Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). The New Poetry: An Anthology. 1917.

Fatherland

Eloise Robinson

FOR what would a man die?

For what would a man be dead,

In April?—go down and lie

In a low bed,

And when spring was passing by

Pull the covers over his head?

Did he know his house would be dark,

The window curtains drawn,

When the morning star was a spark

On the ashes of the dawn?—

Chilly and very low,

With no door swinging back and forth

Where he may pass and go

Over the shining swarth,

With the winds singing to and fro

And the redbirds winging north?

Would he lie like a straight ash stick

When the roots around him stir

And the other dead are quick—

The daisy and ragweed and burr?—

Lie still, though he hear in his night

The wind blowing on to June;

The silence of ripe sunlight

Over the grass at noon;

The stars like bees overhead

In the apple trees and the plums?

For what would a man be dead

Now April comes?

Do men love Fatherland

So, that they die for these:

Night in blue valleys, and

The breakers of blue seas;

Clouds marching, caravanned,

And star-acquainted trees;

Cities time’s made grey

And talkative and wise;

Hills so old they may

Watch pain with patient eyes;

Young mountain-tops that play

At touching the skies;

The heavens, like a bent hand;

The brown earth underneath?

Are these his Fatherland,

For which man stops his breath,

Takes off his body, and

Goes down to sit with Death?

Or is it this that rouses

His heart to go:

Do streets of little houses

Keep haunting him so

With their secrets, like small caged birds

That flutter and fly at the sill,

And their ghosts of long-dead words

That are walking still;

With their cool white beds for sleep,

And their tables spread,

And their tented roofs that keep

Out the curious moon overhead?

For these what man would end

His own fire and lamp-light,

His thought that is his friend

And sits by his hearth at night;

His old, acquainted clothes

And the sweet taste of bread—

All of the things he knows—

Go down in the earth and be dead?

No, this is Fatherland,

For which men, lifting up

Life, toss it on the sand

Like water from a cup:

A little land that has

Truth round it like a sea,

Where dreams are many as

The leaves are on a tree,

And stars grow in the grass

For men to touch and see.

A little, holy land

Within all hearts of men

The earth holds in her hand—

There he is citizen

With high, heroic things,

With faiths and loyalties,

With deeds that put on wings,

And songs that sing of these;

With sacrifice, though it be

For a mistaken dream;

Justice and mercy

Alive with a little gleam

In the earth of men who say

They have rooted it from the sod

And taken another way

And got them another God.

From mountains of the moon

April has come once more;

But April, nor May, nor June,

Will ever find his door.

He lies so quiet now

In puzzlement how death

Can be so kind, and how

Lightly he draws his breath.

Almost afraid to stir

Lest he find his dreaming vain,

He drinks of wonder there

As green leaves drink the rain.

I think he was not sad

To feel his weight of clay,

Nor sorry that he had

Lost April’s way.

He had such glory in

His closing eyes

He needs no stars to spin

And bubble in clear skies,

No young south wind that leaps

Singing, no April flowers;

Within his house he keeps

A greater spring than ours.