Babbie, dear, I feel concern
For your literary turn;
You've not come to three years, yet
You know all your alphabet.

You see letters everywhere—
In the carpet, in the chair:
“There's a Y,” and “There's a P,”
Here an O, and there a T.

Can it be, you little sprite,
That some day you, too, will write?
Mercy, Babbie! I must find
Some distraction for your mind.

Babette, this was a luminous day
(In days that will mean much to you);
For Marshal Joffre passed my way,
And smiled, and spoke a word or two.

And there was in his granite face,
And in, anon, his kindly glance,
Something that glorified the place
And woke, as with a wand, Romance.

Time will unknot, with fingers cool,
The present tangled ball of yarn,
And you, Babette, a girl at school,
Will read the story of the Marne;

Learn how, beneath a pall of smoke,
Affrighted Freedom clutched her breast;
And how the Horror halted … broke …

Our hats are off, the brasses blare,
The emblem of the free
Comes dropping through the quiet air;
I hold you up to see.

'Tis only, to your wondering eyes,
One more thing strange and new,
But, Babbie, while that banner flies
This world is safe for you.

Our ships of war have sailed away,
Their paths we cannot know;
But where they ride they hold the tide
Against the sullen foe.

The Hun may overrun the land,
But freedom holds the seas;
The navies keep the upper-hand,
And Neptune wears the keys.

Your silver drinking-cup drained dry,
You fetch a funny little sigh:
“All gone!” you say, and take it up
And eye the bottom of the cup.

“All gone!” You fetch another sigh,
And tilt the cup and hold it high.
One would suppose, so grave your air,
That you could read the legend there—
“Vanitas vanitatum et omnia vanitas.”

Out of my little prison-cell
I send white thoughts and bid them tell
My message to my kind.
The singing wind can bear it best,
For song it should be—glad song, blest
To beauty by the wind.

O white thoughts, this it is ye mean:
“We, born in pain have breathed and been
Nurtured of suffering;
Have heard all silence, lost all light,
Have touched the unknown Infinite
Of fear; and still we sing:

“‘Night holds a holy mystery
Of life; red pain is wine, and we
Have drunk so deep thereof
That we are strangely healed of fear,

Here I lie like a princess—
All wound in white;
Lilies tall at my bedside,
For my delight;

Hushed feet make in my chamber
Music for me:
Silence answers with phrases
Of her minstrelsy.

Who could be fairer than I am,
All wound in white?
Who could be gladder of beauty,
And beauty's delight?

O for the whiteness and fairness—
But O, to be free!
Pain has the key to my chamber:
He prisons me.

Sister Jerome is very tired and she must sleep;
There is no other guard to keep,
And so the night must be watched through with pain—
Ah me, my sentinel again.

The pain is like a little flame within the night,
A bright white sword, from it no flight …
Slow hours, unrolling dully, endlessly,
O say, when will to-morrow be?

In an eternity of dark and stillness strange,
Around and 'round with pain I range,
Remembering nothing fair. … There is no way,
There is no path unto the day.

There be some that seaward roam,
Adventurers of mere and main;
They watch the wave, follow the foam.
There be those that hunt at home,
Adventurers of pain.

There be those that leave the vale,
And from the hearth-stone turn away,
Heart-homeless if their footsteps fail
Some houseless snowy height to scale,
Ere light dies with the day.

There be some would know the North,
And some would plant the desert-place:
Daily their feet are driven forth,
Their hands have measured the round earth—
Adventurers of space.

Last night I had a guest:
Terror visited me.
To-day I lie dumb—at rest
After my agony.

Where should he have his home,
That he be nigh to hunt me?
Who are they naming his name?
Live they morn's light to see?

Grief and pain I have known;
Now I am learning three.
Thou wast lacking—Terror—alone,
Of the grim Trinity.

Last night I had a guest:
Terror visited me.
To-day I lie dumb—at rest
After my agony.

When I was a wee child
A-singing in the sun,
Came the knell, like a leper's bell,
Of the Fateful One.

In his mouth was hunger,
In his hand was want;
There I shook beneath his look,
Bled beneath his vaunt:

“I am lord of bodies,
I am lord of souls;
I am lord of half the horde
That die between the poles.

“I laugh at all the teachers
That have not taught of me.
I make the rules for all their schools—
My name is Poverty.

“I laugh at all the nations
That have no thought of me:
For still their laws of me are cause—