The New Joan and Other Poems by Katherine Hale — Free Audiobook

1 01 - The New Joan 8:18

These are chiefly songs of women's work, but there is a Christmas song for soldiers. The music of life is still to-day. Only the bugle note is heard. To the men in the trenches it means action, organized and perfected. To us at home it repeats the call. These songs are bound in crimson, for that is the color of courage, and in gold which signifies the strength and the joy of life which is work. The New Joan. The Vision. A soldier's soul returns the centuries down, radiance again. Love's gleaming mystic mate, she who was burned for witchcraft and for state, in the old market-place of ruin town. Today I met her spirit on the earth, and felt a joyous light dark spaces fill. I knew this troubled planet called her still, upon the wheel of reincarnate birth.

Behold the legion of all souls, she said, who ride again for country and for king, and with them, as the ardent sun with spring, see the enchanted ones that life calls dead. Woman and man renewing faith's old tryst, breast shuddering the deeps of this last war, and high above them gleams the stranger star, silver in blood-red skies, the grail of Christ. O you who see a vision in the night, and you who ride high-hearted woman-man, I call you by the name of the new Joan. So passed she clad in armor, clad in light. I. The Child. Give me a new soul, God of all things free. Help me to dream the golden dream of youth, till, gazing deep into the eyes of truth, the dream returns in life that is to be.

With thee I breathe a fire most strange and bright, rosy as dawning, jubilant as day, a light eternal on the time-worn way, a morning note to stir the aged night. To sing the song of flower-time again, it is to deck with joy an ancient door, a fresh rose, cosmic of each rose before, to link with wonder in the endless chain. And as they play mid-stars or'neath the sun, I ask a song for children everywhere, a gleam that dances with them unaware, since God and they, and Joy, are wholly won. 2. The Law. If law be given my hand to make, I pray thee, Lord, that I may break the old law, resolute and hard and fickle, as a chance-thrown card. And ere I lay me down to sleep, I pray thee, Lord, new law to keep.

Great statutes made of love and pain, beauty of sorrow born again. For I would find out truth, my lord, the soul behind the naked word, and at the bourne where life began I would inquire the law for man. Perhaps a voice may answer me that until man and woman be, woman and man the two in one, the latter days have not begun. The woman will, of man apart, the more of man and woman's heart. From that great marriage pure of flaw may spring the everlasting law. 3. The Kitchen Whoever makes a thing more bright, he is an angel of all light. So I, with every skill I can, return to use of pot and pan. Retrieve must I the ages waste, and learn that what the years call taste is hunger's sated brother, sin.

Lo, I shall dwell where truths A kingdom enter, ancient, dear, where red fire lives, and plenty's are, where order summoned back to me makes labor sing, makes beauty free. So shall I take the golden wheat and make me loaves for men to eat. For I am Joan, whose pure desire still keeps aflame the household fire.

For the Land. I am back on the land of my fathers, and I tread it with double-soled boots. I hoe it with hands that are toil-worn, wearing joyful and picturesque suits. I am clad head to foot in dull khaki that echoes my good mother, Earth. And I am glad that my profile is boyish, that my song is a whistle of mirth. I can cut and convey to my cabin these logs that I need for the fire, And I hail the concern of each slacker who is ribald anit my attire. I am doing his bit, though he lingers. I am Joan, and not Peter Pan. Yet the vision that glows through my working is the love that I bear to one man.

V. The Battle-Field. Something sings gently through the din of battle. Something spreads very softly, rim on rim. And every soldier hears, at times, a murmur, tender, incessant, dim. A tiny click of little wooden needles, elfin amid the giant hood of war, whispers of women, tireless and patient, who weave the web afar. Whispers of women, tireless and patient. This is our heart's love, it would seem to say, wrought with the ancient tools of our vocation. We've we the web of love from day to day. And so each soldier, laughing, fighting, dying under the alien skies, in his great hour may listen in death's prescience all-enfolding, and hear a fairy sound bloom like a flower. I like to think that soldiers, gayly dying for the white Christ in fields with shame sown deep, may hear the tender song of women's needles as they fall fast asleep.

VI. THE WORLD. It is a new world that my feet must tread, New though the hurrying ages call it old, While fields that yesterday were cloth of gold Are all dissolving like a film half-fled. The wondrous stage of life, its mimic joys, The deft accomplishment, the bubble fame, Statecraft bedecked as a career a name. Art as a servitor that wealth employs. These were the worlds our mothers counted new. These were the ways we still had kept our own, until eternal law from His high throne melted our world in sudden fire and dew. And now, through mists of dew, through leaping flame, we ride again upon an ancient quest, that we may bring love home, no longer guest, but love triumphant. Ever to remain.

See the bright banner a new day outflings. It shall be ours to hold it high in white. Again, a voice, and out of dawning light the deathless soul a-joan through us sings. Spirit of life, radiant and glad and free, come as of old be born again of me. Through me recover that which man has lost. Mine was the making, mine the precious cost. Out of my body come the sons of men, Into my keeping give their souls again, And let me make this world God's little room, Wherein love's splendors live again and bloom.

2 02 - Christmas Song 1:53

3 03 - London 3:09

London by Catherine Hale. Read for LibriVox.org by Larry Wilson. A Canadian soldier returned to Blighty Speaks.

The day we came to London. Oh, how strange to see the city of the world like this. Our dreams had been of London. Not the sights, but that young London, that young hearts explore. The music halls, the roads, the sleepy inns, where old romance is felt anew each day. This was to be our London. Thus we came. We came as cattle come, when packed too tight in some barbaric car of ancient mold. We came not driven with whips, nor massed in crowds, but driven by bitter pain, and almost dead from faintness of our wounds. We came from siege and rapine, plunder and hell-fire, from thunders never ceasing, from swift death, from screams and cries and parting gasps of souls, and from supremest vision given to man.

This way we came to London. O my friends, we touched white cliffs upon a summer day, pain-blinded, minds befogged, We rode along that ancient traversed way of all the world, and slowly, as the evening shadows fell, we reached Old Paddington, were driven out in shabby cabs through misty, half-lit ways, into a great wide place from whence small streets wandered zigzag with no apparent plan. Yet knew we were at home. I still can feel the cab stop for a moment. and a face peer in the open window. Twas a mask set in a flowered hat. With awful eyes she stared and asked and answered in a flash, Ah, well, you're nearly dead, poor dears. But I, I who am here for ever, come again.

And then we drifted on, and soft gray walls held us a moment to dissolve in mist. Once at a turn I saw the abbey rise, and once the outstretched arms of giant trees. Sometimes a light, but always murmurous noise, not so much hoof-beat, motor-hum, or cry, as vibrancy of voices far and near, a myriad mingled sounds of many men. This and a strange new vision of the heart, a love just dawning. An age-old surprise, a sudden turning to those splendid arms that are forever open. Thus we came, broken by war, home to her splendid arms.

4 04 - The Mother 1:04

5 05 - A Spring Day 1:05

6 06 - June, 1917 1:01

queue_music Chapters 6