Classic Poem

June, but we kept the fire place piled with logs,
And every day it rained. And every morning
I heard the wind and rain among the leaves.
Try as I would my spirits grew no better.
What was it? Was I ill or sick in mind?
I spent the whole day working with my hands,
For there was brush to clear and corn to plant
Between the gusts of rain; and there at night
I sat about the room and hugged the fire.
And the rain dripped and the wind blew, we shivered
For cold and it was June. I ached all through
For my hard labor, why did muscles grow not
To hardness and cure body, if 'twere body,
Or soul if it were soul?

But there at night
As I sat aching, worn, before the hour
Of sleep, and restless in this interval
Of nothingness, the silence out-of-doors,
Timed by the dripping rain, and by the slap
Of cards upon a table by a boarder
Who passed the time in playing solitaire,
Sometimes my ancient host would fill his pipe,
And scrape away the dust of long past years
To show me what had happened in his life.
And as he smoked and talked his aged wife
Would parallel his theme, as a brooks' branches
Formed by a slender island, flow together.
Or yet again she'd intercalate a touch,
An episode or version. And sometimes
He'd make her hush; or sometimes he'd suspend
While she went on to what she wished to finish,
When he'd resume. They talked together thus.
He found the story and began to tell it,
And she hung on his story, told it too.

This night the rain came down in buckets full,
And Claude who brought the logs in showed his breath
Between the opening of the outer door
And the swift on-rush of the room's warm air.
And my host who had hoed the whole day long,
Hearty at eighty years, sat with his pipe
Reading the organ of the Adventists,
His wife beside him knitting.

On the table
Are several magazines with their monthly grist
Of stories and of pictures. O such stories!
Who writes these stories? How does it happen people
Are born into the world to read these stories?
But anyway the lamp is very bad,
And every bone in me aches--and why always
Must one be either reading, knitting, talking?
Why not sit quietly and think?

At last
Between the clicking needles and the slap
Of cards upon the table and the swish
Of rain upon the window my host speaks:
"It says here when the Germans are defeated,
And that means when the Turks are beaten too,
The Christian world will take back Palestine,
And drive the Turks out. God be praised, I hope so."
"Amen" breaks in the wife. "May we both live
To see the day. Perhaps you'll get your trunk back
From Jaffa if the Allies win."

To me
The wife turns and goes on, "He has a trunk,
At least his trunk went on to Jaffa, and
It never came back. The bishop's trunk came back,
But his trunk never came."

And then the husband:
"What are you saying, mother, you go on
As if our friend here knew the story too.
And then you talk as if our hope of the war
Was centered on recovering that trunk."

"Oh, not at all
But if the Allies win, and the trunk is there
In Jaffa you might get it back. You know
You'll never get it back while infidels
Rule Palestine."

The husband says to me:
"It looks as if she thought that trunk of mine,
Which went to Jaffa fifty years ago,
Is in existence yet, when chances are
They kept it for awhile, and sold it off,
Or threw it away."

"They never threw it away.
Why I made him a dozen shirts or more,
And knitted him a lot of lovely socks,
And made him neck-ties, and that trunk contained
Everything that a man might need in absence
A year from home. And yet they threw it away!"

"They might have done so."

"But they never did,
Perhaps they threw your cabinet tools away?"
"They were too valuable."

"Too valuable,
Fine socks and shirts are worthless are they, yes."

"Not worthless, but fine tools are valuable."
He turns to me: "I lost a box of tools
Sent on to Jaffa, too. The scheme was this:
To work at cabinet making while observing
Conditions there in Palestine, and get ready
To drive the Turks from Palestine."

What's this?
I rub my eyes and wake up to this story.
I'm here in Illinois, in a farmer's house
Who boards stray fishermen, and takes me in.
And in a moment Turks and Palestine,
And that old dream of Louis the Saint arise
And show me how the world is small, and a man
Native to Illinois may travel forth
And mix his life with ancient things afar.
To-day be raising corn here and next month
Walking the streets of Jaffa, in Mycenæ,
Digging for Grecian relics.

So I asked
"Were you in Palestine?" And the wife spoke quick:
"He didn't get there, that's the joke of it."
And the husband said: "It wasn't such a joke.
You see it was this way, myself and the bishop,
He lived in Springfield, I in Pleasant Plains,
Had planned to meet in Switzerland."

"Montreaux"
The wife broke in.

"Montreaux" the husband added.
"You said you two had planned it," she went on.
Now looking over specks and speaking louder:
"The bishop came to him, he planned it out.
My husband didn't plan the trip at all.
He knows the bishop planned it."

Then the husband:
"Oh for that matter he spoke of it first,
And I acceded and we worked it out.
He was to go ahead of me, I was
To come in later, soon as I could raise
What funds my congregation could afford
To spare for this adventure."

"Guess," she said,
"How much it was."

I shook my head and she
Said in a lowered and a tragic voice:
"Four hundred dollars, and you can believe
It strapped his church to raise so great a sum.
And if they hadn't thought that Christ would come
Scarcely before the plan could be put through
Of winning back the Holy Land, that sum
Had never been made up and put in gold
For him to carry in a chamois belt."

And then the husband said: "Mother, be still,
I'll tell our friend the story if you'll let me."
"I'm done," she said. "I wanted to say that.
Go on," she said.

And so he started over:
"The bishop came to me and said he thought
The Advent would be June of seventy-six.
This was the winter of eighteen seventy-one.
He said he had a dream; and in this dream
An angel stood beside him, told him so,
And told him to get me and go to Jaffa,
And live there, learn the people and the country,
We were to live disguised the better to learn
The people and the country. I was to work
At my trade as a cabinet maker, he
At carpentry, which was his trade, and so
No one would know us, or suspect our plan.
And thus we could live undisturbed and work,
And get all things in readiness, that in time
The Lord would send us power, and do all things.
We were the messengers to go ahead
And make the ways straight, so I told her of it."

"You told me, yes, but my trust was as great
As yours was in the bishop, little the good
To tell me of it."

"Well, I told you of it.
And she said, 'If the Lord commands you so
You must obey.' And so she knit the socks
And made that trunk of things, as she has said,
And in six weeks I sailed from Philadelphia."

"'Twas nearer two months," said the wife.

"Perhaps,
Somewhere between six weeks and that. The bishop
Left Springfield in a month from our first talk.
I knew, for I went over when he left.
And I remember how his poor wife cried,
And how the children cried. He had a family
Of some eight children."

"Only seven then,
The son named David died the year before."

"Mother, you're right, 'twas seven children then.
The oldest was not more than twelve, I think,
And all the children cried, and at the train
His congregation almost to a man
Was there to see him off."

"Well, one was missing.
You know, you know," the wife said pregnantly.

"I'll come to that in time, if you'll be still.
Well, so the bishop left, and in six weeks,
Or somewhere there, I started for Montreaux
To meet the bishop. Shipped ahead my trunk
To Jaffa as the bishop did. But now
I must tell you my dream. The night before
I reached Montreaux I had a wondrous dream:
I saw the bishop on the station platform
His face with brandy blossoms splotched and wearing
His gold head cane. And sure enough next day
As I stepped from the train I saw the bishop
His face with brandy blossoms splotched and wearing
His gold head cane. And I thought something wrong,
And still I didn't act upon the thought."

"I should say not," the wife broke in again.

"Oh, well what could I do, if I had thought
More clearly than I did that things were wrong.
You can't uproot the confidence of years
Because of dreams. And as to brandy blossoms
I knew his face was red, but didn't know,
Or think just then, that brandy made it red.
And so I went up to the house he lived in--
A mansion beautiful, and we sat down.
And he sat there bolt upright in a rocker,
Hands spread upon his knees, his black eyes bigger
Than I had ever seen them, eyeing me
Silently for a moment, when he said:
'What money did you bring?' And so I told him.
And he said quickly 'let me have it.' So
I took my belt off, counted out the gold
And gave it to him. And he took it, thrust it
With this hand in this pocket, that in that,
And sat there and said nothing more, just looked!
And then before a word was spoke again
I heard a step upon the stair, the stair
Came down into this room where we were sitting.
And I looked up, and there--I rubbed my eyes--
I looked again, rose from my chair to see,
And saw descending the most lovely woman,
Who was"--

"A lovely woman," sneered the wife
"Well, she was just affinity to the bishop,
That's what she was."

"Affinity is right--
You see she was the leader in the choir,
And she had run away with him, or rather
Had gone abroad upon another boat
And met him in Montreaux. Now from this time
For forty hours or so all is a blank.
I just remember trying to speak and choking,
And flying from the room, the bishop clutching
At my coat sleeve to hold me. After that
I can't recall a thing until I saw
A little cottage way up in the Alps.
I was knocking at the door, was faint and sick,
The door was opened and they took me in,
And warmed me with a glass of wine, and tucked me
In a good bed where I slept half a week.
It seems in my bewilderment I wandered,
Ran, stumbled, climbed for forty hours or so
By rocky chasms, up the piney slopes."

"He might have lost his life," the wife exclaimed.

"These were the kindest people in the world,
A French family. They gave me splendid food,
And when I left two francs to reach the place
Where lived the English Consul, who arranged
After some days for money for my passage
Back to America, and in six weeks
I preached a sermon here in Pleasant Plains."

"Beware of false prophets was the text!" she said.

And I who heard this story through spoke up:
"The thing about this that I fail to get
Concerns this woman, the affinity.
If, as seems evident, she and the bishop
Had planned this run-a-way and used the faith,
And you, the congregation to get money
To do it with, or used you in particular
To get the money for themselves to live on
After they had arrived there in Montreaux,
If all this be" I said, "why did this woman
Descend just at the moment when he asked you
For the money that you had. You might have seen her
Before you gave the money, if you had
You might have held it back."

"I would indeed,
You can be sure I should have held it back."

And then the old wife gasped and dropped her knitting.

"Now, James, you let me answer that, I know.
She was done with the bishop, that's the reason.
Be still and let me answer. Here's the story:
We found out later that the bishop's trunk
And kit of tools had been returned from Jaffa
There to Montreaux, were there that very day,
Which means the bishop never meant to go
To Palestine at all, but meant to meet
This woman in Montreaux and live with her.
Well, that takes money. So he used my husband
To get that money. Now you wonder I see
Why she would chance the spoiling of the scheme,
Descend into the room before my husband
Had given up this money, and this money,
You see, was treated as a common fund
Belonging to the church and to be used
To get back Palestine, and so the bishop
As head of the church, superior to my husband,
Could say 'give me the money'--that was natural,
My husband could not be surprised at that,
Or question it. Well, why did she descend
And almost lose the money? Oh, the cat!
I know what she did, as well as I had seen
Her do it. Yes, she listened at the landing.
And when she heard my husband tell the sum
Which he had brought, it wasn't enough to please her,
And Satan entered in her heart, and she
Waited until she heard the bishop's pockets
Clink with the double eagles, then descended
To expose the bishop and disgrace him there
And everywhere in all the world. Now listen:
She got that money or the most of it
In spite of what she did. For in six weeks
After my husband had returned, she walked,
The brazen thing, the public streets of Springfield
As jaunty as you please, and pretty soon
The bishop died and all the papers printed
The story of his shame."

She had scarce finished
When the man at solitaire threw down the deck
And make a whacking noise and rose and came
Around in front of us and stood and looked
The old man and old woman over, me
He studied too. Then in an organ voice:
"Is there a single verse in the New Testament
That hasn't sprouted one church anyway,
Letting alone the verses that have sprouted
Two, three or four or five? I know of one:
Where is it that it says that "Jesus wept"?
Let's found a church on that verse, "Jesus wept."
With that he went out in the rain and slammed
The door behind him.

The old clergyman
Had fallen asleep. His wife looked up and said,
"That man is crazy, ain't he? I'm afraid."