*End of the factory-window song*.
To Mary Pickford
Moving-picture Actress
(On
hearing she was leaving the moving-pictures for the stage.)
Mary Pickford, doll divine,
Year by year, and every day
At the moving-picture play,
You have been my valentine.
Once a free-limbed page in hose,
Baby-Rosalind in flower,
Cloakless, shrinking, in that hour
How our reverent
passion rose,
How our fine desire you won.
Kitchen-wench another day,
Shapeless,
wooden every way.
Next, a fairy from the sun.
Once you walked a
grown-up strand
Fish-wife siren, full of lure,
Snaring with devices sure
Lads who murdered on the sand.
But on most days just a child
Dimpled as no grown-folk are,
Cold of kiss as some north star,
Violet from the valleys wild.
Snared as
innocence must be,
Fleeing, prisoned, chained, half-dead --
At the end of tortures dread
Roaring
cowboys set you free.
Fly, O song, to her to-day,
Like a
cowboy cross the land.
Snatch her from Belasco's hand
And that prison called Broadway.
All the village swains await
One dear lily-girl demure,
Saucy, dancing, cold and pure,
Elf who must return in state.
Blanche Sweet
Moving-picture Actress
(After
seeing the reel called "Oil and Water".)
Beauty has a throne-room
In our
humorous town,
Spoiling its hob-goblins,
Laughing shadows down.
Rank musicians torture
Ragtime ballads vile,
But we walk serenely
Down the odorous aisle.
We
forgive the squalor
And the boom and squeal
For the Great Queen flashes
From the moving reel.
Just a prim blonde stranger
In her early day,
Hiding
brilliant weapons,
Too
averse to play,
Then she burst upon us
Dancing through the night.
Oh, her
maiden radiance,
Veils and roses white.
With new powers, yet cautious,
Not too smart or skilled,
That first flash of dancing
Wrought the thing she willed: --
Mobs of us made noble
By her strong desire,
By her white, uplifting,
Royal romance-fire.
Though the tin piano
Snarls its tango rude,
Though the chairs are shaky
And the dramas crude,
Solemn are her motions,
Stately are her wiles,
Filling oafs with wisdom,
Saving souls with smiles;
'Mid the
restless actors
She is rich and slow.
She will stand like marble,
She will pause and glow,
Though the film is twitching,
Keep a
peaceful reign,
Ruler of her
passion,
Ruler of our pain!
Sunshine
For a Very Little Girl, Not a Year Old. Catharine Frazee Wakefield.
The sun gives not directly
The coal, the diamond crown;
Not in a special basket
Are these from Heaven let down.
The sun gives not directly
The
plough, man's iron friend;
Not by a path or stairway
Do tools from Heaven descend.
Yet
sunshine fashions all things
That cut or burn or fly;
And corn that seems upon the earth
Is made in the hot sky.
The
gravel of the roadbed,
The metal of the gun,
The engine of the airship
Trace somehow from the sun.
And so your soul, my lady --
(Mere
sunshine, nothing more) --
Prepares me the contraptions
I work with or adore.
Within me cornfields rustle,
Niagaras roar their way,
Vast thunderstorms and rainbows
Are in my thought to-day.
Ten thousand anvils sound there
By forges
flaming white,
And many books I read there,
And many books I write;
And freedom's bells are ringing,
And bird-choirs chant and fly --
The whole world works in me to-day
And all the shining sky,
Because of one small lady
Whose smile is my chief sun.
She gives not any gift to me
Yet all gifts, giving one. . . .
Amen.
An Apology for the Bottle Volcanic
Sometimes I dip my pen and find the bottle full of fire,
The salamanders flying forth I cannot but admire.
It's Etna, or Vesuvius, if those big things were small,
And then 'tis but itself again, and does not smoke at all.
And so my blood grows cold. I say, "The bottle held but ink,
And, if you thought it
otherwise, the worser for your think."
And then, just as I throw my scribbled paper on the floor,
The bottle says, "Fe, fi, fo, fum," and steams and shouts some more.
O sad deceiving ink, as bad as
liquor in its way --
All demons of a bottle size have pranced from you to-day,
And seized my pen for hobby-horse as witches ride a broom,
And left a trail of brimstone words and blots and gobs of gloom.
And yet when I am extra good and say my prayers at night,
And mind my ma, and do the chores, and speak to folks polite,
My bottle spreads a rainbow-mist, and from the vapor fine
Ten thousand troops from
fairyland come riding in a line.
I've seen them on their chargers race around my study chair,
They opened wide the window and rode forth upon the air.
The army widened as it went, and into myriads grew,
O how the lances shimmered, how the
silvery trumpets blew!
When Gassy Thompson Struck it Rich
He paid a Swede twelve bits an hour
Just to
invent a fancy style
To spread the
celebration paint
So it would show at least a mile.
Some things they did I will not tell.
They're not quite proper for a rhyme.
But I WILL say Yim Yonson Swede
Did sure
invent a sunflower time.
One thing they did that I can tell
And not
offend the ladies here: --
They took a goat to Simp's Saloon
And made it take a bath in beer.
That ENTERprise took MANagement.
They broke a wash-tub in the fray.
But
mister goat was bathed all right
And bar-keep Simp was, too, they say.
They wore girls' pink straw hats to church
And clucked like hens. They surely did.
They bought two HOtel frying pans
And in them down the mountain slid.
They went to Denver in good clothes,
And kept Burt's grill-room wide awake,
And cut about like jumping-jacks,
And ordered seven-dollar steak.
They had the waiters whirling round
Just
sweeping up the smear and smash.
They tried to buy the State-house flag.
They showed the Janitor the cash.
And old Dan Tucker on a toot,
Or John Paul Jones before the breeze,
Or Indians eating fat fried dog,
Were not as happy babes as these.
One morn, in hills near Cripple-creek
With
cheerful swears the two awoke.
The Swede had twenty cents, all right.
But Gassy Thompson was clean broke.
Rhymes for Gloriana
I. The Doll upon the Topmost Bough
This doll upon the topmost bough,
This playmate-gift, in Christmas dress,
Was taken down and brought to me
One sleety night most comfortless.
Her hair was gold, her dolly-sash
Was gray brocade, most good to see.
The dear toy laughed, and I forgot
The ill the new year promised me.
II. On Suddenly Receiving a Curl Long Refused
Oh, saucy gold
circle of
fairyland silk --
Impudent,
intimate,
delicate treasure:
A noose for my heart and a ring for my finger: --
Here in my study you sing me a measure.
Whimsy and song in my little gray study!
Words out of wonderland, praising her fineness,
Touched with her pulsating,
delicate laughter,
Saying, "The girl is all
daring and kindness!"
Saying, "Her soul is all
feminine gameness,
Trusting her insights,
ardent for living;