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Selections from
Chimneysmoke
by
Christopher Morley
[1921]
Illustrated
by
Thomas Fogarty
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- THIS hearth was built for thy delight,
- For thee the logs were sawn,
- For thee the largest chair, at night,
- Is to the chimney drawn.
- For thee, dear lass, the match was lit
- To yield the ruddy blaze--
- May Jack Frost give us joy of it
- For many, many days.
- Christopher Morley

- TO make this little house my very own
- Could not be done by law alone.
- Though covenant and deed convey
- Absolute fee, as lawyers say,
- There are domestic rites beside
- By which this house is sanctified.
- By kindled fire upon the hearth,
- By planted pansies in the garth,
- By food, and by the quiet rest
- Of those brown eyes that I love best,
- And by a friends bright gift of wine,
- I dedicate this house of mine.
- When all but I are soft abed
- I trail about my quiet stead
- A wreath of blue tobacco smoke
- (A charm that evil never broke)
- And bring my ritual to an end
- By giving shelter to a friend.
- This done, O dwelling, you become
- Not just a house, but truly Home!
- Christopher Morley


- IT was the House of Quietness
- To which I came at dusk;
- The garth was lit with roses
- And heavy with their musk.
- The tremulous tall poplar trees
- Stood whispering around,
- The gentle flicker of their plumes
- More quiet than no sound.
- And as I wondered at the door
- What magic might be there,
- The Lady of Sweet Silences
- Came softly down the stair.
- Christopher Morley

- HE is so small he does not know
- The summer sun, the winter snow;
- The spring that ebbs and comes again,
- All this is far beyond his ken.
- A little world he feels and sees:
- His mother's arms, his mother's knees;
- He hides his face against her breast,
- And does not care to learn the rest.
- Christopher Morley

- ONCE we read Tennyson aloud
- In our great fireside chair;
- Between the lines my lips could touch
- Her April-scented hair.
- How very fond I was, to think
- The printed poems fair,
- When close within my arms I held
- A living lyric there!
- Christopher Morley

- DOWN-SLIPPING Time, sweet, swift, and shallow stream,
- Here, like a boulder, lies this afternoon
- Across your eager flow. So you shall stay,
- Deepened and dammed, to let me breathe and be.
- Your troubled fluency, your running gleam
- Shall pause, and circle idly, still and clear:
- The while I lie and search your glassy pool
- Where, gently coiling in their lazy round,
- Unseparable minutes drift and swim,
- Eddy and rise and brim. And I will see
- How many crystal bubbles of slack Time
- The mind can hold and cherish in one Now!
- Now, for one conscious vacancy of sense,
- The stream is gathered in a deepening pond,
- Not a mere moving mirror. Through the sharp
- Correct reflection of the standing scene
- The mind can dip, and cleanse itself with rest,
- And see, slow spinning in the lucid gold,
- Your liquid notes, imperishable Time.
- It cannot be. The runnel slips away:
- The clear smooth downward sluice begins again,
- More brightly slanting for that trembling pause,
- Leaving the sense its conscious vague unease
- As when a sonnet flashes on the mind,
- Trembles and burns an instant, and is gone.
- Christopher Morley

- TRUTH is enough for prose:
- Calmly it goes
- To tell just what it knows.
- For verse, skill will suffice--
- Delicate, nice
- Casting of verbal dice.
- Poetry, men attain
- By subtler pain
- More flagrant in the brain--
- An honesty unfeigned,
- A heart unchained,
- A madness well restrained.
- Christopher Morley

- IT should be yours, if I could build
- The quaint old dwelling I desire,
- With books and pictures bravely filled
- And chairs beside an open fire,
- White-panelled rooms with candles lit--
- I lie awake to think of it!
- A dial for the sunny hours,
- A garden of old-fashioned flowers--
- Say marigolds and lavender
- And mignonette and fever-few,
- And Judas-tree and maidenhair
- And candytuft and thyme and rue--
- All these for you to wander in.
- A Chinese carp (called Mandarin)
- Waving a sluggish silver fin
- Deep in the moat: so tame he comes
- To lip your fingers offering crumbs.
- Tall chimneys, like long listening ears,
- White shutters, ivy green and thick,
- And walls of ruddy Tudor brick
- Grown mellow with the passing years.
- And windows with small leaded panes,
- Broad window-seats for when it rains;
- A big blue bowl of pot pourri
- And--yes, a Spanish chestnut tree
- To coin the autumn's minted gold.
- A summer house for drinking tea--
- All these (just think!) for you and me.
- A staircase of the old black wood
- Cut in the days of Robin Hood,
- And banisters worn smooth as glass
- Down which your hand will lightly pass;
- A piano with pale yellow keys
- For wistful twilight melodies,
- And dusty bottles in a bin--
- All these for you to revel in!
- But when? Ah well, until that time
- We'll habit in this house of rhyme.
- 1912
- Christopher Morley

- WHEN I a householder became
- I had to give my house a name.
- I thought I'd call it "Poplar Trees,"
- Or "Widdershins" or "Velvet Bees,"
- Or "Just Beneath a Star."
- Or "As You Like It," "If You Please,"
- Or "Nicotine" or "Bread and Cheese,"
- "Full Moon" or "Doors Ajar."
- But still I sought some subtle charm,
- Some rune to guard my roof from harm
- And keep the devil far;
- A thought of this, and I was saved!
- I had my letter-heads engraved
- The House Where Brown Eyes Are.
- Christopher Morley

- EARLY in the morning, when the dawn is on the roofs,
- You hear his wheels come rolling, you hear his horses hoofs;
- You hear the bottles clinking, and then he drives away:
- You yawn in bed, turn over, and begin another day!
- The old-time dairy maids are dear to every poet's heart--
- I'd rather be the dairy man and drive a little cart,
- And bustle round the village in the early morning blue,
- And hang my reigns upon a hook, as I've seen Casey do.
- Christopher Morley

- I OFTEN wander on the beach
- Where once, so brown of limb,
- The biting air, the roaring surf
- Summoned me to swim.
- I see my old abundant youth
- Where combers lean and spill,
- And though I taste the foam no more
- Other swimmers will.
- Oh, good exultant strength to meet
- The arching wall of green,
- To break the crystal, swirl, emerge
- Dripping, taut, and clean.
- To climb the moving hilly blue,
- To dive in ecstasy
- And feel the salty chill embrace
- Arm and rib and knee.
- What brave and vanished laughter then
- And tingling thighs to run,
- What warm and comfortable sands
- Dreaming in the sun.
- The crumbling water spreads in snow,
- The surf is hissing still,
- And though I kiss the salt no more,
- Other swimmers will.
- Christopher Morley

- WHEN we on simple rations sup
- How easy is the washing up!
- But heavy feeding complicates
- The task by soiling many plates.
- And though I grant that I have prayed
- That we might find a serving-maid,
- I'd scullion all my days I think,
- To see Her smile across the sink!
- I wash, she wipes. In water hot
- I souse each pan and dish and pot;
- While taffy mutters, purrs, and begs,
- And rubs himself against my legs.
- The man who never in his life
- Has washed the dishes with his wife
- Or polished up the silver plate--
- He still is largely celibate.
- One warning: there is certain ware
- That must be handled with all care:
- The Lord Himself will give you up
- If you should drop a willow cup!
- Christopher Morley


- AS I went by the church to-day
- I heard the organ cry;
- And goodly folk were on their knees,
- But I went striding by.
- My minister hath a roof more vast:
- My aisles are oak-trees high;
- My altar-cloth is on the hills,
- My organ is the sky.
- I see my rood upon the clouds,
- The winds, my chanted choir;
- My crystal windows, heaven-glazed,
- Are stained with sunset fire.
- The stars, the thunder, and the rain,
- White sands and purple seas--
- These are His pulpit and His pew,
- My God of Unbent Knees!
- Christopher Morley

- THE furnace tolls the knell of falling steam,
- The coal supply is virtually done,
- And at this price, indeed it does not seem
- As though we could afford another ton.
- Now fades the glossy, cherished anthracite;
- The radiators lose their temperature:
- How ill avail, on such a frosty night,
- The "short and simple flannels of the poor."
- Though in the icebox, fresh and newly laid,
- The rude forefathers of the omelet sleep,
- No eggs for breakfast till the bill is paid:
- We cannot cook again till coal is cheap.
- Can Morris-chair or papier-mâché bust
- Revivify the falling pressure-gage?
- Chop up the grand piano if you must,
- And burn the East Aurora parrot cage!
- Full many a can of purest kerosene
- The dark unfathomed tanks of Standard Oil
- Shall furnish me, and with their aid I mean
- To bring my morning coffee to a boil.
- Christopher Morley

- WHY is it that the poet tells
- So little of the sense of smell?
- These are the odors I love well:
- The smell of coffee freshly ground;
- Or rich plum pudding, holly crowned;
- Or onions fried and deeply browned.
- The fragrance of a fumy pipe;
- The smell of apples, newly ripe;
- And printer's ink on leaden type.
- Woods by moonlight in September
- Breathe most sweet, and I remember
- Many a smoky camp-fire ember.
- Camphor, turpentine, and tea,
- The balsam of a Christmas tree,
- These are whiffs of gramarye. . .
- A ship smells best of all to me!
- Christopher Morley

- TO use my books all friends are bid:
- My shelves are open for 'em;
- And in each one, As Grolier did,
- I write Et Amicorum.
- All lovely things in truth belong
- To him who best employs them;
- The house, the picture, and the song
- Are his who most enjoys them.
- Perhaps this book holds precious lore,
- And you may best discern it.
- If you appreciate it more
- Than I -- why don't return it!
- Christopher Morley

- THE barren music of a word or phrase,
- The futile arts of syllable and stress,
- He sought. The poetry of common days
- He did not guess.
- The simplest, sweetest rhythms life affords--
- Unselfish love, true effort truly done,
- The tender themes that underlie all words--
- He knew not one.
- The human cadence and the subtle chime
- Of little laughters, home and child and wife,
- He knew not. Artist merely in his rhyme,
- Not in his life.
- Christopher Morley


- THE greatest poem ever known
- Is one all poets have outgrown:
- The poetry, innate, untold,
- Of being only four years old.
- Still young enough to be a part
- Of Nature's great impulsive heart,
- Born comrade of bird, beast, and tree
- And unselfconscious as the bee--
- And yet with lovely reason skilled
- Each day new paradise to build;
- Elate explorer of each sense,
- Without dismay, without pretense!
- In your unstained transparent eyes
- There is no conscience, no surprise:
- Life's queer conundrums you accept,
- Your strange divinity still kept.
- Being, that now absorbs you, all
- Harmonious, unit, integral,
- Will shred into perplexing bits,--
- Oh, contradictions of the wits!
- And Life, that sets all things in rhyme,
- may make you poet, too, in time--
- But there were days, O tender elf,
- When you were Poetry itself!
- Christopher Morley

- Lizette Woodworth Reese)
- MOST tender poet, when the gods confer
- They save your gracile songs a nook apart,
- And bless with Time's untainted lavender
- The ageless April of your singing heart.
- You, in an age unbridled, ne'er declined
- The appointed patience that the Muse decrees,
- Until, deep in the flower of the mind,
- The hovering woods alight, like bridegroom bees.
- By casual praise or casual blame unstirred
- The placid gods grant gifts where they belong:
- To you, who understand, the perfect word,
- The recompensed necessities of song.
- Christopher Morley

- WHEN withered leaves are lost in flame
- Their eddying gosts, a thin blue haze,
- Blow through the thickets whence they came
- On amberlucent autumn days.
- The cool green woodland heart receives
- Their dim, dissolving, phantom breath;
- In young hereditary leaves
- They see their happy life-in-death.
- My minutes perish as they glow--
- Time burns my crazy bonfire through;
- But ghosts of blackened hours still blow,
- Eternal Beauty, back to you!
- Christopher Morley

- THESE are the folios of April,
- All the library of spring,
- Missals gilt and rubricated
- With the frost's illumining.
- Ruthless, we destroy these treasures,
- Set the torch with hand profane--
- Gone, like Alexandrian vellums,
- Like the books of burnt Louvain!
- Yet these classics are immortal:
- O collectors, have no fear,
- For the publisher will issue
- New editions every year.
- Christopher Morley

- "He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune"--BACON
- AYE Fortune, thou hast hostage of my best!
- I, that was once so heedless of thy frown,
- Have armed thee cap-à-pie to strike me down,
- Have given thee blades to hold against my breast.
- My virtue, that was once all self-possessed,
- Is parceled out in little hands, and brown
- Bright eyes, and in a sleeping baby's gown:
- To threaten these will put me to the test.
- Sure, since there are these pitiful poor chinks
- Upon the makeshift armor of my heart,
- For thee no honor lies in such a fight!
- And thou wouldst shame to vanquish one, me-thinks,
- Who came awake with such a painful start
- To hear the coughing of a child at night.
- Christopher Morley


- Night after night goes by: and clocks still chime
- And stars are changing pattrns in the dark
- And watches tick, and over-puissant Time
- Benumbs the eager brain. The dogs that bark,
- The trains that roar and rattle in the night,
- The very cats that prowl, all quiet find
- And leave the darkness empty, silent quite:
- Sleep comes to chloroform the fretting mind.
- So all things end: and what is left at last?
- Some scribbled sonnets tossed upon the floor,
- A memory of easy days gone past,
- A run-down watch, a pipe, some clothes we wore--
- And in the darkened room I lean to know
- How her dreamless breath doth pause and flow.
- Christopher Morley

- AH very sweet! If news should come to you
- Some afternoon while waiting for our eve,
- That the great Manager had made me leave
- To travel on some territory new;
- And that, whatever homeward winds there blew,
- I could not touch your hand again, nor heave
- The logs upon our hearth and bid you weave
- Some wistful tale before the flames that grew. . .
- Then, when the sudden tears had ceased to blind
- Your pansied eyes, I wonder if you could
- Remember rightly, and forget aright?
- Remember just your lad, uncouthly good,
- Forgetting what he failed in spleen or spite?
- Could you remember him as always kind?
- Christopher Morley

- I READ in our old journals of the days
- When our first love was April-sweet and new,
- How fair it blossomed and deep-rooted grew
- Despite the adverse time; and our amaze
- At moon and stars and beauty beyond praise
- That burgeoned all about us: gold and blue
- The heaven arched us in, and all we knew
- Was gentleness. We walked on happy ways.
- They said by now the path would be more steep,
- the sunsets paler and less mild the air;
- Rightly we heeded not; it was not true.
- We will not tell the secret--let it keep.
- I know not how I thought those days so fair
- These being so much fairer, spent with you.
- Christopher Morley

- WHEN we were parted, sweet, and darkness came,
- I used to strike a match, and hold the flame
- Before your picture and would breathless mark
- The answering glimmer of the tiny spark
- That brought to life the magic of your eyes,
- Their wistful tenderness, their glad surprise.
- Holding that mimic torch before your shrine
- I used to light your eyes and make them mine;
- Watch them like stars set in a lonely sky,
- Whisper my heart out, yearning for reply;
- Summon your lips from far across the sea
- Bidding them live a twilight hour with me.
- Then, when the match was shrivelled into gloom,
- Lo--you were with me in the darkened room.
- Christopher Morley

- COLIN, worshipping some frail,
- By self-deception sways her:
- Calls himself unworthy male,
- Hardly even fit to praise her.
- But this tactic insincere
- In the upshot greatly grieves him
- When he finds the lovely dear
- Quite implicitly believes him.
- Christopher Morley

- AS I sat, to sift my dreaming
- To the meet and needed word,
- Came a merry Interruption
- With insistence to be heard.
- Smiling stood a maid beside me,
- Half alluring and half shy;
- Soft the white hint of her bosom--
- Escapade was in her eye.
- "I must not be so invaded,"
- (IN anger then I cried)--
- "Can't you see that I am busy?
- Tempting creature, stay outside!
- "Pearly rascal, I am writing:
- I am now composing verse--
- Fie on antic invitation:
- Wanton, vanish--fly--disperse!
- "Baggage, in my godlike moment
- What have I to do with thee?"
- And she laughed as she departed--
- "I am Poetry," said she.
- Christopher Morley

- I OFTEN pass a gracious tree
- Whose name I can't identify,
- But still I bow, in courtesy
- It waves a bough, in kind reply.
- I do not know your name, O tree
- (Are you a hemlock or a pine?)
- But why should that embarrass me?
- Quite probably you don't know mine.
- Christopher Morley

- I'M glad our house is a little house,
- Not too tall nor too wide:
- I'm glad the hovering butterflies
- Feel free to come inside.
- Our little house is a friendly house.
- It is not shy or vain;
- It gossips with the talking trees,
- And makes friends with the rain.
- And quick leaves cast a shimmer of green
- Against our whited walls,
- And in the phlox, the courtious bees
- Are paying duty calls.
- Christopher Morley

- AT six--long ere the wintry dawn--
- There sounded through the silent hall
- To where I lay, with blankets drawn
- Above my ears, a plaintive call.
- The Urchin, in the eagerness
- Of three years old, could not refrain;
- Awake, he straightway yearned to dress
- And frolic with his clockwork train.
- I heard him with a sullen shock.
- His sister, by her usual plan,
- Had piped us aft at 3 o'clock--
- I vowed to quench the little man.
- I leaned above him, somewhat stern,
- And spoke, I fear, with emphasis--
- Ah, how much better, parents learn,
- To seal one's censure with a kiss!
- Again the house was dark and still,
- Again I lay in slumber's snare,
- When down the hall I heard a trill,
- A tiny, tinkling, tuneful air--
- His music-box! His best-loved toy,
- His crib companion every night;
- And now he turned to it for joy
- While waiting for the lagging light.
- How clear, and how absurdly sad
- Those tingling pricks of sound unrolled;
- They chirped and quavered, as the lad
- His lonely little heart consoled.
- Columbia, the Ocean's Gem--
- (Its only tune) shrilled sweet and faint.
- He cranked the chimes, admiring them,
- In vigil gay, without complaint.
- The treble music piped and stirred,
- The leaping air that was his bliss;
- And, as I most contritely heard,
- I thanked the all-unconscious Swiss!
- The needled jets of melody
- Rang slowlier and died away--
- The Urchin slept; and it was I
- Who lay and waited for the day.
- Christopher Morley

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