II
John Bunny, Motion Picture Comedian
In which he is remembered in similitude, by reference to Yorick, the king’s jester, who died when Hamlet and Ophelia were children.
Yorick is dead. Boy Hamlet walks forlornBeneath the battlements of Elsinore.Where are those oddities and capers nowThat used to “set the table on a roar”?
And do his bauble-bells beyond the cloudsRing out, and shake with mirth the planets bright?No doubt he brings the blessed dead good cheer,But silence broods on Elsinore tonight.
That little elf, Ophelia, eight years old,Upon her battered doll’s staunch bosom weeps.(“O best of men, that wove glad fairy-tales.”)With tear-burned face, at last the darling sleeps.
Hamlet himself could not give cheer or help,Though firm and brave, with his boy-face controlled.For every game they started out to playYorick invented, in the days of old.
The times are out of joint! O cursed spite!The noble jester Yorick comes no more.And Hamlet hides his tears in boyish prideBy some lone turret-stair of Elsinore.
Mae Marsh, Motion Picture Actress
In “Man’s Genesis”, “The Wild Girl of the Sierras”, “The Wharf Rat”,“A Girl of the Paris Streets”, etc.
I
The arts are old, old as the stonesFrom which man carved the sphinx austere.Deep are the days the old arts bring:Ten thousand years of yesteryear.
II
She is madonna in an artAs wild and young as her sweet eyes:A frail dew flower from this hot lampThat is today’s divine surprise.
Despite raw lights and gloating mobsShe is not seared: a picture still:Rare silk the fine director’s handMay weave for magic if he will.
When ancient films have crumbled likePapyrus rolls of Egypt’s day,Let the dust speak: “Her pride was high,All but the artist hid away:
“Kin to the myriad artist clanSince time began, whose work is dear.”The deep new ages come with her,Tomorrow’s years of yesteryear.
Two Old Crows
Two old crows sat on a fence rail,Two old crows sat on a fence rail,Thinking of effect and cause,Of weeds and flowers,And nature’s laws.One of them muttered, one of them stuttered,One of them stuttered, one of them muttered.Each of them thought far more than he uttered.One crow asked the other crow a riddle.One crow asked the other crow a riddle:The muttering crowAsked the stuttering crow,“Why does a bee have a sword to his fiddle?Why does a bee have a sword to his fiddle?”“Bee-cause,” said the other crow,“Bee-cause,B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B-cause.”
Just then a bee flew close to their rail:—“Buzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz zzzzzzzzz zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz ZZZZZZZZ.”And those two black crowsTurned pale,And away those crows did sail.Why?B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B-cause.B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B-cause.“Buzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz zzzzzzzzzz zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz ZZZZZZZ.”
The Drunkard’s Funeral
“Yes,” said the sister with the little pinched face,The busy little sister with the funny little tract:—“This is the climax, the grand fifth act.There rides the proud, at the finish of his race.There goes the hearse, the mourners cry,The respectable hearse goes slowly by.The wife of the dead has money in her purse,The children are in health, so it might have been worse.That fellow in the coffin led a life most foul.A fierce defender of the red bar-tender,At the church he would rail,At the preacher he would howl.He planted every deviltry to see it grow.He wasted half his income on the lewd and the low.He would trade engender for the red bar-tender,He would homage render to the red bar-tender,And in ultimate surrender to the red bar-tender,He died of the tremens, as crazy as a loon,And his friends were glad, when the end came soon.There goes the hearse, the mourners cry,The respectable hearse goes slowly by.And now, good friends, since you see how it ends,Let each nation-mender flay the red bar-tender,—AbhorThe transgressionOf the red bar-tender,—RuinThe professionOf the red bar-tender:Force him into business where his work does good.Let him learn how to plough, let him learn to chop wood,Let him learn how to plough, let him learn to chop wood.
“The moral,The conclusion,The verdict now you know:—‘The saloon must go,The saloon must go,The saloon,The saloon,The saloon,Must go.’”
“You are right, little sister,” I said to myself,“You are right, good sister,” I said.“Though you wear a mussy bonnetOn your little gray head,You are right, little sister,” I said.
The Raft
The whole world on a raft! A King is here,The record of his grandeur but a smear.Is it his deacon-beard, or old bald pateThat makes the band upon his whims to wait?Loot and mud-honey have his soul defiled.Quack, pig, and priest, he drives camp-meetings wildUntil they shower their pennies like spring rainThat he may preach upon the Spanish main.What landlord, lawyer, voodoo-man has yetA better native right to make men sweat?
The whole world on a raft! A Duke is hereAt sight of whose lank jaw the muses leer.Journeyman-printer, lamb with ferret eyes,In life’s skullduggery he takes the prize—Yet stands at twilight wrapped in Hamlet dreams.Into his eyes the Mississippi gleams.The sandbar sings in moonlit veils of foam.A candle shines from one lone cabin home.The waves reflect it like a drunken star.A banjo and a hymn are heard afar.No solace on the lazy shore excelsThe Duke’s blue castle with its steamer-bells.The floor is running water, and the roofThe stars’ brocade with cloudy warp and woof.
And on past sorghum fields the current swings.To Christian Jim the Mississippi sings.This prankish wave-swept barque has won its place,A ship of jesting for the human race.But do you laugh when Jim bows down forlornHis babe, his deaf Elizabeth to mourn?And do you laugh, when Jim, from Huck apartGropes through the rain and night with breaking heart?
But now that imp is here and we can smile,Jim’s child and guardian this long-drawn while.With knife and heavy gun, a hunter keen,He stops for squirrel-meat in islands green.The eternal gamin, sleeping half the day,Then stripped and sleek, a river-fish at play.And then well-dressed, ashore, he sees life spilt.The river-bank is one bright crazy-quiltOf patch-work dream, of wrath more red than lust,Where long-haired feudist Hotspurs bite the dust …This Huckleberry Finn is but the race,America, still lovely in disgrace,New childhood of the world, that blunders onAnd wonders at the darkness and the dawn,The poor damned human race, still unimpressedWith its damnation, all its gamin breastChorteling at dukes and kings with nigger Jim,Then plotting for their fall, with jestings grim.
Behold a RepublicWhere a river speaks to menAnd cries to those that love its ways,Answering againWhen in the heart’s extravaganceThe rascals bend to say“O singing MississippiShine, sing for us today.”
But who is this in sweeping Oxford gownWho steers the raft, or ambles up and down,Or throws his gown aside, and there in whiteStands gleaming like a pillar of the night?The lion of high courts, with hoary mane,Fierce jester that this boyish court will gain—Mark Twain!The bad world’s idol:Old Mark Twain!
He takes his turn as watchman with the rest,With secret transports to the stars addressed,With nightlong broodings upon cosmic law,With daylong laughter at this world so raw.
All praise to Emerson and Whitman, yetThe best they have to say, their sons forget.But who can dodge this genius of the stream,The Mississippi Valley’s laughing dream?He is the artery that finds the seaIn this the land of slaves, and boys still free.He is the river, and they one and allSail on his breast, and to each other call.
Come let us disgrace ourselves,Knock the stuffed gods from their shelves,And cinders at the schoolhouse fling.Come let us disgrace ourselves,And live on a raft with gray Mark TwainAnd Huck and JimAnd the Duke and the King.
The Ghosts of the Buffaloes
Last night at black midnight I woke with a cry,The windows were shaking, there was thunder on high,The floor was a-tremble, the door was a-jar,White fires, crimson fires, shone from afar.I rushed to the door yard. The city was gone.My home was a hut without orchard or lawn.It was mud-smear and logs near a whispering stream,Nothing else built by man could I see in my dream …Then …Ghost-kings came headlong, row upon row,Gods of the Indians, torches aglow.
They mounted the bear and the elk and the deer,And eagles gigantic, aged and sere,They rode long-horn cattle, they cried “A-la-la.”They lifted the knife, the bow, and the spear,They lifted ghost-torches from dead fires below,The midnight made grand with the cry “A-la-la.”The midnight made grand with a red-god charge,A red-god show,A red-god show,“A-la-la, a-la-la, a-la-la, a-la-la.”
With bodies like bronze, and terrible eyesCame the rank and the file, with catamount cries,Gibbering, yipping, with hollow-skull clacks,Riding white bronchos with skeleton backs,Scalp-hunters, beaded and spangled and bad,Naked and lustful and foaming and mad,Flashing primeval demoniac scorn,Blood-thirst and pomp amid darkness reborn,Power and glory that sleep in the grassWhile the winds and the snows and the great rains pass.They crossed the gray river, thousands abreast,They rode in infinite lines to the west,Tide upon tide of strange fury and foam,Spirits and wraiths, the blue was their home,The sky was their goal where the star-flags are furled,And on past those far golden splendors they whirled.They burned to dim meteors, lost in the deep.And I turned in dazed wonder, thinking of sleep.
And the wind crept byAlone, unkempt, unsatisfied,The wind cried and cried—Muttered of massacres long past,Buffaloes in shambles vast …An owl said: “Hark, what is a-wing?”I heard a cricket carolling,I heard a cricket carolling,I heard a cricket carolling.
Then …Snuffing the lightning that crashed from on highRose royal old buffaloes, row upon row.The lords of the prairie came galloping by.And I cried in my heart “A-la-la, a-la-la,A red-god show,A red-god show,A-la-la, a-la-la, a-la-la, a-la-la.”
Buffaloes, buffaloes, thousands abreast,A scourge and amazement, they swept to the west.With black bobbing noses, with red rolling tongues,Coughing forth steam from their leather-wrapped lungs,Cows with their calves, bulls big and vain,Goring the laggards, shaking the mane,Stamping flint feet, flashing moon eyes,Pompous and owlish, shaggy and wise.Like sea-cliffs and caves resounded their ranksWith shoulders like waves, and undulant flanks.Tide upon tide of strange fury and foam,Spirits and wraiths, the blue was their home,The sky was their goal where the star-flags are furled,And on past those far golden splendors they whirled.They burned to dim meteors, lost in the deep,And I turned in dazed wonder, thinking of sleep.
I heard a cricket’s cymbals play,A scarecrow lightly flapped his rags,And a pan that hung by his shoulder rang,Rattled and thumped in a listless way,And now the wind in the chimney sang,The wind in the chimney,The wind in the chimney,The wind in the chimney,Seemed to say:—“Dream, boy, dream,If you anywise can.To dream is the workOf beast or man.Life is the west-going dream-storm’s breath,Life is a dream, the sigh of the skies,The breath of the stars, that nod on their pillowsWith their golden hair mussed over their eyes.”The locust played on his musical wing,Sang to his mate of love’s delight.
Good-night, good-night, … good-night.”