THE CRUCIBLE

by Robert Haven Schauffler

URNING a while from the golden foes,

And the red, whose ranks her ranks oppose,
Flushed with the promise of happier things,
Fronting the future, America sings:

hemist of morrows am I.

Here in my crucible seething lie

Bloods of the proudest worth

Fused with the bloom of a new-found earth.

Oh, rare is the stuff of creation that bides rebirth

At the touch of my quickening art!

Here's blood that was warmed in Tolstoy's heart;
Blood from the chalice of Shakspere's brain,

From the knee that rebelled at obeisance vain
When Luther rose up from friar, meek,

To captain of souls on the Roman stair.

These drops, behold! once ebbed from the cheek

Of the loved apostle when heaven's smile

Lit the lone beach of Patmos Isle.

Here's blood that danced in the ageless Greek

At the Parthenon's brow as he filleted there

Those sculptures blithe

Whose adamant youth should dull the eternal scythe.

Such drops for my crucible flow from the veins of time's deathless men;

And what blood has accomplished, lo! blood may accomplish again.

Nay, here in my crucible's glow

Shall it accomplish yet more.

Beauty and strength it shall know

Fairer, more potent, than bore

Fire to its current before

Beauty of cavern and island

New to the ancient world;

Grandeur of prairie and cañon and highland,

Glory of floods from the glacial sky-land

Suddenly down to the summer hurled.

And splendors unseen shall it know,

DECORATIONS BY CHARLES S. CHAPMAN

On star-roofed hill,

In the smudge of a hovel's peaty smoke,
Or to wander afar in the path of the gleam
And visit the fairy-folk.

ut what of the poems that wait him within
The maze of my glamourous marshes of Glynn?
Here is the poet's own place

Where the salt creeks interlace,

Closed by the cloisters of vine and of oak

That chrismed the young bard's mouth

Whose spirit was clear to divine,

Whose breath was sweet to evoke,

The flute-notes, crystalline,

Which opened the song of the South.

lain heroes and homespun saviours of old,

PWith the blood of your deep-hidden hearts of gold

Shall I mingle the soul of a land like you—

A land that can hide the solemn pride

Of earth-heavens under its grasses blue?

And with these shall I mix the bold airs of democracy, blest,

That blow in the brotherly vale where East meets

ar beneath furrow and wold,

FStygian river and hill,

Hid in the breast of Kentucky, unfold
To the eye alert and the steadfast will.
There is a city of wide-domed halls,
Colored and carved; the crusted walls
Bear frescos flushed with the alpenglow,
Bear statues kin to the sculpture agleam

[West?

In the halls of the blessed when sculptors dream.
A temple of marble is there whose white-robed
pinnacles seem

Like choristers voicing a strain too rare

For the grosser ears of the world to share;

While the little blind waterfall's tremolo,

As it cheers the dim journey to Lethe's stream,
Startles the still oratorio.

reat-heart Kentucky, whose common crust GHolds for my children such splendors in trust, Ere your sun be set shall you beget

Some child of as deep-hearted likeness to you
As ever the land of Jeanne d'Arc knew?

Or, in caverns of sleep more wild and deep

Than the path of a meteor's earthward leap,

Shall you rouse from his inter-vital rest

Some Barbarossa of the West?

Aye, Kentucky! And this were best,

That you fare but forward as you began

When you rocked on your gaunt and hollow breast
The deepest-hearted American."