Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa - "History of the Incas"

George Washington Cable - "The Cavalier"

Gilbert K. Chesterton - "The Napoleon of Notting Hill"

G. A. Henty - "Forest & Frontiers"

Annual Bibliography of Commonwealth Literature 2007
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

The Defenders of Democracy

U >> Unknown >> The Defenders of Democracy




Who are the shadow-forms crowding the night?
What shadows of men?
The stilled star-night is high with these brooding spirits--
Their shoulders rise on the Earth-rim, and they are great presences in heaven--
They move through the stars like outlined winds in young-leaved maples.
Lilacs bloom for Walt Whitman
And lilacs for Abraham Lincoln.

Deeply the nation throbs with a world's anguish--
But it sleeps, and I on the housetops
Commune with souls long dead who guard our land at midnight,
A strength in each hushed heart--
I seem to hear the Atlantic moaning on our shores with the plaint of the dying
And rolling on our shores with the rumble of battle....
I seem to see my country growing golden toward California,
And, as fields of daisies, a people, with slumbering up-turned faces
Leaned over by Two Brothers,
And the greatness that is gone.

Lilacs bloom for Walt Whitman
And lilacs for Abraham Lincoln.

Spring runs over the land,
A young girl, light-footed, eager...
For I hear a song that is faint and sweet with first love,
Out of the West, fresh with the grass and the timber,
But dreamily soothing the sleepers...
I listen: I drink it deep.

Softly the Spring sings,
Softly and clearly:
"I open lilacs for the beloved,
Lilacs for the lost, the dead.
And, see, for the living, I bring sweet strawberry blossoms,
And I bring buttercups, and I bring to the woods anemones and blue bells...
I open lilacs for the beloved,
And when my fluttering garment drifts through dusty cities,
And blows on hills, and brushes the inland sea,
Over you, sleepers, over you, tired sleepers,
A fragrant memory falls...
I open love in the shut heart,
I open lilacs for the beloved."

Lilacs bloom for Walt Whitman
And lilacs for Abraham Lincoln.

Was that the Spring that sang, opening locked hearts,
And is remembrance mine?
For I know these two great shadows in the spacious night,
Shadows folding America close between them,
Close to the heart...
And I know how my own lost youth grew up blessedly in their spirit,
And how the morning song of the might bard
Sent me out from my dreams to the living America,
To the chanting seas, to the piney hills, down the railroad vistas,
Out into the streets of Manhattan when the whistles blew at seven,
Down to the mills of Pittsburgh and the rude faces of labor...
And I know how the grave great music of that other,
Music in which lost armies sang requiems,
And the vision of that gaunt, that great and solemn figure,
And the graven face, the deep eyes, the mouth,
O human-hearted brother,
Dedicated anew my undevoted heart
to America, my land.

Lilacs bloom for Walt Whitman
And lilacs for Abraham Lincoln.

Now in this hour I was suppliant for these two brothers,
And I said: Your land has need:
Half-awakened and blindly we grope in the great world....
What strength may we take from our Past, What promise hold for our future?

And the one brother leaned and whispered:
"I put my strength in a book,
And in that book my love...
This, with my love, I give to America..."
And the other brother leaned and murmured:
"I put my strength in a life,
And in that life my love,
This, with my love, I give to America."

Lilacs bloom for Walt Whitman
And lilacs for Abraham Lincoln.

Then my heart sang out: This strength shall be our strength:
Yea, when the great hour comes, and the sleepers wake and are hurled back,
And creep down into themselves
There shall they find Walt Whitman
And there, Abraham Lincoln.

O Spring, go over this land with much singing
And open the lilacs everywhere,
Open them out with the old-time fragrance
Making a people remember that something has been forgotten,
Something is hidden deep--strange memories--strange memories--
Of him that brought a sprig of the purple cluster
To him that was mourned of all...
And so they are linked together
While yet America lives...
While yet America lives, my heart,
Lilacs shall bloom for Walt Whitman
And lilacs for Abraham Lincoln.

[signed] James Oppenheim





Bred to the Sea




Ye who are bred to the sea, sons of the sons of seamen,
In what faith do ye sail? By what creed do ye hold?
Little we know of faiths, and we leave the creeds to the parsons.
But we 'bide by the law of the sea which our father made of old.

Where is that sea law writ for mariners and for captains,
That they may know the law by which they sail the sea?
We never saw it writ for sailormen or for masters;
But 'tis laid with the keel of the ship. What would you have?
Let be.

Ye who went down tot he sea in ships and perished aforetime,
In what faith did ye sail? In what creed did ye die?
What is that law to which your lives were forfeit?
What do ye teach your sons that they may not deny?

We kept the faith of our breed. We died in the creed of seamen,
As our sons, too, shall die: the sea will have its way.
The law which bade us sail with death in smack and whaler,
In tall ship and in open boat, is the seaman's law to-day.

The master shall rule his crew. The crew shall obey the master.
Ye shall work your ship while she fleets and ye can stand.
Though ye starve, and freeze, and drown, shipmate shall stand
by shipmate.
Ye shall 'bide by this law of seafaring folk, though ye never
come to land.

Ye shall hold your lives in trust for those who need your succor:
A flash of fire by night, a loom of smoke by day,
A rag to an oar shall be to you the symbol
Of your faith, of your creed, of the law which sailormen obey.

Ye shall not count the odds, ye shall not weigh the danger,
When life is to be saved from storm, from fire, from thirst.
Ye shall not leave your foe adrift and helpless;
And when the boats go overside, 't is, "Women and children
first."

We kept this faith of our breed. We died in this creed of seamen.
We sealed our creed with our lives. It shall endure alway.
The law which bade us sail with death in smack and whaler,
In tall ship and in open boat, is the seaman's law to-day.

[signed] James W. Pryor.





Our Defenders

Across the fields of waving wheat
And leagues of golden corn
The fragrance of the wild-rose bloom
And elder-flower is borne;
But earth's appealing loveliness
We do but half surmise,
For oh, the blur of battle-fields
Is ever in our eyes.

The robin-red-breast and the wren,
We cannot harken these
For dreadful thunder of the guns
That echoes overseas;
And evermore our vision turns
To those who follow far
The bright white light of Liberty
Through the red fires of war.

Our thoughts are with the hero souls
And hero hearts of gold
Who keep Old Glory's hallowed stars
Untarnished as of old;
Who join their hands with hero hands
In hero lands to save
The fearless forehead of the free
The shameful brand of slave.

And through these days of strife and death,
We know they shall not fail,
That Freedom shall not pass from earth
Nor tyranny prevail;
Yea, those that now in anguish bow,
We know that soon or late
They shall be lifted from beneath
The iron heel of hate.

O brave defenders of the free,
For you our tears of pride!
Lo, every drop of blood you shed
Our hearts have sanctified!
And through these days of strife and death,
These weary night-times through,
Our spirits watch with yours, our love
It hovers over you.

[signed] Evaleen Stein





The Bomb




I


"You are late. Billy's been howling the house down."

"All babies cry, big or little, now and then. The nurse is with
Billy. I--" Nellie Cameron paused to smooth a quiver out of her
voice--"I am not late."

"You are not?" Joseph Cameron, bewildered, laid his paper upon his
knees and squinted up at his wife.

"No, Joe, I am not." As if it absorbed her, and no one could
have said that it did not, for she kept house beautifully, Nellie
straightened an etching; the quietly she walked out of the room.

She went into their bedroom and closed the door. After a while
Cameron, watching warily, saw her come into the hall again in a
peach-colored dress that he particularly liked her in; saw her go
down the hall, away from him--and she had a very good back--to the
nursery door, the warm, cheerful firelight falling full upon her
face, her hands, her softly glowing dress. Billy, their only son,
just learning to walk, toddled to meet her. Cameron saw the chubby
hands rumple her skirts, saw Nellie stoop and swing him high with
her firm arms, the drop him to his place upon her breast. The
door close, the hall was shadowy again, the apartment as still as
a place marked "To Let."

The dinner was on time and excellent; Nellie, decorative and
chatty, was promptly in her place. Dinner over, they went to the
sitting-room for their coffee. The apartment was very high up, the
windows looking over the tree-tops of the Drive, across the Hudson
tot he Jersey shore. It was March, and the shore lights wavered
in gusts of rain that threatened to turn to snow. The room was
warm; Cameron was suffocating; Nellie was serenely unaware. She
had eaten well, from her soup through her cheese. There are times
when, to a man, a woman's appetite is the last straw. She was
tired, she said, but at her ease, and never prettier.

"Going out to-night, Joey?"

"Yes. Bridge hand around at Gordon's. Want a talk with Gordon
about a matter of business."

"I like to have things to do in the afternoon, but when night
comes"--Nellie smothered a contented yawn--"I love getting into
something comfy, and just buzzing round our own lamp."

"I must own that I have never found afternoon diversions to be
diverting." To save him he could not keep his voice good-natured.
He had had a grind of a day, and was dog-tired; it seemed to him
she ought to know it and talk about it.

"Yes?" Nellie mused. "It was amusing at the club to-day--the
Non-descripts." She laughed softly. "It wasn't 'nondescript'
to-day, though!"

"Some old maid telling you to bring your children up on the country,
and throw your husbands out of their jobs?"

"What, Joey?" Nellie seemed to bring her thoughts back from a long
way off. "Old maid? I should say not! We had a man. We nearly
always do. Then everybody comes, and there's more glow. He was an
English socialist--I guess he was a socialist. Burne-Jones hair,
and a homespun jacket,--loose, and all that,--and a heavy ribbon
on his glasses. He talked about the new man."

"The--what?"

"The new man." Nellie opened her eyes wide, as if her husband
puzzled her.

"Well--I'm damned!"

Nellie broke into sudden mirth.

"You were, Joey dear; that is just what you were. You were damned
all the way there and back again."

Cameron strangled.

"Have I the honor to typify the--new creature?"

"You're the very image of him, Joey dear." And she smiled upon
him as if he were some new moth, in at their window, to buzz round
their lamp.

"And--this person--?"

Nellie became eagerly communicative.

"I do wonder if I can make you see him? Tall and dark, and with
good-looking, thinnish hands and almost amusing way of playing
with his eye-glasses. You know, Joey: the sort of distinguished
talk-it-all-out sort of man that just makes men rage. Of course,"
she went on, largely wise, "he's the sort of socialist to make a
real socialist rage, but he's just the thing for clubs."

"You often have them?"

"Of course," she laughed. "You see, we don't see much of men at
home any more. It keeps us from forgetting how you look, and how
amusing you may be."

Cameron gazed before him into a chaos without words.

Nellie was oblivious.

"He finished off with a perfect bomb, Joey. It was funny! Of
course the new man's a city product, and he drew him to the life:
rushed and tortured by ambition, tired out at the end of the day,
too tired to be possibly amusing, his nerves excited till anything
quieter than lower Broadway hurts his ears, all passion and
brilliance spent on business, dinners here and there, with people
who all have their ax to grind, too, and are keyed up to it by
rows and rows of cocktails. He drew him without mercy, and he had
every wife there either wincing or laughing, with the truth of what
he said. He was quite eloquent." She paused, she laughed softly,
she turned her eyes upon him. "Then, Joey, guess--just guess!--what
he said!"

"Far be it from me!"

"He said that any intelligent modern woman would require at
least one husband and three lovers to arrive at the standards and
companionship of one wholesome old-fashioned man!"

Cameron got to his feet and held to the top shelf of the bookcase.

"Do you mean to tell me that respectable women sit and listen to
such talk?"

"But, Joey dear, you see so little of us respectable women now,
you don't really know us--"

"It's not decent--"

Nelly was all patience.

"But, you know, Joey dear, I think maybe it is true. Don't you
think so?"

Cameron swallowed two or three retorts; then with a laugh that seemed
to break to pieces in the air, he went into he hall, got into his
hat and coat, and left the house.

Nellie listened gravely.

"Poor dear old land-lubber!" she sighed. "But it had to come sooner
or later!" Then she went to the telephone.

"57900 Bryant, please. May I speak to Mr. Crane?"


II


When Cameron came in at midnight he found his wife and his old
friend Willoughby Crane playing chess in the dining room.

"Hello, Joe, old man," murmured Crane. "That you?"

"Why, yes, I believe it is I," said Cameron.

"Almost forgot what you looked like," Crane rambled pleasantly.
"Dropped in for a reminder."

"I'm sorry to have missed you," muttered Cameron.

"Well, you haven't altogether missed me, you know: so cheer up,
old man. If Nell's good for a rubber, you may have the joy of my
presence for an hour or two longer. You're lucky, having a wife
who can play chess!"

"Get yourself a drink, Joey," suggested Nellie. "The whisky's in
the sideboard, down on he left."

"Don't you suppose I know where the whisky is?" demanded Cameron.

"Maybe there's not much left." Nellie looked on, all solicitude.

Cameron, his thought babbling over the good old days of the
ducking-stool, poured himself carefully a highball that was brown.
Silence reigned. The light fell upon the head and shoulders of
Crane and his long, quick-fingered hands.

"After a man has slaved his soul out," Cameron moaned, "these are
the things a woman cares about!"

Crane won the rubber, and spent considerable gallantry upon Nellie
in compensation. Cameron had yawned all through, but no one had
noticed. Crane lighted a cigarette and perched upon the corner of
the dining-table.

"I say, Joe, got anything on to-morrow night?"

"I have," said Cameron.

"Something you can't chuck?"

"Scarcely. A director's dinner."

Crane grew thoughtful.

"You certainly are a victim of the power-passion," he sighed,
considering Cameron. "I don't know how you stand it. I'd have
more money, no doubt, if I weren't so apathetic, but, by Jinks, it
doesn't look worth it to me!"

"A question of taste," said Cameron briefly.

"Taste? If that were all!" He smoked, looking at Nellie through
the haze. "I say, Nell, I've got tickets for Kreisler to-morrow
night. Come with me, there's a good girl! Lend me your wife, will
you, Joe?"

"Lend?" echoed Nellie. "I like that! Anybody'd take me for goods
and chattels. Of course I'll come. I'd love to."

"You know, Joey," Crane went on simply, "Nellie's the only woman I
know that it's real joy to hear music with. She knows what she's
listening to. A fellow can sort of forget that he's got her
along, an still be glad he has. As for you, you old money-hunting
blunderbuss, the way you squirm in the presence of music ought to
be a penitentiary offense. I'm almost glad you can't go." He gave
a laugh that was dangerously genuine, and bolted for the hall to
get his coat and hat.

"Poor old Joe is almost asleep," said Nellie, sweetly.

Joe did not look it, but Willoughby got out solicitously, and he
sat upon a damp bench opposite Cameron's glowing windows, and he
laughed and laughed till a policeman sternly ordered him to move
on.

"Isn't Willoughby a dear!" Nellie commented as she moved about,
putting things in their places for the night. Cameron yawned
obviously. Nellie hummed a snatch of a tune.

All that long night Cameron lay stretched upon the edge of their
bed, staring into the lumpy darkness. Nellie slept like a baby.
But once, soon after the lights were turned off, Cameron's blood
froze by inches from his head to his feet. It seemed to him that
Nellie was laughing, was fairly biting her pillow to keep from
laughing aloud! Gravely, of the darkness, he asked how all this had
come about. He asked it of the familiar, shadowy heap of Nellie's
clothes upon the chair by the window, asked if he had deserved it.
Toward dawn he slept.


III


Cameron, after the way of the new man, kept some evening clothes
down town. It saved traveling. The next afternoon, about four
o'clock, there came, somewhere between the pit of his stomach and
his brain, an aching weight. Conscience! At six-thirty he hung
his dinner-jacket back in the closet and sent the directors word
that he had a headache. Then, as blind as a moth, he started for
home, for that lamp about which Nellie "Loved to buzz."

He let himself into the apartment, chuckling to think of Nellie's
surprise, at just the hour at which they were used to dining. The
place was shadowy, the table in its between-meals garb. The aching
weight came back. He tapped on the nursery door.

Miss Merritt, the nurse, was dining by the nursery window, Billy's
high chair drawn near by. Billy, drowsy and rosy, was waving a
soup-spoon about his head, dabbing at the lights upon the silver
with fat fingers that were better at clinging than at letting go.

"Good evening, Miss Merritt," said Cameron. "Hello, Bill! Where's
your mother?" His tone struck false, for through his mind was
booming the horrible question, "Can Nellie have gone out with that
ass Crane to dine?"

Miss Merritt's mousy face became all eyes.

"Why, sir, Mrs. Cameron has gone out to dinner, and after to a
concert. I guess you forgot, sir."

"Oh, yes," said Cameron, easily. "This is the night of the concert.
I had absolutely forgotten. I'd have got a bite down town if I'd
thought. Is the cook in?"

"Sure, sir. I'll call her."

She left Cameron alone with Billy, who, cannibal-wise, was chewing
his father's hand and crowing over the appetizing bumps and veins.

"If you'd jest 'ave 'phoned, sir," panted the cook, who was a large,
purple-faced person.

Cameron sighed.

"Just anything, Katy. I have a headache. Some eggs and toast--poached
eggs, I think."

In another moment the maid passed the nursery door, with white
things over her arm, on her way to set the table.

Cameron, dazed as never in his life before, lifted Billy to his
shoulder and trotted up and down the room. "Nice little boy!" he
laughed, Billy's damp fists hitting at him in ecstasy. "I'll just
take him to the sitting-room while you finish your dinner." He did
his best to pretend that the situation was not unusual, to act as
if, in his own home, a man could be nothing but at home. All these
confounded hirelings, acting as if they owned the place, had the
cheek to be amazed over his dropping in!

Miss Merritt beamed.

"I always say, sir, that boys should know their fathers."

"Boys should know their fathers?" This was almost the last straw.

"Here!" said Miss Merritt, holding out a pink-edged blanket. "Jest
put in on your lap, sir." There was about her that utter peculiar
lack of decorum that is common to nurses and mothers and Cameron,
blushing furiously, grabbed the blanket and fled.

"Boys should know their father, hey?" Cameron was enraged.
"We'll see about that pretty quick!" Billy crowed with joy as the
blanket flapped about them, and, above the chasm of his doubts and
his conscience Cameron heard himself laugh, too. He got into his
arm-chair. Billy, so warm and solid and gay, so evidently liking
him, gave him, parent that he was, the thrill of adventure as his
hands held him and knew him for his own. The blanket spread upon
his knees, the door closed, Cameron expanded with the desire to
know his son, even as it was desirable that his son should know
him. He turned him over and around, he studied the vagaries of
scallops and pearl buttons; profoundly he pitied his small image for
all of his discomforts, and advised him to grow out of safety-pins
as fast as possible. He fell into a philosophical mood, spouting
away at Bill, and Bill responded with fists and delicious gurgles
and an imitative sense of investigation. Cameron reflected, with
illumination, upon the amusing sounds a baby makes when the world
is well. They were really having an awfully good time.

Billy was fuzzy and blond, one of those moist, very blue-eyed
babies that women appreciate. Cameron all at once saw why. Warmth
expanded his aching heart, and his arms circled his own mite of
boy. Billy yawned, agreed instantly with Cameron that a yawn from
a baby was funny, and with a chuckle pitched against Cameron, bumped
his nose on a waistcoat button, considered the button solemnly,
with his small mouth stuck out ridiculously, and then snuggled into
the hollow of his father's arms, and, closing his big eyes with a
confidence that made thrills creep over him, the man, and brought
something stinging to his eyes, Bill went to sleep.

After an unmeasured lapse of time, Miss Merritt came for the baby.
"Oh, the lambkin! Ain't he sweet, sir?"

Cameron ached in every joint, but he did not know it.

"Take care how you handle him!" he whispered. "It's awful to be
awakened out of one's first sleep!"

"I know better than to wake a sleepin' baby, believe me," said Miss
Merritt with a touch of spice.

The door closed. Cameron sat stretching his stiff arms and legs
and staring before him, and upon his usually tired and lined face
was the beam of full joy.

Then came dinner, a lonely, silent mockery of a meal. And back the
question came, booming over the soft tinkling of glass and silver.
He realized, with his salad, that four nights out of seven, Nellie
dined like this, alone. His lower lip protruded, and lines of
conscience fell in a curtain on his face.

"Mrs. Cameron hates eatin' 'lone, too," said the maid. "She generally
eats early, so 's t' have Billy in his high chair 'longside. If
he sleeps, she reads a book, sir."

He was alone in the sitting-room with his coffee, and the place had
sunk into fathomless silence. It was only half after eight! He
stuck his head out of the window. Soft flakes touched and soothed
his feverish head. "Damn money!" he whispered suddenly, then stood
back in the room, startled, staring his blasphemy in the face.
He'd go out in the snow, and get rid of himself. This was awful!

Bundled in a greatcoat, collar high, trousers rolled up, he ducked
out of the great marble and iron vestibule into the night. There
was no wind, and the snow was falling softly, steadily. The drive
was deserted, and he made his way across to the walk along the wall.
By the light of the lamp, blurred by the flakes till it looked like
a tall-stemmed thistle-ball, he looked at his watch. No matter
where Nellie had dined, she was a the concert by now, and a great
sigh of relief fluttered the flakes about his mouth.

He turned north, glad of the rise in the ground to walk against.
"By jinks!" he smiled grudgingly, "it's not so bad out here. We
city idiots, we--NEW MEN, with all our motors and subways, we are
forgetting how to prowl."

The world fell of to shadow a little beyond the shore-line, a mere
space of air and flakes. Ice swirled by its way to the sea, for
the tide was going out. He peered; he began to hear all sorts
of fine snow-muffled sounds; and suddenly, away out on the river,
something was going on--boats whistling and signaling, chatting
in their scientific persiflage, out in the dark and cold of the
night. "Lonesome, too!" Cameron laughed, and, boyishly, he tossed
a snow-ball into the space, as if he'd have something to say out
there, too! "I'm soft!" he groaned, clutching his arm. And suddenly
he smiled to think how one of these days he and Bill would come
out here and play together. He looked about, and a sudden pride
filled him. He was actually the only creature enjoying this splendid
snow! He had passed one old gentleman in a fur-lined coat, with
a cap upon his white hair, walking slowly, a white bulldog playing
after him in the scarcely trodden snow.

Cameron turned home, a new and inexplicable glow upon him, cares
dropped away. He marched; he laughed aloud once with a sudden
thought of Bill. "Little corker!" He let himself in, and went
straight to the bedroom to change his shoes. "I must get some
water-tight things to prowl in," he thought, and he whistled a line
of "Tipperary." Blurred in a pleasant fatigue he sat on the edge
of his bed, staring at his wet socks, when the telephone jingled,
and he hurried out to answer.

"Yep, this is Cameron. Oh, hello, old girl! Thought I'd just come
up for a quiet home dinner, you know." A grin like the setting
sun for warmth spread over his face as he listened, as he felt the
tables turning under his wet feet.

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