Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1930-02-27
THIS AND THAT
BY CHARLES E. TRAcERELL.

to a new birth. He sees life now, so he
believes, as whole, and not so much
in part as formerly. He likens his posi-
tion in his old age, with the compan-
ions of his youth mostly gone from him,
as one who climbs a hill, and looks
down upon his own home where far it
lieth, small as faded thought
There again is something memorable
Small as a faded thought" is an ulti-
mate comparison as any one knows
who works with thoughts and has had
one get away from him. 1t is gone
| completely, as if it had never hem.
Mans Reason is in such deep in
solvency to sense,
that tho she guide his highest flight
heav'nward and teach him
dignity morals manners and human
comfort
she can delcstly and dangerously
bediZen
the riot.ng joys that fringe the sad
pathways of He'll"
Our average reader (of whom we
speak both with joy and sadness) will
find these astounding lines for a very
old man to produce. Yet this is a
surprisingly modern old man. His
photographs show him heavily bearded,
with a leonine thatch of hair, deep-set
eyes, true poet in the olden manner.
Birds, which he declares to be "of
all animals the nearest to man." recall
to him airplaneS. Yet this bit of de-
scription is far outdone by his picture
of radio broadcasting. Here is a mod
ern poet, speaking in the language
of old:
Science comforting mans animal
poverty
and liesuring his toll, hath humanized
manners
and social temper, and now above her
globe-spredd net
of speeded intercourse hath outrun all
magic,
and disclosing the secrecy of the reticent
air
hath woven seamless web of invisible
strands
Spiriting the dumb inane with the quick
matter of life:
Now music's prisoned raptur and the
drown'd voice of truth
mantled in lights velocity, over land
and sea
are omnipreSent, speaking aloud to
every ear,
into every heart and home their I'M
hinder'd message.
the body and soul of Universal Brother
hood;
whereby war faln from savagery to
fratricide,
from a trumpeting vainglory to a cry
ing shame
stalketh now with blasting curse brand
ed on its brow"
X X X
Well, folks, as the radio announcers
sometimes say, now that you have had
few samples, how do you like it?
Whatever one may think of it, there
is validity in such lines as the fol-
lowing:
"I will tell thee secret, my son, con-
straining thee
lest thou dare impart it to any man
while 1 liv.
My writing is at end. hav seen such
things reveapd
that what / hav written and taught
seemeth to me of small WORTH"
And these striking lines:
"Yet from those three long centuries of
rapin and blood.
inhumanity of heart and wanton
cruelty of hand
ther is little left, save the broken relic
of one
good bishop. and the record of one
noble king
The lines beginning thine eateth
away at many an old delusion" show
an amazing young -mindedneSs for a
man in his eighty-sixth year We end
this briefest consideration of Book I
of noble poem with these lines:
ct is nightly
to the reproach Of Reason that she
cannot save
nor guide the herd: that minds who
else wer 1T to rule
IRryH aFf
tence, and so
by spiritual dishonesty in their Hurried
reign
confirm the disrepute of all authority
but only in sackcloth can the Muse
speak of such things"