Marshall Louis Mertins: "The Poet of the Seven Seas"

              MARSHALL LOUIS MERTINS
The Poet of the Seven Seas

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CENTRAL EXTENSION BUREAU




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MARSHALL LOUIS MERTINS Poet of the Seven Seas
By Way of Introduction
I HAVE done a great many things in my life of which I have been ashamed, but the crowning crime comes, now that I am saying these complimentary things regarding Marshall Louis Mertins.  Surely the country has problems enough, without any more windjammers going to and fro in the earth.

And furthermore, it is distressingly hard for me to say anything about Mertins.  I think so well of the fellow, that my personal opinion simply biases my judgment of his platform work, willy nilly.  But traveling with him from season to season, I have had plenty of opportunities to pick up things regarding his work, and be it said that Mertins always makes good.  Nay, he always DOES good, which in my estimation is infinitely better.

HE IS one of the few men in America today reading their own verse, their own playlets, and short stories.  And he gets away with it, superlatively.  I do not wish to infer that his evening is merely a poem recital.  Far from that.  He uses his clever jingles to illustrate his points.  And these jingles are some poems!  The American public is well acquainted with them, for they have been published wherever there are people who read.  But nobody gets the correct angle, until in his own whimsical, happy fashion, the author reads them himself.  It is like a composer playing his own symphony, or an inventor displaying his own creation.  'And I sat down and wrote a little poem for my newspaper.'  One sees the twinkling lights of the little logged off lands, hears the rumble of the mountain waterfalls, and smells the pines in the early dawn of a mountain morning.  The ships of the seven seas go sailing before you, while that other and deeper sea, the Sea of the Human Soul, is displayed in its wonderful makeup, fresh from the hand of God!

But why multiply! Mertins is truly a wonder. He is a writer, a fighter, a teacher, a preacher; an editor, a creditor—for the race owes him much.  Suffice it to say that in some of the towns where we both appeared, popular plaudits awarded the palm to him, rather than to me.  All of which is continuing to make me tired with an exceeding great tire!

JUDGE GEORGE D. ALDEN, of Boston




List of Subjects

THE GOLD AT THE RAINBOW'S END, - -
RICH MAN, POOR MAN, BEGGAR MAN, THIEF,
SONGS OF THE SEVEN SEAS, - - - -


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MARSHALL LOUIS MERTINS Poet of the Seven Seas
A Song of the Seven Seas

I LISTENED one day to a sea shell,
A full thousand miles from the sea,
And its voice was the voice of the billows,
And the tide rushing in o'er the willows,
(Of the billows so sounding, and free!)
Then the wave sound grew stronger and louder,
And louder and stronger it grew,
Till the spray from the sea wafted o'er me,
And freight laden ships sailed before me,
And the Ocean rolled on in its blue!


A PERFUME at eve lingered round me,
(At eve, when the tapers were low)
A perfume like Roses of Sharon,
(Like red blooming roses so fair on
Some Mantle of Gold long ago!)
And down 'neath the dust and the ashes
The source of that perfume I found.
A Rose Vase by ruthless hands broken,
With the scent of its rose like a token
Still sending its perfume around.



L'Envoi

The sweet perfumes of Araby,
Forgotten cannot be,
And there's no call like the waters
If you've learned to love the Sea.

—Marshall Louis Mertins.


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The Nation's Capital
I am glad you are saying the things you are as they need to be stressed.  The young generation needs to know them.  Men's lives are molded by their ambitions, and one of the snags against which some public men in America have been shipwrecked is this love of self, rather than love of country.

WILLIAM JENNINGS BRYAN.



Philista
Some modern institutions have escaped atrophy and are not static, and the thanks are due to Mertins and other good men.

ELBERT HUBBARD.



Ohio
Mr. Mertins is a poet of unusually rich endowments, and he stands out in my experience as a quaint philosopher of much power.  He is thoroughly human, possessing a personality of incalculable charm, while his verse has that human interest so uncommon in the poetry of today.

JUDGE ROWLAND W. BAGGOTT, Juvenile Court, Dayton.



New York
There is a pot of gold at the foot of the rainbow, and Mertins has surely found that gold.  In his lecture on the search for happiness, Maeterlinck's 'Blue Bird' is interpreted most beautifully, and sordid that person who cannot hear the strains of the blue bird in that speech.  However, he is not a lecturer in the pedantic sense, but rather he appears to talk directly to the audience as a conversationalist, and raconteur.  His poems, also, are interpreted conversationally, and not with the bombast and pomp so often the fault of writers reading their own poetry.  Truth to tell, he is the only poet we have ever found who acceptably reads his own jingles.

BROADWAYFARER, in N. Y. World, (Roosevelt's Old Missou.)



Kentucky
Marshall Louis Mertins is going to be one of the very greatest of American orators of all time.  He is versatile, virile, vital!  A lecturer, a poet, a MAN!

BURNS OF THE MOUNTAINS. Pres. Jas. A. Burns, Oneida.



Plus Ultra Est

I stand and gaze at a solemn sea,
O'er a moaning harbor bar!
There are white winged ships that call to me,
And a low hung evening star!
And though my boat will bear me free,
It cannot bear me far.


'Tis night!  The evening star is set,
And here I stand and wait.
When o'er the bar, stark, cold and wet,
I come to one small gate,
Will One who came to save forget,
And say: Too late!  Too late!


Nay, nay, He smiles, the floating spar,
The troubled sea, the gale,
Have all been stilled, and silent are,
His word can never fail!
He guides the gull, the sea, the star,
And me, He will not fail!


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America
Go out when you are at Helena and climb the mountain.  Then look away to the west as the sun sinks in all the glorious colorings of God's painting.  I am sure you will write another verse about the little tot with 'the sunny gold hair!'

MAUD BALLINGTON BOOTH,Little Mother of the Prisons.



Australia
You are a true Elizabethan.  Bret Harte would have signed many of your poems, for you have imprisoned the very 'Thrall of the West' in your work.

TOM SKEYHILL, Author, A Singing Soldier, Hamilton.



Canada
I was touched and thrilled by the human interest plea in your lecture.  Your verse from 'The Wishing Gate,' certainly strikes a responsive chord in a soldier's heart.  Having read your poems, it is hard for me to decide which moved me most, your public address, or your printed verse.  May you 'Carry on!' and may the future hold much for you!

ARTHUR GIBBONS, Author, A Guest of the Kaiser, Toronto.



Russia
I wish to tell you that I am in hearty sympathy with you in your work of setting forth in the press and on the platform, the works and ideals of my father, Count Lyof N. Tolstoi.  Being a lecturer on the same subject, I have noted with interest the things you have to say concerning him. Let me assure you that it is my opinion that you know and understand my father's life and ideals as few Americans understand them.

COUNT ILYA TOLSTOI, Author, Memoirs of Tolstoi, Yasnaya Polyana.



Ireland
Immensely I enjoy your poems.  They have a human interest touch that adds charm.  Hearing you read them, brought to my mind most vividly the old home scenes of picturesque Ireland, the home of my childhood, where as a boy I played in the River Shannon, and coming home at nightfall, fell asleep in the dusk outside the Irish cabin, with my head in me mither's lap.  Lad, somehow, I feel ye could light an Irish pipe, with a broken match, in a blithering gale!  Cultivate the gift that is in thee, and God bless thee!

T. J. O'CONNOR, Irish Poet.



Silver Sails

Silver sails, and silver sails,
And where is one I love?
He sailed away, one autumn day,
When the sky was red above!
He kissed my cheek, and fared to seek,
His dreamed of treasure trove!


Silver sails, and silver sails,
(Oh, must I drink the lees?)
The sky grows dark, and a trampish bark,
Rides on the evening breeze!
I hear his call, at full nightfall,
O'er the wraith o' th' Seven Seas!


Silver sails, and silver sails,
And the wraith o' th' Seven Seas!


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