Textarchiv - Katharine Lee Bates

The Least of These

mrbot — Sun, 01 Apr 2018 21:10:02 +0000

The wolf of want is howling
At doors no angel keeps.
Young Mary smiled on her Holy Child,
But many a mother weeps.

The Kings of the East brought treasures
Uncounted and unpriced.
Who bears a gift to arms that lift
A little famished Christ?

Katharine Lee Bates

1918

The U-boat Crew

mrbot — Mon, 26 Mar 2018 21:10:01 +0000

Alas, alas for those blond boys who stalk
Their prey in ambush of the shuddering seas,
Whiling the wait with merry, tender talk
Of some dear knot of flower-clad cottages

Beyond the Rhine! The merchantship draws on;
Their swift torpedo strikes its mark; the sea
Moans with the dying; for a victory won
They thank the pagan god of Germany.

Happier to die the hideous, smothering death,
Too deep for mercy, in their own snared trap,
Than live to learn how time interpreteth
The cause they served; the tragical mishap

Of pride that pledged The Day and brought The Night;
—Than live to loathe their Fatherland, a name
So high, so fallen, that betrayed their bright
Young loyalty to savageries of shame.

Katharine Lee Bates

1918

What is Christ?

mrbot — Thu, 22 Mar 2018 21:10:05 +0000

I
Oh, what is Christ, that we should call on Him?
Wasted Armenia, in her utter woe,
Dies in the mocking desert, calling so.
Hyænas tear her children limb from limb.
The clouds, soft dimpled once with cherubim,
Now screen the flight of Lucifers that strow
Their fiery seed where clustered households know
'Twixt sleep and death one flaring interim
Of agony, brief as the broken prayer.
What prayer? What Christ? Himself He could not save.
From first to last, when hath He saved His own?
Stephen's young body, battered stone by stone,
Edith Cavell in her most holy grave,
For His helpless host of martyrs witness bear.

II
Thought casts the challenge. Faith must lift the glove.
Most true it is Christ doth not save the flesh.
God's dreamy Nazarene, caught in the mesh
Of ignorance and malice, whitest dove
Net ever snared, took little care thereof.
Not His to plead with Pilate, nor to thresh
Those priestly lies. He died, to live afresh
Spirit, not body; not the Jew, but Love.
Love, the one Light in which all lusters meet,
Ultimate miracle, far goal of Time!
Even to-day, when all seems lost, they feel,
Those nations that like hooded sorrows kneel,
Their prayer's deep answer, loathing war as crime,
Longing to gather at Love's wounded feet.

Katharine Lee Bates

1918

The Red Cross Nurse

mrbot — Wed, 21 Mar 2018 21:10:04 +0000

One summer day, gleaming in memory,
We drove, my Joy and I,
Through fragrant hawthorn lanes
Gold-fringed with wisps of rye
Brushed off the harvest wains,
From that old, gladsome town of Shrewsbury,
Throned on twin hills and girdled by a loop
Of the brown Severn, out to Battlefield.
Henry the Fourth with his usurping sword
Smote here the haughty Percies,
And after builded here, as due to Him
Who made rebellion stoop
And lesser traitors to chief traitor yield,
A church. Decayed, restored,
Its centuries afford.
To stranger eyes, enshadowed by the view
Of that ridged burial plain from which it grew,
No sight more sacred than a crude
Image of visage dim,
Hewn by some ancient tool from forest wood,
Our Lady of the Mercies.

Even so long ago amid the slaughter,
Hushed now beneath its coverlet of flowers,
Groped this imperfect dream
Of Pity, pure, divine.
Madonna, look to-day upon thy daughter
And know her by the crimson cross, the sign
Of love that shall at last, at last redeem
This war-torn world of ours.

Katharine Lee Bates

1918

Only Mules

mrbot — Tue, 20 Mar 2018 21:10:07 +0000

No matter; we are only mules
And slow to understand
We drown according to the rules
Of war, we contraband

War reckons us as shot and shell,
As so much metal lost.
And mourns the dollars gone to swell
The monstrous bill of cost.

Would that we had been wrought of steel
And not of quivering flesh!
Of iron, not of nerves that feel,
And maddened limbs that thresh

The sucking seas in stubborn strife
For that dim right of ours
To what no factory fashions, life,
No Edison endowers.

Our last wild screams are choked; you know
It does not matter, for
We're only mules that suffered so,
And contraband of war.

Katharine Lee Bates

1918

Night and Morning

mrbot — Sun, 18 Mar 2018 21:10:07 +0000

The night was loud with tumult; trees were torn
Sheer from their roots by the delirious wind;
In some waste dreamland wandered all forlorn
A smitten soul, bewildered, broken, blind.

The mists had lifted; evanescent gleams
Of tender emerald lighted every leaf,
While from a casement smiled, escaped from dreams,
A quiet face made exquisite by grief.

Katharine Lee Bates

1918

The Morning Paper

mrbot — Wed, 14 Mar 2018 21:10:06 +0000

Carnage!
Humanity disgraced!
Time's dearest toil effaced!
Poison gases and flame
Putting Nero to shame!
Bayonet, bomb and shell!
Merry reading for hell!
The wickedness! the waste!

Courage!
To gain their fiery goal,
Some crumbling, blood-soaked knoll,
How fearlessly they fling
Their flesh to suffering,
Offer their ardent breath
To gasping, shuddering death!
O miracle of soul!

Katharine Lee Bates

1918

Children of the War

mrbot — Wed, 14 Mar 2018 21:10:06 +0000

Shrunken little bodies, pallid baby faces,
Eyes of staring terror, innocence defiled,
Tiny bones that strew the sand of silent places,
— This upon our own star where Jesus was a child.

Broken buds of April, is there any garden
Where they yet may blossom, comforted of sun,
While their sad Creator bows to ask their pardon
For the life He gave them, life and death in one?

Spared by steel and hunger, still shall horror blazon
Those white and tender spirits with anguish unforgot;
Half a century hence the haggard look shall gaze on
The outrage of a mother, shall see a grandsire shot.

Man who wings the azure, lassoes the hoof sparkling,
Fire-maned steeds of glory and binds them to his car,
Cannot man whose searchlight leaves no horizon darkling
Safeguard little children upon our golden star?

Katharine Lee Bates

1918

White Moments

mrbot — Mon, 12 Mar 2018 21:10:02 +0000

The best of life, what is it but white moments?
Those swift illuminations when we see
The flying shadows on the fragrant meadows
As God beholds them from eternity.

White moments, when the bliss of being worships,
And fear and shame are heretics that burn
In holy fire of exquisite desire
For love's surrender and for love's return.

White moments, when a Power above the artist
Catches his plodding chisel, sets it free,
And from each urgent stroke there springs emergent
The wayward grace that laughs at industry.

White moments, when the drowsing soul, sense-muffled,
Is stung awake by some keen arrow-flight
And rends the bestial, claiming its celestial
Succession in the lineage of light.

White moments, when the spirit, long confronted
By all the bitter formulæ of fate,
Inveterate romancer, finds its answer
In some mysterious faith inviolate.

White moments, when the silence steals on sorrow,
And in that hush the heart becomes aware
Of wings that brood it, visions that seclude it
Forevermore from folly, fear and care.

The best of life, what is it but white moments?
Freedoms that break the chain and fling the load,
Irradiations, ardors, consecrations,
— The starry shrines along our pilgrim road.

Katharine Lee Bates

1918

Our First Families

mrbot — Fri, 08 Dec 2017 21:10:02 +0000

Sweet are the manners of the wood,
Our only old society,
Where all the folk are glad and good
In unrebuked variety.

Within this gentle commonweal
No envy falls with fairy gold
On jewel-weed and Solomon's seal,
Moth mullein and marsh marigold.

No rubied vines despise the lot
Of ragged neighbors; whether moss
Be flat or tufted matters not,
Pale peat or glittering feather-moss.

The common milkwort holds estates
And wears his purple royalty;
The bluets keep their ancient traits
With quiet Quaker loyalty.

These families of long descent,
Our tutors in amenities,
Have pedigrees of such extent
They well may share serenities.

Ere first the hollow Catacombs
Thrilled to a Christian litany
There bloomed beside the redmen's homes
Spicebush and fragrant dittany.

This rock's huge shadow rested on
Gentian and nodding trillium
Before the rise of Babylon,
Before the fall of Ilium.

Katharine Lee Bates

1918