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esp 003
 Contents

Title Page

PART ONE: Before/Life

I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX
X
XI
XII
XIII
XIV
XV
XVI
XVII
XVIII
XIX
XX
XXI
XXII
XXIII
XXIV
XXV
XXVI
XXVII
XXVIII
XXIX
XXX
XXXI
XXXII
XXXIII
XXXIV
XXXV

PART TWO: After/Life

XXXVI
XXXVII
XXXVIII
XXXIX
XL
XLI
XLII
XLIII
XLIV
XLV
XLVI
XLVII
XLVIII
XLIX
L
LI
LII
LIII
LIV
LV
LVI
LVII
LVIII
LIX
LX
LXI
LXII
LXIII
LXIV
LXV

PART THREE: Future/Life

LXVI
LXVII
LXVIII
LXIX
LXX

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Copyright
PART ONE:

Before/Life
I
Once or twice in the pages that follow I step back for a moment
and think about the implications of what I am doing.
II
Notes for a narration by the author/for a BBC 6Music radio
retrospective of Joy Division broadcast in May 2005 – the
25th anniversary of Ian Curtis’ death.

It has taken 25 years for the story of Joy Division to travel from the
dark underground into the commercial light. 25 years for Joy
Division to go from rumour, from obscurity, from the ordinary
streets where they lived, to being officially named as one of the
greatest rock groups of all time – they were influenced by the very
best things to be influenced by – the Stooges, the Velvets, Roxy –
and they have influenced all the very best things since – Depeche,
U2, Nirvana, Radiohead – and no serious modern group can
escape their shadow.

No group that wants to do something original and special using

guitars, bass, drums, voice and studio can avoid the sound and
vision, the sound and fury, the sound and beauty, the sound and
space, the sound and time, the sound and delay, the sound and
Manchester of Joy Division.

It was 25 years ago that the frantic story of Joy Division came
crashing to a shocking stop, and 25 years since the story slowly
began. A group, two years old, that was on the go, full of go,
forward, always moving into the future, broke up into pieces.
Going, going, gone. Eventually, compilations and repackagings
and anniversaries and films and memories and books and the
enduring strength of their songs would put these pieces back
together again. Joy Division have been put back together by time,
and something that at the time seemed wasted and wrecked is
now remembered with words like these …

25 years ago the Joy Division singer Ian Curtis committed

suicide two months shy of his 24th birthday.
 29 years ago he had four years to live.

Around the time of Ian’s twentieth birthday, in July 1976, Curtis

saw the Sex Pistols play the Lesser Free Trade Hall in
Manchester, not then aware of the presence of his future
colleagues Bernard Sumner and Peter Hook. The two shows the
Pistols played in Manchester that summer are the beginning of the
Manchester music life that includes the Fall, Buzzcocks,
Magazine, A Certain Ratio, the Smiths, Stone Roses, Oasis,
Doves, and the Pistols shows were the beginning of Joy Division.
The Pistols inspired Manchester music fans to realise that they
could make music as well as listen to it. They could be musicians.

In a broken down, bleak and spacious Manchester taunted by

the ghosts of the Industrial Revolution and hemmed in by hills,
moors and dull grey clouds, Sumner and Hook formed a group
with Curtis and drummer Steve Brotherdale that for a brief moment
were the Stiff Kittens, and were then Warsaw, named after a
Bowie track from Low, ‘Warszawa’. Their first gig was in May
1977, supporting the Manchester Buzzcocks and the Newcastle
Penetration. They sounded more like a slow northern Damned
than cosmic rearrangers of rock dynamics, more like a group that
couldn’t really play than a group who might one day match or even
reach further than Bowie’s Low.

Brotherdale left in August, to be replaced by Stephen Morris,

who, like Curtis, was from Macclesfield. Warsaw produced an
undernourished homemade EP, An Ideal for Living, less the
Damned than before but not yet in any way damned. They
changed their name because of a London punk group called
Warsaw Pakt. They became Joy Division, a name they found in an
obscure book about the German concentration camps, The House
of Dolls, written by an inmate, Ka-Tzetnik, prisoner number
135633. The ‘joy division’ was a term used to describe units where
female inmates were forced to prostitute themselves for Nazi
guards.
 A group with a name like that had to make music of sensitive,
complex power and rare insight to avoid being condemned for
indulgent frivolity, for messing around with things beyond their
understanding.

By the time they first appeared as Joy Division, at the Pips club
on January 25th 1978, around the time Rotten left the Sex Pistols,
strangely, they were becoming stranger, and darker, and wilder,
and beginning to sound like a group called Joy Division. Space
and doubt were creeping into their music – blocky riff music was
transforming into something sly, nebulous and alien.

They were ambitious. They took part in a Battle of the Bands

record company competition in April at the Rafters club – a sort of
Punk Idol display by fifteen local bands desperate to get the
attention of the London label Stiff. It was their third show with their
new name. Joy Division went on last, way after midnight, worked
up into a frenzy by the possibility that they might not get a slot, and
a fierce desire to impress that shot straight into the heart of their
music. Local television celebrity Tony Wilson instantly saw
something – in their eyes, limbs and rhythms – and was further
intrigued, even delighted, when Curtis insulted him for not putting
Joy Division on his Granada TV show. Also around at the time –
local promoter turned record producer Martin Hannett and the
Rafters resident disc jockey Rob Gretton, who had managed crude
Wythenshawe punk popsters Slaughter and the Dogs.

Their anger was not that of banal punks lobbing scowls at the
everyday targets of frustration, but more mysterious, less domestic
– rage aimed at time, history and the gods, aimed at the self, and
fate. Hook, Morris and Sumner all played as if they were the lead
instrument, and Curtis’ voice sometimes drifted behind the sound.
But he was discreetly dominant, truly the voice, the mind, the body
of the band. Slowly, he started to move onstage, slowly, he started
to move faster, slowly, he turned into a performer possessed,
flailing across the turbulent rhythms as if he was physically
representing the wired state of his imagination.

They worked with self-sustaining determination during 1978,

and gained strength and self-belief. With anti-South philanthropic
purpose, Tony Wilson and friend actor Alan Erasmus had
launched a local club dedicated to supporting and promoting local
talent, and the first night of their Factory Club on June 9th 1978
featured Joy Division, beginning to sound like they’d slipped
through the doors of perception, into a wonderland where
Manchester could be the charged centre of the universe, yet
completely adrift from it.

Local design student Peter Saville produced an eye-catching

poster for the show even though he delivered it after the concert
was over. The poster for the Factory show was FAC 1 – the very
start of Factory Records, the first thought, which would lead to
another thought, and so on, until there were so many thoughts
they needed to be numbered.

Mr Television Tony Wilson issued his invitation, and Joy

Division appeared on Granada Reports, the Northwest six o’clock
news show, performing ‘Shadowplay’ – a bare set, the intense
group paraded on podiums like a downbeat sixties pop group,
moody shots of the city centre as a backdrop, as if Manchester
was located on the dark side of the moon.

Wilson and Erasmus turned the Factory club into the Factory
record label. They would be joined by Gretton, who backed into
managing the group, and who then protected them with his life,
Hannett, who as Martin Zero had produced Buzzcocks’ punk
ground zero single Spiral Scratch, and enigmatic imagineer
Saville. The name Factory was as much out of the Lancashire
mills, the local industrial past, as it was a knowing nod to Warhol’s
Manhattan community of freaks and dreamers. Also, when most
factories in the area had closed down, here was one that was
opening. Eventually, as the result of various fun and games, and
associated heartache and decision making, the label would have a
catalogue of over 400 items, some of which were musical, some of
which were ideas, some of which were mere fancies and failed
experiments, and some of which were to do with the teeth, hair
and travel arrangements of the directors. There was also a
nightclub, because Factory understood that the quality of a city’s
nightlife can have a strange effect on mundane daily existence.
Eventually, largely because of this nightclub, which began a little
sadly and then ended up a little madly, the stylings, humour and
pretensions of the label would influence the city itself, somehow
infecting its very atmosphere and appearance.

The first Factory signing was the chamber-punk Durutti

Column, remembering music they’d heard in their dreams, or
heard whispering in from the moors. Factory decided to release a
sampler of northern talents, Joy Division amongst them. The group
went into the studio with Martin Hannett to record ‘Digital’ and
‘Glass’ – group had found their producer, producer his group, and
Joy Division’s primitive outlines of ideas about how to make music
that incarnated their sense of isolation, intensity and insolence
were transformed into grand sonic sculptures by someone who
made sense of existence through the shaping, scraping and taping
of sound. The Factory Sampler, a double seven-inch single,
featuring ‘Glass’ and ‘Digital’, was smartly packaged as an art
object, as if it was a piece of glass, a shiny object of desire that set
the template for the anonymous, glamorous and mischievous
Factory artwork. The catalogue number – FAC 2.

On December 27th 1978, just about a year old, Joy Division

played their first show in London, at the Hope and Anchor. 30
people paid to get in.

The first NME of 1979, a look forward to acts likely to break

through that year, and Ian Curtis was on the cover, photographed
on a Saturday when Manchester was covered in snow. He looked
like he belonged there, like there would be many more occasions
when he would grace the cover of music magazines. He looked
like there was something on his mind. He looked like he figured if
you look long enough at anything it will become extremely
interesting. He didn’t particularly look like he’d booked a trip to the
unfathomable abyss. Perhaps he was just wondering about the
strangeness of snow.
Meanwhile, in Ian’s real life, which was accelerating as crazily as
his singing dancing alternative life, he had been diagnosed with
epilepsy. He was prescribed strong medication. Strobe lights could
trigger a fit. The diagnosis and his sense of always being on the
edge of control, of breaking down, seizing up, hitting the ceiling
and falling through the floor, would feed directly into the
dynamically disjointed ‘She’s Lost Control’, one of the classic
songs that were now bursting, seeping, leaping, thrusting up from
inside his mind, and inside the group, which were becoming one
and the same thing. The fact that there was a positive response to
what they were doing intensified Division’s self-motivating urgency.

Early 1979 sees their first session for John Peel, a major sign
that they were moving outside Manchester, into an outside world
which had influenced them, and which they were to influence so
much in return, even as they never in the end really left
Manchester.

In April 1979, after a false start with an RCA album, angry at

corny overdubs that softened and sweetened their music, they
started recording tracks with Martin Hannett for their debut album.
Unknown Pleasures was released in June 1979 – the sound and
clatter of a young group from a bruised and battered Manchester
escaping their disconnected surroundings and their fractured lives
through sound and energy, the sound and fiction of a punk group
who wanted to experiment with sound and feeling, the sound and
resolution of four idealists produced by a north-western Phil
Spector, a post-punk George Martin, a Pennine Eno. He took the
zipped, razored riffs of Barney, the plunging, plangent trebled bass
of Hooky, the lost, lonely voice and defiant words of Ian Curtis, and
gave each contributor all the room they needed – they were in
their own zone, miles away from each other, and yet on top of
each other. Most of all, he embellished the popping, capricious
drums of Stephen, pulled the idea of rock rhythm apart, and then
nailed it back together using stoned time and dream space. As he
said, he made the drums go bang, but not in an obvious way. This
was a subtle, extreme rerouting of the sonic possibilities of rock.
Hannett added and removed space, dropped in random rumours
of sound, amplified emptiness, created a hollowed out impression
of volume and violence. He put the bass and drums way into the
future, and the guitar somewhere odd, solemn and disturbing.
Peter Saville designed an audacious, opulently minimal sleeve
that said little about who, what, where, when, why, but which said,
in an unsaid, unfussy, unconventional sort of way, everything
about the music and the makers, who were clearly something of a
mystery, sending traumatised signals back from a spaced-out
place where nothing was as it seems and Manchester was
disappearing into the darkness.

‘Transmission’ was recorded during the April Unknown

Pleasures session, but Joy Division were the kind of group and
Factory the kind of label not to spoil the flow and integrity of an
album by putting on a track that didn’t quite belong – it was
released as a single in July, and although it sounded like a hit, and
would now be heard everywhere instantly, back then it was the
kind of visceral exploration of blissful possibilities that stayed a
certain secret for the NME/John Peel community.

Major labels started calling, but the group loved the madcap
Factory, and Factory loved them, and together they made up
things as they went along, not looking towards commercial
success, but their own version of succeeding, through the power
of their music, and the way it changed in response to their artistic
needs, not industry demands imposed from the outside. Another
exploratory Peel session in November 1979 further established
how Joy Division along with Factory were inventing many of the
ways independent music would make itself known.

In July 1979, they made another appearance on Tony Wilson’s

Granada channel, performing ‘She’s Lost Control’. This was the
northern equivalent of the Pistols appearing on Grundy – no
swearing, no mock controversy, just a focussed, intense
presentation. They didn’t appear many times on television, but
when they did, they always commanded attention. Later that year,
on September 1st, they recorded ‘She’s Lost Control’ and
Transmission’ for BBC2’s self-consciously worthy youth
programme Something Else. It was broadcast two weeks later.
The Jam are on the same show, but it’s Joy Division who capture
the imagination and make history with an incandescent
performance that would be studied for years. A dazzling, driven
Curtis, in glamorous glistening greys, with everyday combed hair,
looks severely wiped out, in a kind of agony, and yet ready to
storm the barricades of eternity. When the music picks up pace,
and Curtis starts to move, staring right through time, flinging his
body against the space around him, it’s as though he’s challenging
the whole world to pay attention, to dare consider that what he’s
doing, what he’s singing about, is in any way ordinary.

After each live show during 1979, their cult status increased.
Ian Curtis had mutated into an explosive performer who was
dragging his life, his woes, his responsibilities, his fears and
anxieties into the songs and then right onto a stage. The young
man who dreamt of being a rock star was now launching himself
into stardom by scrupulously revealing his nightmares. The
seriousness of what he was doing, using music to escape a life
that he was using music to describe, overflowed into live shows
that were becoming more and more manic. That his dancing now
often teetered into seizures that seemed like mere extensions to
the demented choreography added to the danger and excitement
of a Joy Division show. A Joy Division song, a live performance,
an Ian Curtis display of concentrated desperation was now
creating expectations in their followers, it was creating more and
more momentum which the group seemed compelled to maintain,
at whatever cost. There was no release of tension – Curtis
explored all the horror again and again, reliving his torment for
those who just thought it was spectacular, demonic show
business. There was no stopping Joy Division, and Ian Curtis. It
seemed that nothing could stop them.

A combination of a conscientious, grafting work ethic, a basic

rock and roll need to enjoy and exploit the attention that was
coming their way, and perhaps the bullying of Factory, kept them
writing and touring. In late ’79, they supported a now chart-topping
Buzzcocks on a major UK tour. They recorded ‘Atmosphere’. In
January, they were touring Europe. In March they started
recording their second album, plus ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’.

At home Ian had a wife and a young baby. At work, in the heat
of the Factory, the heat Factory was stoking up led by the greedy,
myth-making Baron Manchester Tony Wilson, Curtis was
becoming an avant-garde rock god with, he felt, a reputation to
uphold as someone who could drive himself to the limits, and then
beyond, and be composed enough to report back on the dilemmas
and demons he was facing. At work, the work of an apprentice pop
star, he had a girlfriend, artier, it seemed, and more provocative
than what he could find in a Manchester he was leaving behind, or
dismissing using his imagination. He was being torn apart, by love,
work, stress, songs, and the first distorted signs of a fame that
would in the end only come after he had died.

He sang ‘Atmosphere’ as if he felt that, despite the pain, he

was going to live forever.

He sang ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’ as if he knew the exact

moment when he was going to die.
 He sang the songs on Closer as if he knew that he was going
to die sooner, one way or another, rather than later – even if it was
just the death of Ian Curtis the family man, or Ian Curtis the rock
singer, one cancelling the other out, not actually Ian Curtis the
death of the man.

In March 1980, a French label, Sordide Sentimental, released

1,578 numbered copies of ‘Atmosphere’, backed with ‘Dead Souls’
– ‘Atmosphere’ was Hannett’s finest, most deranged yet
smoothest moment, as if primetime Spector had produced a
Martian Doors, as if Kafka had written a song for Sinatra. It
typically came as an extravagant gesture of opposition to the rock-
star cult of personality, an opaque, epic representation of intimacy
packaged in a gothic gatefold sleeve complete with an essay that
quite naturally locked Joy Division into a history of the fantastic
along with the Marquis De Sade. Ian had copy number two.

‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’ was a song about the death of love,
ghosted by a shadowy love of death, delivered as if it was a near-
cheerful pop tune.

Closer was not written or titled to be the majestic close of

everything, it just looked and sounded like it was. At the time of
recording, all the anguish that Ian was articulating, that the band
was supplying the volatile soundtrack to, that Hannett was
technologically anchoring, just seemed what was happening at
that moment. It was a passing phase: it was a storm they were
passing through. When they got to the third album, they
presumed, they thought, that the pressure, the emotional and
social climate, would all be somewhere else. But no one was really
thinking. Everything and everyone was moving too fast. Nothing
and no one was moving as fast as Curtis towards a destination he
had encoded into his songs.

‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’ does not appear on Closer, just as

‘Transmission’ did not appear on Unknown Pleasures.
 In hindsight Closer was a series of blatant suicide notes to a
number of people in Ian’s immediate vicinity, who at the time
simply looked upon the songs as immensely powerful
representations of emotional collapse that had appalling, yet
liberating clarity – not actually an emotional collapse.
The guitars, never as responsible for the melody as the voice,
the bass, the drums, or even Hannett’s disquieting way with
ambient space and incidental noise, were slipping even further into
the background, anticipating a Joy Division that never happened,
one that might be more Can and Kraftwerk than Iggy and Reed.
The drums that previously seemed to follow or provoke the
whirling limbs of Ian’s dancing now seemed to slip into the spaces
between order and chaos.

On April 2nd, 3rd and 4th 1980, Joy Division played four
concerts in three days, including a support for the Stranglers
during which Curtis smashed into the drum kit. April 1980 was
torrid for Ian – more illness, more stress, more fits, a fumbling
suicide attempt that forced Tony Wilson to consider guest
replacements for Ian in the group while he recovered.

April the 8th, a concert in Bury turns into a riot, as if symbolise

to Curtis a world that was disintegrating, a life that was over.
On May 2nd 1980 Joy Division played their last ever show, in
Birmingham, in High Hall at the University. The last song they
played was ‘Digital’. Joy Division shows often had the speed and
fury, and drama and tension, of a conclusion to something, the last
time anything so intense could be summoned up for the sake of a
night’s entertainment. This one was no different, except not only
did it seem like their last concert, it really was their last concert.
Joy Division had taken just over two years, less than a thousand
days, to leap to this conclusion.

The tour that would have followed the summer hit that ‘Love
Will Tear Us Apart’ became never happened – jingling, but mostly
jangling, in the charts, the song sounded weirdly bright, if a little
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
Flashing toward the goal in full career!
The thrice-immortal Twins the chase abreast,
Cheering the race but keeping out of range
Of Ursa’s long, lean paws where his huge frame
Looms in the Polar Circle!

Farther south
The Lion’s crouching form, with gleaming eyes
And shadowy mouth!

The Plowman of the skies,

Proud of Arcturus’ fame!

And Hercules
Setting his giant heel upon the fang
Of the unwieldy Dragon; while beyond
The Serpent’s Crown makes mockery of the deed!

Far over by a handful of degrees

Imperial Vega rides the horizon,
Harped on by Lyra, as when morning sang
The genesis of systems God-decreed.

Already shines afar the Northern Cross

Where else were only dreariness and dark,
Like flaming symbol of a holy Cause
Which bore its ensign up the Winter arc
And more divinely glowed with sacred fire
Than the tiaraed Lady of the Chair
With dazzling looks, or than her daughter whom
Impetuous Perseus, thinking her so fair,
Delivered by the right of passion from
The Beast with jaws of grossness open wide.

Nor would I miss the Eagle, argus-eyed

And swift on wings of night.

What! Call this Night

 What! Call this Night,
With thousand thousand suns in timeless space
So vast that distance gives no parallax
And centuries untold would pass ere light
From the remotest wanderer could burn!

So vast yon fires are a hundred-fold

More luminous than ours to them in turn,
And it in lost direction would dissolve
From Earth’s own lode-star here yclept the Pole!

So vast that hosts so numberless revolve

In unison as no assembled whole
Of man’s most perfect mechanism moves,
Yet by the which he boasts perpetual noon
As though the elements he late improves
And plays them in a more triumphant tune.

What! Call this Night and our small dial Day

Because by it we see ourselves and then
As mere automatons! Such is the way
Of over-conscious men; why, even I
An hour since called light a flickering lamp,
Philosophy the palimpsest of pedants,
The universe a papier-mache script,
While on it egotism’s ink was still too damp
And speculation dript.

But as I mount the Great Highway of Pearl

Which turns to diamonds where its steeds strike hoof
And chariot-wheels o’er the arena whirl
Until the course is flashing flint and fire—
How my soul thrills with this real vision of
The truth no lips can utter—with desire
To feel, not name, the Maker!

Night is Day
T hi h th’ di l h d bli d d
To eyes which earth’s diurnal sun had blinded
But now see glory, majesty, design,
Love eternal-minded, Will divine,
Swinging out censers, filling space with throne-rooms,
Ordering the times of destiny,
Making music and revealing purpose
Perfect but unthinkable, yet in man
Tuning a chord of nature in response
To fugitive notes of a melodious plan,

To stray scintillas of a Master-spell,

That we might have sufficient just of sense
To throb with feeling of theophany,
Just awe enough of the Ineffable
Out of our pinpoint nothingness to cry

“What is man that Thou art mindful of him?

And what is he that he should give a Name
Which we with lips vainglorious can laud,
A shape of Person to the Great I am
Before we deign to worship Him as God?”
PAUPACK
Whither waters, gently flowing
In thy rocky channel-race,
Yet anon more noisy growing
O’er the stones which stay thy pace—
Gentle waters, whither going?

Laughing louder as they hurried,

Making music as they ran,
Deeper still the rock they furrowed
And a stolen run began
Half in cliffs and chasms buried.

Through the narrows flung they churning,

Leaped they in a mad cascade
And a bedded boulder spurning
They a misty iris made,
Spray to fitful spectrum turning.

Wildling waters thus romancing

Through the gorge in joy’s career,
Wooded witchery enhancing,
Paupack picturesque and dear,
Haste thee onward ever dancing!

Let thy pilgrimage and laughter

Quicken an Algonquin vein
Till the lure I follow after
Flushes every sense again
Like the freshet of the water;

Till, O Paupack, each erosion

Of my nature is at flood
With a primitive emotion,
With an impulse of the blood,
Singing on towards the ocean!
FIRESIDE
 MOTHER

Only one link is to us all

A never-failing bond,
Only one thought of time’s recall
Makes all the world respond.
Dear ties there are that knit us close
As parent, friend or brother;
But God a universal chose
In the dear name of “Mother!”

Only one face no stranger is

Sometime at every side,
Only one love whose holy kiss
To few has been denied;
And whether we it treasure up
Or its affection smother,
Yet still the world’s communion-cup
Is the dear name of “Mother!”

Only one touch of nature makes

Us feel alike at best,
Only one gift for our sakes
Outbalances the rest;
And whether good or evil, we
Are human to each other
When our most sacred memory
Is the dear name of “Mother!”
CHATTER B OX
Miss Chatterbox, come here and tell
Me all about the fairies’ spell
So new to you but strange to me
Till you revive its mystery!
I, too, delight in Summer bowers
But you bewitch the birds and flowers;
I, too, rejoice in sunny nooks
But you make music of the brooks!

Miss Chatterbox, the secret share

Of all the magic of the air!
How comes the woodland’s passing breeze
To be the whisper of the trees?
How come the echoes through their screen
To be the pranks of elves unseen?—
The bushy tails and beadlike eyes
The wizard and the kewpie spies?

Miss Chatterbox, the riddle read

Of yonder fence-side hearts that bleed,
Of yonder riot in the field
Where buttercups to daisies yield;
Where drowsy sprites sip clover-sweets
And bobolink with Cupid meets;
Where brownies over on the knoll
The puff-balls of the pasture roll.

Miss Chatterbox, how happens it

That you in all this witchcraft fit;
That in your feet the fairies dance
And from your eyes the sun-sprites glance;
That in your curls are elfin kinks
And in your cheek a cupid winks;
The wood-nymphs clap their hands with thine
And thou art nature’s countersign?
L ITTL E STOC KING
Cunningly, patiently I knit you,
Little stocking,
Counting the stitches the while;
Lovingly in thought I fit you
While rocking
Back and forth, back and forth, with a smile,
On the baby-feet I kiss
Or in slumber absent miss,
Dreams flocking, little stocking,
Like this.

Skilfully, wistfully I weave you,

Interlocking
The strands in and out and around;
Tenderly in mind I leave you,
Little stocking,
As the woolen thread’s unwound,
And I think of baby feet
You will cover when complete,
Half-mocking, little stocking,
So sweet.

Artfully I toe and heel you,

Little stocking,
Clicking the needle ends;
Fondly I fashion and feel you,
Heart a-talking

As the tapering fabric spends;

Will the baby-feet be true
To the dreams I wove in you?
Little stocking, little stocking,
Adieu!
EL FIN FAC ES
Round me gather Rosycheeks,
Clean and fresh as peaches,
Smiling daughters of the Greeks,
Golden-tongued with speeches.

“Papa, tell your little girls

All about the fairies!”
Bless my soul! they all had curls
And Cupid-lips like cherries.

Yes, indeed, and starry eyes

And merry little dimples
Something like a sly surprise
Hid in cunning wimples.

Yes, and twinkling baby-feet

Dancing midst the flowers,
Gathering the honey sweet
Through the morning hours.

But at twilight is the time

Each becomes a brownie,
Murmuring a sleepy rhyme,
Growing soft and downy

Till—say, I declare there springs

Up from either shoulder
Fluffy little angel-wings
That at first enfold her,—

Then I have to rub my eyes

All alert and scarey,
For right out the window flies
Every single fairy

And I’m left there all alone,

P i i th
Peering in the corners.

Little elfin-faces gone

Leave behind them mourners.
 SWEET ’ STEEN

Little outgrown pinafore

Hanging there behind the door,
Seldom seen,
Sprigged all over full of buds
Like the yesterdays whose suds
Only partly washed you out—
What d’you mean
By reviving such a time
Like a phantom put to rout
Till it runs to rue and rhyme?

Ah, ’tis sad to think of it—

Missy that you used to fit
Till between
Top and bottom was a glance,
Now is wearing styles of France;
For alas, she’s grown to be
Sweet sixteen,
With young ladyship’s conceit
And its sprouting vanity—
Sixteen, pinafore, and sweet!
 B OY

Boy, thou art the work of ages,

Disporting by creation’s glades and streams—
Laughing at the sages
And filling all the pages
Of time eternal with thy hopes and dreams!

Boy, thou art the work of nature,

Commingling of earth and air and fire—
In consciousness and feature
A juvenescent creature
With active mind and limbs that never tire.

Boy, thou art the work of gladness

And meant to fill the world with lusty shout,
With laughter, not with sadness,
With goodness, not with badness,
With eager confidence and not with doubt!

Boy, thou art the work of Heaven,

A thought to give the world a bonnie heir—
A living joyous leaven,
A spirit nobly driven
To try the future and divinely dare!
 A CH IL D’ S L IF TED C RO SS

How are we taught by childhood’s simple plea

Our greatest need and poor deformity
When such a child each vesper hour could pray,
“Lord, make me well and take my cross away!

“That I may share in joy and love return,

That I may live to labor and to learn
And that to-morrow may redeem to-day,
Lord, make me well and take my cross away!”

The help came down not as the cry went up,

Not as the thirst the giving of the cup;
Poor little one, if only we could say
God made him well and took his cross away!

’Tis thus we bring our own distorting grief

To our beloved Physician for relief;
And as our burden at thy feet we lay,
Lord, say ’tis well and take our cross away!

Thus too we bring our sin-misshapen soul

To our great Healer, who can make us whole,
And there beside His cross, not ours, we pray,
“Lord, make me well and take my sins away!”

Ah, time may hold surcease from pain and care;

Who knows what is the answering of prayer
Or why the Potter breaks the faulty clay?
Lord, make us beautiful in Thine own way!
 TH E B OY MIL L IO NAIR E

Boy, I’m worth a hundred million

And I’m sixty seasons old,
But you’re worth about a billion
In another kind of gold!
I’ve the money, you’ve the treasure,
You’ve the future, I’ve the past,
I’ve the power, you’ve the pleasure,
Mine is fleeting, yours will last.

When you whistle through the clover,

Capturing the bumble-bee,
When the brook is running over
And the trout-line craftily
Feels the eddy—who can offer
You a kingdom more divine?
I’ve an overflowing coffer
But would trade it all for thine.
 A L UL LAB Y

Little birdie, fold thy wings,

Snuggle in thy nest;
While the wind thy cradle swings,
Baby-birdie, rest!
Oh, so wee and warm and near
To thy mamma’s breast!
Oh, so free from harm and fear!
Go to rest, go to rest!

Little flower, hide thy face,

For ’tis eventide!
In the sleepy night’s embrace,
Little flower, hide!
Oh, so wee and fair and still
On thy mamma’s breast!
Oh, so free from care and ill!
Be at rest, be at rest!

Little baby, close thine eyes;

Fairies come for thee
From the land of lullabys,
Where my baby’ll be
Oh, so blissful while she sleeps
On her mamma’s breast!
And I kiss her smiling lips;
She’s at rest, she’s at rest!
 THE LAST SONG

Just one more little song, mother,

Before I go to sleep;
For thou hast often hushed my heart
To slumber soft and deep.
Before ’tis dark I long, mother,
For thy dear voice, which seems
To make thy gentle face a part
Of childhood’s golden dreams.

Just one more little song, mother,

Before I sink to rest;
For thou hast often stilled my fears
Upon thy tender breast.
Thy love so great was strong, mother,
With childhood’s safe repose
On lips that kissed away its tears,
In arms that held it close.

Just one more little song, mother,

Before I dream of skies
Where stars and flowers smile and shine
And angel-harps surprise.
But not in Heaven’s throng, mother,
Is there a dearer face,
A sweeter song or soul than thine
The Gloryland to grace.
 YO UTH

A vision of morning,
A sparkle of dew,
With roses adorning
Life’s pilgrimage through;
All joy and no sorrow,
No trouble to borrow,
An endless to-morrow,
And love ever true.
 AGE

To sit in the gloaming

And muse by the fire
Till the spirit of homing
Takes wings of desire;
And the might-have-beens lighten
And the things-to-be brighten
And the heavenlies heighten
And the holies inspire.
SENTIMENT
 A C ORON ATION

Dear, on thy brow I set a crown,

Invisible yet rare;
Not jewelled gold, which burdens down
With royalty and care.

I bring thee nothing but my love

And what my hands can win,
And yet I crown thee, dear, above
A kingdom’s proudest queen.

I kiss each gleaming tress of thine

Coiled lightly round thy head,
And woman’s glory grows divine
With love’s aurora shed.

If thou canst but forget the rest,

The gems I cannot bring,
This jewel doth become thee best
To me, thy lover-king.

Dear, in my soul thou hast a throne

All white and heavengold,
And on thy brow I set a crown
That doth my heart infold.
I’ L L B E WATC HING ON THE SHOR E
She kissed me when we parted,—
I to sail the stormy main,
She to keep the little cottage
Snug until I come again;
And well do I remember
What she promised o’er and o’er:—
“When you come sailing from the ocean
I’ll be watching on the shore!”

So I was a jolly skipper,

Coiling rope or reefing sail;
Many a distant port I entered,
Many a homebound ship did hail.
If I sent or got a message,
Always it the promise bore:—
“When you come sailing from the ocean
I’ll be watching on the shore!”

Death came yawning in the tempest;

Wild and high the spindrift flew,
And from dizzy deck and masthead
Oft I thought my hour was due;
Till her dear prophetic promise
Sang above the billows’ roar:—
“When you come sailing from the ocean
I’ll be watching on the shore!”

But alas! One time I harbored

She was sleeping white and still
Where the ivy made a trellis
Of the lookout on the hill;
And the cold engraven marble
Yet the farewell promise bore:—
“When you come sailing from the ocean
I’ll be watching on the shore!”
 I G IVE THEE MY P RO MISE

I thee my promise, sweetheart,

give
With thy dear lips to mine,
That nothing shall keep from us
The sealing of this sign;
As o’er the world I wander
By hope of fortune sped,
My heart will grow the fonder
For thy promise me to wed.

I give thee the token, sweetheart,

Whose circle on thy hand
God grant may ne’er be broken,
However far the land!
For where it pleaseth Heaven
To lead my errant feet,
This little token given
Will keep the promise sweet.

I give thee the keeping, sweetheart,

Of my own heart that pleads
For love’s immediate reaping
And with the parting bleeds;
But I with arms that hold thee
Must labor for thee, too;
And so I fast enfold thee
And bid thee, love, adieu!