonment for debt was then legal. 
 
 He worried about his family. His last child was born 
 during his funeral. 
 
 Burn's mind was broad and liberal not only for his 
 times but for all times. 
 
 He did not believe in the theolog}' of the church, but 
 he respected sincere religion, and had faith in immortality. 
 
 He was not the kind of reformer that plans with 
 malice aforethought to uplift the world. He left that to 
 Atlas and the others who feel so much responsibility 
 about it. He was not a meddler. 
 
 While he had no sympathy with the intolerant in- 
 stitution of the Covenanters, and had suffered from it, — 
 he could do them justice. 
 
 With all their grim intolerance, the Covenanters had 
 been the apostles of Scotland's liberty. They had stayed 
 the tyranny of the feudal barons. 
 
 Burns knew his country's history and respected them. 
 
 When he heard the Covenant slurred he wrote these 
 lines : — 
 
 "The solemn league and Covenant 
 Cost Scotland blood — cost Scotland tears; 
 But it sealed Freedom's sacred cause — 
 If thou'rt a slave, indulge they sneers." 
 
 45 
 
Burns was the poet of womanhood. His touch on tlie 
 lute strings runs from Bonny Mary on the hillside — the 
 queen of a cottage — to lovely Queen Mary in the halls of 
 Holyrood. 
 
 A white neck was laid under England's axe. An 
 impassioned and beautiful face shines starlike through the 
 song and the story of Scotland : — even as the Grecian 
 Helen's through the song of Troy. And Marie Steuart is 
 mourned in no sweeter requiem than the one the plow-boy 
 wrote. 
 
 He loved nature and birds and the animals. 
 
 Here of course should slide in — the beatified legend 
 of Orpheus — Ancient of the tale-spinner's biography 
 yarns. 
 
 After their other fables, — it is easy to believe that the 
 •wild-folk went a-dreaming to his ukelele like dough-boys 
 to the mess bugle. 
 
 Pied piper's piccolo and chuck-horn solo, play but a 
 stolen stave from the old sorcery harp : — the mess call to 
 a feasting in the promised land. 
 
 Echo-drift from the load-star lyre of Orpheus must 
 have spilled around the hills of Scotland. For if Robert 
 Bums saw a wounded hare limp by, or a bashful grass- 
 mouse, he made them his comrades and ours. 
 
 We were all poets in our youth, but as we grow up 
 we get ashamed of the poetry in our natures. 
 
 A man might as well be ashamed of his grandmother 
 who was the loving friend of his childhood. For it is 
 Nature — the olden mother that whispers. 
 
 The real poets are the listeners : — they who cherished 
 the early dreams and longings, and let them grow, and 
 
 46 
 
wove them into language in the effort to translate them 
 for us. 
 
 They are castaways from some far-ofif planet — ship- 
 wrecked on our wild shore. They know their native home 
 is in the distant sun-land — out among the ranges of the 
 great telescopes. But when they tell us of it, we listen to 
 the music and mock the soul-beats of the singer. 
 
 Robert Burns died on the 21st day of July, 1796 at 
 the age of about thirty-seven and one-half years. 
 
 Never lived a master-singer so frank and brave. 
 
 He would not shirk the consequences of his faults. 
 Instead of hiding his mistakes, he openly did his level best 
 to right them. 
 
 Since the lyric heart of Scotland stilled, the mountain 
 daisies have crimsoned the hills for more than a hundred 
 springtimes. And the Burns memorial is not yet written. 
 His poems have reached only the nearest of the audience. 
 
 But from clouds that never floated, the reeling larks 
 — like Bonny Jeans — will lilt his tunes; — and the river's 
 immemorial organ tell the idyls to the ocean. 
 
 Down the generations yet to live — rich and poor — 
 dweller in the city, and Lincoln boy in the wilderness — 
 lover and hero and sweetheart, — will know the revel of 
 his song. 
 
 The absent lover will send his girl a copy of "My 
 Nannie's a'wa," for a Valentine. 
 
 She will send him back— "O Whistle and Fie come 
 to You My Lad." 
 
 He whose reverie quests the lost love of his youth — 
 gone beyond a wider stream than flowed around Mont- 
 gomery — will dream of Highland Mary. 
 
 He who toils in hardship will read : — 
 
 "The rank is but the guinea stamp 
 The man's the gowd for a' that." 
 47 
 
The future holds in mystic hush the music for John 
 Andersons not started up the hill; — and even the unsung 
 memory of us is there in "Auld Lang Syne." 
 
 As the world runs on, and younger Scotlands rise on 
 Scotland — like the white crags of Ben Lomond: — they 
 shall never blush for the minstrel boy of their native land. 
 
 Robert Burns will blow the lowland Pan-pipes down 
 the ages. 
 
 And on in sun-lit Maydays we shall never ken: — a 
 man shall be a man, and a woman a woman, for all that. 
 
 00 
 
 THE END 
 
 00 
 
 48 
 
COLONEL WESTNEDGE 
 
 From "The Kalamazoo Herald" of 
 Dec. 19, 1918. 
 
 Colonel Joseph B. Westnedge died at an army hospi- 
 tal at Nantes — in the old provence of France that was 
 Brittany— November 29th, 1918. 
 
 So runs the message sent across the sea that told the 
 ending of his bright heroic story. 
 
 The trumpets had sounded, "Cease Firing," along 
 the battle lines of France. His friends were already mak- 
 ing plans as to what they would do to, "Jo", when he 
 reached home. Then from out the clouds — the bugler 
 of the innumerable legions blew for him, the call, — "Lie 
 Down." 
 
 He was the ideal type of the American volunteer — 
 the citizen soldier. 
 
 His military experience began in Company C — the 
 Kalamazoo unit of the old 2nd Infantry of the Michigan 
 National Guard. 
 
 For years the National Guard worked against dis- 
 couragement. But it was the organization that kept alive 
 the army spirit through the long night of American un- 
 preparedness. 
 
 The people had settled down to the belief that we 
 should never have another war: — or if we did, the navy 
 would take care of it in a few weeks — so what was the 
 use of military outfits in time of peace? 
 
 49 
 
One of the Guard problems was, — how a youngster 
 could master the complicated profession of the modern 
 soldier, and still be a citizen and succeed in his daily busi- 
 ness. 
 
 Surely it took the up-hearted spirit of the soldier, and 
 the patriotism that must be a part of good citizenship to 
 carry-on both at the same time. 
 
 He took great interest in the Armory Building, and 
 the fittings for the local companies. 
 
 At the time the troops left home, his own name and 
 those of several of our local officers were on paper at the 
 bank for moneys borrowed for the Armory fund. 
 
 These notes amounted to about five thousand dollars. 
 They have since been paid by public donations. 
 
 When the Spanish-American war came, — the thought 
 that drew the people on, was finer than the watchword, — 
 "Remember the Maine." The medieval curse of Castile 
 was brooding over Cuba. Spain showed the same cruel 
 disregard for human wrong and suffering that has marked 
 the German invasions. 
 
 When President McKinley called for volunteers, the 
 regiment went to Island Lake to. muster in for the war. 
 This was a little more than twenty years ago. Jo W^est- 
 nedge was then a lieutenant in Company C. 
 
 Another, "To", — Jo Nolan, — was its captain. He too 
 was an ideal officer — loved by his men and considered of 
 promise by his superiors. His ambition and his whole 
 heart was in his work. But that boy soldier's heart ! At 
 his physical examination the surgeons found that even 
 then its beats were almost numbered. 
 
 Nolan soon passed away. After the examination he 
 came to my tent, and choked when he told me he was not 
 to go. The disappointment probably hastened the end. 
 
 50 
 
I asked him who would be Captain of C. He said, — 
 "The other Jo,— Company C. will be all right." 
 
 So Captain Westnedge had the experience of serving 
 through the Spanish-American as a company commander. 
 
 An officer who takes a higher rank without this epi- 
 sode is handicapped. The company is the real unit of the 
 service, — and at times may be a little army of itself. 
 
 Its commander is brought in touch with the men. He 
 knows their wants and troubles — their easily besetting — 
 faults : — for even a good soldier can at times be a good 
 sinner, A company officer learns to understand the hu- 
 man nature of soldiers, and finds out their way of look- 
 ing at things. 
 
 Without this experience — and without the kindly 
 sympathy which was part of the Joe Westnedge make-up 
 — an officer cannot be a real leader. 
 
 He served with his company until mustered out at 
 the end of the war. By common consent he was a credit 
 to the service; and his work had the warm approval of 
 superior officers. 
 
 At the close of the Spanish-American war he stayed 
 with the Michigan organization of the regiment, and rose 
 to be its Lieutenant Colonel. 
 
 When the National Guard was again called out of 
 the state, it was for service on the Mexican border. 
 
 Again with the old company, he was on active service 
 with the old regiment, and became its Colonel. 
 
 No one dreamed how soon the training he gave it, 
 would be tested in the greatest world war. 
 
 When the storm broke, — it found him ready with the 
 outfit. 
 
 The boys who walked our streets in the heyday of 
 Jyouth were soon to rival in story the armies gray with 
 
 51 
 
legend — ^those that since the dawn of history have fought 
 over the fields of France. 
 
 The accounts we have of Colonel Westnedge from 
 the time he landed with them — "Over There" — show him 
 with the regiment he had carefully and ably coached. 
 
 How well he did his work, is told by the fact that 
 when his command was enlarged to the foreign service 
 limit, he was retained as colonel. It was selected from 
 the greatest army the United States ever mustered, as one 
 of the units of its flower guard. 
 
 A man may be a good officer — faithful and careful 
 in the discharge of his duties : — but the final test of the 
 soldier that includes all others, must be, — is he a com- 
 manding officer in presence of the enemy ? 
 
 This test he seems to have met — not only with the 
 record of well done, — but with distinguished courage and 
 ability. Those who were with the regiment when its 
 cradle was rocked, must always cherish with mournful 
 pride this memory. When those supreme hours of ad- 
 venture came, — it was led by a soldier who had grown 
 up with it : — by one who has placed it with the regiments 
 from the time of the revolution on, that have marked the 
 color lines of American history. 
 
 Still young, — he was old enough for developed judg- 
 ment. Grant was forty-two when Lee surrendered. 
 Colonel Westnedge was forty-six at the end. 
 
 A military officer is not made in a day. He had been 
 training for about twenty-five years. 
 
 Citizen soldier of two wars for ideals: — he lived to 
 see the lone star of the Indies float from a liberty mast; 
 and heard the chimes of victory play from belfries that 
 had grieved for Lafayette. 
 
 In the heart of his country his laurels are safe. 
 
 52 
 
Among his old friends and comrades there goes with 
 the wreath, a feeling of personal loss — a sensing that the 
 spirit passed on is rarely equaled — the genial kindly spirit 
 of Jo Westnedge. 
 
 Poor and hollow would be the words we murmur 
 above his lowly head, if we could only echo that he had 
 been a skillful officer. 
 
 We can go beyond that, and feel rather than speak — 
 a tribute to his manly worth and his kindly human sym- 
 pathy. 
 
 The men in his regiment were to him his soldier 
 brothers, with whom he would gladly live, and if need be 
 gladly die. 
 
 They had no danger to face on the firing line their 
 Colonel would not share: — no trouble he would not try 
 to make lighter : — no hardship in which he would not bear 
 his part. 
 
 To his immediate family there is little we can say, 
 except to tell them our sympathy is deeper than the touch 
 of language, — and that the sunset shadows fall eastward 
 to the morning. 
 
 He sleeps in the ancient cathedral city where King 
 Henry signed the famous Edict of Nantes, that gave free- 
 dom to the Hugenots. It is in a land where the last 
 crusaders of liberty have written an ampler edict that 
 makes men and women free. 
 
 The signets to the charter are ruddy drops from 
 warm brave hearts. Opposite one of them is written the 
 name — Westnedge of Kalamazoo. 
 
 In Memorial Mays whose bloomage we shall never 
 wreathe, — garland and song and the messenger of elo- 
 quence will not let it fade. 
 
 By the banks of the Loire there is a green mound the 
 reverie of Michigan haunts. There the minstrel winds of 
 
 53 
 
Brittany sing the requiem of Nature — the infinite mother. 
 When they journey onward, — it changes to a new song 
 of the people's hope. 
 
 We hear that Company C, is shattered. Many others 
 from Kalamazoo sleep in the vineyard land. 
 
 And some have come home to their rest. 
 
 Twenty-three centuries ago, Pericles stood over his 
 country's dead in a garden of Athens and said : — 
 
 "Youth perished from the city like spring from the 
 year," and, — "Immortality belongs to those who die in the 
 service of their country." 
 
 They may camp with Lafayette and Westnedge : — or 
 in grassy mounded arbors of their native land. The same 
 benediction of the sunset hallows the oaken cross beyond 
 the Atlantic, — and tides homeward with the dial till it 
 nestles on the Westland marble. Its farewell glimmer 
 on the lowly barrows is an earnest of the flushing dawn 
 on eternal highlands. 
 
 NOTE. 
 
 Colonel Irish served twelve years with the 2nd In- 
 fantry of the Michigan National Guard — five years as 
 Captain of Company C ; and betxVeen five and six years 
 as Colonel of the regiment. He was not with it in the 
 Spanish- American : — but went out as Colonel of the 35th 
 Michigan, — a volunteer regiment which he organized to 
 fill out the state quota, after the National Guard had all 
 gone in. Editor Herald. 
 
 54 
 
WAITING FOR A SAIL 
 
 Attention of Our Inter-ocean Post Boy, 
 
 She stands on the roof 
 
 and peers for a sail. 
 But the mist on the tide 
 
 is gray Hke a veil ; 
 And the wings of the boat 
 
 never float in. the haze 
 To joyance the eyes 
 
 that grow dim with the days. 
 
 Can you guess the rare cargo 
 
 that lags on the brine ? 
 It is made up of gold 
 
 from a story-old mine ; 
 And the more of the ore 
 
 that goes cruising away, — 
 All the more will be left 
 
 for a sunnier day. 
 
 For the bark with white sails 
 
 and the lingering spars — 
 That is steered from its port 
 
 by the mystery stars, — 
 Bears a message of fate 
 
 becalmed in the mail. 
 And so she must wistfully 
 
 wait for a sail. 
 
 55 
 
THE MAINE 
 
 By the marge of the dusky Antilles 
 Our ship was a-swing on the wave. 
 
 On the breasts of its sailors the lilies 
 Gleam white as they garland the brave. 
 
 * 
 
 In Spain's mystic port of Havana, 
 A blink of the sun's dimming light 
 
 Caressed the last tinge of the banner 
 While bugles were lilting good night. 
 
 The star's that shone white in the glooming 
 Were black ere the refrain of dawn ; 
 
 And the spell of the mariner's dooming 
 Had silenced the tune of the horn. 
 
 The crew to the cloud-lands were sailing; 
 
 And sweet haunting eyes on the pier 
 The barques of the dreamers seemed hailing, 
 
 As home to their slumber drew near. 
 
 Then a red ocean Etna uprending. 
 Made flame of the battleship's prid?; 
 
 And the sea-raging dragon was sending 
 The Blues with a toss on the tide. 
 
 * 
 
 The dead sailors found after the wreck were buried 
 on the Island, — and the Cubans draped the mounds with 
 lilies. 
 
 56 
 
They were sailors a-cruise with the thunder; 
 
 The lads who could make the old flasr 
 To far briny portals, a wonder 
 
 That heralds more cannon than brag. 
 
 In the smoke of the battle guns chiding 
 We knew that their hearts would be leal ; 
 
 But a mad lurking devil was hiding 
 Deep down by the Ironclad's keel. 
 
 A breeze of the ocean eternal 
 
 Round haven-slung hammocks a-hum ! — 
 The rend of the powder infernal ! 
 
 The gunners at anchor-watch dumb ! 
 
 O, brave were the dreams of the sailor 
 Who rocked in the mystery boat: — 
 
 For who was the powder imp's jailor 
 To tell him how long it would float. 
 
 They sleep by the bright island surges: — 
 We grieve with the gulf's moaning dirges; 
 
 And pluck with impassioned emotion 
 For mariners dead with the "Maine" — 
 
 For our exiles a-cold in the ocean — 
 The red thorny roses of pain. 
 
 The lilies of Castile are fading 
 
 On mounds by the Indies' strand ; 
 And the fragrance of memory lading 
 
 The winds of their fond native land. 
 The stars that charm sweetly above them 
 
 Beguile their long dream by the sea. 
 May a flag with a lone star to love them 
 
 Float over an Isle of the Free. 
 April, 1898. 
 
 57 
 
NAP IN THE SADDLE 
 
 SCENE I A lake-side resort. Time morning. 
 
 An English girl in cross-seat riding habit, 
 waits for the saddle horses. The groom is late. 
 She sits down in a hammock and carefully 
 pulls the skirt of her riding coat over a fresh 
 tear in the trousers. 
 
 She drops asleep. It is the morning after 
 the country mask-ball, and she was up late last 
 night. Her hair falls down and at times is lift- 
 ed on the breeze. 
 
 A small brook runs through the grove. 
 Across it, her brindle bull-terrier has treed a 
 squirrel. Other wag-tails are stricken with 
 acute ecstasy. In vain the lady boarders shout 
 the recall at them. 
 
 Some of the boys are yelling, — "Sic I'm 
 Tri.v!" Bare-footed they splash through the 
 stream and race for the tree. Several little 
 pigs are scared ahead, and scurry in yapulant 
 panic. 
 
 The Bolsheviki mob about the tree refuse 
 to listen to reason — from female politicans. 
 
 The squirrels up the other trees — vo-zip- 
 perate. 
 
 There is a wooded turn in the near-by 
 road, and the auto horns challenge it with long 
 and short signals. 
 
 From the stables, the blooded Kentuck 
 nickers a cheery solo — on his oaten Pan pipe. 
 
 58 
 
An impertinent rooster on the fence mocks 
 its echo. 
 
 From boughs above the cradle — an astral 
 Puckrell winks, and drips the poppy sap. 
 
 A mortal wag — in spurs and khaki — 
 steals up and gently sways the net. 
 
 A young lady sitting near, sings in a low 
 sweet voice, — 
 
 "By Baby Bunting — 
 
 Daddy's gone a-htmting." 
 And,— 
 
 "Rock-a-bye baby in the tree top." 
 
 A yoimgster strums support on a banjo, 
 and varies with rag-time, and the rocking 
 is cadenced to the tunes. 
 
 The blonde naps on : — but now a peachy 
 wine brims tingent in her cheek. 
 
 Her left hand clutches a mesh of the 
 swing with a nervous jerk. A murmur plays 
 on the sleeping lips. A sensitive ear — for mu- 
 sic — might catch a piccolo octave — followed by 
 — "Trix! Go home!" 
 
 A small black spider darts over her 
 fingers. The thumb turns up and points for- 
 ward between the ears — of the hammock. 
 
 She now holds the hemp with a caress — 
 as if it were a rubber cord to be relaxed or 
 pulled. 
 
 PROLOGUE 
 She tips, and on her lips the pranky smiles 
 Half blab how wily Mab a dream beguiles. 
 The Queenie flicks unseen the hammock nag. 
 The colt that trots no jolt, shall quest the stag; 
 
 59 
 
And Trix in winks his flixy tail shall wag. 
 Now mad-folk — down a glad ancestral trance — 
 With lurking Puck — come perking dim romance. 
 In yore-land woods the boar-hunt riders go. 
 In luck at view, the buck-hounds jump the roe. 
 And back to olden-time more packs may rail : — 
 AVhile larking in the dream, a hark-horn hail 
 Lures on — where vision hunters lose the trail. 
 
 THE DREAM 
 
 Fleethart — ranger of the wild — 
 What rolling lasso hoop 
 
 Your war)'^ feet beguiled? 
 
 The shooting loop 
 Has snared you in its droop 
 
 No colt from Arab desert well : — 
 
 Or Old-Kentucky Dixies : — 
 For silver cup or golden spell 
 
 Can pool with Barb of Pixies. 
 
 A witch'es plug will rear on air 
 And mop the Bureau weather. 
 
 1 know that at a fancy scare — 
 (And sometijnes at a country fair) — 
 
 Old Peg will clear the heather. 
 But who had guessed Your Nervy Grace 
 
 Was sprung from Goblin-bred eternals- 
 Of gamy heart and foxy pace — 
 That range Endymion's vernals? 
 (A fly flew on his ear — 
 My hand feels creepy queer,) 
 
 60 
 
No throbbing hoof-beats stir my seat: — 
 
 Like a wolf the pathway traiHng, — 
 Where fall the white and wingy feet 
 That fan along this sailing. 
 (His gallop tricks so pat and true, — 
 This horse seems fit to carr}' two. 
 (They'd have to hug 
 And sit up snug.) 
 
 The wind that frets my streaming hair, 
 
 A liossy mane carresses, 
 I know not where I go nor care — 
 
 So light the bridle presses. 
 And now — down Sherwood's forest trail 
 
 The n.iddy dawn is sliding: — 
 While winds the Saxon bugle scale, 
 
 And tonic hounds are chiding. 
 Afar at first the echo, 
 But now it seems to beck — O 
 
 A-like a hope in hiding. 
 
 The rouse wakes up the quarry's lair. 
 
 My veins with vintage jingle: — 
 Could a girl this revel dare. — 
 
 And its run through gulch and dingle? 
 Are those the wild boar's yawling shrills 
 
 With the hounding yaps a-mingle? 
 They buzz my nerve like dental drills — 
 When the spin jumps on with a tingle, 
 I hear the glen maids scream 
 I/ike scares on lips that dream. 
 He's the Bug of the jungles 
 If the slot-bitch bunsfles. 
 
 61 
 
At pealing horn and forest cries, — 
 How high my horse is bounding: — 
 
 While kindle keen his wide-set eyes — 
 Turned where the hunt is sounding! 
 
 What bright haired queen beside me goes? 
 
 Ah Elgiva — loved in story ! 
 But no — a plate-glass window shows 
 
 My shadow crowned with Saxon glory ! 
 
 And yet it seems not strange to me .^^ 
 For plate-glass panel's dark reffector 
 
 To gleam by vSherwood's linden tree, 
 And trick my double for a spectre. 
 
 Or was it Eve-wise Dryad 
 In boot and — checks attired? 
 (I guess she tripped — 
 Her — things are ripped.) 
 
 I heard the tree-girl's song 
 As I rode along. 
 Her Druid croon- 
 W^as some sweet tune 
 From the homing soul 
 In a sea-shell's bowl. 
 From the world apart 
 It melts my heart ; 
 And glims with glamourie 
 A misty memorie. 
 
 Now through the oaks 
 With hob-nob jokes 
 And rollic shout 
 
 62 
 
Jinks on the rout. 
 
 And in the lead — they cheer 
 
 A flash of fear. 
 
 The buck-hound's zip 
 
 Its heels may nip. 
 I hear the jets from bugles keen. 
 
 I see the sheen 
 
 Of Lincoln green — 
 And in that larky picinic party 
 Rides one who spurs in khaki. 
 There a-thwart the hawthorne cover 
 See the hurdle jumpers hover — 
 And here and there the scarlet kindle — 
 And far in front — a dog of hrindle! 
 
 His flutty wag 
 Is the guidon flag, — 
 Or the plume of Navarre 
 That shines like a star. 
 If he trees that pig 
 He may be wiser, 
 And get a twig — 
 As did Tricks Kaiser, — 
 That H. C. L. 
 Is fierce in ham. 
 And he'l catch — 
 (A rhyme for L.) 
 But he won't give a — 
 (Rhyme for ham.) 
 And like the twinkling Procyon — 
 In Stella lore, 
 The canis minor 
 That goes before 
 Orion's big-dog shiner — 
 
 63 
 
He'l hunt anon — the sky on. 
 And be a good dog gone. 
 
 Jim Abbot raised the pup. 
 
 At shows they take the cup. 
 
 O never! Trix won't bite! 
 
 No— he don't get tight. 
 
 He frisked my — togs last night. 
 
 Of course he barks at cats : — 
 
 He found them on a chair 
 
 And shook the pair, 
 And tore that tear. 
 
 But then he's zeal on rats. 
 My tunic spats — 
 And shows the hole — 
 
 (I almost said — Sheol !) 
 
 He nips at Fleethart's heels — 
 
 Until I squirm like eels, 
 
 And let out squeals. 
 
 And if I send him back — 
 
 He's sure to loop my track. 
 I stayed with Jim 
 So late to dance — 
 Trix took the whim 
 To rip my — O figs! — 
 His Jigs to — Prance! 
 FTe plays till he pants. 
 I wouldn't care 
 If I had another pair. 
 O I can swim, 
 But I like Jim :— 
 And so I let him. dream 
 He's teaching me the stream. 
 
 64 
 
The woods grow dim — 
 I cannot swim — 
 O Jim ! 
 
 SCENE II The spider imp comes back. She is an old 
 and cunning dame with Xey eyes that leer the 
 brain. She sHdes along the sleeping face. 
 
 The branches over-head shake with a puff of 
 Eurus. 
 
 Some drops of morning dew spray down 
 as fell the Lethe Lull on Palinurus. 
 
 Trix has caught the squirrel! 
 There is a victory jubilee. 
 
 ON WITH THE TRANCE! 
 
 That fly is a freak 
 It nipped my cheek. 
 The dogs are off the peep 
 Of the wild-heel's leap. 
 
 They run in laps 
 
 With silly yaps. 
 The gay shirt frills 
 From the bal-masque rills, 
 Dance waltz quadrills 
 That swim on the hills. 
 The horse that jolts the boar 
 Falls down on the ball-room floor. 
 I catch no step, in the riddles 
 
 The Cremona fiddles 
 
 Of the wood-bands fling. 
 
 But the belling swells 
 
 65 
 
The viol's ring 
 On the catgut rack — 
 Hark-on the wildered pack. 
 
 Along the screen the movies glimpse. 
 I see the wet grass brim 
 And the glancing spiders skim — 
 And the girls who dance with Jim. 
 
 There's pert old Mab — the Queen of Imps;- 
 
 And a whelp gets gored and limps. 
 
 It's lady's choice : 
 They'v caught their boys. 
 Those horrid flirts 
 In the two-step glance. 
 There's Jim zvith Nance 
 And I can't dance — 
 For I tore my — skirts. 
 
 The jump-hounds have no sniff. 
 The slow-dogs trail a whiff. 
 So now the leash-boy slips 
 Old Meg — for witch-nose tips. 
 No chance for her to flunk it. 
 She'd smell the dens 
 Of the moonshine pens — 
 In Tunkett. 
 Old Meg would nose for a peg — 
 And find a keg 
 Where Nick's own spell 
 In — (I won't tell.) — had sunk it. 
 
 She nags cold reek 
 Of the tricl<y freak 
 
 66 
 
In the fenland ruck; — 
 And she's good for the spoil 
 Down the still-hunt foil 
 To the — Angel's — truck. 
 
 And Jim I guess — 
 Might slip the dream-hound's throng — 
 
 And lip the horn. 
 
 He told me once 
 
 That runaway stunts 
 
 On a blooded racer. 
 
 Were about as sane 
 
 As swiging champagne 
 
 With a whiskey chaser. 
 
 I know he rides a horse, — 
 
 But whence that fond remorse? 
 
 He must suppress 
 
 His canteen thirst 
 
 For moonshine nips — 
 
 When the hammock — rips, 
 
 (He is the worst!) 
 
 It is Dian's pony: — 
 
 It carries two — 
 
 But just to coo. 
 
 And he gets phony 
 
 And shocks my — symphony. 
 
 But after all, — what harm 
 
 To skim the jorum, 
 
 And sip the charm, — 
 Just in a dream-rhyme variorum ! 
 
 I ride the swish of the coppice spray — 
 In dews that damp the May. 
 
 67 
 
In their plashy smacks 
 They smell sachet — 
 Like the rose bouquet 
 That was sent by — Max 
 
 Where goes the fresh of the rose 
 When its perfume blows? 
 
 Where spent the virile scent 
 For the slot forgot. 
 
 Where spoom the muzzles true 
 
 That sift the tainted dew, — 
 The cunning — fled 
 
 From the blood-hound dead? 
 
 Where vanish the love-lies 
 That float on the masker's lips — 
 Where the tide of mad Burgundy dips 
 When its undertow slips; — 
 And told by coquetry eyes 
 \\^ith the wits 
 Of the kits 
 In the domino slits? 
 
 That jimpy doe 
 
 Is a changling roe. 
 
 For the brown eyes glow 
 
 In the necromancy 
 
 Like the eyes of Nancy; 
 
 And its green shirt waist 
 
 Goes well with her — taste. 
 
 The eerie beaut 
 
 Is playing cute. 
 
 The witch is rich. 
 
 But there lurks in the wood — 
 
 68 
 
With his bugle sking 
 
 And his bow fresh strung: — 
 
 One Robin Hood. 
 
 Like a ghost he gUdes 
 
 Through the thicket shdes, — 
 
 Lest the king's good shng 
 
 His neck should swing. 
 
 He marks sweet Nancy 
 
 With a goose-wing fancy. 
 
 That nanny roe 
 
 Falls quick for a beau. 
 
 I don't care 
 
 If he shoots a tear — 
 
 Or pinks the minx: — 
 
 For she is the slim 
 
 Who is after Jim. 
 
 If he wants that flirt — 
 
 \\'hy she can have him, — 
 
 And this whole concert. 
 
 His green-shirt spouse 
 
 Could give him a house. 
 
 Along the margent day, 
 From onward years I heard a lay, — 
 And some strange ukelele play. 
 
 Afar on the horizon 
 
 The dawn-shine 
 
 Smiled surprise on 
 
 A cottage vine ; — 
 
 And then went homing 
 
 Down the gloaming. 
 I saw a twilight rush-light glim, — 
 And up the path came — J -Jim. 
 
 69 
 
I hear again the Dryad sing: 
 And sweeter falls the hymn. 
 She trills some fairy mother-key: — 
 Yet strange as dreams to me. 
 It thrills afar 
 From the Curfew star — 
 (On drifting wings.) 
 And as the echo sings — 
 Its tune like a cradle swings. 
 
 THE LASS OF THE LINDEN. 
 (The Tree Maid's Chant.) 
 
 The Linden tree 
 
 Belongs to me. 
 
 I am the soul 
 
 Of the Linden's bole. 
 
 In the sap of its shoot 
 
 My life took root. 
 
 When it dies 
 
 My spirit flies. 
 The Linden grew 
 In the crimson dew 
 By the Dragon's cave — 
 Where the hot-heart spill 
 Of the gallant knave 
 Its roots would fill. 
 
 The Linden high 
 
 Tops in the sky. 
 
 Its bright tides flow ; — 
 
 And its blossoms blow 
 
 In billowy seas 
 
 For the honey bees. 
 
 70 
 
For a thousand years 
 
 It rocks and cheers. 
 
 In its branches slung 
 
 My hammock hung. 
 
 When the rolHng raft 
 
 In the tempest swung — 
 
 I lay and laughed. 
 When the leaguer trumpet blew 
 My heart to the Goblin flew — 
 That the bandit Siegfried slew. 
 
 The wine of my prime 
 
 Was the juice of the Lime, 
 
 And the tangy flood 
 
 Of the Wyvern's blood. 
 The vintage sting 
 Of the song I sing — 
 To you I bring. 
 
 The spell I drank 
 
 In my bosom sank : — 
 
 Till I knew each tune 
 
 The birds and rivers rune: — 
 
 The storm in the trees : 
 
 The surge of the seas : — 
 
 The wild-tongue's cry 
 
 And the branches sigh. 
 
 The age's chime 
 
 Was my cradle rhyme. 
 
 What it sang to me 
 
 I tell to thee. 
 
 This a song 
 
 Before you are born — 
 
 The voice of the deep 
 
 71 
 
You shall hear in your sleep. 
 You shall come to life 
 In a world of strife; — 
 And far will you sail 
 On the ether gale — 
 Storm for your guest ; 
 And waves in your rest. 
 
 I am the wave 
 
 From the heart 
 
 Of the Linden brave. 
 
 The boar's mad rave : — 
 
 The bay-hound's stave ; 
 
 And the lark's sweet hymn 
 
 On the morning's rim : — 
 
 Each pipe a note 
 
 Of the song remote: — 
 
 For the deep sends its call 
 
 With the voice of all. 
 
 I am the lass of the Linden — 
 
 Belle of the tree-lands. 
 
 When falls my leafy urn 
 
 On the drift to the lee-lands: — 
 
 The dragon shall turn 
 
 In the storm-foam rack: — 
 
 The tide we shall spurn, — 
 
 And I will fight back. 
 
 Death I fear not: — 
 
 Let it come by age, 
 
 Or the axe-bit rage: — 
 
 The steel and its slash 
 
 No terror can flash. 
 
 If battle shock 
 
 72 
 
The wood-lands rock, — 
 Then my tree and I 
 Like the soldier die. 
 
 When the raucous shell 
 
 Through the drift-gas Hell, — 
 
 Went by on its quest 
 
 For the leal of the west, — 
 
 Over the droop 
 
 From the starry troop, 
 
 Did the maid of the Linden stoop. 
 
 And little they knew 
 
 As the gun-bees flew — 
 
 In the forest rue, 
 
 That the cross she wore 
 
 Was red with the shed 
 
 Of a dragon's gore. 
 
 Be longing and brave : — 
 The heir-loom of Linden 
 Is — fear not the grave. 
 Death's brimming bowl 
 Is the sap of the lime 
 At the top of its climb — 
 In a stirrup-cup troll. 
 Swage deep with the flagon 
 That beads with the dragon : — 
 Then gayly ride on. 
 
 Immortal are all 
 Your race alQne 
 Would black-ball— 
 Your kindred that crawl. 
 Why give them a stone? 
 
 7Z 
 
When did you pass 
 
 On the prototype lift — 
 
 Across the morass — 
 
 Over the marge of the mortal? 
 
 Where found you the isolate gift 
 
 Of a spirit-bright garner? 
 
 What made you the only immortal — 
 
 Sending your mother back to Nirvana? 
 
 Fierce is the jungle chase! 
 
 Fierce is your race ! 
 
 The wave of the cave man 
 
 Yet throbs in your clan. 
 
 Know ye that all are immortal 
 
 From prototype up. 
 
 No creature is made 
 
 To sink down in the cup. 
 
 Peace is a lull that is brooding a war ! — 
 
 Peace is a Proteus arming the maskers. 
 
 Equal the justice the eon's allot — 
 
 To the long ago : — to the now ; and the on. 
 
 A world without fight is a poppy-pipe league. 
 
 A dragon — the land of the Lotus would rouse. 
 
 Bludgeon of cave man : — 
 
 Sorcery steel of the Camelot fairy : — 
 
 Roll of brown rifle: — Machine-gun tattoo: — 
 
 Hit the same key on the organ's — where-to? 
 
 Choke-damp of Pandora — a-drift in the dark — 
 
 And the winds of peace are poison ! 
 
 In the reek — hear the fog-bells toll ! 
 
 In the masquerade go czars as saints. 
 
 The sword is the lift of a spirit hope : — 
 
 Its gleam shall not pale round spirals of stars. 
 
 74 
 
Stately and tall is the Linden — 
 
 Queen of the trees, — 
 Wise with the welkin-ken — 
 
 Loved by the wing-sweet bees 
 
 That round it fly. 
 
 Fair and sweet am L 
 
 The cavern blood 
 
 Tints red my bud. 
 
 Each leaf apart 
 
 Is a loyal heart. 
 A sprig of the Linden tree 
 Shall be your fleur-de-lis : — 
 
 The passion dart 
 
 Of the budding Lime — 
 Bright with the Hero's crime. 
 
 Crave not wealth : — 
 
 Revel in health. 
 Bend beside the stricken : — 
 Try their hearts to quicken. 
 Heark to the voicing glees 
 That blow from far-off seas. 
 The wafts on the ether that bring you- 
 Out of the branches that swing you,- 
 Tell the old story to trees. 
 
 True is the story of Elfin and Dryad 
 The legends romantic have wired. 
 On the boom now afloat 
 The Dryads shall vote. 
 I am your Fairy 
 From the tree-top airy. 
 My gift is staunch pluck. 
 I charm you with luck. 
 
 75 
 
Here's a deep health to thee — 
 In the Dragon's flagon — 
 From the Linden tree. 
 
 I could not waltz to that violin : — 
 It got me pretty nigh-all-in. 
 
 If she sticks to her tenet 
 
 She'll spout in the senate. 
 
 It wasn't a wind that blew 
 
 Out of a tree in Kalamazoo : — 
 
 For there the votes get whirls 
 
 That dizzy the girls. 
 
 The count is a kid, 
 
 And the ballots are hid 
 
 In a dicing game — 
 
 So they can't take aim. 
 
 They shake the votes 
 
 And roll the goats, — 
 
 Till in Kalamazoo 
 
 The tally-may-skew.' 
 
 Its a moonshine brew — 
 
 Where they skim the stew 
 
 For a bubbling crew 
 
 To blow the — revenue. 
 
 Burr-Oaks are inspired : 
 
 But a Basswood Dryad 
 
 Would chant em' tired. 
 She'l spin for a president 
 
 If a non-resident 
 
 In the hurdle race goes. 
 Who knows? 
 
 What tag is that on the Basswood bole — 
 And pinned by a dart through the scroll ? 
 
 76 
 
The scrip is the quill of Friar Tuck, 
 I'll read it just for luck. 
 
 MAID MARIAN LOST! 
 Strayed: — Reward offered. , 
 
 Saw ye my Mary Ann flit there, 
 
 Or where her light foot stayed? 
 Who spied the gleam of sunny hair 
 
 Along the path she strayed? 
 Ye'l know the face alike the peeps 
 
 Of dawn in happy May : — 
 Her spirit eyes the bell-blue deeps 
 
 A-bloom on bank and brae. 
 
 Mahap in Sherwood's Oakland tossed 
 
 She's sniped by Boy-Scout Dan; 
 'And in the windy forest lost — 
 
 Who then might steal my Ann ? 
 O darksome days that lack the flirt ? 
 
 Where trend the pilgrim feet? 
 Too free her heart to feel a hurt : — 
 
 Too blithe its kindly beat. 
 
 So if ye find an errant maid 
 
 With sun-lit hair and eye — 
 Then fetch my love-light from the glade 
 Where hide her blushes shy. 
 And you shall preen 
 In Lincoln green, — 
 (And swing for buck 
 With the Reverend Tuck.) 
 
 7-7 
 
Coax back the truant's rosy feet — 
 
 My Merry-men — I pray; 
 And ruddy heart-gold's lavish treat 
 
 Shall Love's bright ransom pay. 
 So trill a-down the greenwood May 
 
 My lure-horn's mating charm. 
 She'l know the Outlaw's homing lay : — 
 
 The gloaming rush-light psalm. 
 
 HIS 
 
 ROBIN HOOD 
 
 MARK 
 
 The mark is an arrow 
 Shot through the narrow 
 Flitch of a willow switch. 
 Rob's bow must be slow 
 
 At the span — 
 If he missed the willowy Ann. 
 
 The maid of the hymn 
 
 Will I hope — miss Jim. 
 Mrs. Robin Hood is quite romancy. 
 Mary A. can out-Nance Nancy. 
 Ah me ! But lovers play tricks 
 For the smile of an asterix ! 
 
 If men only knew 
 
 That a lass can be true! 
 And that one bonny girl 
 In the home-sweet twilight, 
 Takes the mask off the whirl 
 In a cabaret high-light! 
 
 O, a bungalow hammock 
 Gets the doe and the bannock! 
 
 78 
 
But hark! Again the Hue! 
 The stag-hounds bay the view ! 
 
 Fast tilt the joyance crew — 
 
 In green and gold — 
 
 In scarlet bold — 
 
 Against the leafy bowers 
 
 Where blossom flowers ! 
 
 And one in khaki — 
 
 Ahead and larky. 
 
 The coiling echos swirl the dells 
 
 With mocking eddies 
 
 Whose rhyming spread is 
 
 A chime of bells. 
 
 A-down the glens 
 
 They drown the dens. 
 
 And lilt-horn spells 
 
 And yeoman yells 
 
 Ring mad-peal mels : — 
 Till Sherwood's Druid Oak rebels. 
 
 No peep-glass Dryads now — go pranking on the 
 
 Idle's yonder bank ! 
 The hounds ! The hunter's View-Halloo ! 
 And wild my red-roan's ululu ! 
 Is boar or stag 
 The royal swag 
 The bloodhounds tag? 
 Does spear or whinyara 
 Spill his vineyard? 
 Who shreds the shag? 
 Who's in? It's him! 
 You win! O Jim! 
 
 79 
 
Here winds the briming tide to breast ! 
 
 The tossing lion face is beaming: — 
 I stroke the cool immortal crest: — 
 
 And lo — my gallop all was dreaming ! 
 
 Who saw my Chestnut's satin vest, 
 
 Or heard his curb-chain tinkle? 
 Did dawn-crow zest shy ofif his jest 
 
 And speed the white feet's twinkle? 
 
 O Barb of No-land's mystic shore — 
 
 Your starry eyes grow dim with morning; 
 The East but glowed : — 
 The cock but crowed : — in dreams of yore ; 
 
 And swift the elfin heart took warning. 
 
 From morn of Merry England : — 
 
 O Jack of the Swing-band — 
 
 Flit to the Pix- winged strand. 
 But with the jocund train 
 
 That hunt from Castle-Airy — 
 Where nod-folk loose the rein, 
 
 A roan of mine will tarry : — 
 Or lark the range of the Linden gleams 
 With rovers old and storial ; — 
 And nibble by the pasture streams 
 On blue-grass hills pictorial. 
 
 He'l call and look 
 
 A-yont the brook 
 Until the forest warden 
 Lilts the rouse from cradle-dreams 
 In woods across the [ordan. 
 
 80 
 
Come Trix ! 
 
 And quit that mix ! 
 
 You get in trim 
 
 And go with — Jim. 
 Now keep away from Fleethart's flings ! 
 
 You'l get a crimp — 
 
 And you will Hmp. 
 Quit you sweetheart ! You tear my — things. 
 
 Nancy! You ivivc the belle 
 
 Last night ; and you just looked swell ! 
 Of all the — togs I have ever seen 
 
 1 envy you that sea- foam green. 
 Gay old Fleethart ! You just flew! 
 Here's a lump of sugar for you. 
 
 Now mind you Trix what you are about. 
 
 I am ready Captain Abbot. 
 
 81 
 
MAGDALENA-A PICTURE 
 
 In the picture the face is inclined, and the eyes 
 droop. 
 
 Where the peering eyes of mortals 
 May not haunt the trysting place : 
 Swung within its viewless portals 
 Hides an exile's spellful face. 
 
 On the canvass softly cluster 
 Ruffled waves of sunny hair ; 
 
 And their golden rippled lustre 
 Lights the beauty pictured there. 
 
 Faultless curves the profile tracing: 
 Sculptured neck and rounded chin : 
 
 Penciled lights the shadows chasing : — 
 Might an artist lover win. 
 
 Rich the sparkling life-wine flushes 
 Where the cheeks bright roses creep ; 
 
 And with riper color brushes 
 Lips that Eros' secret keep. 
 
 But the long-lashed eyelid's veiling 
 Shrouds the glance's sweet desire. 
 
 Like the chastened marble — paling 
 Some pure statute's earthy fire. 
 
 82 
 
Who shall paint the wistful beaming 
 Quenched beneath the masking shy? 
 
 Who shall track the wilds of dreaming- 
 Under pensive downcast eve? 
 
 Were the mystic fancies dimming 
 Left from girlhood's happy past. 
 
 And the tidal heart-wave brimming 
 Through a woman's soul at last? 
 
 Where the shadowy fringing lashes 
 Deep tlie coying spirit screen — 
 
 .^lumber not revealing flashes, — 
 1 leart illuming — Afagdalene? 
 
 Still the sun-gold downward trailing 
 Twinkles on the wavv tress. 
 
 Rut the eyelid's dreamy veiling 
 Foils the painter's wistfulness. 
 
 There in Eden's apple-morning 
 Still the face illusive seems: 
 
 As the baffling Lisa's, dawning 
 On Da Vinci's easel dreams. 
 
 Ah, — the cunning master's meaning: — 
 Who can fathom woman's heart? 
 
 Were her spirit o'er us leaning, 
 Vanquished both were song and art. 
 
 So the Afage's touch has limed it; 
 
 And the easel-flower will bloom 
 Where the blight has never dimmed it, — 
 
 In a heart-warm garden room. 
 
 83 
 
REMINISCE 
 
 On the hilltop loomed the tenting, 
 
 And the dingle down below, 
 Faint the winter Southwind scenting, 
 
 Rimmed the bending river's flow. 
 Once the sandy camp path wending 
 
 While the mellow bugles played, — 
 Blithe the revel mess call sending, — 
 
 Wide a canvass portal swayed. 
 In I peered for chuck and brimmer : 
 
 But in Beauty's eyrie snared, — 
 While the candle glims grew dimmer, — 
 
 Bright beguiling glances dared. 
 Then like faces kenned in vision 
 
 When the wild-winged fancies rise 
 On the reverie shores Elysian, 
 
 Soon I felt more spellful eyes. 
 Magnet lights in shadows perking, 
 
 Lit the deeps behind their gaze: — 
 Still those elfin lamps are lurking 
 
 In Romance's twilight haze. 
 Where the camp-fire's sly caresses 
 
 Sliding up in foxy play. 
 Twinkled in the darkling tresses, — 
 
 Back was turned a sunny ray. 
 Gone the evening's light and shading : 
 
 But the brown hair's dark and bright, 
 With its penciled wave unfading, 
 
 Frames a picture on the night. 
 
 84 
 
Still the red lip's music — falling 
 
 In its liquid cadenced bars — 
 Mocks in dreams with phantom calling ; 
 
 And those eyes like gloaming stars, 
 Tryst the hours with strange alluring. 
 
 Lowly lie the rueful tents : 
 Early lapsed their kind immuring: 
 
 Ghostly moth-things prowl the rents. 
 But the fire-fly face — reluming 
 
 In its haunting beauty — smiles 
 Through the Southland's fitful glooming. 
 
 From the shadow laden Isles. 
 
 So some rainbow whim of mortals 
 
 Fading from espial fleets ; 
 Though the heart its prison portals 
 
 With a heyday rhythm beats. 
 Thus some earthland apparition 
 
 Once its flitting bounty lends, — 
 Then in dreams that lull volition 
 
 From a misty casement bends. 
 And the spirit's lost ideal 
 
 That the lowly earth denies, 
 Beckons out beyond the real — 
 
 Where the viewless kingdom lies. 
 Nearer to its mystic border 
 
 Souls in exile often dwell : — 
 Stronger 'gainst its spectral warder 
 
 Than their mortal senses tell. 
 
 Now the camp-fire elves are banished 
 
 To a cloudy-tented park. 
 Long have lass and legion vanished 
 
 85 
 
Where the bugle echoes larlc. 
 Curtain-drop on canvass mansions 
 
 Dims the dream of bygone time. 
 Falhng faint the cornet chansons 
 
 Float but wildered waifs of rhyme. 
 
 86 
 
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