Then Uncle Tom to Eva flew,

To the high sanctoriums bright and new;
And Simon Legree stared up beneath,

And cracked his heels, and ground his teeth:
And went down to the Devil.

He crossed the yard in the storm and gloom;
He went into his grand front room.
He said, "I killed him, and I don't care."
He kicked a hound, he gave a swear;
He tightened his belt, he took a lamp,
Went down cellar to the webs and damp.
There in the middle of the mouldy floor
He heaved up a slab; he found a door—
And went down to the Devil.

His lamp blew out, but his eyes burned bright. Simon Legree stepped down all night—

Down, down to the Devil.

Simon Legree he reached the place,

He saw one half of the human race,

He saw the Devil on a wide green throne, Gnawing the meat from a big ham-bone, And he said to Mister Devil:

"I see that you have much to eat—
A red ham-bone is surely sweet.
I see that you have lion's feet;

I see your frame is fat and fine,
I see you drink your poison wine-
Blood and burning turpentine."

And the Devil said to Simon Legree:

"I like your style, so wicked and free.
Come sit and share my throne with me,
And let us bark and revel."

And there they sit and gnash their teeth,
And each one wears a hop-vine wreath.
They are matching pennies and shooting craps,
They are playing poker and taking naps.
And old Legree is fat and fine:

He eats the fire, he drinks the wine-
Blood and burning turpentine-

Down, down with the Devil;

Down, down with the Devil;

Down, down with the Devil.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN WALKS AT
MIDNIGHT*1

(In Springfield, Illinois)

It is portentous, and a thing of state
That here at midnight, in our little town.
A mourning figure walks, and will not rest,
Near the old court-house pacing up and down,

*See pages 51, 114, 123, 245, 252, 323.

1 Reprinted by permission of the publishers, The Macmillan Company, from The Chinese Nightingale and Other Poems by Vachel Lindsay.

Or by his homestead, or in shadowed yards
He lingers where his children used to play,
Or through the market, on the well-worn stones
He stalks until the dawn-stars burn away.

A bronzed, lank man! His suit of ancient black, A famous high top-hat and plain worn shawl Make him the quaint great figure that men love, The prairie-lawyer, master of us all.

He cannot sleep upon his hillside now.
He is among us:—as in times before!
And we who toss and lie awake for long,
Breathe deep, and start, to see him pass the door.

His head is bowed. He thinks of men and kings.
Yea, when the sick world cries, how can he sleep?
Too many peasants fight, they know not why;
Too many homesteads in black terror weep.

The sins of all the war-lords burn his heart.
He sees the dreadnaughts scouring every main.
He carries on his shawl-wrapped shoulders now
The bitterness, the folly and the pain.

He cannot rest until a spirit-dawn

Shall come; the shining hope of Europe free:
A league of sober folk, the Workers' Earth,
Bringing long peace to Cornland, Alp and Sea.

It breaks his heart that kings must murder still,
That all his hours of travail here for men

Seem yet in vain. And who will bring white peace
That he may sleep upon his hill again?

Edwin Meade Robinson

Edwin Meade Robinson (no relation to Edwin Arlington Robinson) was born November 1, 1879, at Lima, Indiana. He engaged in newspaper work when he was scarcely out of his 'teens, joining the staff of the Indianapolis Sentinel in 1901. He began writing a daily poem in 1904 and, for years, has conducted a column of prose and verse in the Cleveland Plain Dealer.

Mere Melodies (1918) is a collection of Robinson's light and sentimental verse, an uneven collection. Piping and Panning (1920) is a much fresher and far more vigorous assembling of this versifier's humorous and burlesque idioms. One of our most adroit technicians, he is especially happy in interior rhyming; a poem like "Halcyon Days" contains, beside the end-rhymes, rhymes hidden within the lines and others running over from line to line.

HOW HE TURNED OUT

When he was young, his parents saw (as parents by the million see)

That Rollo had an intellect of quite unequaled brilliancy; They started in his training from the hour of his nativity, And carefully they cultivated every bright proclivity.

At eight, he ate up authors like a literary cannibal,
At nine he mastered Latin as the Latins mastered
Hannibal;

At ten he knew astronomy and differential calculus,
And at eleven could dissect the tiniest animalculus.

At twelve, he learned orthometry, and started in to master all

The different kinds of poetry, the lyric and the pastoral, The epic and dramatic, the descriptive and didactical, With lessons theoretical and exercises practical.

Music he learned-the old and sweet, the up-to-date and hideous;

He painted like Apelles and he modeled like a Phidias; In language he was polyglot, in rhetoric Johnsonian, In eloquence Websterian, in diction Ciceronian.

At last, with learning that would set an ordinary head

agog,

His education far outshone his most proficient pedagog; And so he entered life, with all his lore to lift the lid for him

And what do you imagine that his erudition did for him? Alas! I fear the truth will shock you, rather than amuse you all—

To those who've read this sort of verse, the sequel is unusual.

This man (it's hard on humor, for it breaks the well known laws of it!)

Was happier for his learning, and a great success because of it!