Once more old Hezekiah stayed his hoe To squint at Eben. Silent, Eben scanned A little roll of sheepskin in his hand, While, row on dusky row, Tall bean poles ribbed with dark the gold-pale afterglow. The boy looked up: here was another land! Mountain and farm with mystic beauty flared Where Eben stared. Stooping, he lifted with a furtive smile Two splintered sticks, and spliced them. Nevermore His spirit would go beastwise to his chore Blinded, for even while He stooped to the old task, sudden in the sunset’s pile His radiant Herdsman swung a fiery door, Thro’ which came forth with far-borne trumpetings Poets and kings, His fellow conquerors: there Virgil dreamed, There Cæsar fought and won the barbarous tribes, There Darwin, pensive, bore the ignorant gibes, And One with thorns redeemed From malice the wild hearts of men: there surged and streamed With chemic fire the forges of old scribes Testing anew the crucibles of toil To save God’s soil. So Eben turned again to hoe his beans, But now, to ballads which his Herdsman sung, Henceforth he hoed the dream in with the dung, And for his ancient spleens Planting new joys, imagination found him means. At last old Hezekiah loosed his tongue: “Well, boy, this school--what has it learned ye to know?” He said: “To hoe.” _The Forum_ _Percy MacKaye_ THE MARVELOUS MUNCHAUSEN The snug little room with its brazier fire aglow, And Piet and Sachs and Vroom--all in the long ago,-- Oh, the very long ago!--o’er their pipes and hollands seen; And on the wall the man-o’-war, and firelight on the screen! Their flowered, bulging waistcoats that wrinkle when they chuckle; The baron, much-mustachioed, and gay with star and buckle, And bristling in a uniform as scarlet as his cheeks, With choker lace beneath his chin, and splendid, yellow breeks! The smoke drifts blue, and bluer through that window, all abreeze, Are glinting sky and glistening sea beyond the Holland quays. Blue tiles, red bricks, the bustling wharves, with color’s oriflamme; Starched caps and rosy-posy cheeks--the girls of Amsterdam! The snug little room with its brazier fire aglow! Oh, listen, will he tell them, as he told them long ago,-- Oh, very long ago, a-laughing in his sleeve!-- The marvelous Munchausen, with the fables _I_ believe? * * * * * “When I had sown the Turkey beans that reachéd to the moon, And lifted all Westminster in the sling from my balloon (Swung over the Atlantic, They peered from windows, frantic), When, eagle-back, I’d scanned the pole in broad, eternal noon, “In Queen Mab’s chariot I ventured on the sea. ’Twas like a mammoth hazelnut, with matchless orrery A-sparkle on its ceiling, With planet systems wheeling And giddy comets sizzling all about the head o’ me.