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 CONTENTS

List of Figures ix

List of Tables xi

About the Author xiii

Acknowledgements xv

1. Punishment Pervades 1

2. Punishment Changes 17

3. Counting Mass Supervision 41

4. Legitimating Mass Supervision 75

5. Experiencing Mass Supervision 105

6. Seeing Mass Supervision 135

7. Supervision: Unleashed or Restrained? 157

Postscript: Making Stories and Songs from Supervision

(by Jo Collinson Scott and Fergus McNeill) 179

Appendix: The Invisible Collar (A Story About Supervision) 195

Bibliography 211

Index 239

vii
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 LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1. Untitled 1.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Figure 2. Untitled 2.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Figure 3. Dimensions of Mass Supervision. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Figure 4. Untitled 3.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Figure 5. Untitled 4.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
Figure 6. Total Prison and Probation Population Rates per 100,000
in 2010. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
Figure 7. Probation and Prison Relative to Index Crime,
1980 2010.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
Figure 8. Control Regimes Typology. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
Figure 9. Prison (sentenced), Probation and Parole Populations in the
USA, by Ethnicity, 2015.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
Figure 10. Numbers of Community Payback Orders Commenced and
of People Commencing CPOs per 10,000 in Scottish Local
Authorities, 2015 2016. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
Figure 11. The Scottish Prison Population between 1980 and
2013 2014.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
Figure 12. Community Sentences in Scotland since 1980. . . . . . . 66
Figure 13. Number of Community Sentences, Average Daily Prison
Population and Recorded Crime per 100,000 Population in
Scotland, 1980 2016. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
Figure 14. Untitled 5.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
Figure 15. The Four Rs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
Figure 16. Untitled 6.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
Figure 17. Untitled 7.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
Figure 18. The Long Walk by ‘Messiah 10’. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120

ix
x List of Figures

Figure 19. Untitled 8.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

121
Figure 20. Untitled 9.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
Figure 21. Untitled 10. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
 LIST OF TABLES

Table 1. Ethnicity, Age and Gender of Subjects of Community Payback

Orders, by Percentage. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
Table 2. Number of People Subject to Post-release Supervision (Statutory
Throughcare) in Scotland, 2005 2016, by Type. . . . . . . 69
Table 3. Requirements of Community Payback Orders commenced in
2015 2016.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83

xi
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 ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Fergus McNeill is Professor of Criminology and Social Work at the

University of Glasgow where he works in the Scottish Centre for Crime
and Justice Research and in Sociology. Prior to becoming an academic in
1998, he worked for 10 years in residential drug rehabilitation and as a
criminal justice social worker.
His many research projects and publications have examined institu-
tions, cultures and practices of punishment and rehabilitation particu-
larly in the community and questions about their reform. Between 2012
and 2016, he chaired an EU-funded research network on ‘Offender
Supervision in Europe’ which involved about 70 researchers from across
23 jurisdictions. This book reflects upon and consolidates learning from
that network.
Fergus has co-written or co-edited several previous books including
Offender Supervision: New Directions in Theory, Research and Practice,
Offender Supervision in Europe, Reducing Reoffending: Social Work and
Community Justice in Scotland, Understanding Penal Practice and Youth
Offending and Youth Justice. His most recent books include Community
Punishment: European Perspectives (co-edited with Gwen Robinson);
Probation: 12 essential questions (co-edited with Ioan Durnescu and Rene
Butter); Beyond the Risk Paradigm in Criminal Justice (co-edited with
Chris Trotter and Gill McIvor); and Reimagining Rehabilitation: Beyond
the Individual (co-written with Lol Burke and Steve Collett and published
by Routledge in 2018). Pervasive Punishment is his first sole-authored
monograph.
Currently, Fergus is leading ‘Distant Voices: Coming Home’, a major
3-year Economic and Social Research Council/Arts and Humanities

xiii
xiv About the Author

Research Council project using creative practices to explore crime, punish-

ment and reintegration. The project is a partnership between Vox Liminis
(a third sector organization that Fergus helped establish), the University of
Edinburgh, the University of Glasgow and the University of the West of
Scotland.
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This book has been a long time in the making, and I owe too many debts
to acknowledge them all here … but I’m going to name a few.
Pervasive Punishment might never have been written but for the gener-
osity of the British Academy in awarding me a Mid-Career Fellowship
(Award No. MD160022). I’m especially grateful to David Garland for his
support for my application. During session 2017 2018, the British
Academy award paid for the wonderful Caitlin Gormley to cover much of
my teaching (so well that I fear that colleagues and students won’t want
me back!).
The Fellowship also allowed me to travel to meet with some remark-
able and generous scholars and friends so that I could road-test some
of the ideas in this book. I had the great pleasure of visiting Reuben
Miller (University of Chicago), Josh Page and Michelle Phelps (University
of Minnesota), Jon Jacobs (John Jay College, City University of New
York), Kristel Beyens (Free University of Brussels) and Miranda Boone
(University of Leiden). I am also very grateful to colleagues and students
who took time to attend seminars, offered insightful comments and
showed me wonderful hospitality. As well as my ‘official’ hosts, particular
thanks are due to Jess Bird, Jay Borchert, David Green, Lila Kazemian and
Jennifer Peirce.
British Academy Mid-Career Fellowships also provide some funds for
public engagement. I used these resources to establish the Pervasive
Punishment blog (www.pervasivepunishment.com) and to support book-
related events organized by the Howard League Scotland in Edinburgh
and the Howard League for Penal Reform in Oxford. I’m very grateful to
both organisations for these opportunities to share the work in progress.
These events also included performances of songs related to punishment,
reintegration and supervision written in workshops organized and run by
Vox Liminis, a Scottish charity that brings creative practice to criminal

xv
xvi Acknowledgements

justice and its reform (www.voxliminis.co.uk). Louis Abbott (in Edinburgh)

and Donna Maciocia (in Oxford) provided these beautiful performances. It
is a pleasure and a privilege to work with Louis and Donna and everyone
else associated with Vox. I owe you all and especially Alison Urie (that
other Wayward Puritan) a very great deal for teaching me so much about
so many things; not least the importance and potency of creativity.
On the subject of creativity, I also want to thank Martin Cathcart
Froden and Phil Thomas for some early advice in relation to the short
story that is woven through this book’s chapters, to Gabi Fröden for the
cover art, and to Jo Collinson Scott for agreeing to write an EP of songs
inspired by the story and the book. We say more about this process and
about the relationships between the research, the story and the songs in
the book’s post-script. The cover art and EP were also funded by the
British Academy Fellowship. It is a genuine delight to have been able to
assemble all these different ways of seeing, hearing and sensing supervision
with help from so many talented friends.
All but one of the photographs that illustrate this book were taken by
supervisees and supervisors in the ‘Supervisible’ and ‘Picturing Probation’
projects (discussed in chapter 5). These projects were part of the COST
Action IS1106 on Offender Supervision in Europe which I chaired between
2012 and 2016. Wendy Fitzgibbon inspired and led the Supervisible pro-
ject, and Picturing Probation was led by Nicola Carr, Gwen Robinson and
Anne Worrall. I am grateful for their permission to use some of these pro-
jects’ photographs in the book, but my debt extends to all 70-odd active
members of the Action. This book is, in large part, an attempt to consoli-
date what I learned from and with all of them. I want to pay special tribute
to the Action’s core leadership group Miranda Boone, Niamh Maguire,
Martine Herzog-Evans, Christine Morgenstern, Elena Larrauri, Ioan
Durnescu, Christian Grafl, Gwen Robinson, Kerstin Svensson, Martin
Lulei, Ineke Pruin and Sandra Scicluna and to pay special tribute to Kristel
Beyens who, as Vice-Chair, offered me invaluable and unfailing support
for those four years.
In places in this book, I have leant on and re-developed or re-purposed
previous publications, some involving co-authors. Working with these
scholars has been crucial to my development and, in some cases, I have to
admit that I don’t really know where their ideas end and my ideas begin.
In particular, I’ve been co-writing with Gwen Robinson since we agonized
Acknowledgements xvii

over 23 drafts of our first co-authored conference paper in 2002 2003.

Chapter 2 of this book draws on a more recent book chapter that we co-
wrote (McNeill & Robinson, 2016); the section on Foucault leans very
heavily on Gwen’s contribution to that chapter. Chapter 4 redevelops
elements of two earlier collaborations (Robinson & McNeill, 2015;
Robinson, McNeill, & Maruna, 2013). It is typically generous of Gwen to
let me use our previous work in this way, and I am also grateful to the edi-
tors at Palgrave, Sage and Routledge for giving their permission for me to
use these earlier works here. Chapters 5 and 6 draw on my recent paper in
Punishment and Society (McNeill, 2018); I am grateful to Kelly Hannah-
Moffat and Sage for permission to do so. Thanks are also due to Wendy
Fitzgibbon and Christine Graebsch for their permission to recycle the title
of our co-authored chapter about the Supervisible project (Fitzgibbon,
Graebsch, & McNeill, 2017) as the title of this book. Jo Collinson Scott
and Oliver Escobar kindly allowed me to lean on their musicological (Jo)
and political science (Oliver) expertise in writing Chapter 6, drawing on
their contributions to our ongoing ESRC/AHRC funded Distant Voices
project (www.distantvoices.org.uk).
While I have benefitted enormously from an extensive network of
colleagues and friends, not just in the COST Action, but also in the
American, British and European Societies of Criminology, I also owe a
huge debt to all of my colleagues here at home in the Scottish Centre for
Crime and Justice Research. Since 2006, SCCJR has provided me not just
with a great place to work among talented, critical scholars and students,
but also with time and space and support. In particular, I want to thank
the Centre’s founding Directors Michele Burman, Gill McIvor and
Richard Sparks and the current Director, Sarah Armstrong. Michele has
been a hugely supportive, encouraging and effective supporter not just of
me but much more importantly of the development of Scottish crimin-
ology. More than anyone else, I think, she has laid the foundations for
and built the infrastructure to support a whole new generation of scholars
who are doing remarkable and important work. My thinking has been
continually challenged and enormously enriched by working with the con-
stellation of stellar doctoral researchers clustered around the Scottish
Centre for Crime and Justice Research. For example, I owe a debt to
Maureen McBride for advice in relation to the brief discussion of
xviii Acknowledgements

sectarianism of sectarianism in Chapter 3, and to Javier Velasquez

Valenzuela for comments on Chapters 5 and 7.
Several other people have also provided invaluable comments on drafts
of parts of this book. Peter Conlong and Alan Fleming provided very use-
ful feedback on my use of Scottish Government data in Chapter 3. Jo
Collinson Scott sharpened up Chapters 5 and 6, and David Hayes did like-
wise for Chapters 6 and 7. However, I am most especially indebted to the
two wise friends who, over the course of the last year, have provided me
with critical but encouraging feedback chapter by chapter: Michelle Phelps
and Gwen Robinson. Whatever its limitations, this book is much the better
for your advice.
Looking much further back, my career began not in academia but with
a decade in practice; first in drug rehabilitation and then in criminal justice
social work. That experience still informs what I do even though I realise
that it has lost its currency. Being a practitioner in both settings left me
with respect and admiration for ‘those who do’; especially those who per-
severe in pursuing justice and providing help despite the obstacles often-
times placed in their way by society, by government, and by policies and
systems. That’s why this book is dedicated to Gordon McKean (a good
friend and former colleague) and to ‘all the Paulines’ (if you read the short
story, that dedication will start to make sense).
Finishing a book is often the hardest part. I want to thank Heather
Irving lending me her lovely house in the beautiful Fife town of Anstruther
in early June 2018 for the few days that I needed to piece together the
fragments. Here’s to the next Tall Ship Session.
Special thanks to my editor Jules Willan and to everyone at Emerald
for supporting this project, for being interested in mass supervision and
for accommodating my eccentricities. It’s great to be part of something
new and exciting. I hope this is the first book of many that Emerald will
publish on this topic.
Finally, thank you Morag, Caitie and Calum. You keep my feet on the
ground but let my head stay in the clouds at least some of the time.
 CHAPTER 1

PUNISHMENT PERVADES

THE WAITING ROOM

Joe sat on the bench in the waiting room. Looking down, he noticed that
the bench was screwed to the floor. Not even the furniture here was free.
Perspex screens and locked doors separated him and the others waiting

Figure 1. Untitled 1.

1
2 Pervasive Punishment

from those for whom they waited; the veils between the untrustworthy
and those to whom they were entrusted. Joe absent-mindedly read the
graffiti carved into the bench; testimonies of resistance that made the place
feel even more desperate.
Joe scanned the postered walls, shouting their messages in pastel shades
and bold print. Problems with drugs? Problems with alcohol? Problems
with anger? Stay calm. Apparently, help was at hand or at the end of a
phone-line. But meanwhile remember that abusive language and aggressive
behaviour will not be tolerated. Not in this room that itself felt like an
installation of abuse and aggression. To Joe, it said ‘You are pathetic, des-
perate or dangerous. You are not to be trusted. You must wait’.
He fidgeted and returned his eyes to the floor, downcast by the weight
of the room’s assault, avoiding contact, avoiding hassle, staying as
unknown as possible in this shame pit. Better to be out of place here than
to belong. This was no place to make connections.
Joe wondered what she would be like Pauline the unknown
woman who now held the keys to his freedom. Her word had become his
law: This was an ‘order’ after all. He was to be the rule-keeper, she the
ruler cruel, capricious or kind. She might hold the leash lightly or she
might drag him to heel. Instinctively, he lifted his hand to his neck, but no
one can loosen an invisible collar. At least it was not a noose. Joe swal-
lowed uncomfortably, noticing the dryness of his mouth and the churning
in his gut. He was not condemned to hang. He was condemned to be left
hanging.
Joe wondered what Pauline would be like.

PERVASIVE PUNISHMENT?

Pervading, adj.: That pervades; that passes or spreads through.

Pervasive, adj.: Having the quality or power of pervading;

penetrative, permeative, ubiquitous. (Oxford English
Dictionary)

The opening episode printed in italics at the beginning of this chapter

like similar passages at the start of each chapter in this book forms part
of a short story. That story is a work of creative, imaginative writing but it
Punishment Pervades 3

is a fiction that, like the italic font in which it is presented, leans on

research and practical experience of criminal justice supervision, both
others’ and my own the same research and experience that forms the
basis for the more conventional academic analyses that constitute each
chapter of this book.
The purpose of the short story is to imaginatively bring to life the
themes and content of this book. Ideally, I want you, the reader, to
become curious about Joe and to care about what is happening to him and
to the other characters we will meet in other episodes. I hope that by help-
ing us to imagine how it feels to be supervised, and to be the supervisor,
this fiction will help us to become curious and to care about the entirely
real but largely hidden and neglected forms of suffering and support that
this book aims to expose and explore. These are forms of suffering and
support that affect millions of people around the world every day and that
are imposed, at least in theory, on ‘our’ behalf, for the collective good. It
follows that we all have a duty to imagine, examine and enquire about
them carefully, and to consider whether we are content with these forms
of pervasive punishment.
That title Pervasive Punishment perhaps already hints at the diffi-
culty in delimiting such a project. This book concerns a diverse set of insti-
tutions and practices about which it is impossible to agree a common or
settled language; institutions and practices that have evolved differently in
different places. At least some of these definitional complexities will be
unravelled later (mainly in Chapter 4). For now, the Anglophone terms
‘probation’ and ‘parole’ serve as useful starting points; suffice is to say that
our focus here is on sanctions or measures imposed by criminal courts that
involve some form of supervision in the community, whether instead of a
custodial sentence (as in certain forms of suspended or conditional sen-
tences), as a community-based sentence in its own right (like probation, in
some jurisdictions), or as part of a sentence that begins with imprisonment
but extends beyond it (as in parole). When US-based scholars write and talk
about populations under ‘correctional supervision’, they sometimes mean
both people in prison or jail and people on probation or parole. Here, I will
use the term ‘supervision’ in the more limited European way, to refer only
to those under some form of penal supervision in the community.
The title Pervasive Punishment is borrowed from a book chapter that
I co-authored with Wendy Fitzgibbon and Christine Graebsch. That
4 Pervasive Punishment

chapter explored how people chose to represent their experiences of

supervision in and through photographs, as part of a project called
‘Supervisible’,1 which will be discussed in more detail in Chapter 5
(Fitzgibbon, Graebsch, & McNeill, 2017). I will use images from that pro-
ject and from its sister project ‘Picturing Probation’ (see Worrall, Carr, &
Robinson, 2017) throughout the book to illustrate the short story; for
example, the picture in Figure 1 is taken from the Picturing Probation
project.2
Fitzgibbon et al. (2017) concluded their chapter by arguing that:

[…] much of the Anglophone literature on probation practice

(and on experiences of supervision) focuses on probation (or
supervisory) meetings. The implicit assumption in these studies
is that it is in these human encounters that supervision
‘happens’. Our findings suggest that the experience of
supervision is a much more diffuse and pervasive one; for our
supervisees at least, it seems to extend in time and in impact
across the life of the supervisee.

Equally importantly, this pervasive impact of supervision is

experienced as being painful. Looking across the common
themes above, we might argue that this pain consists largely in
the combination of being (continually) judged and constrained
over time, and in the presence of a suspended threat. (Fitzgibbon
et al., 2017, p. 318)

In other words, we argued that the effects of supervision are often

diffuse they pervade the lives of supervisees and that, even when
experienced as helpful, they hurt. By way of illustration, one Scottish par-
ticipant in the Supervisible project engaged the help of a friend in taking
the picture shown in Figure 2. In it, cast as shadows, they dangle from a
climbing frame in a children’s play-park. Another Scottish participant,
interpreting this picture, told me that it reminded him of a spider’s web.
He saw the two shadows as supervisor and supervised, one elevated and
one degraded, both trapped in the justice system: ‘the more you struggle,
the more tightly it binds you’. However, unlike imprisonment (and here
the spider’s web metaphor breaks down), supervision seeks to bind not by
confining the supervisee to a place, but rather by moving with him or her.
Punishment Pervades 5

Figure 2. Untitled 2.

It is, in this sense, an ambulant or mobile punishment (Morgenstern,

2015).
The term ‘pervasive’ in the book’s title also alludes to another sort of
penal mobility. It is not just that supervision permeates the lives of individ-
ual supervisees; it has also spread through society itself and even across
societies. Indeed, as we will see in Chapter 3, in some places and for some
segments of the population, supervision is becoming commonplace, if not
quite ubiquitous.
As many readers will immediately recognise, this is far from being a
novel observation. Several decades ago, Andrew Scull (1977, 1983),
Thomas Mathieson (1983) Stanley Cohen (1983,1985) and others warned
of the ‘dispersal of discipline’ beyond the prison. Cohen’s (1985) highly
influential book Visions of Social Control warned that a policy rhetoric of
diversion and decarceration was cloaking the emergence of more expan-
sive and penetrating forms of ‘deviance control’. He argued that these new
forms were serving to widen the penal net at the same time as thinning its
mesh, dredging more people into rather than fishing more people out of
the penal system. For both Cohen and Scull, the growth of ‘community
corrections’ (meaning probation and parole systems and other forms of
‘intermediate punishments’) was an important part of this alarming
picture.
6 Pervasive Punishment

Gwen Robinson (2016) has recently reminded us that these sorts

of analyses had crystallised by the late 1980s to such an extent that
Lowman, Menzies and Palys (1987) produced an edited collection on
Transcarceration. Rather than accepting the logic of probation, parole and
other measures as alternatives to imprisonment, the concept of transcar-
ceration stressed the connections and conjunctions between different sorts
of penal institutions and measures, suggesting a symbiotic rather than a
substitutionary relationship between imprisonment and its supposed
community-based ‘alternatives’. As Robinson observes, the editors of the
collection also stressed that transcarceration involves:

the marriage of exclusive and inclusive modes of social control,

as evident in the emergence in some jurisdictions of home
confinement schemes (Blomberg, 1987) and the expansion of
parole and other mandatory forms of post-custodial supervision
(Ratner, 1987). (Robinson, 2016, p. 100)

However, Robinson (2016) goes on to argue that, during the 1990s

and 2000s, rather than continuing to develop, test and refine these sorts of
analyses, scholars became preoccupied instead with the advent of mass
incarceration (Garland, 2001). In consequence, she suggests that what
little sociological interest there has been in supervision has tended to focus
on those forms of supervision that are most closely related to imprison-
ment, that is, parole and electronic monitoring. Other community-based
sanctions and measures (like probation or community service) have been
even more neglected. This leads Robinson to characterise community sanc-
tions and measures as the ‘Cinderella’ of ‘Punishment and Society’ studies,
leaving it as:

[…] a neglected and under-theorised zone despite the fact that,

as we have seen, several scholars in the 1980s foresaw the
expansion and diversification of forms of non-carceral control in
many Western jurisdictions, and the empirical reality that
offenders subject to some sort of supervisory sanction in the
community have, in many jurisdictions, come to substantially
outnumber those subject to custodial confinement. (Robinson,
2016, p. 101)
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
Haste thee, nymph, and bring with thee
Jest and youthful Jollity,
Quips and cranks and wanton wiles,
Nods and becks and wreathèd smiles
Such as hang on Hebe’s cheek,
And love to live in dimples sleek,—
Sport that wrinkled Care derides,
And Laughter holding both his sides.
Come, and trip it, as ye go,
On the light fantastic toe;
And in thy right hand lead with thee
The mountain nymph, sweet Liberty:
And, if I give thee honor due,
Mirth, admit me of thy crew,
To live with her, and live with thee,
In unreproved pleasures free.

FROM IL PENSEROSO
By John Milton

Oft, on a plat of rising ground,

I hear the far-off curfew sound
Over some wide watered shore,
Swinging slow with sullen roar;
Or, if the air will not permit,
Some still removed place will fit,
Where glowing embers through the room
Teach light to counterfeit a gloom.

THE LOTOS-EATERS
By Alfred Tennyson

The Lotos blooms below the barren peak:

The Lotos blows by every winding creek:
All day the wind breathes low with mellower tone:
Through every hollow cave and alley lone
Round and round the spicy downs the yellow Lotus-dust is blown.
We have had enough of action, and of motion we,
Rolled to starboard, rolled to larboard, when the surge was seething
free,
Where the wallowing monster spouted his foam-fountains in the sea.
Let us swear an oath, and keep it with an equal mind,
In the hollow Lotus-land to live and lie reclined
On the hills like gods together, careless of mankind.
For they lie beside their nectar, and the bolts are hurled
Far below them in the valleys, and the clouds are lightly curled
Round their golden houses, girdled with the gleaming world;
Where they smile in secret, looking over wasted lands,
Blight and famine, plague and earthquake, roaring deeps, and fiery
sands,
Clanging fights, and flaming towns, and sinking ships, and praying
hands.
But they smile, they find a music centered in a doleful song
Steaming up, a lamentation and an ancient tale of wrong,
Like a tale of little meaning, though the words are strong;
Chanted from an ill-used race of men that cleave the soil,
Sow the seed, and reap the harvest with enduring toil,
Storing yearly little dues of wheat, and wine, and oil;
Till they perish and they suffer—some, ’tis whispered—down in hell
Suffer endless anguish, others in Elysian valleys dwell,
Resting weary limbs at last on beds of asphodel.
Surely, surely, slumber is more sweet than toil, the shore
Than labor in the deep mid-ocean, wind and wave and oar;
O rest ye, brother mariners, we will not wander more.

HOME, WOUNDED
By Sydney Dobell

Blare the trumpet, and boom the gun,

But, O, to sit here thus in the sun,
To sit here, feeling my work is done,
While the sands of life so golden run,
And I watch the children’s posies,
And my idle heart is whispering,
“Bring whatever the years may bring,
The flowers will blossom, the birds will sing,
And there’ll always be primroses.”

THE MINARET BELLS

By William M. Thackeray

Tink a tink, tink a tink,

By the light of the star,
On the blue river’s brink,
I heard a guitar.

I heard a guitar
On the blue waters clear,
And knew by its music
That Selim was near!

Tink a tink, tink a tink,

How the soft music swells,
And I hear the soft clink
Of the minaret bells!

SPRINGTIME
By Leonard G. Nattkemper

May-time’s Spring-time,
O let us steal away.
Spring-time’s love-time,
So let us go to-day.

Oh! the dawn, while dew is on,

Awakes a fragrant breeze;
It fills my room with rich perfume
From snow-white locust trees.

Across the grain there floats a strain

Of ancient witchery;
A robin’s throat hath freed a note
Of rarest ecstasy.

And while he sings, within me springs

An echo to his lay—
But how can words e’er match this bird’s
Sweet song of Spring, I pray!

Such noon-day dreams by babbling streams,

There’s nothing to compare;
Soft zephyrs blow where waters flow,
Entangling my hair.

In shady nooks, fond lover looks

In eyes as blue as skies;
And her reply, though quaint and shy,
Is what true love implies.

So May-time’s Spring-time,
Now let us steal away;
Spring-time’s love-time,
And let us go to-day.

A SINGING LESSON
By Jean Ingelow

A nightingale made a mistake—

She sang a few notes out of tune—
Her heart was ready to break,
And she hid away from the moon.
She wrung her claws, poor thing,
But was far too proud to weep;
She tucked her head under her wing,
And pretended to be asleep.

A lark, arm-in-arm with a thrush,

Came sauntering up to the place;
The nightingale felt herself blush,
Though feathers hid her face.
She knew they had heard her song,
She felt them snicker and sneer;
She thought this life was too long,
And wished she could skip a year.

“Oh, nightingale,” cooed a dove,

“Oh, nightingale, what’s the use?
You bird of beauty and love,
Why behave like a goose?
Don’t skulk away from our sight
Like a common contemptible fowl;
You bird of joy and delight,
Why behave like an owl?

“Only think of all you have done—

Only think of all you can do;
A false note is really fun
From such a bird as you!
Lift up your proud little crest;
Open your musical beak;
Other birds have to do their best,
But you need only speak.”

The nightingale shyly took

Her head from under her wing,
And giving the dove a look
Straightway began to sing.
There was never a bird could pass—
The night was divinely calm—
And the people stood on the grass
To hear that wonderful psalm.
The nightingale did not care—
She only sang to the skies;
Her song ascended there,
And there she fixed her eyes.
The people who listened below
She knew but little about—
And this tale has a moral, I know,
If you’ll try to find it out.

MORAL
Never give up, always look up.
Cheer the discouraged.
Strive for heavenly applause.
Care not for the praise of men, but for the praise of God.

THE WOLVES OF THE SEA

By Herbert Bashford

From dusk until dawn they are hurrying on,

Unfettered and fearless they flee;
From morn until eve they plunder and thieve—
The hungry, white wolves of the Sea!

With never a rest, they race to the west,

To the Orient’s rim do they run;
By the berg and the floe of the northland they go
And away to the isles of the sun.

They wail at the moon from the desolate dune

Till the air has grown dank with their breath;
They snarl at the stars from the treacherous bars
Of the coasts that are haunted by Death.

They grapple and bite in a keen, mad delight

As they feed on the bosom of Grief;
And one steals away to a cave with his prey,
And one to the rocks of the reef.

With the froth on their lips they follow the ships,

Each striving to lead in the chase;
Since loosed by the hand of the King of their band
They have known but the rush of the race.

They are shaggy and old, yet as mighty and bold

As when God’s freshest gale set them free;
Not a sail is unfurled in a part of the world
But is prey for the wolves of the Sea!

—Copyright by Harr Wagner Co., San Francisco, and used by kind

permission of author and publisher.

OLD IRONSIDES
By Oliver Wendell Holmes

Ay, tear her tattered ensign down!

Long has it waved on high,
And many an eye has danced to see
That banner in the sky;
Beneath it rung the battle shout,
And burst the cannon’s roar;—
The meteor of the ocean air
Shall sweep the clouds no more.

Her deck, once red with hero’s blood,

Where knelt the vanquished foe,
When winds were hurrying o’er the flood,
And waves were white below,
No more shall feel the victor’s tread,
Or know the conquered knee;
The harpies of the shore shall pluck
The eagle of the sea!
Oh, better that her shattered hulk
Should sink beneath the wave;
Her thunders shook the mighty deep,
And there should be her grave;
Nail to the mast her holy flag,
Set every threadbare sail,
And give her to the god of storms,
The lightning and the gale!

COLUMBUS
By Joaquin Miller

Behind him lay the gray Azores,

Behind the Gates of Hercules;
Before him not the ghost of shores;
Before him only shoreless seas.
The good mate said: “Now must we pray,
For lo! the very stars are gone.
Brave Adm’r’l, speak; what shall I say?”
“Why, say: ‘Sail on! sail on! and on!’”

“My men grow mutinous day by day;

My men grow ghastly wan and weak.”
The stout mate thought of home; a spray
Of salt wave washed his swarthy cheek.
“What shall I say, brave Adm’r’l, say,
If we sight naught but seas at dawn?”
“Why, you shall say at break of day:
‘Sail on! Sail on! Sail on! and on!’”

They sailed and sailed, as winds might blow,

Until at last the blanched mate said:
“Why, now, not even God would know
Should I and all my men fall dead.
These very winds forget their way;
For God from these dread seas is gone.
Now speak, brave Adm’r’l; speak and say—”
He said: “Sail on! sail on! and on!”

They sailed: they sailed. Then spake the mate:

“This mad sea shows his teeth to-night,
He curls his lip, he lies in wait,
With lifted teeth, as if to bite!
Brave Adm’r’l, say but one good word:
What shall we do when hope is gone?”
The words leapt like a leaping sword:
“Sail on! Sail on! Sail on! and on!”

Then pale and worn, he kept his deck,

And peered through darkness. Ah, that night
Of all dark nights! And then a speck—
A light! A light? A light! A light!
It grew; a starlit flag unfurled!
It grew to be Time’s burst of dawn.
He gained a world; he gave that world
Its grandest lesson: “On! sail on!”

—Copyright by Harr Wagner Co., San Francisco, and used by kind

permission of author and publisher.

DAYBREAK
By Robert Browning

Day!
Faster and more fast,
O’er night’s brim, day boils at last:
Boils pure gold, o’er the cloud-cup’s brim
Where spurting and suppressed it lay,
For not a froth-flake touched the rim
Of yonder gap in the solid gray
Of the eastern cloud, an hour away;
But forth one wavelet, then another, curled,
Till the whole sunrise, not to be suppressed,
Rose, reddened, and its seething breast
Flickered in bounds, grew gold, then overflowed the world.

Oh, Day, if I squander a wavelet of thee,

A mite of my twelve hours’ treasure,
The least of thy gazes or glances,
(Be they grants thou art bound to or gifts above measure)
One of thy choices or one of thy chances,
(Be they tasks God imposed thee or freaks at thy pleasure)
—My Day, if I squander such labor or leisure,
Then shame fall on Asolo, mischief on me!

Thy long, blue, solemn hours serenely flowing,

Whence earth, we feel, gets steady help and good—
Thy fitful sunshine-minutes, coming, going,
As if earth turned from work in gamesome mood—
All shall be mine! But thou must treat me not
As prosperous ones are treated, those who live
At hand here, and enjoy the higher lot,
In readiness to take what thou wilt give,
And free to let alone what thou refusest;
For, Day, my holiday, if thou ill-usest
Me, who am only Pippa,—old-year’s sorrow,
Cast off last night, will come again to-morrow:
Whereas, if thou prove gentle, I shall borrow.
Sufficient strength of thee for new-year’s sorrow.
All other men and women that this earth
Belongs to, who all days alike possess,
Make general plenty cure particular dearth,
Get more joy one way, if another, less:
Thou art my single day, God lends to leaven
What were all earth else, with a feel of heaven.

—From “Pippa Passes.”

MY SWORD SONG
 By Richard Realf

Day in, day out, through the long campaign,

I march in my place in the ranks;
And whether it shine or whether it rain,
My good sword cheerily clanks;
It clanks and clanks in a knightly way
Like the ring of an armored heel;
And this is the song which day by day,
It sings with its lips of steel:

“O friend, from whom a hundred times,

I have felt the strenuous grip
Of the all-renouncing love that climbs
To the heights of fellowship;
Are you tired of all the weary miles?
Are you faint with your swooning limbs?
Do you hunger back for the olden smiles,
And the lilt of olden hymns?

“Has your heart grown weak since that rapt hour

When you leapt, with a single bound,
From dreaming ease to sovereign power
Of a living soul world-crowned?
Behold! the aloes of sacrifice
Are better than radiant wine,
And the bloody sweat of a cause like this
Is an agony divine.

“Under the wail of the shuddering world

Amoan for its fallen sons;
Over the volleying thunders hurled
From the throats of the wrathful guns;
Above the roar of the plunging line
That rocks with the fury of hell,
Runs the absolute voice: O Earth of mine,
Be patient, for all is well!”
Thus sings my sword to my soul, and I,
Albeit the way is long,
As soiled clouds darken athwart the sky—
Still keep my spirit strong:
Whether I live, or whether I lie
On the stained ground, ghastly and stark,
Beyond the carnage I shall descry
God’s love shines across the dark.

—Copyright by Funk & Wagnalls Co., New York, and used by their
kind permission.

LABOR
Anonymous

Toil swings the ax, and forests bow;

The seeds break out in radiant bloom,
Rich harvests smile behind the plow,
And cities cluster round the loom;
Where towering domes and tapering spires
Adorn the vale and crown the hill,
Stout labor lights its beacon-fires,
And plumes with smoke the forge and mill.

The monarch oak, the woodland’s pride,

Whose trunk is seamed with lightning scars,
Toil launches on the restless tide,
And there unrolls the flag of stars;
The engine with its lungs of flame,
And ribs of brass and joints of steel,
From Labor’s plastic fingers came,
With sobbing valve and whirling wheel.

’Tis Labor works the magic press,

And turns the crank in hives of toil,
And beckons angels down to bless
 Industrious hands on sea and soil.
Here sun-brown Toil, with shining spade,
Links lake to lake with silver ties
Strung thick with palaces of trade,
And temples towering to the skies.

THE ARROW AND THE SONG[17]

By Henry W. Longfellow

I shot an arrow into the air,

It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For, so swiftly it flew, the sight
Could not follow it in its flight.

I breathed a song into the air,

It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For who has sight so keen and strong,
That it can follow the flight of song?

Long, long afterward, in an oak

I found the arrow, still unbroke;
And the song, from beginning to end,
I found again in the heart of a friend.

THE BELLS OF SAN GABRIEL

By Charles Warren Stoddard
[Particularly note the possibility of onomatopoesy in the following
refrain. What answer do the bells give to the questions of the poet?
There is no other answer than their steady, monotonous toll. The
answer must be found in your own heart, viz., that no good work,
done with high zeal and enthusiasm, with self-sacrifice, ever can be
in vain. Then read the refrain as a bell would sound, if it were struck
at the end of each line, prolonging the sound to correspond with the
continued resonance of the bell.]
Thine was the corn and the wine,
The blood of the grape that nourished;
The blossom and fruit of the vine
That was heralded far away.
These were thy gifts; and thine,
When the vine and the fig-tree flourished,
The promise of peace and of glad increase
Forever and ever and aye.
What then wert thou, and what art now?
Answer me, O, I pray!

And every note of every bell

Sang Gabriel! rang Gabriel!
In the tower that is left the tale to tell
Of Gabriel, the Archangel.

Oil of the olive was thine;

Flood of the wine-press flowing;
Blood o’ the Christ was the wine—
Blood o’ the Lamb that was slain.
Thy gifts were fat o’ the kine
Forever coming and going
Over the hills, the thousand hills,
Their lowing a soft refrain.
What then wert thou, and what art now?
Answer me, once again!

And every note of every bell

Sang Gabriel! rang Gabriel!
In the tower that is left the tale to tell
Of Gabriel, the Archangel.

Seed o’ the corn was thine—

Body of Him thus broken
And mingled with blood o’ the vine—
The bread and the wine of life;
Out of the good sunshine
They were given to thee as a token—
The body of Him, and the blood of Him,
When the gifts of God were rife.
What then wert thou, and what art now,
After the weary strife?

And every note of every bell

Sang Gabriel! rang Gabriel!
In the tower that is left the tale to tell
Of Gabriel, the Archangel.

Where are they now, O bells?

Where are the fruits o’ the Mission?
Garnered, where no one dwells.
Shepherd and flock are fled.
O’er the Lord’s vineyard swells
The tide that with fell perdition
Sounded their doom and fashioned their tomb
And buried them with the dead.
What then wert thou, and what art now?—
The answer is still unsaid.

And every note of every bell

Sang Gabriel! rang Gabriel!
In the tower that is left the tale to tell
Of Gabriel, the Archangel.

Where are they now, O tower!

The locusts and wild honey?
Where is the sacred dower
That the bride of Christ was given?
Gone to the builders of power,
The misers and minters of money;
Gone for the greed that is their creed—
And these in the land have thriven.
What then wert thou, and what art now,
And wherefore hast thou striven?

And every note of every bell

 Sang Gabriel! rang Gabriel!
In the tower that is left the tale to tell
Of Gabriel, the Archangel.

—Copyright by John Lane, New York, and used by kind

permission.

A WELCOME TO ALEXANDRA
March 7, 1863
By Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Sea-kings’ daughter from over the sea, Alexandra!

Saxon and Norman and Dane are we,
But all of us Danes in our welcome of thee, Alexandra!
Welcome her, thunders of fort and of fleet!
Welcome her, thundering cheer of the street!
Welcome her, all things youthful and sweet,
Scatter the blossoms under her feet!
Break, happy land, into earlier flowers!
Make music, O bird, in the new-budded bowers!
Blazon your mottoes of blessing and prayer!
Welcome her, welcome her, all that is ours!
Warble, O bugle, and trumpet, blare!
Flags, flutter out upon turrets and towers!
Flames, on the windy headland flare!
Utter your jubilee, steeple and spire!
Clash, ye bells, in the merry March air!
Flash, ye cities, in rivers of fire!
Rush to the roof, sudden rocket, and higher
Melt into stars for the land’s desire!
Roll and rejoice, jubilant voice,
Roll as a ground-swell dash’d on the strand,
Roar as the sea when he welcomes the land,
And welcome her, welcome the land’s desire.
The sea-kings’ daughter is happy as fair,
Blissful bride of a blissful heir,
Bride of the sire of the kings of the sea—
O joy to the people and joy to the throne,
Come to us, love us and make us your own;
For Saxon or Dane or Norman we,
Teuton or Celt, or whatever we be,
We are each all Dane in our welcome of thee, Alexandra!

CHRISTMAS IN INDIA
By Rudyard Kipling

Dim dusk behind the tamarisks—the sky is saffron yellow—

As the women in the village grind the corn,
And the parrots seek the river-side, each calling to his fellow
That the Day, the staring Eastern Day is born.
Oh, the white on the highway! Oh, the stenches in the byway!
Oh, the clammy fog that hovers over earth!
And at home they’re making merry ’neath the white and scarlet berry
—
What part have India’s exiles in their mirth?

Full day behind the tamarisks—the sky is blue and staring—

As the cattle crawl afield beneath the yoke,
And they bear one o’er the field path, who is past all hope or caring,
To the ghat below the curling wreaths of smoke.
Call on Rama, going slowly, as ye bear a brother slowly—
Call on Rama—he may hear, perhaps, your voice!
With our hymn-books and our psalters we appeal to other altars,
And to-day we bid good Christian men rejoice!

High noon behind the tamarisks—the sun is hot above us—

As at home the Christmas Day is breaking wan,
They will drink our healths at dinner—those who tell us how they
love us,
And forget us till another year be gone!
Oh, the toil that knows no breaking! Oh, the Heimweh, ceaseless,
aching!
 Oh, the black dividing sea and alien plain.
Youth was cheap, wherefore we sold it.
Gold was good—we hoped to hold it,
And to-day we know the fullness of our gain.

Gray dusk behind the tamarisks—the parrots fly together—

As the sun is sinking slowly over Home;
And the last ray seems to mock us shackled in a lifelong tether
That drags us back howe’er so far we roam.
Hard her service, poor her payment—she in ancient, tattered
raiment—
India, she the grim stepmother of our kind.
If a year of life be lent her, if her temple’s shrine we enter,
The door is shut—we may not look behind.

Black night behind the tamarisks—the owls begin their chorus—

As the conches from the temple scream and bray.
With fruitless years behind us, and the hopeless years before us,
Let us honor, O my brothers, Christmas Day!
Call a truce, then, to our labors—let us feast with friends and
neighbors,
And be merry as the custom of our caste;
For if “faint and forced the laughter,” and if sadness follow after,
We are richer by one mocking Christmas past.

THE BELLS OF SHANDON

By Francis Mahony

With deep affection

And recollection
I often think of
Those Shandon bells,
Whose sound so wild would,
In the days of childhood,
Fling round my cradle
Their magic spells.
On this I ponder
Where’er I wander,
And thus grow fonder,
Sweet Cork, of thee—
With thy bells of Shandon
That sound so grand on
The pleasant waters
Of the River Lee.

I’ve heard bells chiming

Full many a clime in,
Tolling sublime in
Cathedral shrine;
While at a glib rate
Brass tongues would vibrate;
But all their music
Spoke naught like thine.

For memory, dwelling

On each proud swelling
Of thy belfry, knelling
Its bold notes free,
Made the bells of Shandon
Sound far more grand, on
The pleasant waters
Of the River Lee.

I’ve heard bells tolling

Old Adrian’s Mole in
Their thunder rolling
From the Vatican;
And cymbals glorious
Swinging uproarious
In the gorgeous turrets
Of Notre Dame;

But thy sounds were sweeter

Than the dome of Peter
Flings o’er the Tiber,
Pealing solemnly.
O, the bells of Shandon
Sound far more grand, on
The pleasant waters
Of the River Lee.

There’s a bell in Moscow

Where on tower and kiosko
In Saint Sophia
The Turkman gets,
And loud in air
Calls men to prayer,
From the tapering summits
Of tall minarets.

Such empty phantom

I freely grant them;
But there’s an anthem
More dear to me;
’Tis the bells of Shandon
That sounds so grand, on
The pleasant waters
Of the River Lee.

THE DAY AND THE WORK

By Edwin Markham

To each man is given a day and his work for the day;
And once, and no more, he is given to travel this way.
And woe if he flies from the task, whatever the odds;
For the task is appointed to him on the scroll of the gods.

There is waiting a work where only your hands can avail;

And so if you falter, a chord in the music will fail.
We may laugh to the sky, we may lie for an hour in the sun;