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Ballads of a Bohemian

<h2> III </h2> The Cafe de la Source, Late in July 1914. The other evening MacBean was in a pessimistic mood. "Why do you write?" he asked me gloomily. "Obviously," I said, "to avoid starving. To produce something that will buy me food, shelter, raiment." "If you were a millionaire, would you still write?" "Yes," I said, after a moment's thought. "You get an idea. It haunts you. It seems to clamor for expression. It begins to obsess you. At last in desperation you embody it in a poem, an essay, a story. There! it is disposed of. You are at rest. It troubles you no more. Yes; if I were a millionaire I should write, if it were only to escape from my ideas." "You have given two reasons why men write," said MacBean: "for gain, for self-expression. Then, again, some men write to amuse themselves, some because they conceive they have a mission in the world; some because they have real genius, and are conscious they can enrich the literature of all time. I must say I don't know of any belonging to the latter class. We are living in an age of mediocrity. There is no writer of to-day who will be read twenty years after he is dead. That's a truth that must come home to the best of them." "I guess they're not losing much sleep over it," I said. "Take novelists," continued MacBean. "The line of first-class novelists ended with Dickens and Thackeray. Then followed some of the second class, Stevenson, Meredith, Hardy. And to-day we have three novelists of the third class, good, capable craftsmen. We can trust ourselves comfortably in their hands. We read and enjoy them, but do you think our children will?" "Yours won't, anyway," I said. "Don't be too sure. I may surprise you yet. I may get married and turn bourgeois." The best thing that could happen to MacBean would be that. It might change his point of view. He is so painfully discouraging. I have never mentioned my ballads to him. He would be sure to throw cold water on them. And as it draws near to its end the thought of my book grows more and more dear to me. How I will get it published I know not; but I will. Then even if it doesn't sell, even if nobody reads it, I will be content. Out of this brief, perishable Me I will have made something concrete, something that will preserve my thought within its dusty covers long after I am dead and dust. Here is one of my latest: <h2> Poor Peter </h2> Blind Peter Piper used to play All up and down the city; I'd often meet him on my way, And throw a coin for pity. But all amid his sparkling tones His ear was quick as any To catch upon the cobble-stones The jingle of my penny. And as upon a day that shone He piped a merry measure: "How well you play!" I chanced to say; Poor Peter glowed with pleasure. You'd think the words of praise I spoke Were all the pay he needed; The artist in the player woke, The penny lay unheeded. Now Winter's here; the wind is shrill, His coat is thin and tattered; Yet hark! he's playing trill on trill As if his music mattered. And somehow though the city looks Soaked through and through with shadows, He makes you think of singing brooks And larks and sunny meadows. Poor chap! he often starves, they say; Well, well, I can believe it; For when you chuck a coin his way He'll let some street-boy thieve it. I fear he freezes in the night; My praise I've long repented, Yet look! his face is all alight . . . Blind Peter seems contented. A day later. On the terrace of the Closerie de Lilas I came on Saxon Dane. He was smoking his big briar and drinking a huge glass of brown beer. The tree gave a pleasant shade, and he had thrown his sombrero on a chair. I noted how his high brow was bronzed by the sun and there were golden lights in his broad beard. There was something massive and imposing in the man as he sat there in brooding thought. MacBean, he told me, was sick and unable to leave his room. Rheumatism. So I bought a cooked chicken and a bottle of Barsac, and mounting to the apartment of the invalid, I made him eat and drink. MacBean was very despondent, but cheered up greatly. I think he rather dreads the future. He cannot save money, and all he makes he spends. He has always been a rover, often tried to settle down but could not. Now I think he wishes for security. I fear, however, it is too late. <h2> The Wistful One </h2> I sought the trails of South and North, I wandered East and West; But pride and passion drove me forth And would not let me rest. And still I seek, as still I roam, A snug roof overhead; Four walls, my own; a quiet home. . . . "You'll have it—when you're dead." MacBean is one of Bohemia's victims. It is a country of the young. The old have no place in it. He will gradually lose his grip, go down and down. I am sorry. He is my nearest approach to a friend. I do not make them easily. I have deep reserves. I like solitude. I am never so surrounded by boon companions as when I am all alone. But though I am a solitary I realize the beauty of friendship, and on looking through my note-book I find the following: <h2> If You Had a Friend </h2> If you had a friend strong, simple, true, Who knew your faults and who understood; Who believed in the very best of you, And who cared for you as a father would; Who would stick by you to the very end, Who would smile however the world might frown: I'm sure you would try to please your friend, You never would think to throw him down. And supposing your friend was high and great, And he lived in a palace rich and tall, And sat like a King in shining state, And his praise was loud on the lips of all; Well then, when he turned to you alone, And he singled you out from all the crowd, And he called you up to his golden throne, Oh, wouldn't you just be jolly proud? If you had a friend like this, I say, So sweet and tender, so strong and true, You'd try to please him in every way, You'd live at your bravest—now, wouldn't you? His worth would shine in the words you penned; You'd shout his praises . . . yet now it's odd! You tell me you haven't got such a friend; You haven't? I wonder . . . What of God? To how few is granted the privilege of doing the work which lies closest to the heart, the work for which one is best fitted. The happy man is he who knows his limitations, yet bows to no false gods. MacBean is not happy. He is overridden by his appetites, and to satisfy them he writes stuff that in his heart he despises. Saxon Dane is not happy. His dream exceeds his grasp. His twisted, tortured phrases mock the vague grandiosity of his visions. I am happy. My talent is proportioned to my ambition. The things I like to write are the things I like to read. I prefer the lesser poets to the greater, the cackle of the barnyard fowl to the scream of the eagle. I lack the divinity of discontent. True Contentment comes from within. It dominates circumstance. It is resignation wedded to philosophy, a Christian quality seldom attained except by the old. There is such an one I sometimes see being wheeled about in the Luxembourg. His face is beautiful in its thankfulness. <h2> The Contented Man </h2> "How good God is to me," he said; "For have I not a mansion tall, With trees and lawns of velvet tread, And happy helpers at my call? With beauty is my life abrim, With tranquil hours and dreams apart; You wonder that I yield to Him That best of prayers, a grateful heart?" "How good God is to me," he said; "For look! though gone is all my wealth, How sweet it is to earn one's bread With brawny arms and brimming health. Oh, now I know the joy of strife! To sleep so sound, to wake so fit. Ah yes, how glorious is life! I thank Him for each day of it." "How good God is to me," he said; "Though health and wealth are gone, it's true; Things might be worse, I might be dead, And here I'm living, laughing too. Serene beneath the evening sky I wait, and every man's my friend; God's most contented man am I . . . He keeps me smiling to the End." To-day the basin of the Luxembourg is bright with little boats. Hundreds of happy children romp around it. Little ones everywhere; yet there is no other city with so many childless homes. <h2> The Spirit of the Unborn Babe </h2> The Spirit of the Unborn Babe peered through the window-pane, Peered through the window-pane that glowed like beacon in the night; For, oh, the sky was desolate and wild with wind and rain; And how the little room was crammed with coziness and light! Except the flirting of the fire there was no sound at all; The Woman sat beside the hearth, her knitting on her knee; The shadow of her husband's head was dancing on the wall; She looked with staring eyes at it, she looked yet did not see. She only saw a childish face that topped the table rim, A little wistful ghost that smiled and vanished quick away; And then because her tender eyes were flooding to the brim, She lowered her head. . . . "Don't sorrow, dear," she heard him softly say; "It's over now. We'll try to be as happy as before (Ah! they who little children have, grant hostages to pain). We gave Life chance to wound us once, but never, never more. . . ." The Spirit of the Unborn Babe fled through the night again. The Spirit of the Unborn Babe went wildered in the dark; Like termagants the winds tore down and whirled it with the snow. And then amid the writhing storm it saw a tiny spark, A window broad, a spacious room all goldenly aglow, A woman slim and Paris-gowned and exquisitely fair, Who smiled with rapture as she watched her jewels catch the blaze; A man in faultless evening dress, young, handsome, debonnaire, Who smoked his cigarette and looked with frank admiring gaze. "Oh, we are happy, sweet," said he; "youth, health, and wealth are ours. What if a thousand toil and sweat that we may live at ease! What if the hands are worn and torn that strew our path with flowers! Ah, well! we did not make the world; let us not think of these. Let's seek the beauty-spots of earth, Dear Heart, just you and I; Let other women bring forth life with sorrow and with pain. Above our door we'll hang the sign: 'No children need apply. . . .'" The Spirit of the Unborn Babe sped through the night again. The Spirit of the Unborn Babe went whirling on and on; It soared above a city vast, it swept down to a slum; It saw within a grimy house a light that dimly shone; It peered in through a window-pane and lo! a voice said: "Come!" And so a little girl was born amid the dirt and din, And lived in spite of everything, for life is ordered so; A child whose eyes first opened wide to swinishness and sin, A child whose love and innocence met only curse and blow. And so in due and proper course she took the path of shame, And gladly died in hospital, quite old at twenty years; And when God comes to weigh it all, ah! whose shall be the blame For all her maimed and poisoned life, her torture and her tears? For oh, it is not what we do, but what we have not done! And on that day of reckoning, when all is plain and clear, What if we stand before the Throne, blood-guilty every one? . . . Maybe the blackest sins of all are Selfishness and Fear. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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