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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d7b82bc --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,4 @@ +*.txt text eol=lf +*.htm text eol=lf +*.html text eol=lf +*.md text eol=lf diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..3e778d0 --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #65807 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/65807) diff --git a/old/65807-0.txt b/old/65807-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 1e4273b..0000000 --- a/old/65807-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,17485 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg eBook of The New Poetry, by Various - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and -most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms -of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you -will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before -using this eBook. - -Title: The New Poetry - An Anthology - -Author: Various - -Editor: Harriet Monroe - Alice Corbin Henderson - -Release Date: July 9, 2021 [eBook #65807] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -Produced by: Richard Tonsing and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team - at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images - generously made available by The Internet Archive) - -*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE NEW POETRY *** - - This ebook (originally published in 1920) was created in honour of - Distributed Proofreaders 20th Anniversary. - - - - - THE NEW POETRY - - - - -[Illustration] - - THE MACMILLAN COMPANY - - NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO · DALLAS · ATLANTA · SAN FRANCISCO - - MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED - - LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA · MELBOURNE - - THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD. TORONTO - - - - - THE NEW POETRY - - AN ANTHOLOGY - - - EDITED BY - - HARRIET MONROE - - AND - - ALICE CORBIN HENDERSON - - EDITORS OF “POETRY” - - - _WITH REVISED BIBLIOGRAPHY_ - - - New York - - THE MACMILLAN COMPANY - - 1920 - - _All rights reserved_ - - - - - COPYRIGHT, 1917, - BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. - - Set up and electrotyped. Published February, 1917. - - - Norwood Press: - - Berwick & Smith Co., Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. - - - - - INTRODUCTION - - -During the last three or four years there has been a remarkable -renascence of poetry in both America and England, and an equally -extraordinary revival of public interest in the art. - -The editors of this anthology wish to present in convenient form -representative work of the poets who are to-day creating what is -commonly called “the new poetry,”—a phrase no doubt rash and most -imperfectly descriptive, since the new in art is always the elder old, -but one difficult to replace with any form of words more exact. Much -newspaper controversy, and a number of special magazines, testify to the -demand for such a book; also many letters to the editors of _Poetry_ -asking for information—letters not only from individual lovers of the -art, but also from college professors and literary clubs or groups, who -have begun to feel that the poetry of to-day is a vital force no longer -to be ignored. Indeed, many critics feel that poetry is coming nearer -than either the novel or the drama to the actual life of to-day. The -magazine _Poetry_, ever since its foundation in October, 1912, has -encouraged this new spirit in the art, and the anthology is a further -effort on the part of its editors to present the new spirit to the -public. - -What is the new poetry? and wherein does it differ from the old? The -difference is not in mere details of form, for much poetry infused with -the new spirit conforms to the old measures and rhyme-schemes. It is not -merely in diction, though the truly modern poet rejects the so-called -“poetic” shifts of language—the _deems_, _’neaths_, _forsooths_, etc., -the inversions and high-sounding rotundities, familiar to his -predecessors: all the rhetorical excesses through which most Victorian -poetry now seems “over-apparelled,” as a speaker at a _Poetry_ dinner—a -lawyer, not a poet—put it in pointing out what the new movement is -aiming at. These things are important, but the difference goes deeper -than details of form, strikes through them to fundamental integrities. - -The new poetry strives for a concrete and immediate realization of life; -it would discard the theory, the abstraction, the remoteness, found in -all classics not of the first order. It is less vague, less verbose, -less eloquent, than most poetry of the Victorian period and much work of -earlier periods. It has set before itself an ideal of absolute -simplicity and sincerity—an ideal which implies an individual, -unstereotyped diction; and an individual, unstereotyped rhythm. Thus -inspired, it becomes intensive rather than diffuse. It looks out more -eagerly than in; it becomes objective. The term “exteriority” has been -applied to it, but this is incomplete. In presenting the concrete object -or the concrete environment, whether these be beautiful or ugly, it -seeks to give more precisely the emotion arising from them, and thus -widens immeasurably the scope of the art. - -All this implies no disrespect for tradition. The poets of to-day do not -discard tradition because they follow the speech of to-day rather than -that of Shakespeare’s time, or strive for organic rhythm rather than use -a mold which has been perfected by others. On the contrary, they follow -the great tradition when they seek a vehicle suited to their own epoch -and their own creative mood, and resolutely reject all others. - -Great poetry has always been written in the language of contemporary -speech, and its theme, even when legendary, has always borne a direct -relation with contemporary thought, contemporary imaginative and -spiritual life. It is this direct relation which the more progressive -modern poets are trying to restore. In this effort they discard not only -archaic diction but also the shop-worn subjects of past history or -legend, which have been through the centuries a treasure-trove for the -second-rate. - -This effort at modern speech, simplicity of form, and authentic vitality -of theme, is leading our poets to question the authority of the accepted -laws of English verse, and to study other languages, ancient and modern, -in the effort to find out what poetry really is. It is a strange fact -that, in the common prejudice of cultivated people during the four -centuries from just before 1400 to just before 1800, nothing was -accepted as poetry in English that did not walk in the iambic measure. -Bits of Elizabethan song and of Dryden’s two musical odes, both beating -four-time instead of the iambic three, were outlandish intrusions too -slight to count. To write English poetry, a man must measure his paces -according to the iambic foot-rule; and he must mark off his lines with -rhymes, or at least marshal them in the pentameter movement of blank -verse. - -The first protest against this prejudice, which long usage had hardened -into law, came in the persons of four or five great poets—Burns, -Coleridge, Keats, Shelley, Byron—who puzzled the ears of their -generation with anapæsts and other four-time measures, and who carried -into their work a certain immediacy of feeling and imagery—a certain -modern passion of life—which even Cowper, Thompson and a few others of -their time, though they had written of things around them, had scarcely -attained. Quarterly critics and London moralists blinked and gasped, but -at last the bars had to go down for these great radicals. And before -long the extreme virtuosity of Swinburne had widened still further the -musical range of the English language. - -By the time Whitman appeared, the ear of the average reader—that -formidable person—was attuned to anapæsts, dactyls, choriambics, -sapphics, rhymed or unrhymed. He could not call them by name, but he was -docile to all possible intricacies of pattern in any closely woven -metrical scheme. But Whitman gave him a new shock. Here was a so-called -poet who discarded all traditional patterns, and wove a carpet of his -own. Once more the conservatives protested: was this poetry? and, if so, -why? If poetry was not founded on the long-accepted metrical laws, then -how could they distinguish it from prose, and thus keep the labels and -catalogues in order? What was Whitman’s alleged poetry but a kind of -freakish prose, invented to set forth a dangerous anarchistic -philosophy? - -It would take too long to analyze the large rhythms of Whitman’s free -verse; but the mere fact that he wrote free verse and called it poetry, -and that other poets—men like Rossetti, Swinburne, Symonds, even the -reluctant Emerson—seemed to agree that it was poetry, this fact alone -was, in the opinion of the conservatives, a challenge to four centuries -of English poets. And this challenge, repeated by later poets, compels -us to inquire briefly into the origins of English poetry, in the effort -to get behind and underneath the instinctive prejudice that English -poetry, to be poetry, must conform to prescribed metres. - -Chaucer, great genius that he was, an aristocrat by birth and breeding, -and a democrat by feeling and sympathy—Chaucer may have had it in his -power to turn the whole stream of English poetry into either the French -or the Anglo-Saxon channel. Knowing and loving the old French epics -better than the Norse sagas, he naturally chose the French channel, and -he was so great and so beloved that his world followed him. Thus there -was no longer any question—the iambic measure and rhyme, both dear to -the French-trained ears of England’s Norman masters, became fixed as the -standard type of poetic form. - -But it was possibly a toss-up—the scale hung almost even in that -formative fourteenth century. If Chaucer’s contemporary Langland—the -great democrat, revolutionist, mystic—had had Chaucer’s authority and -universal sympathy, English poetry might have followed his example -instead of Chaucer’s; and Shakespeare, Milton and the rest might have -been impelled by common practice to use—or modify—the curious, heavy, -alliterative measure of _Piers Ploughman_, which now sounds so strange -to our ears: - - In a somer seson, - When softe was the sonne, - I shoop me into shroudes - As I a sheep weere; - In habite as an heremite - Unholy of werkes, - Wente wide in this world - Wondres to here. - -Though we must rejoice that Chaucer prevailed with his French forms, -Langland reminds us that poetry—even English poetry—is older than rhyme, -older than the iambic measure, older than all the metrical patterns -which now seem so much a part of it. If our criticism is to have any -value, it must insist upon the obvious truth that poetry existed before -the English language began to form itself out of the débris of other -tongues, and that it now exists in forms of great beauty among many -far-away peoples who never heard of our special rules. - -Perhaps the first of these disturbing influences from afar to be felt in -modern English poetry was the Celtic renascence, the wonderful revival -of interest in old Irish song, which became manifest in translations and -adaptations of the ancient Gaelic lyrics and epics, made by W. B. Yeats, -Lady Gregory, Douglas Hyde and others. - -This influence was most powerful because it came to us directly, not at -second-hand, through the English work of two poets of genius, Synge and -Yeats. These great men, fortified and inspired by the simplicity and -clarity of primitive Celtic song, had little patience with the -“over-appareled” art of Tennyson and his imitators. They found it -stiffened by rhetoric, by a too conscious morality leading to pulpit -eloquence, and by second-hand bookish inspirations; and its movement -they found hampered, thwarted of freedom, by a too slavish acceptance of -ready-made schemes of metre and rhyme. The surprises and irregularities, -found in all great art because they are inherent in human feeling, were -being ruled out of English poetry, which consequently was stiffening -into forms too fixed and becoming more and more remote from life. As Mr. -Yeats said in Chicago: - -“We were weary of all this. We wanted to get rid not only of rhetoric -but of poetic diction. We tried to strip away everything that was -artificial, to get a style like speech, as simple as the simplest prose, -like a cry of the heart.” - -It is scarcely too much to say that “the new poetry”—if we may be -allowed the phrase—began with these two great Irish masters. Think what -a contrast to even the simplest lyrics of Tennyson the pattern of their -songs presents, and what a contrast their direct outright human feeling -presents to the somewhat culture-developed optimism of Browning, and the -science-inspired pessimism of Arnold. Compared with these Irishmen the -best of their predecessors seem literary. This statement does not imply -any measure of ultimate values, for it is still too early to estimate -them. One may, for example, believe Synge to be the greatest -poet-playwright in English since Shakespeare, and one of the great poets -of the world; but a few more decades must pass before such ranking can -have authority. - -At the same time other currents were influencing progressive minds -toward even greater freedom of form. Strangely enough, Whitman’s -influence was felt first in France. It reached England, and finally -America, indirectly from Paris, where the poets, stimulated by -translations of the great American, especially Bajazette’s, and by the -ever-adventurous quality of French scholarship, have been experimenting -with free verse ever since Mallarmé. The great Irish poets felt the -French influence—it was part of the education which made them realize -that English poetry had become narrow, rigid, and insular. Yeats has -held usually, though never slavishly, to rhyme and a certain regularity -of metrical form—in which, however, he makes his own tunes; but Synge -wrote his plays in that wide borderland between prose and verse, in a -form which, whatever one calls it, is essentially poetry, for it has -passion, glamour, magic, rhythm, and glorious imaginative life. - -This borderland between prose and verse is being explored now as never -before in English; except, perhaps in the King James translation of the -Bible. The modern “vers-libertines,” as they have been wittily called, -are doing pioneer work in an heroic effort to get rid of obstacles that -have hampered the poet and separated him from his audience. They are -trying to make the modern manifestations of poetry less a matter of -rules and formulæ, and more a thing of the spirit, and of organic as -against imposed, rhythm. In this enthusiastic labor they are following -not only a strong inward impulse, not only the love of freedom which -Chaucer followed—and Spenser and Shakespeare, Shelley and Coleridge and -all the masters—but they are moved also by influences from afar. They -have studied the French _symbolistes_ of the ’nineties, and the more -recent Parisian _vers-libristes_. Moreover, some of them have listened -to the pure lyricism of the Provençal troubadours, have studied the more -elaborate mechanism of early Italian sonneteers and canzonists, have -read Greek poetry from a new angle of vision; and last, but perhaps most -important of all, have bowed to winds from the East. - -In the nineteenth century the western world—the western æsthetic -world—discovered the orient. Someone has said that when Perry knocked at -the gates of Japan, these opened, not to let us in, but to let the -Japanese out. Japanese graphic art, especially, began almost at once to -kindle progressive minds. Whistler, of course, was the first great -creative artist to feel the influence of their instinct for balance and -proportion, for subtle harmonies of color and line, for the integrity of -beauty in art as opposed to the moralizing and sentimental tendencies -which had been intruding more and more. - -Poetry was slower than the graphic arts to feel the oriental influence, -because of the barrier of language. But European scholarship had long -dabbled with Indian, Persian and Sanskrit literatures, and Fitzgerald -even won over the crowd to some remote suspicion of their beauty by -meeting Omar half-way, and making a great poem out of the marriage, not -only of two minds, but of two literary traditions. Then a few airs from -Japan blew in—a few translations of _hokku_ and other forms—which showed -the stark simplicity and crystal clarity of the art among Japanese -poets. And of late the search has gone further: we begin to discover a -whole royal line of Chinese poets of a thousand or more years ago; and -we are trying to search out the secrets of their delicate and beautiful -art. The task is difficult, because our poets, ignorant of Chinese, have -to get at these masters through the literal translations of scholars. -But even by this round-about way, poets like Allen Upward, Ezra Pound, -Helen Waddell and a few others, give us something of the rare flavor, -the special exquisite perfume, of the original. And of late the Indian -influence has been emphasized by the great Bengali poet and sage, -Rabindranath Tagore, whose mastery of English makes him a poet in two -languages. - -This oriental influence is to be welcomed because it flows from deep -original streams of poetic art. We should not be afraid to learn from -it; and in much of the work of the imagists, and other radical groups, -we find a more or less conscious, and more or less effective, yielding -to that influence. We find something of the oriental directness of -vision and simplicity of diction, also now and then a hint of the -unobtrusive oriental perfection of form and delicacy of feeling. - -All these influences, which tend to make the art of poetry, especially -poetry in English, less provincial, more cosmopolitan, are by no means a -defiance of the classic tradition. On the contrary, they are an endeavor -to return to it at its great original sources, and to sweep away -artificial laws—the _obiter dicta_ of secondary minds—which have -encumbered it. There is more of the great authentic classic tradition, -for example, in the _Spoon River Anthology_ than in the _Idylls of the -King_, _Balaustian’s Adventure_, and _Sohrab and Rustum_ combined. And -the free rhythms of Whitman, Mallarmé, Pound, Sandburg and others, in -their inspired passages, are more truly in line with the biblical, the -Greek, the Anglo-Saxon, and even the Shakespearean tradition, than all -the exact iambics of Dryden and Pope, the patterned alexandrines of -Racine, or the closely woven metrics of Tennyson and Swinburne. - -Whither the new movement is leading no one can tell with exactness, nor -which of its present manifestations in England and America will prove -permanently valuable. But we may be sure that the movement is toward -greater freedom of spirit and form, and a more enlightened recognition -of the international scope, the cosmopolitanism, of the great art of -poetry, of which the English language, proud as its record is, offers -but a single phase. As part of such a movement, even the most -extravagant experiments, the most radical innovations, are valuable, for -the moment at least, as an assault against prejudice. And some of the -radicals of to-day will be, no doubt, the masters of to-morrow—a -phenomenon common in the history of the arts. - - * * * * * - -It remains only to explain the plan of this anthology, its inclusions -and omissions. - -It has seemed best to include no poems published before 1900, even -though, as in a few cases, the poets were moved by the new impulses. For -example, those two intensely modern, nobly impassioned, lyric poets, -Emily Dickinson and the Shropshire Lad (Alfred Edward Housman)—the one -dead, the other fortunately still living—both belong, by date of -publication, to the ’nineties. The work of poets already, as it were, -enshrined—whether by fame, or death, or both—has also not been quoted: -poets whose works are already, in a certain sense, classics, and whose -books are treasured by all lovers of the art—like Synge and Moody and -Riley, too early gone from us, and William Butler Yeats, whose later -verse is governed, even more than his earlier, by the new austerities. - -Certain other omissions are more difficult to explain, because they may -be thought to imply a lack of consideration which we do not feel. The -present Laureate, Robert Bridges, even in the late ’eighties and early -’nineties, was led by his own personal taste, especially in his _Shorter -Poems_, toward austere simplicity of subject, diction and style. But his -most representative poems were written before 1900. Rudyard Kipling has -been inspired at times by the modern muse, but his best poems also -antedate 1900. This is true also of Louise Imogen Guiney and Bliss -Carman, though most of their work, like that of Arthur Symons and the -late Stephen Phillips and Anna Hempstead Branch, belongs, by its -affinities, to the earlier period. And Alfred Noyes, whatever the date -of his poems, bears no immediate relation to the more progressive modern -movement in the art. - -On the other hand, we have tried to be hospitable to the adventurous, -the experimental, because these are the qualities of pioneers, who look -forward, not backward, and who may lead on, further than we can see as -yet, to new domains of the ever-conquering spirit of beauty. - - _H. M._ - - _NOTE. A word about the typography of this volume. No rigid system of - lineation, indention, etc., has been imposed upon the poets who very - kindly lend us their work. For example, sonnets are printed with or - without indention according to the individual preference of the poet; - also other rhymed forms, such as quatrains rhyming alternately; as - well as various forms of free verse. Punctuation and spelling are more - uniform, although a certain liberty has been conceded in words like_ - gray _or_ grey, _the color of which seems to vary with the spelling, - and in the use of dots, dashes, commas, colons, etc._ - - - - - TABLE OF CONTENTS - - - CONRAD AIKEN: PAGE - Music I Heard 1 - Dead Cleopatra 1 - Dancing Adairs 2 - - ZOË AKINS: - The Tragedienne 3 - I Am the Wind 3 - Conquered 4 - The Wanderer 4 - - RICHARD ALDINGTON: - The Poplar 5 - Lesbia 6 - Images, I-VI 6 - Choricos 7 - - MARY ALDIS: - Barberries 10 - When You Come 11 - Flash-lights, I-III 12 - - WALTER CONRAD ARENSBERG: - Voyage à l’Infini 13 - At Daybreak 14 - To Hasekawa 14 - Dialogue 14 - Song of the Souls Set Free 15 - - WILTON AGNEW BARRETT: - A New England Church 15 - - JOSEPH WARREN BEACH: - Rue Bonaparte 16 - The View at Gunderson’s 17 - - WILLIAM ROSE BENÉT: - The Falconer of God 18 - The Horse Thief 20 - - MAXWELL BODENHEIM: - The Rear Porches of an Apartment-Building 24 - The Interne 24 - The Old Jew 25 - The Miner 25 - To an Enemy 25 - To a Discarded Steel Rail 26 - - GORDON BOTTOMLEY: - Night and Morning Songs: - My Moon 26 - Elegiac Mood 27 - Dawn 27 - - ROLLO BRITTEN: - Bird of Passion 28 - - RUPERT BROOKE: - Retrospect 28 - Nineteen-Fourteen: - I. Peace 29 - II. Safety 30 - III. The Dead 30 - IV. The Dead 31 - V. The Soldier 31 - - WITTER BYNNER: - To Celia: - I. Consummation 32 - II. During a Chorale by Cesar Franck 33 - III. Songs Ascending 34 - Grieve not for Beauty 34 - - JOSEPH CAMPBELL: - At Harvest 35 - On Waking 36 - The Old Woman 38 - - NANCY CAMPBELL: - The Apple-Tree 38 - The Monkey 39 - - SKIPWITH CANNÉLL: - The Red Bridge 40 - The King 41 - - WILLA SIBERT CATHER: - The Palatine (In the “Dark Ages.”) 43 - Spanish Johnny 44 - - PADRAIC COLUM: - Polonius and the Ballad Singers 45 - The Sea Bird to the Wave 49 - Old Men Complaining 49 - - GRACE HAZARD CONKLING: - Refugees (Belgium—1914) 52 - “The Little Rose is Dust, My Dear” 53 - - ALICE CORBIN: - O World 53 - Two Voices 54 - Love Me at Last 55 - Humoresque 55 - One City Only 55 - Apparitions, I-II 57 - The Pool 57 - Music 58 - What Dim Arcadian Pastures 59 - Nodes 59 - - ADELAIDE CRAPSEY: - Cinquains: - November Night 60 - Triad 60 - Susanna and the Elders 61 - The Guarded Wound 61 - The Warning 61 - Fate Defied 61 - The Pledge 61 - Expenses 62 - Adventure 62 - Dirge 62 - Song 62 - The Lonely Death 63 - - H. D.: - Hermes of the Ways, I-II 63 - Priapus (Keeper of Orchards) 65 - The Pool 66 - Oread 66 - The Garden, I-II 66 - Moonrise 67 - The Shrine, I-IV 68 - - MARY CAROLYN DAVIES: - Cloistered 71 - Songs of a Girl, I-V 72 - - FANNIE STEARNS DAVIS: - Profits 73 - Souls 74 - - WALTER DE LA MARE: - The Listeners 74 - An Epitaph 75 - - LEE WILSON DODD: - The Temple 76 - The Comrade 77 - - JOHN DRINKWATER: - Sunrise on Rydal Water 78 - - LOUISE DRISCOLL: - The Metal Checks 80 - - DOROTHY DUDLEY: - La Rue de la Montagne Sainte-Gèneviève 84 - - HELEN DUDLEY: - To One Unknown 86 - Song 86 - - MAX EASTMAN: - Diogenes 87 - In March 87 - At the Aquarium 87 - - T. S. ELIOT: - Portrait of a Lady, I-III 88 - - ARTHUR DAVISON FICKE: - Meeting 92 - Among Shadows 93 - The Three Sisters 93 - Portrait of an Old Woman 93 - I am Weary of Being Bitter 94 - From “Sonnets of a Portrait Painter” 95 - Like Him Whose Spirit 95 - - JOHN GOULD FLETCHER: - Irradiations, I-IV 96 - Arizona Poems: - Mexican Quarter 98 - Rain in the Desert 99 - The Blue Symphony, I-V 100 - - F. S. FLINT: - Poems in Unrhymed Cadence, I-III 104 - - MOIREEN FOX: - Liadain to Curithir, I-V 106 - - FLORENCE KIPER FRANK: - The Jewish Conscript 108 - The Movies 109 - You 109 - - ROBERT FROST: - Mending Wall 110 - After Apple-Picking 111 - My November Guest 112 - Mowing 113 - Storm Fear 113 - Going for Water 114 - The Code—Heroics 115 - - HAMLIN GARLAND: - To a Captive Crane 119 - The Mountains are a Lonely Folk 119 - Magic 119 - - WILFRID WILSON GIBSON: - Color 120 - Oblivion 121 - Tenants 121 - Gold 122 - On Hampstead Heath 122 - Battle: - The Going 123 - The Joke 123 - In the Ambulance 123 - Hit 124 - The Housewife 124 - Hill-born 125 - The Fear 125 - Back 125 - - RICHARD BUTLER GLAENZER: - Star-Magic 126 - - DOUGLAS GOLDRING: - Voyages, I-IV 127 - - HERMANN HAGEDORN: - Early Morning at Bargis 128 - Doors 129 - Departure 129 - Broadway 130 - - THOMAS HARDY: - She Hears the Storm 130 - The Voice 131 - In the Moonlight 132 - The Man He Killed 132 - - RALPH HODGSON: - The Mystery 133 - Three Poems, I-III 133 - Stupidity Street 134 - - HORACE HOLLEY: - Three Poems: - Creative 134 - Twilight at Versailles 135 - Lovers 135 - - HELEN HOYT: - Ellis Park 135 - The New-Born 136 - Rain at Night 137 - The Lover Sings of a Garden 137 - Since I Have Felt the Sense of Death 138 - - FORD MADOX HUEFFER: - Antwerp, I-VI 138 - - SCHARMEL IRIS: - After the Martyrdom 143 - Lament 143 - Iteration 144 - Early Nightfall 144 - - ORRICK JOHNS: - Songs of Deliverance: - I. The Song of Youth 144 - II. Virgins 146 - III. No Prey Am I 146 - - JOYCE KILMER: - Trees 150 - Easter 150 - - ALFRED KREYMBORG: - America 151 - Old Manuscript 151 - Cézanne 152 - Parasite 152 - - WILLIAM LAIRD: - Traümerei at Ostendorff’s 153 - A Very Old Song 154 - - D. H. LAWRENCE: - A Woman and Her Dead Husband 155 - Fireflies in the Corn 157 - Green 158 - Grief 158 - Service of All the Dead 159 - - AGNES LEE: - Motherhood 159 - A Statue in a Garden 161 - On the Jail Steps 161 - Her Going 162 - - WILLIAM ELLERY LEONARD: - Indian Summer 165 - - VACHEL LINDSAY: - General William Booth Enters into Heaven 166 - The Eagle that is Forgotten 168 - The Congo (A Study of the Negro Race): - I. Their Basic Savagery 169 - II. Their Irrepressible High Spirits 171 - III. The Hope of Their Religion 172 - Aladdin and the Jinn 174 - The Chinese Nightingale 175 - - AMY LOWELL: - Patterns 182 - 1777: - I. The Trumpet-Vine Arbor 186 - II. The City of Falling Leaves 187 - Venus Transiens 191 - A Lady 192 - Chinoiseries: - Reflections 192 - Falling Snow 193 - Hoar-frost 193 - Solitaire 193 - A Gift 194 - Red Slippers 194 - Apology 195 - - PERCY MACKAYE: - Old Age 196 - Song from “Mater” 197 - - FREDERIC MANNING: - Sacrifice 198 - At Even 199 - - JOHN MASEFIELD: - Ships 200 - Cargoes 203 - Watching by a Sick-Bed 203 - What am I, Life? 204 - - EDGAR LEE MASTERS: - Spoon River Anthology: - The Hill 205 - Ollie M^cGee 206 - Daisy Fraser 207 - Hare Drummer 207 - Doc Hill 208 - Fiddler Jones 208 - Thomas Rhodes 209 - Editor Whedon 210 - Seth Compton 210 - Henry C. Calhoun 211 - Perry Zoll 212 - Archibald Higbie 212 - Father Malloy 213 - Lucinda Matlock 213 - Anne Rutledge 214 - William H. Herndon 215 - Rutherford M^cDowell 215 - Arlo Will 216 - Aaron Hatfield 217 - Webster Ford 218 - Silence 219 - - ALICE MEYNELL: - Maternity 221 - Chimes 221 - - MAX MICHELSON: - O Brother Tree 222 - The Bird 223 - Storm 223 - A Hymn to Night 224 - Love Lyric 224 - - EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY: - God’s World 225 - Ashes of Life 226 - The Shroud 226 - - HAROLD MONRO: - Great City 227 - Youth in Arms 228 - The Strange Companion 229 - - HARRIET MONROE: - The Hotel 231 - The Turbine 233 - On the Porch 236 - The Wonder of It 237 - The Inner Silence 238 - Love Song 238 - A Farewell 239 - Lullaby 239 - Pain 240 - The Water Ouzel 241 - The Pine at Timber-Line 242 - Mountain Song 242 - - JOHN G. NEIHARDT: - Prayer for Pain 243 - Envoi 244 - - YONE NOGUCHI: - The Poet 245 - I Have Cast the World 246 - - GRACE FALLOW NORTON: - Allegra Agonistes 246 - Make No Vows 247 - I Give Thanks 247 - - JAMES OPPENHEIM: - The Slave 248 - The Lonely Child 249 - Not Overlooked 249 - The Runner in the Skies 250 - - PATRICK ORR: - Annie Shore and Johnnie Doon 250 - In the Mohave 251 - - SEUMAS O’SULLIVAN: - My Sorrow 252 - Splendid and Terrible 252 - The Others 253 - - JOSEPHINE PRESTON PEABODY: - Cradle Song, I-III 254 - The Cedars 256 - A Song of Solomon 257 - - EZRA POUND: - Δώρια 257 - The Return 258 - Piccadilly 259 - N. Y. 259 - The Coming of War: Actaeon 260 - The Garden 260 - Ortus 261 - The Choice 261 - The Garret 262 - Dance Figure 262 - From “Near Périgord” 263 - An Immorality 264 - The Study in Aesthetics 265 - Further Instructions 265 - Villanelle: The Psychological Hour, I-III 266 - Ballad of the Goodly Fere 268 - Ballad for Gloom 270 - La Fraisne 271 - The River-Merchant’s Wife: A Letter (from the Chinese of Li Po.) 273 - Exile’s Letter (From the Chinese of Li Po.) 274 - - JOHN REED: - Sangar 277 - - ERNEST RHYS: - Dagonet’s Canzonet 280 - A Song of Happiness 281 - - EDWIN ARLINGTON ROBINSON: - The Master 283 - John Gorham 285 - Richard Cory 287 - The Growth of Lorraine, I-II 287 - Cassandra 288 - - CARL SANDBURG: - Chicago 290 - The Harbor 291 - Sketch 292 - Lost 292 - Jan Kubelik 293 - At a Window 293 - The Poor 294 - The Road and the End 294 - Killers 295 - Nocturne in a Deserted Brickyard 296 - Handfuls 296 - Under the Harvest Moon 297 - Choose 297 - Kin 298 - Places 298 - Joy 299 - The Great Hunt 299 - Our Prayer of Thanks 300 - - CLARA SHANAFELT: - To Thee 301 - Caprice 301 - A Vivid Girl 301 - Invocation 302 - Pastel 302 - A Gallant Woman 302 - Scherzo 303 - - FRANCES SHAW: - Who Loves the Rain 304 - The Harp of the Wind 304 - The Ragpicker 305 - Cologne Cathedral 305 - Star Thought 305 - The Child’s Quest 306 - Little Pagan Rain Song 306 - - CONSTANCE LINDSAY SKINNER: - Songs of the Coast-Dwellers: - The Chief’s Prayer after the Salmon Catch 307 - Song of Whip-Plaiting 308 - No Answer is Given 309 - - JAMES STEPHENS: - What Tomas An Buile said in a Pub 312 - Bessie Bobtail 313 - Hate 313 - The Waste Places, I-II 314 - Hawks 316 - Dark Wings 317 - - GEORGE STERLING: - A Legend of the Dove 317 - Kindred 318 - Omnia Exeunt in Mysterium 318 - The Last Days 319 - - WALLACE STEVENS: - Peter Quince at the Clavier, I-IV 320 - In Battle 322 - Sunday Morning, I-V 323 - - AJAN SYRIAN: - The Syrian Lover in Exile Remembers Thee, Light of my Land 325 - - RABINDRANATH TAGORE: - From “Gitanjali,” I-VI 327 - From “The Gardener,” I-IX 329 - - SARA TEASDALE: - Leaves 334 - Morning 334 - The Flight 335 - Over the Roofs 335 - Debt 336 - Songs in a Hospital: - The Broken Field 336 - Open Windows 336 - After Death 337 - In Memoriam F. O. S. 337 - Swallow Flight 338 - The Answer 338 - - EUNICE TIETJENS: - The Bacchante to Her Babe 339 - The Steam Shovel 341 - The Great Man 343 - - RIDGELY TORRENCE: - The Bird and the Tree 344 - The Son 345 - - CHARLES HANSON TOWNE: - Beyond the Stars 346 - - LOUIS UNTERMEYER: - Landscapes 348 - Feuerzauber 350 - On the Birth of a Child 351 - Irony 352 - - ALLEN UPWARD: - Scented Leaves from a Chinese Jar: - The Acacia Leaves 352 - The Bitter Purple Willows 352 - The Coral Fisher 353 - The Diamond 353 - The Estuary 353 - The Intoxicated Poet 353 - The Jonquils 353 - The Marigold 353 - The Mermaid 354 - The Middle Kingdom 354 - The Milky Way 354 - The Onion 354 - The Sea-Shell 354 - The Stupid Kite 354 - The Windmill 355 - The Word 355 - - JOHN HALL WHEELOCK: - Sunday Evening in the Common 355 - Spring 356 - Like Music 356 - The Thunder-Shower 357 - Song 357 - Alone 358 - Nirvana 358 - Triumph of the Singer 358 - - HERVEY WHITE: - Last Night 359 - I Saw the Clouds 360 - - MARGARET WIDDEMER: - The Beggars 361 - Teresina’s Face 362 - Greek Folk Song 362 - - FLORENCE WILKINSON: - Our Lady of Idleness 363 - Students 365 - - MARGUERITE WILKINSON: - A Woman’s Beloved—A Psalm 367 - An Incantation 368 - - WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS: - Sicilian Emigrant’s Song 369 - Peace on Earth 370 - The Shadow 371 - Metric Figure 371 - Sub Terra 372 - Slow Movement 373 - Postlude 374 - - CHARLES ERSKINE SCOTT WOOD: - “The Poet in the Desert”—Extracts from the Prologue 375 - - EDITH WYATT: - On the Great Plateau 377 - Summer Hail 379 - To F. W. 380 - A City Afternoon 382 - - - - - THE NEW POETRY - - - - - Conrad Aiken - - - MUSIC I HEARD - - Music I heard with you was more than music, - And bread I broke with you was more than bread. - Now that I am without you, all is desolate, - All that was once so beautiful is dead. - - Your hands once touched this table and this silver, - And I have seen your fingers hold this glass. - These things do not remember you, beloved: - And yet your touch upon them will not pass. - - For it was in my heart you moved among them, - And blessed them with your hands and with your eyes. - And in my heart they will remember always: - They knew you once, O beautiful and wise! - - - DEAD CLEOPATRA - - Dead Cleopatra lies in a crystal casket, - Wrapped and spiced by the cunningest of hands. - Around her neck they have put a golden necklace - Her tatbebs, it is said, are worn with sands. - - Dead Cleopatra was once revered in Egypt— - Warm-eyed she was, this princess of the south. - Now she is very old and dry and faded, - With black bitumen they have sealed up her mouth. - - Grave-robbers pulled the gold rings from her fingers, - Despite the holy symbols across her breast; - They scared the bats that quietly whirled above her. - Poor lady! she would have been long since at rest - - If she had not been wrapped and spiced so shrewdly, - Preserved, obscene, to mock black flights of years. - What would her lover have said, had he foreseen it? - Had he been moved to ecstasy, or tears? - - O sweet clean earth from whom the green blade cometh!— - When we are dead, my best-beloved and I, - Close well above us that we may rest forever, - Sending up grass and blossoms to the sky. - - - DANCING ADAIRS - - Behold me, in my chiffon, gauze and tinsel, - Flitting out of the shadow into the spotlight, - And into the shadow again, without a whisper!— - Firefly’s my name, I am evanescent. - - Firefly’s your name. You are evanescent. - But I follow you as remorselessly as darkness, - And shut you in and enclose you, at last, and always, - Till you are lost, as a voice is lost in silence. - - Till I am lost, as a voice is lost in silence.... - Are you the one who would close so cool about me? - My fire sheds into and through you and beyond you: - How can your fingers hold me? I am elusive. - - How can my fingers hold you? You are elusive? - Yes, you are flame; but I surround and love you, - Always extend beyond you, cool, eternal, - To take you into my heart’s great void of silence. - - You shut me into your heart’s great void of silence.... - O sweet and soothing end for a life of whirling! - Now I am still, whose life was mazed with motion. - Now I sink into you, for love of sleep. - - - - - Zoë Akins - - - THE TRAGEDIENNE - - A storm is riding on the tide; - Grey is the day and grey the tide, - Far-off the sea-gulls wheel and cry— - A storm draws near upon the tide; - - A city lifts its minarets - To winds that from the desert sweep, - And prisoned Arab women weep - Below the domes and minarets; - - Upon a hill in Thessaly - Stand broken columns in a line - About a cold forgotten shrine, - Beneath a moon in Thessaly: - - But in the world there is no place - So desolate as your tragic face. - - - I AM THE WIND - - I am the wind that wavers, - You are the certain land; - I am the shadow that passes - Over the sand. - - I am the leaf that quivers, - You the unshaken tree; - You are the stars that are steadfast, - I am the sea. - - You are the light eternal— - Like a torch I shall die; - You are the surge of deep music, - I but a cry! - - - CONQUERED - - O pale! O vivid! dear! - O disillusioned eyes - Forever near! - O Dream, arise! - - I will not turn away - From the face I loved again; - Your beauty may sway - My life with pain. - - I will drink the wine you pour, - I will seek to put asunder - Our ways no more— - O Love! O Wonder! - - - THE WANDERER - - The ships are lying in the bay, - The gulls are swinging round their spars; - My soul as eagerly as they - Desires the margin of the stars. - - So much do I love wandering, - So much I love the sea and sky, - That it will be a piteous thing - In one small grave to lie. - - - - - Richard Aldington - - - THE POPLAR - - Why do you always stand there shivering - Between the white stream and the road? - - The people pass through the dust - On bicycles, in carts, in motor-cars; - The wagoners go by at dawn; - The lovers walk on the grass path at night. - - Stir from your roots, walk, poplar! - You are more beautiful than they are. - - I know that the white wind loves you, - Is always kissing you and turning up - The white lining of your green petticoat. - The sky darts through you like blue rain, - And the grey rain drips on your flanks - And loves you. - And I have seen the moon - Slip his silver penny into your pocket - As you straightened your hair; - And the white mist curling and hesitating - Like a bashful lover about your knees. - - I know you, poplar; - I have watched you since I was ten. - But if you had a little real love, - A little strength, - You would leave your nonchalant idle lovers - And go walking down the white road - Behind the wagoners. - - There are beautiful beeches - Down beyond the hill. - Will you always stand there shivering? - - - LESBIA - - Grow weary if you will, let me be sad. - Use no more speech now; - Let the silence spread gold hair above us, - Fold on delicate fold. - Use no more speech; - You had the ivory of my life to carve.... - - And Picus of Mirandola is dead; - And all the gods they dreamed and fabled of, - Hermes, and Thoth and Bêl are rotten now, - Rotten and dank. - - And through it all I see your pale Greek face; - Tenderness - Makes me eager as a little child to love you, - You morsel left half-cold on Cæsar’s plate. - - - IMAGES - - I - - Like a gondola of green scented fruits - Drifting along the dank canals at Venice, - You, O exquisite one, - Have entered my desolate city. - - II - - The blue smoke leaps - Like swirling clouds of birds vanishing. - So my love leaps forth towards you, - Vanishes and is renewed. - - III - - A rose-yellow moon in a pale sky - When the sunset is faint vermilion - In the mist among the tree-boughs, - Art thou to me. - - IV - - As a young beech-tree on the edge of a forest - Stands still in the evening, - Yet shudders through all its leaves in the light air - And seems to fear the stars— - So are you still and so tremble. - - V - - The red deer are high on the mountain, - They are beyond the last pine trees. - And my desires have run with them. - - VI - - The flower which the wind has shaken - Is soon filled again with rain; - So does my mind fill slowly with misgiving - Until you return. - - - CHORICOS - - The ancient songs - Pass deathward mournfully. - - Cold lips that sing no more, and withered wreaths, - Regretful eyes and drooping breasts and wings— - Symbols of ancient songs - Mournfully passing - Down to the great white surges, - Watched of none - Save the frail sea-birds - And the lithe pale girls, - Daughters of Okeanos. - - And the songs pass - From the green land - Which lies upon the waves as a leaf - On the flowers of hyacinth; - And they pass from the waters, - The manifold winds and the dim moon, - And they come, - Silently winging through soft Kimmerian dusk, - To the quiet level lands - That she keeps for us all, - That she wrought for us all for sleep - In the silver days of the earth’s dawning— - Prosperine, daughter of Zeus. - - And we turn from the Kuprian’s breasts, - And we turn from thee, - Phoibos Apollon, - And we turn from the music of old - And the hills that we loved and the meads, - And we turn from the fiery day, - And the lips that were over-sweet; - For silently - Brushing the fields with red-shod feet, - With purple robe - Searing the flowers as with a sudden flame, - Death, - Thou hast come upon us. - - And of all the ancient songs - Passing to the swallow-blue halls - By the dark streams of Persephone, - This only remains: - That in the end we turn to thee, - Death, - That we turn to thee, singing - One last song. - - O Death, - Thou art an healing wind - That blowest over white flowers - A-tremble with dew; - Thou art a wind flowing - Over long leagues of lonely sea; - Thou art the dusk and the fragrance; - Thou art the lips of love mournfully smiling; - Thou art the pale peace of one - Satiate with old desires; - Thou art the silence of beauty, - And we look no more for the morning; - We yearn no more for the sun, - Since with thy white hands, - Death, - Thou crownest us with the pallid chaplets, - The slim colorless poppies - Which in thy garden alone - Softly thou gatherest. - - And silently; - And with slow feet approaching; - And with bowed head and unlit eyes, - We kneel before thee. - And thou, leaning towards us, - Caressingly layest upon us - Flowers from thy thin cold hands, - And, smiling as a chaste woman - Knowing love in her heart, - Thou sealest our eyes - And the illimitable quietude - Comes gently upon us. - - - - - Mary Aldis - - - BARBERRIES - - You say I touch the barberries - As a lover his mistress? - What a curious fancy! - One must be delicate, you know— - They have bitter thorns. - You say my hand is hurt? - Oh no, it was my breast, - It was crushed and pressed. - I mean—why yes, of course, of course— - There is a bright drop—isn’t there?— - Right on my finger; - Just the color of a barberry, - But it comes from my heart. - - Do you love barberries? - In the autumn - When the sun’s desire - Touches them to a glory of crimson and gold? - I love them best then. - There is something splendid about them: - They are not afraid - Of being warm and glad and bold; - They flush joyously, - Like a cheek under a lover’s kiss; - They bleed cruelly - Like a dagger wound in the breast; - They flame up madly for their little hour, - Knowing they must die. - Do you love barberries? - - - WHEN YOU COME - - “_There was a girl with him for a time. She took him to her room when - he was desolate and warmed him and took care of him. One day he could - not find her. For many weeks he walked constantly in that locality in - search of her._”—From _Life of Francis Thompson_. - - When you come tonight - To our small room - You will look and listen— - I shall not be there. - - You will cry out your dismay - To the unheeding gods; - You will wait and look and listen— - I shall not be there. - - There is a part of you I love - More than your hands in mine at rest; - There is a part of you I love - More than your lips upon my breast. - - There is a part of you I wound - Even in my caress; - There is a part of you withheld - I may not possess. - - There is a part of you I hate— - Your need of me - When you would be alone, - Alone and free. - - When you come tonight - To our small room - You will look and listen— - I shall not be there. - - - FLASH-LIGHTS - - I - - Candles toppling sideways in tomato cans - Sputter and sizzle at head and foot. - The gaudy patterns of a patch-work quilt - Lie smooth and straight - Save where upswelling over a silent shape. - A man in high boots stirs something on a rusty stove - Round and round and round, - As a new cry like a bleating lamb’s - Pierces his brain. - After a time the man busies himself - With hammer and nails and rough-hewn lumber, - But fears to strike a blow. - Outside the moonlight sleeps white upon the plain - And the bark of a coyote shrills across the night. - - II - - A smell of musk - Comes to him pungently through the darkness. - On the screen - Scenes from foreign lands, - Released by the censor, - Shimmer in cool black and white - Historic information. - He shifts his seat sideways, sideways— - A seeking hand creeps to another hand, - And a leaping flame - Illuminates the historic information. - - III - - Within the room, sounds of weeping - Low and hushed: - Without, a man, beautiful with the beauty - Of young strength, - Holds pitifully to the handle of the door. - He hiccoughs and turns away, - While a hand-organ plays, - “The hours I spend with thee, dear heart.” - - - - - Walter Conrad Arensberg - - - VOYAGE À L’INFINI - - The swan existing - Is like a song with an accompaniment - Imaginary. - - Across the grassy lake, - Across the lake to the shadow of the willows, - It is accompanied by an image— - As by Debussy’s - “_Reflets dans l’eau_.” - - The swan that is - Reflects - Upon the solitary water—breast to breast - With the duplicity: - “_The other one!_” - - And breast to breast it is confused. - O visionary wedding! O stateliness of the procession! - It is accompanied by the image of itself - Alone. - - At night - The lake is a wide silence, - Without imagination. - - - AT DAYBREAK - - I had a dream and I awoke with it— - Poor little thing that I had not unclasped - After the kiss good-by. - - And at the surface how it gasped— - This thing that I had loved in the unlit - Depth of the drowsy sea.... - Ah me! - This thing with which I drifted toward the sky. - - Driftwood upon a wave— - Senseless the motion that it gave. - - - TO HASEKAWA - - Perhaps it is no matter that you died. - Life’s an _incognito_ which you saw through: - You never told on life—you had your pride; - But life has told on you. - - - DIALOGUE - - Be patient, Life, when Love is at the gate, - And when he enters let him be at home. - Think of the roads that he has had to roam. - Think of the years that he has had to wait. - - _But if I let Love in I shall be late. - Another has come first—there is no room. - And I am thoughtful of the endless loom— - Let Love be patient, the importunate._ - - O Life, be idle and let Love come in, - And give thy dreamy hair that Love may spin. - _But Love himself is idle with his song. - Let Love come last, and then may Love last long._ - - Be patient, Life, for Love is not the last. - Be patient now with Death, for Love has passed. - - - SONG OF THE SOULS SET FREE - - Wrap the earth in cloudy weather - For a shroud. - We have slipped the earthly tether, - We’re above the cloud. - Peep and draw the cloud together, - Peep upon the bowed. - - What can they be bowing under, - Wild and wan? - Peep, and draw the cloud asunder, - Peep, and wave a dawn. - It will make them rise and wonder - Whether we are gone. - - - - - Wilton Agnew Barrett - - - A NEW ENGLAND CHURCH - - The white church on the hill - Looks over the little bay— - A beautiful thing on the hill - When the mist is gray; - When the hill looks old, and the air turns cold - With the dying day! - - The white church on the hill— - A Greek in a Puritan town— - Was built on the brow of the hill - For John Wesley’s God’s renown, - And a conscience old set a steeple cold - On its Grecian crown. - - In a storm of faith on the hill - Hands raised it over the bay. - When the night is clear on the hill, - It stands up strong and gray; - But its door is old, and the tower points cold - To the Milky Way. - - The white church on the hill - Looks lonely over the town. - Dim to them under the hill - Is its God’s renown, - And its Bible old, and its creed grown cold, - And the letters brown. - - - - - Joseph Warren Beach - - - RUE BONAPARTE - - You that but seek your modest rolls and coffee, - When you have passed the bar, and have saluted - Its watchful madam, then pray enter softly - The inner chamber, even as one who treads - The haunts of mating birds, and watch discreetly - Over your paper’s edge. There in the corner, - Obscure, ensconced behind the uncovered table, - A man and woman keep their silent tryst. - Outside the morning floods the pavement sweetly; - Yonder aloft a maid throws back the shutters; - The hucksters utter modulated cries - As wistful as some old pathetic ballad. - Within the brooding lovers, unaware, - Sit quiet hand in hand, or in low whispers - Communicate a more articulate love. - Sometimes she plays with strings and, gently leaning - Against his shoulder, shows him childish tricks. - She has not touched the glass of milk before her, - Her breakfast and the price of their admittance. - She has a look devoted and confiding - And might be pretty were not life so hard. - But he, gaunt as his rusty bicycle - That stands against the table, and with features - So drawn and stark, has only futile strength. - The love they cherish in this stolen meeting - Through all the day that follows makes her sweeter, - And him perhaps it only leaves more bitter. - But you that have not love at all, old men - That warm your fingers by this fire, discreetly - Play out your morning game of dominoes. - - - THE VIEW AT GUNDERSON’S - - Sitting in his rocker waiting for your tea, - Gazing from his window, this is what you see: - - A cat that snaps at flies; a track leading down - By log-built shanties gray and brown; - - The corner of a barn, and tangled lines of fence - Of rough-hewn pickets standing dense; - - The ghost of a tree on a dull, wet day; - And the blanket fog where lies the bay. - - But when he’s seen the last of you, - Sitting in his rocker, what’s _his_ view? - - (For there he sits, day in, day out, - Nursing his leg—and his dreams, no doubt.) - - The snow-slide up behind the _gaard_; - The farm beside old Trondjem _fjord_; - - Daughters seven with their cold blue eyes, - And the great pine where his father lies; - - The boat that brought him over the sea; - And the toothless woman who makes his tea. - - (Their picture, framed on the rough log wall, - Proves she had teeth when he was tall.) - - He sees the balsam thick on the hill, - And all he’s cleared with a stubborn will. - - And last he sees the full-grown son - For whom he hoards what he has won. - - You saw little worth the strife: - What he sees is one man’s life. - - - - - William Rose Benét - - - THE FALCONER OF GOD - - I flung my soul to the air like a falcon flying. - I said, “Wait on, wait on, while I ride below! - I shall start a heron soon - In the marsh beneath the moon— - A strange white heron rising with silver on its wings, - Rising and crying - Wordless, wondrous things; - The secret of the stars, of the world’s heart-strings - The answer to their woe. - Then stoop thou upon him, and grip and hold him so!” - - My wild soul waited on as falcons hover. - I beat the reedy fens as I trampled past. - I heard the mournful loon - In the marsh beneath the moon. - And then, with feathery thunder, the bird of my desire - Broke from the cover - Flashing silver fire. - High up among the stars I saw his pinions spire. - The pale clouds gazed aghast - As my falcon stooped upon him, and gript and held him fast. - - My soul dropped through the air—with heavenly plunder?— - Gripping the dazzling bird my dreaming knew? - Nay! but a piteous freight, - A dark and heavy weight - Despoiled of silver plumage, its voice forever stilled— - All of the wonder - Gone that ever filled - Its guise with glory. O bird that I have killed, - How brilliantly you flew - Across my rapturous vision when first I dreamed of you! - - Yet I fling my soul on high with new endeavor, - And I ride the world below with a joyful mind. - _I shall start a heron soon - In the marsh beneath the moon— - A wondrous silver heron its inner darkness fledges!_ - I beat forever - The fens and the sedges. - The pledge is still the same—for all disastrous pledges, - All hopes resigned! - My soul still flies above me for the quarry it shall find! - - - THE HORSE THIEF - - There he moved, cropping the grass at the purple canyon’s lip. - His mane was mixed with the moonlight that silvered his snow-white - side, - For the moon sailed out of a cloud with the wake of a spectral ship. - I crouched and I crawled on my belly, my lariat coil looped wide. - - Dimly and dark the mesas broke on the starry sky. - A pall covered every color of their gorgeous glory at noon. - I smelt the yucca and mesquite, and stifled my heart’s quick cry, - And wormed and crawled on my belly to where he moved against the moon! - - Some Moorish barb was that mustang’s sire. His lines were beyond all - wonder. - From the prick of his ears to the flow of his tail he ached in my - throat and eyes. - Steel and velvet grace! As the prophet says, God had “clothed his neck - with thunder.” - Oh, marvelous with the drifting cloud he drifted across the skies! - - And then I was near at hand—crouched, and balanced, and cast the coil; - And the moon was smothered in cloud, and the rope through my hands - with a rip! - But somehow I gripped and clung, with the blood in my brain aboil,— - With a turn round the rugged tree-stump there on the purple canyon’s - lip. - - - Right into the stars he reared aloft, his red eye rolling and raging. - He whirled and sunfished and lashed, and rocked the earth to thunder - and flame. - He squealed like a regular devil horse. I was haggard and spent and - aging— - Roped clean, but almost storming clear, his fury too fierce to tame. - - And I cursed myself for a tenderfoot moon-dazzled to play the part, - But I was doubly desperate then, with the posse pulled out from town, - Or I’d never have tried it. I only knew I must get a mount and a start. - The filly had snapped her foreleg short. I had had to shoot her down. - - So there he struggled and strangled, and I snubbed him around the tree. - Nearer, a little nearer—hoofs planted, and lolling tongue— - Till a sudden slack pitched me backward. He reared right on top of me. - Mother of God—that moment! He missed me ... and up I swung. - - Somehow, gone daft completely and clawing a bunch of his mane, - As he stumbled and tripped in the lariat, there I was—up and astride - And cursing for seven counties! And the mustang? _Just insane!_ - Crack-bang! went the rope; we cannoned off the tree—then—gods, that - ride! - - A rocket—that’s all, a rocket! I dug with my teeth and nails. - Why, we never hit even the high spots (though I hardly remember - things), - But I heard a monstrous booming like a thunder of flapping sails - When he spread—well, _call_ me a liar!—when he spread those wings, - those wings! - - - So white that my eyes were blinded, thick-feathered and wide unfurled - They beat the air into billows. We sailed, and the earth was gone. - Canyon and desert and mesa withered below, with the world. - And then I knew that mustang; for I—was Bellerophon! - - Yes, glad as the Greek, and mounted on a horse of the elder gods, - With never a magic bridle or a fountain-mirror nigh! - _My chaps and spurs and holster must have looked it?_ What’s the odds? - I’d a leg over lightning and thunder, careering across the sky! - - And forever streaming before me, fanning my forehead cool, - Flowed a mane of molten silver; and just before my thighs - (As I gripped his velvet-muscled ribs, while I cursed myself for a - fool), - The steady pulse of those pinions—their wonderful fall and rise! - - The bandanna I bought in Bowie blew loose and whipped from my neck. - My shirt was stuck to my shoulders and ribboning out behind. - The stars were dancing, wheeling and glancing, dipping with smirk and - beck. - The clouds were flowing, dusking and glowing. We rode a roaring wind. - - We soared through the silver starlight to knock at the planets’ gates. - New shimmering constellations came whirling into our ken. - Red stars and green and golden swung out of the void that waits - For man’s great last adventure; the Signs took shape—and then - - I knew the lines of that Centaur the moment I saw him come! - The musical-box of the heavens all around us rolled to a tune - That tinkled and chimed and trilled with silver sounds that struck you - dumb, - As if some archangel were grinding out the music of the moon. - - - Melody-drunk on the Milky Way, as we swept and soared hilarious, - Full in our pathway, sudden he stood—the Centaur of the Stars, - Flashing from head and hoofs and breast! I knew him for Sagittarius. - He reared, and bent and drew his bow. He crouched as a boxer spars. - - Flung back on his haunches, weird he loomed—then leapt—and the dim void - lightened. - Old White Wings shied and swerved aside, and fled from the - splendor-shod. - Through a flashing welter of worlds we charged. I knew why my horse was - frightened. - He _had_ two faces—a dog’s and a man’s—that Babylonian god! - - Also, he followed us real as fear. Ping! went an arrow past. - My broncho buck-jumped, humping high. We plunged ... I guess that’s - all! - I lay on the purple canyon’s lip, when I opened my eyes at last— - Stiff and sore and my head like a drum, but I broke no bones in the - fall. - - So you know—and now you may string me up. Such was the way you caught - me. - Thank you for letting me tell it straight, though you never could - greatly care. - For I took a horse that wasn’t mine!... But there’s one the heavens - brought me, - And I’ll hang right happy, because I know he is waiting for me up - there. - - From creamy muzzle to cannon-bone, by God, he’s a peerless wonder! - He is steel and velvet and furnace-fire, and death’s supremest prize; - And never again shall be roped on earth that neck that is “clothed with - thunder” ... - String me up, Dave! Go dig my grave! _I rode him across the skies!_ - - - - - Maxwell Bodenheim - - - THE REAR-PORCHES OF AN APARTMENT-BUILDING - - A sky that has never known sun, moon or stars, - A sky that is like a dead, kind face, - Would have the color of your eyes, - O servant-girl, singing of pear-trees in the sun, - And scraping the yellow fruit you once picked - When your lavender-white eyes were alive.... - On the porch above you are two women, - Whose faces have the color of brown earth that has never felt rain. - The still wet basins of ponds that have been drained - Are their eyes. - They knit gray rosettes and nibble cakes.... - And on the top-porch are three children - Gravely kissing each others’ foreheads— - And an ample nurse with a huge red fan.... - - The passing of the afternoon to them - Is but the lengthening of blue-black shadows on brick walls. - - - THE INTERNE - - Oh, the agony of having too much power! - In my passive palm are hundreds of lives. - Strange alchemy!—they drain my blood: - My heart becomes iron; my brain copper; my eyes silver; my lips brass. - Merely by twitching a supple finger, I twirl lives from - me—strong-winged, - Or fluttering and broken. - They are my children, I am their mother and father. - I watch them live and die. - - - THE OLD JEW - - No fawn-tinged hospital pajamas could cheat him of his austerity, - Which tamed even the doctors with its pure fire. - They examined him; made him bow to them: - Massive altars were they, at whose swollen feet grovelled a worshiper. - Then they laughed, half in scorn of him; and there came a miracle. - The little man was above them at a bound. - His austerity, like an irresistible sledge-hammer, drove them lower and - lower: - They dwindled while he soared. - - - THE MINER - - Those on the top say they know you, Earth—they are liars. - You are my father, and the silence I work in is my mother. - Only the son knows his father. - We are alike—sweaty, inarticulate of soul, bending under thick - knowledge. - I drink and shout with my brothers when above you— - Like most children we soon forget the parents of our souls. - But you avidly grip us again—we pay for the little noise of life we - steal. - - - TO AN ENEMY - - I despise my friends more than you. - I would have known myself, but they stood before the mirrors - And painted on them images of the virtues I craved. - You came with sharpest chisel, scraping away the false paint. - Then I knew and detested myself, but not you: - For glimpses of you in the glasses you uncovered - Showed me the virtues whose images you destroyed. - - - TO A DISCARDED STEEL RAIL - - Straight strength pitched into the surliness of the ditch, - A soul you have—strength has always delicate secret reasons. - Your soul is a dull question. - I do not care for your strength, but for your stiff smile at Time— - A smile which men call rust. - - - - - Gordon Bottomley - - - NIGHT AND MORNING SONGS - - - MY MOON - - My moon was lit in an hour of lilies; - The apple-trees seemed older than ever. - It rose from matted trees that sever - The oats from the meadow, and woke the fillies - That reared in dew and gleamed with dew - And ran like water and shadow, and cried. - It moistened and veiled the oats yet new, - And seemed to drip long drops of the tide, - Of the mother-sea so lately left. - Feathers of flower were each bereft - Of color and stem, and floated low; - Another lily opened then - And lost a little gold dust; but when - The lime-boughs lifted there seemed to go - Some life of the moon, like breath that moves - Or parting glances that flutter and strain— - A ghost with hands the color of doves - And feet the color of rain. - - - ELEGIAC MOOD - - From song and dream for ever gone - Are Helen, Helen of Troy, - And Cleopatra made to look upon, - And many a daring boy— - Young Faust and Sigurd and Hippolytus: - They are twice dead and we must find - Great ladies yet unblemished by the mind, - Heroes and acts not cold for us - In amber or spirits of too many words. - Ay, these are murdered by much thinking on. - I hanker even for new shapes of swords, - More different sins, and raptures not yet done. - Yet, as I wait on marvels, such a bird - As maybe Sigurd heard— - A thrush—alighting with a little run - Out-tops the daisies as it passes - And peeps bright-eyed above the grasses. - - - DAWN - - A thrush is tapping a stone - With a snail-shell in its beak; - A small bird hangs from a cherry - Until the stem shall break. - No waking song has begun, - And yet birds chatter and hurry - And throng in the elm’s gloom - Because an owl goes home. - - - - - Rollo Britten - - - BIRD OF PASSION - - Leave the lovely words unsaid; - For another thought is fled - From my dream-entangled mind. - Bird of passion, unenshrined, - I can never phrase thee quite— - So I speed thee on thy flight, - Unembodied thus forever, - Floating in a mist that never - May be raised. Thou art one - Of the black-winged birds that run, - With uncomprehended flight, - Unimpeded down the night. - - - - - Rupert Brooke - - - RETROSPECT - - In your arms was still delight, - Quiet as a street at night; - And thoughts of you, I do remember, - Were green leaves in a darkened chamber, - Were dark clouds in a moonless sky. - Love, in you, went passing by, - Penetrative, remote, and rare, - Like a bird in the wide air; - And, as the bird, it left no trace - In the heaven of your face. - In your stupidity I found - The sweet hush after a sweet sound. - All about you was the light - That dims the graying end of night; - Desire was the unrisen sun, - Joy the day not yet begun, - With tree whispering to tree, - Without wind, quietly. - Wisdom slept within your hair, - And Long-suffering was there, - And, in the flowing of your dress, - Undiscerning Tenderness. - And when you thought, it seemed to me, - Infinitely, and like a sea, - About the slight world you had known - Your vast unconsciousness was thrown.... - O haven without wave or tide! - Silence, in which all songs have died! - Holy book, where hearts are still! - And home at length under the hill! - O mother quiet, breasts of peace, - Where love itself would faint and cease! - O infinite deep I never knew, - I would come back, come back to you, - Find you, as a pool unstirred, - Kneel down by you, and never a word, - Lay my head, and nothing said, - In your hands, ungarlanded; - And a long watch you would keep; - And I should sleep, and I should sleep! - - - NINETEEN-FOURTEEN - - - I—PEACE - - Now, God be thanked who has matched us with his hour, - And caught our youth, and wakened us from sleeping! - With hand made sure, clear eye, and sharpened power, - To turn, as swimmers into cleanness leaping, - Glad about a world grown old and cold and weary; - Leave the sick hearts that honor could not move, - And half-men, and their dirty songs and dreary, - And all the little emptiness of love! - Oh! we, who have known shame, we have found release there, - Where there’s no ill, no grief, but sleep has mending, - Naught broken save this body, lost but breath; - Nothing to shake the laughing heart’s long peace there, - But the only agony, and that has ending; - And the worst friend and enemy is but Death. - - - II—SAFETY - - Dear! of all happy in the hour, most blest - He who has found our hid security, - Assured in the dark tides of the world that rest, - And heard our word, “Who is so safe as we?” - We have found safety with all things undying. - The winds, and morning, tears of men and mirth, - The deep night and birds singing, and clouds flying, - And sleep, and freedom, and the autumnal earth. - We have built a house that is not for Time’s throwing. - We have gained a peace unshaken by pain for ever. - War knows no power. Safe shall be my going, - Secretly armed against all death’s endeavor; - Safe though all safety’s lost; safe where men fall; - And if these poor limbs die, safest of all. - - - III—THE DEAD - - Blow out, you bugles, over the rich Dead! - There’s none of these so lonely and poor of old, - But, dying, has made us rarer gifts than gold. - These laid the world away; poured out the red - Sweet wine of youth; gave up the years to be - Of work and joy, and that unhoped serene - That men call age; and those who would have been - Their sons they gave, their immortality. - Blow, bugles, blow! They brought us, for our dearth, - Holiness, lacked so long, and Love, and Pain. - Honor has come back, as a king, to earth, - And paid his subjects with a royal wage; - And Nobleness walks in our ways again; - And we have come into our heritage. - - - IV—THE DEAD - - These hearts were woven of human joys and cares, - Washed marvellously with sorrow, swift to mirth. - The years had given them kindness. Dawn was theirs, - And sunset, and the colors of the earth. - These had seen movement, and heard music; known - Slumber and waking; loved; gone proudly friended; - Felt the quick stir of wonder; sat alone; - Touched flowers and furs, and cheeks. All this is ended. - There are waters blown by changing winds to laughter - And lit by the rich skies, all day. And after, - Frost, with a gesture, stays the waves that dance - And wandering loveliness. He leaves a white - Unbroken glory, a gathered radiance, - A width, a shining peace, under the night. - - - V—THE SOLDIER - - If I should die, think only this of me: - That there’s some corner of a foreign field - That is for ever England. There shall be - In that rich earth a richer dust concealed; - A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware, - Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam, - A body of England’s, breathing English air, - Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home. - And think, this heart, all evil shed away, - A pulse in the eternal mind, no less - Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given; - Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day; - And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness, - In hearts at peace, under an English heaven. - - - - - Witter Bynner - - - TO CELIA - - - I—CONSUMMATION - - There was a strangeness on your lips, - Lips that had been so sure; - You still were mine but in eclipse, - Beside me but obscure. - - There was a cloud upon your heart; - For, Celia, where you lay, - Death, come to break your life apart, - Had led your love away. - - Through the cold distance of your eyes - You could no longer see. - But when you died, you heard me rise - And followed suddenly. - - And close beside me, looking down - As I did on the dead, - You made of time a wedding-gown, - Of space a marriage-bed. - - I took, in you, death for a wife, - You married death in me, - Singing, “There is no other life, - No other God than we!” - - - II—DURING A CHORALE BY CESAR FRANCK - - In an old chamber softly lit - We heard the Chorale played, - And where you sat, an exquisite - Image of Life and lover of it, - Death sang a serenade. - - I know now, Celia, what you heard, - And why you turned and smiled. - It was the white wings of a bird - Offering flight, and you were stirred - Like an adventurous child. - - Death sang: “Oh, lie upon your bier, - Uplift your countenance!” - Death bade me be your cavalier, - Called me to march and shed no tear, - But sing to you and dance. - - And when you followed, lured and led - By those mysterious wings, - And when I heard that you were dead, - I could not weep. I sang instead, - As a true lover sings. - - · · · · · - - Today a room is softly lit; - I hear the Chorale played. - And where you come, an exquisite - Image of Death and lover of it, - Life sings a serenade. - - - III—SONGS ASCENDING - - Love has been sung a thousand ways— - So let it be; - The songs ascending in your praise - Through all my days - Are three. - - Your cloud-white body first I sing; - Your love was heaven’s blue, - And I, a bird, flew carolling - In ring on ring - Of you. - - Your nearness is the second song; - When God began to be, - And bound you strongly, right or wrong, - With his own thong, - To me. - - But oh, the song, eternal, high, - That tops these two!— - You live forever, you who die, - I am not I - But you. - - - GRIEVE NOT FOR BEAUTY - - Grieve not for the invisible, transported brow - On which like leaves the dark hair grew, - Nor for the lips of laughter that are now - Laughing inaudibly in sun and dew, - Nor for those limbs that, fallen low - And seeming faint and slow, - Shall yet pursue - More ways of swiftness than the swallow dips - Among ... and find more winds than ever blew - The straining sails of unimpeded ships! - Mourn not!—yield only happy tears - To deeper beauty than appears! - - - - - Joseph Campbell - - - AT HARVEST - - Earth travails, - Like a woman come to her time. - - The swaying corn-haulms - In the heavy places of the field - Cry to be gathered. - Apples redden, and drop from their rods. - Out of their sheath of prickly leaves - The marrows creep, fat and white. - The blue pallor of ripeness - Comes on the fruit of the vine-branch. - - Fecund and still fecund - After æons of bearing: - Not old, not dry, not wearied out; - But fresh as when the unseen Right Hand - First moved on Brí, - And the candle of day was set, - And dew fell from the stars’ feet, - And cloths of greenness covered thee. - - Let me kiss thy breasts: - I am thy son and lover. - - Womb-fellow am I of the sunburnt oat, - Friendly gossip of the mearings; - Womb-fellow of the dark and sweet-scented apple; - Womb-fellow of the gourd and of the grape: - Like begotten, like born. - - And yet without a lover’s knowledge - Of thy secrets - I would walk the ridges of the hills, - Kindless and desolate. - - What were the storm-driven moon to me, - Seed of another father? - What the overflowing - Of the well of dawn? - What the hollow, - Red with rowan fire? - What the king-fern? - What the belled heath? - What the drum of grouse’s wing, - Or glint of spar, - Caught from the pit - Of a deserted quarry? - - Let me kiss thy breasts: - I am thy son and lover. - - - ON WAKING - - Sleep, gray brother of death, - Has touched me, - And passed on. - - I arise, facing the east— - Pearl-doored sanctuary - From which light, - Hand-linked with dew and fire, - Dances. - - Hail, essence, hail! - Fill the windows of my soul - With beauty: - Pierce and renew my bones: - Pour knowledge into my heart - As wine. - - Cualann is bright before thee. - Its rocks melt and swim: - The secret they have kept - From the ancient nights of darkness - Flies like a bird. - - What mourns? - Cualann’s secret flying, - A lost voice - In endless fields. - What rejoices? - My voice lifted praising thee. - - Praise! Praise! Praise! - Praise out of trumpets, whose brass - Is the unyoked strength of bulls; - Praise upon harps, whose strings - Are the light movements of birds; - Praise of leaf, praise of blossom, - Praise of the red-fibred clay; - Praise of grass, - Fire-woven veil of the temple; - Praise of the shapes of clouds; - Praise of the shadows of wells; - Praise of worms, of fetal things, - And of the things in time’s thought - Not yet begotten. - To thee, queller of sleep, - Looser of the snare of death. - - - THE OLD WOMAN - - As a white candle - In a holy place, - So is the beauty - Of an agèd face. - - As the spent radiance - Of the winter sun, - So is a woman - With her travail done. - - Her brood gone from her, - And her thoughts as still - As the waters - Under a ruined mill. - - - - - Nancy Campbell - - - THE APPLE-TREE - - I saw the archangels in my apple-tree last night, - I saw them like great birds in the starlight— - Purple and burning blue, crimson and shining white. - - And each to each they tossed an apple to and fro, - And once I heard their laughter gay and low; - And yet I felt no wonder that it should be so. - - But when the apple came one time to Michael’s lap - I heard him say: “The mysteries that enwrap - The earth and fill the heavens can be read here, mayhap.” - - Then Gabriel spoke: “I praise the deed, the hidden thing.” - “The beauty of the blossom of the spring - I praise,” cried Raphael. Uriel: “The wise leaves I sing.” - - And Michael: “I will praise the fruit, perfected, round, - Full of the love of God, herein being bound - His mercies gathered from the sun and rain and ground.” - - So sang they till a small wind through the branches stirred, - And spoke of coming dawn; and at its word - Each fled away to heaven, winged like a bird. - - - THE MONKEY - - I saw you hunched and shivering on the stones, - The bleak wind piercing to your fragile bones, - Your shabby scarlet all inadequate: - A little ape that had such human eyes - They seemed to hide behind their miseries— - Their dumb and hopeless bowing down to fate— - Some puzzled wonder. Was your monkey soul - Sickening with memories of gorgeous days, - Of tropic playfellows and forest ways, - Where, agile, you could swing from bole to bole - In an enchanted twilight with great flowers - For stars; or on a bough the long night hours - Sit out in rows, and chatter at the moon? - Shuffling you went, your tiny chilly hand - Outstretched for what you did not understand; - Your puckered mournful face begging a boon - That but enslaved you more. They who passed by - Saw nothing sorrowful; gave laugh or stare, - Unheeding that the little antic there - Played in the gutter such a tragedy. - - - - - Skipwith Cannéll - - - THE RED BRIDGE - - The arches of the red bridge - Are stronger than ever: - The arches of the scarlet bridge - Are of rough, bleak stone. - - (Why should such massive arches be the span - From cloud to tenuous cloud?) - - Let us not seek omens in the guts - Of newly slain fowls; - Leaving such play to the children, - Let us pluck wild swans - From under the moon; - Or, challenging strong, terrible men, - Let us slay them and seek truth - In their smoking entrails. - - Let us fling runners - Across the red bridge, - Deep-lunged runners who will return to us - With tidings of the far countries - And the strange seas! - - There be many terrible men - Going out upon the bridge, - Through the little door - That is by the steps from the river. - - - THE KING - - Seven full-paunched eunuchs came to me, - Bearing before them upon a silver shield - The secrets of my enemy. - - As they crossed my threshold to stand, - With stately and hypocritical gesture - In a row before me, - One stumbled. - The dull, incurious eyes of the others - Blazed into no laughter, - Only a haggard malice - At the discomfiture - Of their companion. - - Why should such _Things_ have power - Not spoken for in the rules of men? - - - I would not receive them. - With my head covered I motioned them - To go forth from my presence. - - Where shall I find an enemy - Worthy of me as him they defaced? - - As they left me, - Bearing with them - Lewd shield and scarlet crown, - One paused upon the threshold, - Insolent, - To sniff a flower. - Even him I permitted to go forth - Safely. - - · · · · · - - Therefore - I have renounced my kingdom; - In a little bronze boat I have set sail - Out - Upon the sea. - - There is no land, and the sea - Is black like the cypresses waiting - At midnight in the place of tombs; - Is black like the pool of ink - In the palm of a soothsayer. - - - My boat - Fears the white-lipped waves - That snatch at her, - Hungrily, - Furtively, - As they steal past like cats - Into the night: - And beneath me, in their hidden places, - The great fishes talk of me - In a tongue I have forgotten. - - - - - Willa Sibert Cather - - - THE PALATINE - - _In the “Dark Ages”_ - - “Have you been with the King to Rome, - Brother, big brother?” - “I’ve been there and I’ve come home. - Back to your play, little brother.” - - “Oh, how high is Cæsar’s house, - Brother, big brother?” - “Goats about the doorways browse; - Night-hawks nest in the burnt roof-tree. - Home of the wild bird and home of the bee, - A thousand chambers of marble lie - Wide to the sun and the wind and the sky. - Poppies we find amongst our wheat - Grow on Cæsar’s banquet seat. - Cattle crop and neat-herds drowse - On the floors of Cæsar’s house.” - - “But what has become of Cæsar’s gold, - Brother, big brother?” - “The times are bad and the world is old— - Who knows the where of the Cæsar’s gold? - Night comes black o’er the Cæsar’s hill; - The wells are deep and the tales are ill; - Fireflies gleam in the damp and mold— - All that is left of the Cæsar’s gold. - Back to your play, little brother.” - - “What has become of the Cæsar’s men, - Brother, big brother?” - “Dogs in the kennel and wolf in the den - Howl for the fate of the Cæsar’s men, - Slain in Asia, slain in Gaul, - By Dacian border and Persian wall. - Rhineland orchard and Danube fen - Fatten their roots on Cæsar’s men.” - - “Why is the world so sad and wide, - Brother, big brother?” - “Saxon boys by their fields that bide - Need not know if the world is wide. - Climb no mountain but Shere-end Hill, - Cross no water but goes to mill. - Ox in the stable and cow in the byre, - Smell of the wood-smoke and sleep by the fire; - Sun-up in seed-time—a likely lad - Hurts not his head that the world is sad. - Back to your play, little brother.” - - - SPANISH JOHNNY - - The old West, the old time, - The old wind singing through - The red, red grass a thousand miles— - And, Spanish Johnny, you! - He’d sit beside the water ditch - When all his herd was in, - And never mind a child, but sing - To his mandolin. - - The big stars, the blue night, - The moon-enchanted lane; - The olive man who never spoke, - But sang the songs of Spain. - His speech with men was wicked talk— - To hear it was a sin; - But those were golden things he said - To his mandolin. - - The gold songs, the gold stars, - The word so golden then; - And the hand so tender to a child— - Had killed so many men. - He died a hard death long ago - Before the Road came in— - The night before he swung, he sang - To his mandolin. - - - - - Padraic Colum - - - POLONIUS AND THE BALLAD SINGERS - - A gaunt-built woman and her son-in-law— - A broad-faced fellow, with such flesh as shows - Nothing but easy nature—and his wife, - The woman’s daughter, who spills all her talk - Out of a wide mouth, but who has eyes as gray - As Connemara, where the mountain-ash - Shows berries red indeed: they enter now— - Our country singers! - - “Sing, my good woman, sing us some romance - That has been round your chimney-nooks so long - ’Tis nearly native; something blown here - And since made racy—like yon tree, I might say, - Native by influence if not by species, - Shaped by our winds. You understand, I think?” - - “I’ll sing the song, sir.” - - To-night you see my face— - Maybe nevermore you’ll gaze - On the one that for you left his friends and kin; - For by the hard commands - Of the lord that rules these lands - On a ship I’ll be borne from Cruckaunfinn! - - Oh, you know your beauty bright - Has made him think delight - More than from any fair one he will gain; - Oh, you know that all his will - Strains and strives around you till - As the hawk upon his hand you are as tame! - - Then she to him replied: - I’ll no longer you deny, - And I’ll let you have the pleasure of my charms; - For to-night I’ll be your bride, - And whatever may betide - It’s we will lie in one another’s arms! - - “You should not sing - With body doubled up and face aside— - There is a climax here—‘It’s we will lie’— - Hem—passionate! And what does your daughter sing?” - - “A song I like when I do climb bare hills— - ’Tis all about a hawk.” - - No bird that sits on rock or bough - Has such a front as thine; - No king that has made war his trade - Such conquest in his eyne! - I mark thee rock-like on the rock - Where none can see a shape. - I climb, but thou dost climb with wings, - And like a wish escape, - She said— - And like a wish escape! - - No maid that kissed his bonny mouth - Of another mouth was glad; - Such pride was in our chieftain’s eyes, - Such countenance he had! - But since they made him fly the rocks, - Thou, creature, art my quest. - Then lift me with thy steady eyes. - If then to tear my breast, - She said— - If then to tear my breast! - - “The songs they have - Are the last relics of the feudal world: - Women will keep them—byzants, doubloons, - When men will take up songs that are as new - As dollar bills. What song have you, young man?” - - “A song my father had, sir. It was sent him - From across the sea, and there was a letter with it, - Asking my father to put it to a tune - And sing it all roads. He did that, in troth, - And five pounds of tobacco were sent with the song - To fore-reward him. I’ll sing it for you now— - _The Baltimore Exile_.” - - The house I was bred in—ah, does it remain? - Low walls and loose thatch standing lone in the rain, - With the clay of the walls coming through with its stain, - Like the blackbird’s left nest in the briar! - - Does a child there give heed to the song of the lark, - As it lifts and it drops till the fall of the dark, - When the heavy-foot kine trudge home from the paurk, - Or do none but the red-shank now listen? - - The sloe-bush, I know, grows close to the well, - And its long-lasting blossoms are there, I can tell, - When the kid that was yeaned when the first ones befell - Can jump to the ditch that they grow on! - - But there’s silence on all. Then do none ever pass - On the way to the fair or the pattern or mass? - Do the gray-coated lads drive the ball through the grass - And speed to the sweep of the hurl? - - O youths of my land! Then will no Bolivar - Ever muster your ranks for delivering war? - Will your hopes become fixed and beam like a star? - Will they pass like the mists from your fields? - - The swan and the swallows, the cuckoo and crake, - May visit my land and find hillside and lake. - And I send my song. I’ll not see her awake— - I’m too old a bird to uncage now! - - “Silver’s but lead in exchange for songs, - But take it and spend it.” - - “We will. And may we meet your honor’s like - Every day’s end.” - - “A tune is more lasting than the voice of the birds.” - - “A song is more lasting than the riches of the world.” - -NOTE. _The last stanza in the first ballad sung is a fragment of an old -country song; the rest of it, with the other two ballads, is invented. -But they are all in the convention of songs still sung by strolling -ballad-singers. I have written the common word for pasture-field “paurk” -so as not to give a wrong association: it might be written “park,” as -Burns, using the word in the same sense, writes it. “Paurk” or “park” is -Gaelic for pasture field, and is always used in Irish country speech in -that sense. The two last lines spoken are translations of a Gaelic -phrase which has been used by Dr. Douglas Hyde as a motto for his -collection of Connacht love songs. P. C._ - - - THE SEA BIRD TO THE WAVE - - On and on, - O white brother! - Thunder does not daunt thee! - How thou movest! - By thine impulse— - With no wing! - Fairest thing - The wide sea shows me! - On and on - O white brother! - Art thou gone! - - - OLD MEN COMPLAINING - - _First Old Man_ - _He threw his crutched stick down: there came - Into his face the anger flame, - And he spoke viciously of one - Who thwarted him—his son’s son. - He turned his head away._—“I hate - Absurdity of language, prate - From growing fellows. We’d not stay - About the house the whole of a day - When we were young, - Keeping no job and giving tongue! - - “Not us in troth! We would not come - For bit or sup, but stay from home - If we gave answers, or we’d creep - Back to the house, and in we’d peep - Just like a corncrake. - - “My grandson and his comrades take - A piece of coal from you, from me - A log, or sod of turf, maybe; - And in some empty place they’ll light - A fire, and stay there all night, - A wisp of lads! Now understand - The blades of grass under my hand - Would be destroyed by company! - There’s no good company: we go - With what is lowest to the low! - He stays up late, and how can he - Rise early? Sure he lags in bed, - And she is worn to a thread - With calling him—his grandmother. - She’s an old woman, and she must make - Stir when the birds are half awake - In dread he’d lose this job like the other!” - - - _Second Old Man_ - “They brought yon fellow over here, - And set him up for an overseer: - Though men from work are turned away - That thick-necked fellow draws full pay— - Three pounds a week.... They let burn down - The timber yard behind the town - Where work was good; though firemen stand - In boots and brasses big and grand - The crow of a cock away from the place. - And with the yard they let burn too - The clock in the tower, the clock I knew - As well as I know the look in my face.” - - - _Third Old Man_ - “The fellow you spoke of has broken his bounds— - He came to skulk inside of these grounds: - Behind the bushes he lay down - And stretched full hours in the sun. - He rises now, and like a crane - He looks abroad. He’s off again: - Three pounds a week, and still he owes - Money in every street he goes, - Hundreds of pounds where we’d not get - The second shilling of a debt.” - - - _First Old Man_ - “Old age has every impediment - Vexation and discontent; - The rich have more than we: for bit - The cut of bread, and over it - The scrape of hog’s lard, and for sup - Warm water in a cup. - But different sorts of feeding breaks - The body more than fasting does - With pains and aches. - - “I’m not too badly off, for I - Have pipe and tobacco, a place to lie, - A nook to myself; but from my hand - Is taken the strength to back command— - I’m broken, and there’s gone from me - The privilege of authority.” - - _I heard them speak— - The old men heavy on the sod, - Letting their angers come - Between them and the thought of God._ - - - - - Grace Hazard Conkling - - - REFUGEES - - _Belgium—1914_ - - “Mother, the poplars cross the moon; - The road runs on, so white and far, - We shall not reach the city soon: - Oh, tell me where we are!” - - “Have patience, patience, little son, - And we shall find the way again: - (God show me the untraveled one! - God give me rest from men!)” - - “Mother, you did not tell me why - You hurried so to come away. - I saw big soldiers riding by; - I should have liked to stay.” - - “Hush, little man, and I will sing - Just like a soldier, if I can— - They have a song for everything. - Listen, my little man! - - “This is the soldiers’ marching song: - We’ll play this is the village street—” - “Yes, but this road is very long, - And stones have hurt my feet.” - - “Nay, little pilgrim, up with you! - And yonder field shall be the town. - I’ll show you how the soldiers do - Who travel up and down. - - “They march and sing and march again, - Not minding all the stones and dust: - They go, (God grant me rest from men!) - Forward, because they must.” - - “Mother, I want to go to sleep.” - “No, darling! Here is bread to eat! - (O God, if thou couldst let me weep, - Or heal my broken feet!)” - - - “THE LITTLE ROSE IS DUST, MY DEAR” - - The little rose is dust, my dear; - The elfin wind is gone - That sang a song of silver words - And cooled our hearts with dawn. - - And what is left to hope, my dear, - Or what is left to say? - The rose, the little wind and you - Have gone so far away. - - - - - Alice Corbin - - - O WORLD - - O world that changes under my hand, - O brown world, bitter and bright, - And full of hidden recesses - Of love and light— - - O world, what use would there be to me - Of power beyond power - To change, or establish new balance, - To build, or deflower? - - O world, what use would there be? - Had I the Creator’s fire, - I could not build you nearer - To my heart’s desire! - - - TWO VOICES - - There is a country full of wine - And liquor of the sun, - Where sap is running all the year, - And spring is never done, - Where all is good as it is fair, - And love and will are one. - Old age may never come there, - But ever in to-day - The people talk as in a dream - And laugh slow time away. - - But would you stay as now you are, - Or as a year ago? - Oh, not as then, for then how small - The wisdom we did owe! - Or if forever as to-day, - How little we could know! - - Then welcome age, and fear not sorrow; - To-day’s no better than to-morrow, - Or yesterday that flies. - By the low light in your eyes, - By the love that in me lies, - I know we grow more lovely - Growing wise. - - - LOVE ME AT LAST - - Love me at last, or if you will not, - Leave me; - Hard words could never, as these half-words, - Grieve me: - Love me at last—or leave me. - - Love me at last, or let the last word uttered - Be but your own; - Love me, or leave me—as a cloud, a vapor, - Or a bird flown. - Love me at last—I am but sliding water - Over a stone. - - - HUMORESQUE - - To some the fat gods - Give money, - To some love; - - But the gods have given me - Money _and_ love: - - Not _too much_ money, - Nor _quite enough_ love! - - To some the fat gods - Give money, - To some love. - - - ONE CITY ONLY - - One city only, of all I have lived in, - And one house of that city, belong to me ... - I remember the mellow light of afternoon - Slanting across brick buildings on the waterfront, - And small boats at rest on the floating tide, - And larger boats at rest in the near-by harbor; - And I know the tidal smell, and the smell of mud, - Uncovering oyster flats, and the brown bare toes of small negroes - With the mud oozing between them; - And the little figures leaping from log to log, - And the white children playing among them— - I remember how I played among them. - And I remember the recessed windows of the gloomy halls - In the darkness of decaying grandeur, - The feel of cool linen in the cavernous bed, - And the window curtain swaying gently - In the night air; - All the half-hushed noises of the street - In the southern town, - And the thrill of life— - Like a hand in the dark - With its felt, indeterminate meaning: - I remember that I knew there the stirring of passion, - Fear, and the knowledge of sin, - Tragedy, laughter, death.... - - And I remember, too, on a dead Sunday afternoon - In the twilight, - When there was no one else in the house, - My self suddenly separated itself - And left me alone, - So that the world lay about me, lifeless. - I could not touch it, or feel it, or see it; - Yet I was there. - The sensation lingers: - Only the most vital threads - Hold me at all to living ... - Yet I only live truly when I think of that house; - Only enter then into being. - One city only of all I have lived in, - And one house of that city, belong to me. - - - APPARITIONS - - I - - A thin gray shadow on the edge of thought - Hiding its wounds: - These are the wounds of sorrow— - It was my hand that made them; - And this gray shadow that resembles you - Is my own heart, weeping ... - You sleep quietly beneath the shade - Of willows in the south. - - II - - When the cold dawn stood above the house-tops, - Too late I remembered the cry - In the night of a wild bird flying - Through the rain-filled sky. - - - THE POOL - - Do you remember the dark pool at Nîmes, - The pool that had no bottom? - Shadowed by Druids ere the Romans came— - Dark, still, with little bubbles rising - So quietly level with its rim of stone - That one stood shuddering with the breathless fear - Of one short step? - - My little sister stood beside the pool - As dark as that of Nîmes. - I saw her white face as she took the plunge; - I could not follow her, although I tried. - The silver bubbles circled to the brink, - And then the water parted: - With dream-white face my little sister rose - Dripping from that dark pool, and took the hands - Outstretched to meet her. - - I may not speak to her of all she’s seen; - She may not speak to me of all she knows, - Because her words mean nothing: - She chooses them - As one to whom our language is quite strange, - As children make queer words with lettered blocks - Before they know the way.... - - My little sister stood beside the pool— - I could not plunge in with her, though I tried. - - - MUSIC - - _The ancient songs - Pass deathward mournfully._ - _R. A._ - - The old songs - Die. - Yes, the old songs die. - Cold lips that sang them, - Cold lips that sang them— - The old songs die, - And the lips that sang them - Are only a pinch of dust. - - I saw in Pamplona - In a musty museum— - I saw in Pamplona - In a buff-colored museum— - I saw in Pamplona - A memorial - Of the dead violinist; - I saw in Pamplona - A memorial - Of Pablo Sarasate. - - Dust was inch-deep on the cases, - Dust on the stick-pins and satins, - Dust on the badges and orders, - On the wreath from the oak of Guernica! - - The old songs - Die— - And the lips that sang them. - Wreaths, withered and dusty, - Cuff-buttons with royal insignia, - These, in a musty museum, - Are all that is left of Sarasate. - - - WHAT DIM ARCADIAN PASTURES - - What dim Arcadian pastures - Have I known - That suddenly, out of nothing, - A wind is blown, - Lifting a veil and a darkness, - Showing a purple sea— - And under your hair the faun’s eyes - Look out on me? - - - NODES - - The endless, foolish merriment of stars - Beside the pale cold sorrow of the moon, - Is like the wayward noises of the world - Beside my heart’s uplifted silent tune. - - The little broken glitter of the waves - Beside the golden sun’s intense white blaze, - Is like the idle chatter of the crowd - Beside my heart’s unwearied song of praise. - - The sun and all the planets in the sky - Beside the sacred wonder of dim space, - Are notes upon a broken, tarnished lute - That God will someday mend and put in place. - - And space, beside the little secret joy - Of God that sings forever in the clay, - Is smaller than the dust we can not see, - That yet dies not, till time and space decay. - - And as the foolish merriment of stars - Beside the cold pale sorrow of the moon, - My little song, my little joy, my praise, - Beside God’s ancient, everlasting rune. - - - - - Adelaide Crapsey - - - CINQUAINS - - - NOVEMBER NIGHT - - Listen. - With faint dry sound, - Like steps of passing ghosts, - The leaves, frost-crisp’d, break from the trees - And fall. - - - TRIAD - - These be - Three silent things: - The falling snow ... the hour - Before the dawn ... the mouth of one - Just dead. - - - SUSANNA AND THE ELDERS - - “Why do - You thus devise - Evil against her?” “For that - She is beautiful, delicate; - Therefore.” - - - THE GUARDED WOUND - - If it - Were lighter touch - Than petal of flower resting - On grass, oh still too heavy it were, - Too heavy! - - - THE WARNING - - Just now, - Out of the strange - Still dusk ... as strange, as still ... - A white moth flew. Why am I grown - So cold? - - - FATE DEFIED - - As it - Were tissue of silver - I’ll wear, O fate, thy grey, - And go mistily radiant, clad - Like the moon. - - - THE PLEDGE - - White doves of Cytherea, by your quest - Across the blue Heaven’s bluest highest air, - And by your certain homing to Love’s breast, - Still to be true and ever true—I swear. - - - EXPENSES - - Little my lacking fortunes show - For this to eat and that to wear; - Yet laughing, Soul, and gaily go! - An obol pays the Stygian fare. - - - ADVENTURE - - Sun and wind and beat of sea, - Great lands stretching endlessly ... - Where be bonds to bind the free? - All the world was made for me! - - - DIRGE - - Never the nightingale, - Oh, my dear, - Never again the lark - Thou wilt hear; - Though dusk and the morning still - Tap at thy window-sill, - Thou ever love call and call - Thou wilt not hear at all, - My dear, my dear. - - - SONG - - I make my shroud, but no one knows— - So shimmering fine it is and fair, - With stitches set in even rows. - I make my shroud, but no one knows. - - In door-way where the lilac blows, - Humming a little wandering air, - I make my shroud and no one knows, - So shimmering fine it is and fair. - - - THE LONELY DEATH - - In the cold I will rise, I will bathe - In waters of ice; myself - Will shiver, and shrive myself, - Alone in the dawn, and anoint - Forehead and feet and hands; - I will shutter the windows from light, - I will place in their sockets the four - Tall candles and set them a-flame - In the grey of the dawn; and myself - Will lay myself straight in my bed, - And draw the sheet under my chin. - - - - - H. D. - - - HERMES OF THE WAYS - - I - - The hard sand breaks, - And the grains of it - Are clear as wine. - - Far off over the leagues of it, - The wind, - Playing on the wide shore, - Piles little ridges, - And the great waves - Break over it. - - But more than the many-foamed ways - Of the sea, - I know him - Of the triple path-ways. - Hermes, - Who awaiteth. - - Dubious, - Facing three ways, - Welcoming wayfarers, - He whom the sea-orchard - Shelters from the west, - From the east - Weathers sea-wind; - Fronts the great dunes. - - Wind rushes - Over the dunes, - And the coarse, salt-crusted grass - Answers. - - Heu, - It whips round my ankles! - - II - - Small is - This white stream, - Flowing below ground - From the poplar-shaded hill, - But the water is sweet. - - Apples on the small trees - Are hard, - Too small, - Too late ripened - By a desperate sun - That struggles through sea-mist. - The boughs of the trees - Are twisted - By many bafflings; - Twisted are - The small-leafed boughs. - - But the shadow of them - Is not the shadow of the mast head - Nor of the torn sails. - - Hermes, Hermes, - The great sea foamed, - Gnashed its teeth about me; - But you have waited, - Where sea-grass tangles with - Shore-grass. - - - PRIAPUS - - _Keeper of Orchards_ - - I saw the first pear - As it fell. - The honey-seeking, golden-banded, - The yellow swarm - Was not more fleet than I, - (Spare us from loveliness!) - And I fell prostrate, - Crying, - “Thou hast flayed us with thy blossoms; - Spare us the beauty - Of fruit-trees!” - - The honey-seeking - Paused not, - The air thundered their song, - And I alone was prostrate. - - O rough-hewn - God of the orchard, - I bring thee an offering; - Do thou, alone unbeautiful - (Son of the god), - Spare us from loveliness. - - The fallen hazel-nuts, - Stripped late of their green sheaths, - The grapes, red-purple, - Their berries - Dripping with wine, - Pomegranates already broken, - And shrunken figs, - And quinces untouched, - I bring thee as offering. - - - THE POOL - - Are you alive? - I touch you— - You quiver like a sea-fish. - I cover you with my net. - What are you, banded one? - - - OREAD - - Whirl up, sea— - Whirl your pointed pines. - Splash your great pines - On our rocks. - Hurl your green over us— - Cover us with your pools of fir. - - - THE GARDEN - - I - - You are clear, - O rose, cut in rock. - I could scrape the color - From the petals, - Like spilt dye from a rock. - - If I could break you - I could break a tree. - - If I could stir - I could break a tree, - I could break you. - - II - - O wind, rend open the heat, - Cut apart the heat, - Slit it to tatters. - - Fruit cannot drop - Through this thick air; - Fruit cannot fall into heat - That presses up and blunts - The points of pears, - And rounds grapes. - - Cut the heat: - Plough through it, - Turning it on either side - Of your path. - - - MOONRISE - - Will you glimmer on the sea? - Will you fling your spear-head - On the shore? - What note shall we pitch? - We have a song, - On the bank we share our arrows— - The loosed string tells our note: - - _O flight, - Bring her swiftly to our song. - She is great, - We measure her by the pine-trees._ - - - THE SHRINE - - “_She watches over the sea_” - - I - - Are your rocks shelter for ships?— - Have you sent galleys from your beach, - Are you graded—a safe crescent— - Where the tide lifts them back to port? - Are you full and sweet, - Tempting the quiet - To depart in their trading ships? - - Nay, you are great, fierce, evil— - You are the land-blight. - You have tempted men - But they perished on your cliffs. - - Your lights are but dank shoals, - Slate and pebble and wet shells - And sea-weed fastened to the rocks. - - It was evil—evil - When they found you, - When the quiet men looked at you. - They sought a headland - Shaded with ledge of cliff - From the wind-blast. - But you—you are unsheltered, - Cut with the weight of wind. - You shudder when it strikes, - Then lift, swelled with the blast. - You sink as the tide sinks, - You shrill under hail and sound, - Thunder when thunder sounds. - - You are useless: - When the tides swirl - Your boulders cut and wreck - The staggering ships. - - II - - You are useless, - O grave, O beautiful. - The landsmen tell it—I have heard— - You are useless. - - And the wind sounds with this - And the sea - Where rollers shot with blue - Cut under deeper blue. - - Oh, but stay tender, enchanted - Where wave-lengths cut you - Apart from all the rest— - For we have found you, - We watch the splendor of you, - We thread throat on throat of freesia - For your shelf. - - You are not forgot, - O plunder of lilies, - Honey is not more sweet - Than the salt stretch of your beach. - - III - - Stay—stay— - But terror has caught us now. - We passed the men in ships, - We dared deeper than the fisher-folk; - And you strike us with terror, - O bright shaft. - - Flame passes under us - And sparks that unknot the flesh— - Sorrow, splitting bone from bone, - Splendors thwart our eyes - And rifts in the splendor, - Sparks and scattered light. - - Many warned of this, - Men said: - “There are wrecks on the fore-beach, - Wind will beat your ship, - There is no shelter in that headland; - It is useless waste, that edge, - That front of rock— - Sea-gulls clang beyond the breakers, - None venture to that spot.” - - IV - - But hail— - As the tide slackens, - As the wind beats out, - We hail this shore— - We sing to you, - Spirit between the headlands - And the further rocks. - Though oak-beams split, - Though boats and sea-men flounder, - And the strait grind sand with sand - And cut boulders to sand and drift— - - Your eyes have pardoned our faults, - Your hands have touched us; - You have leaned forward a little - And the waves can never thrust us back - From the splendor of your ragged coast. - - - - - Mary Carolyn Davies - - - CLOISTERED - - To-night the little girl-nun died. - Her hands were laid - Across her breast; the last sun tried - To kiss her quiet braid; - And where the little river cried, - Her grave was made. - - The little girl-nun’s soul, in awe, - Went silently - To where her brother Christ she saw, - Under the Living Tree; - He sighed, and his face seemed to draw - Her tears, to see. - - He laid his hands on her hands mild, - And gravely blessed; - “Blind, they that kept you so,” he smiled, - With tears unguessed. - “Saw they not Mary held a child - Upon her breast?” - - - SONGS OF A GIRL - - I - - Perhaps, - God, planting Eden, - Dropped, by mistake, a seed - In Time’s neighbor-plot, - That grew to be - This hour? - - II - - You and I picked up Life and looked at it curiously; - We did not know whether to keep it for a plaything or not. - It was beautiful to see, like a red firecracker, - And we knew, too, that it was lighted. - We dropped it while the fuse was still burning.... - - III - - I am going to die too, flower, in a little while— - Do not be so proud. - - IV - - The sun is dying - Alone - On an island - In the bay. - - Close your eyes, poppies— - I would not have you see death, - You are so young! - - V - - The sun falls - Like a drop of blood - From some hero. - - We, - Who love pain, - Delight in this. - - - - - Fannie Stearns Davis - - - PROFITS - - Yes, stars were with me formerly. - (I also knew the wind and sea; - And hill-tops had my feet by heart. - Their shagged heights would sting and start - When I came leaping on their backs. - I knew the earth’s queer crooked cracks, - Where hidden waters weave a low - And druid chant of joy and woe.) - - But stars were with me most of all. - I heard them flame and break and fall. - Their excellent array, their free - Encounter with Eternity, - I learned. And it was good to know - That where God walked, I too might go. - - Now, all these things are passed. For I - Grow very old and glad to die. - What did they profit me, say you, - These distant bloodless things I knew? - - Profit? What profit hath the sea - Of her deep-throated threnody? - What profit hath the sun, who stands - Staring on space with idle hands? - And what should God Himself acquire - From all the aeons’ blood and fire? - - My profit is as theirs: to be - Made proof against mortality: - To know that I have companied - With all that shines and lives, amid - So much the years sift through their hands, - Most mortal, windy, worthless sands. - - This day I have great peace. With me - Shall stars abide eternally! - - - SOULS - - My soul goes clad in gorgeous things, - Scarlet and gold and blue. - And at her shoulder sudden wings - Like long flames flicker through. - - And she is swallow-fleet, and free - From mortal bonds and bars. - She laughs, because eternity - Blossoms for her with stars! - - O folk who scorn my stiff gray gown, - My dull and foolish face, - Can ye not see my soul flash down, - A singing flame through space? - - And folk, whose earth-stained looks I hate, - Why may I not divine - Your souls, that must be passionate, - Shining and swift, as mine? - - - - - Walter de la Mare - - - THE LISTENERS - - “Is there anybody there?” said the Traveller, - Knocking on the moonlit door; - And his horse in the silence champed the grasses - Of the forest’s ferny floor; - And a bird flew up out of the turret, - Above the Traveller’s head; - And he smote upon the door again a second time; - “Is there anybody there?” he said. - But no one descended to the Traveller; - No head from the leaf-fringed sill - Leaned over and looked into his grey eyes, - Where he stood perplexed and still. - But only a host of phantom listeners - That dwelt in the lone house then - Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight - To that voice from the world of men: - Stood thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark stair, - That goes down to the empty hall, - Hearkening in an air stirred and shaken - By the lonely Traveller’s call. - And he felt in his heart their strangeness, - Their stillness answering his cry, - While his horse moved, cropping the dark turf, - ’Neath the starred and leafy sky; - For he suddenly smote on the door, even - Louder, and lifted his head:— - “Tell them I came, and no one answered - That I kept my word,” he said. - Never the least stir made the listeners, - Though every word he spake - Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house - From the one man left awake: - Ay, they heard his foot upon the stirrup, - And the sound of iron on stone, - And how the silence surged softly backward, - When the plunging hoofs were gone. - - - AN EPITAPH - - Here lies a most beautiful lady: - Light of step and heart was she; - I think she was the most beautiful lady - That ever was in the West Country. - But beauty vanishes; beauty passes; - However rare—rare it be; - And when I crumble, who will remember - This lady of the West Country? - - - - - Lee Wilson Dodd - - - THE TEMPLE - - Hear me, brother! - Boldly I stepped into the Temple, - Into the Temple where the God dwells - Veiled with Seven Veils, - Into the Temple of Unbroken Silence: - And my joyous feet shod with crimson sandals - Rang out on the tesselated pavement, - Rang out fearlessly - Like a challenge and a cry! - And there—in that shrouded solitude, - There—before the Seven Veils, - There—because of youth and youth’s madness, - Because of love and love’s unresting heart, - There did I sing three songs! - And my first song praised the eyes of a wanton; - And my second song praised the lips of a wanton; - And my third song praised the feet of a dancing girl! - - Thus did I desecrate the Temple, - Thus did I stand before the Seven Veils, - Proudly! - Thus did I wait upon the God’s Voice— - Proudly!— - And the sudden shaft of death.... - - But no Voice stirred the Seven Veils, - Though I stood long.... - - And my knees shook, - My bones were afraid.... - - Swiftly I loosed the crimson sandals, - And, tearing them from off my feet, - Crept shuddering forth! - - Hear me, brother! - Now am I as one stricken with palsy, - Now am I sick with the close ache of terror, - Now am I as one who, having tasted poison, - Cowers, waiting for the pang! - -_For the God spake not...._ - - And the sense of my littleness is upon me: - And I am a worm in my own sight, - Trodden and helpless; - A casual grain of sand - Indistinguishable amid a million grains: - And I take no pleasure now in youth - Nor in youth’s madness, - In love - Nor in love’s unresting heart; - And I praise no longer the eyes of a wanton, - Nor the lips of a wanton, - Nor the light feet of a dancing girl. - - - THE COMRADE - - Call me friend or foe, - Little I care! - I go with all who go - Daring to dare. - - I am the force, - I am the fire, - I am the secret source - Of desire. - - I am the urge, - The spur and thong: - Moon of the tides that surge - Into song! - - Call me friend or foe, - Little care I, - I go with all who go - Singing to die. - - Call me friend or foe.... - Taking to give, - I go with all who go - Dying to live. - - - - - John Drinkwater - - - SUNRISE ON RYDAL WATER - - _To E. de S._ - - Come down at dawn from windless hills - Into the valley of the lake, - Where yet a larger quiet fills - The hour, and mist and water make - With rocks and reeds and island boughs - One silence and one element, - Where wonder goes surely as once - It went - By Galilean prows. - - Moveless the water and the mist, - Moveless the secret air above, - Hushed, as upon some happy tryst - The poised expectancy of love; - What spirit is it that adores - What mighty presence yet unseen? - What consummation works apace - Between - These rapt enchanted shores? - - Never did virgin beauty wake - Devouter to the bridal feast - Than moves this hour upon the lake - In adoration to the east. - Here is the bride a god may know, - The primal will, the young consent, - Till surely upon the appointed mood - Intent - The god shall leap—and, lo, - - Over the lake’s end strikes the sun— - White, flameless fire; some purity - Thrilling the mist, a splendor won - Out of the world’s heart. Let there be - Thoughts, and atonements, and desires; - Proud limbs, and undeliberate tongue; - Where now we move with mortal care - Among - Immortal dews and fires. - - So the old mating goes apace, - Wind with the sea, and blood with thought, - Lover with lover; and the grace - Of understanding comes unsought - When stars into the twilight steer, - Or thrushes build among the may, - Or wonder moves between the hills, - And day - Comes up on Rydal mere. - - - - - Louise Driscoll - - - THE METAL CHECKS - - [_The scene is a bare room, with two shaded windows at the back, and a - fireplace between them with a fire burning low. The room contains - a few plain chairs, and a rough wooden table on which are piled - many small wooden trays. THE COUNTER, who is Death, sits at the - table. He wears a loose gray robe, and his face is partly - concealed by a gray veil. THE BEARER is the World, that bears the - burden of War. He wears a soiled robe of brown and green and he - carries on his back a gunny-bag filled with the little metal disks - that have been used for the identification of the slain common - soldiers._] - - _The Bearer_ - - Here is a sack, a gunny sack, - A heavy sack I bring. - Here is toll of many a soul— - But not the soul of a king. - - This is the toll of common men, - Who lived in the common way; - Lived upon bread and wine and love, - In the light of the common day. - - This is the toll of working men, - Blood and brawn and brain. - Who shall render us again - The worth of all the slain? - - - _The Counter_ - Pour them out on the table here. - _Clickety_—_clickety_—_clack_! - For every button a man went out, - And who shall call him back? - _Clickety_—_clickety_—_clack_! - - One—two—three—four— - Every disk a soul! - Three score—four score— - So many boys went out to war. - Pick up that one that fell on the floor— - Didn’t you see it roll? - That was a man a month ago. - This was a man. Row upon row— - Pile them in tens and count them so. - - - _The Bearer_ - - I have an empty sack. - It is not large. Would you have said - That I could carry on my back - So great an army—and all dead? - - [_As THE COUNTER speaks THE BEARER lays the sack over his arm and helps - count._] - - - _The Counter_ - Put a hundred in each tray— - We can tally them best that way. - Careful—do you understand - You have ten men in your hand? - There’s another fallen—there— - Under that chair. - - [_THE BEARER finds it and restores it._] - - That was a man a month ago; - He could see and feel and know. - - Then, into his throat there sped - A bit of lead. - Blood was salt in his mouth; he fell - And lay amid the battle wreck. - Nothing was left but this metal check— - And a wife and child, perhaps. - - [_THE BEARER finds the bag on his arm troublesome. He holds it up, - inspecting it._] - - - _The Bearer_ - What can one do with a thing like this? - Neither of life nor death it is! - For the dead serve not, though it served the dead. - The wounds it carried were wide and red, - Yet they stained it not. Can a man put food, - Potatoes or wheat, or even wood - That is kind and burns with a flame to warm - Living men who are comforted— - In a thing that has served so many dead? - There is no thrift in a graveyard dress, - It’s been shroud for too many men. - I’ll burn it and let the dead bless. - - - [_He crosses himself and throws it into the fire. He watches it burn. - THE COUNTER continues to pile up the metal checks, and drop them by - hundreds into the trays which he piles one upon another. THE BEARER - turns from the fire and speaks more slowly than before. He indicates - the metal checks._] - - Would not the blood of these make a great sea - For men to sail their ships on? It may be - No fish would swim in it, and the foul smell - Would make the sailors sick. Perhaps in Hell - There’s some such lake for men who rush to war - Prating of glory, and upon the shore - Will stand the wives and children and old men - Bereft, to drive them back again - - When they seek haven. Some such thing - I thought the while I bore it on my back - And heard the metal pieces clattering. - - - _The Counter_ - Four score—five score— - These and as many more. - Forward—march!—into the tray! - No bugles blow today, - No captains lead the way; - But mothers and wives, - Fathers, sisters, little sons, - Count the cost - Of the lost; - And we count the unlived lives, - The forever unborn ones - Who might have been your sons. - - - _The Bearer_ - Could not the hands of these rebuild - That which has been destroyed? - Oh, the poor hands! that once were strong and filled - With implements of labor whereby they - Served home and country through the peaceful day. - When those who made the war stand face to face - With these slain soldiers in that unknown place - Whither the dead go, what will be the word - By dead lips spoken and by dead ears heard? - Will souls say King or Kaiser? Will souls prate - Of earthly glory in that new estate? - - - _The Counter_ - One hundred thousand— - One hundred and fifty thousand— - Two hundred— - - - - _The Bearer_ - Can this check plough? - Can it sow? can it reap? - Can we arouse it? - Is it asleep? - - Can it hear when a child cries?— - Comfort a wife? - This little metal disk - Stands for a life. - - Can this check build, - Laying stone upon stone? - Once it was warm flesh - Folded on bone. - - Sinew and muscle firm, - Look at it—can - This little metal check - Stand for a man? - - - _The Counter_ - One—two—three—four— - - - - - Dorothy Dudley - - - LA RUE DE LA MONTAGNE SAINTE-GÈNEVIÈVE - - I have seen an old street weeping— - Narrow, dark, ascending; - Water o’er the spires - Of a church descending; - The church thrice veiled—in rain, - In the shadow of the years, - In the grace of old design; - Dim dwellings, blind with tears, - Rotting either side - The winding passage way, - To where the river crosses - Weeping, under gray - And limpid heavens weeping. - Gardens I have seen - Through archèd doors, whose gratings - Ever cry the keen - Dim melodies of lace - Long used and rare, gardens - With an old-time grace - Vibrating, dimly trembling - In the music of the rain. - Roses I have seen drip a faint - Perfume, and lilacs train - A quivering loveliness - From door to archèd door, - Passing by in flower carts; - While waters ever pour - O’er the white stones of the fountain, - Melting icily away - Half way up the mountain; - Where to mingle tears with tears, - Their clothes misshapen, sobbing, - Two or three old women, - In wooden sabots hobbling, - Meet to fill their pitchers, - From the stream of water leaping - Through the lips, a long time parted, - Of a face grotesquely weeping— - A carven face forever weeping. - - - - - Helen Dudley - - - TO ONE UNKNOWN - - I have seen the proudest stars - That wander on through space, - Even the sun and moon, - But not your face. - - I have heard the violin, - The winds and waves rejoice - In endless minstrelsy, - Yet not your voice. - - I have touched the trillium, - Pale flower of the land, - Coral, anemone, - And not your hand. - - I have kissed the shining feet - Of Twilight lover-wise, - Opened the gates of Dawn— - Oh, not your eyes! - - I have dreamed unwonted things, - Visions that witches brew, - Spoken with images, - Never with you. - - - SONG - - A few more windy days - Must come and go their ways, - And we will walk - My love and I - Beneath the amber-dripping boughs. - - Then on the stars we’ll tread, - On purple stars and red, - And wonder why - The while we talk - Men sing so much of broken vows. - - - - - Max Eastman - - - DIOGENES - - A hut, and a tree, - And a hill for me, - And a piece of a weedy meadow. - I’ll ask no thing, - Of God or king, - But to clear away his shadow. - - - IN MARCH - - On a soaked fence-post a little blue-backed bird, - Opening her sweet throat, has stirred - A million music-ripples in the air - That curl and circle everywhere. - They break not shallow at my ear, - But quiver far within. Warm days are near! - - - AT THE AQUARIUM - - Serene the silver fishes glide, - Stern-lipped, and pale, and wonder-eyed! - As through the aged deeps of ocean, - They glide with wan and wavy motion! - They have no pathway where they go, - They flow like water to and fro. - They watch with never winking eyes, - They watch with staring, cold surprise, - The level people in the air, - The people peering, peering there: - Who wander also to and fro, - And know not why or where they go, - Yet have a wonder in their eyes, - Sometimes a pale and cold surprise. - - - - - T. S. Eliot - - - PORTRAIT OF A LADY - - I - - Among the smoke and fog of a December afternoon - You have the scene arrange itself—as it will seem to do— - With “I have saved this afternoon for you”; - And four wax candles in the darkened room, - Four rings of light upon the ceiling overhead: - An atmosphere of Juliet’s tomb - Prepared for all the things to be said, or left unsaid. - - We have been, let us say, to hear the latest Pole - Transmit the Preludes, through his hair and finger-tips. - “So intimate, this Chopin, that I think his soul - Should be resurrected only among friends— - Some two or three, who will not touch the bloom - That is rubbed and questioned in the concert room.” - - And so the conversation slips - Among velleities and carefully caught regrets, - Through attenuated tones of violins - Mingled with remote cornets, - And begins: - “You do not know how much they mean to me, my friends; - And how, how rare and strange it is, to find, - In a life composed so much, so much of odds and ends— - (For indeed I do not love it ... you knew? you are not blind! - How keen you are!) - To find a friend who has these qualities, - Who has, and gives - Those qualities upon which friendship lives: - How much it means that I say this to you— - Without these friendships—life, what _cauchemar_!” - - Among the windings of the violins, - And the ariettes - Of cracked cornets, - Inside my brain a dull tom-tom begins - Absurdly hammering a prelude of its own— - Capricious monotone - That is at least one definite “false note.” - Let us take the air, in a tobacco trance, - Admire the monuments, - Discuss the late events, - Correct our watches by the public clocks; - Then sit for half an hour and drink our bocks. - - II - - Now that lilacs are in bloom - She has a bowl of lilacs in her room - And twists one in her fingers while she talks. - “Ah my friend, you do not know, you do not know - What life is, you who hold it in your hands—” - (Slowly twisting the lilac stalks); - “You let it flow from you, you let it flow, - And youth is cruel, and has no remorse, - And smiles at situations which it cannot see.” - I smile, of course, - And go on drinking tea. - “Yet with these April sunsets, that somehow recall - My buried life, and Paris in the spring, - I feel immeasurably at peace, and find the world - To be wonderful and youthful, after all.” - - The voice returns like the insistent out-of-tune - Of a broken violin on an August afternoon: - “I am always sure that you understand - My feelings, always sure that you feel, - Sure that across the gulf you reach your hand. - - “You are invulnerable, you have no Achilles’ heel. - You will go on, and when you have prevailed - You can say: ‘At this point many a one has failed.’ - But what have I, but what have I, my friend, - To give you, what can you receive from me? - Only the friendship and the sympathy - Of one about to reach her journey’s end. - - “I shall sit here, serving tea to friends....” - - I take my hat: how can I make a cowardly amends - For what she has said to me? - - You will see me any morning in the park - Reading the comics and the sporting page. - Particularly I remark - An English countess goes upon the stage, - A Greek was murdered at a Polish dance, - Another bank defaulter has confessed. - I keep my countenance, - I remain self-possessed - Except when a street piano, mechanical and tired, - Reiterates some worn-out common song, - With the smell of hyacinths across the garden - Recalling things that other people have desired. - Are these ideas right or wrong? - - III - - The October night comes down. Returning as before, - Except for a slight sensation of being ill at ease, - I mount the stairs and turn the handle of the door - And feel as if I had mounted on my hands and knees. - - “And so you are going abroad; and when do you return? - But that’s a useless question. - You hardly know when you are coming back, - You will find so much to learn.” - My smile falls heavily among the bric-a-brac. - - “Perhaps you can write to me.” - My self-possession flares up for a second; - _This_ is as I had reckoned. - “I have been wondering frequently of late - (But our beginnings never know our ends!) - Why we have not developed into friends.” - I feel like one who smiles, and turning shall remark - Suddenly, his expression in a glass. - My self-possession gutters; we are really in the dark. - - “For everybody said so, all our friends, - They all were sure our feelings would relate - So closely! I myself can hardly understand. - We must leave it now to fate. - You will write, at any rate. - Perhaps it is not too late. - I shall sit here, serving tea to friends.” - - And I must borrow every changing shape - To find expression ... dance, dance - Like a dancing bear, - Cry like a parrot, chatter like an ape. - Let us take the air, in a tobacco trance ... - Well! and what if she should die some afternoon, - Afternoon gray and smoky, evening yellow and rose; - Should die and leave me sitting pen in hand - With the smoke coming down above the house tops; - Doubtful, for quite a while - Not knowing what to feel or if I understand - Or whether wise or foolish, tardy or too soon... - Would she not have the advantage, after all? - This music is successful with a “dying fall” - Now that we talk of dying— - And should I have the right to smile? - - - - - Arthur Davison Ficke - - - MEETING - - Gray-robed Wanderer in sleep ... Wanderer ... - You also move among - Those silent halls - Dim on the shore of the unsailed deep? - And your footfalls, yours also, Wanderer, - Faint through those twilight corridors have rung? - - Of late my eyes have seen ... Wanderer ... - Amid the shadows’ gloom - Of that sleep-girdled place - I should have known such joy could not have been— - To see your face: and yet, Wanderer, - What hopes seem vain beneath the night in bloom? - - Wearily I awake ... Wanderer ... - Your look of old despair, - Like a dying star, - In morning vanishes. But for all memories’ sake, - Though you are far, tonight, O Wanderer, - Tonight come, though in silence, to the shadows there ... - - - AMONG SHADOWS - - In halls of sleep you wandered by, - This time so indistinguishably - I cannot remember aught of it, - Save that I know last night we met. - I know it by the cloudy thrill - That in my heart is quivering still; - And sense of loveliness forgot - Teases my fancy out of thought. - Though with the night the vision wanes, - Its haunting presence still may last— - As odor of flowers faint remains - In halls where late a queen has passed. - - - THE THREE SISTERS - - Gone are the three, those sisters rare - With wonder-lips and eyes ashine. - One was wise and one was fair, - And one was mine. - - Ye mourners, weave for the sleeping hair - Of only two, your ivy vine. - For one was wise and one was fair, - But one was mine. - - - PORTRAIT OF AN OLD WOMAN - - She limps with halting painful pace, - Stops, wavers, and creeps on again; - Peers up with dim and questioning face - Void of desire or doubt or pain. - - Her cheeks hang gray in waxen folds - Wherein there stirs no blood at all. - A hand like bundled cornstalks holds - The tatters of a faded shawl. - - Where was a breast, sunk bones she clasps; - A knot jerks where were woman-hips; - A ropy throat sends writhing gasps - Up to the tight line of her lips. - - Here strong the city’s pomp is poured ... - She stands, unhuman, bleak, aghast: - An empty temple of the Lord - From which the jocund Lord has passed. - - He has builded him another house, - Whenceforth his flame, renewed and bright, - Shines stark upon these weathered brows - Abandoned to the final night. - - - I AM WEARY OF BEING BITTER - - I am weary of being bitter and weary of being wise, - And the armor and the mask of these fall from me, after long. - I would go where the islands sleep, or where the sea-dawns rise, - And lose my bitter wisdom in the wisdom of a song. - - There are magics in melodies, unknown of the sages; - The powers of purest wonder on secret wings go by. - Doubtless out of the silence of dumb preceding ages - Song woke the chaos-world—and light swept the sky. - - All that we know is idle; idle is all we cherish; - Idle the will that takes loads that proclaim it strong. - For the knowledge, the strength, the burden—all shall perish: - One thing only endures, one thing only—song. - - - FROM “SONNETS OF A PORTRAIT PAINTER” - - I am in love with high far-seeing places - That look on plains half-sunlight and half-storm, - In love with hours when from the circling faces - Veils pass, and laughing fellowship glows warm. - You who look on me with grave eyes where rapture - And April love of living burn confessed— - The Gods are good! the world lies free to capture! - Life has no walls. Oh, take me to your breast! - Take me—be with me for a moment’s span! - I am in love with all unveilèd faces. - I seek the wonder at the heart of man; - I would go up to the far-seeing places. - While youth is ours, turn toward me for a space - The marvel of your rapture-lighted face! - - There are strange shadows fostered of the moon, - More numerous than the clear-cut shade of day.... - Go forth, when all the leaves whisper of June, - Into the dusk of swooping bats at play; - Or go into that late November dusk - When hills take on the noble lines of death, - And on the air the faint astringent musk - Of rotting leaves pours vaguely troubling breath. - Then shall you see shadows whereof the sun - Knows nothing—aye, a thousand shadows there - Shall leap and flicker and stir and stay and run, - Like petrels of the changing foul or fair; - Like ghosts of twilight, of the moon, of him - Whose homeland lies past each horizon’s rim.... - - - LIKE HIM WHOSE SPIRIT - - Like him whose spirit in the blaze of noon - Still keeps the memory of one secret star - That in the dusk of a remembered June - Thrilled the strange hour with beauty from afar— - And perilous spells of twilight snare his heart, - And wistful moods his common thoughts subdue, - And life seethes by him utterly apart— - Last night I dreamed, today I dream, of you. - Gleams downward strike; bright bubbles upward hover - Through the charmed air; far sea-winds cool my brow. - Invisible lips tell me I shall discover - Today a temple, a mystery, a vow ... - The cycle rounds: only the false seems true. - Last night I dreamed, today I dream, of you. - - - - - John Gould Fletcher - - - IRRADIATIONS - - I - - Over the roof-tops race the shadows of clouds: - Like horses the shadows of clouds charge down the street. - - Whirlpools of purple and gold, - Winds from the mountains of cinnabar, - Lacquered mandarin moments, palanquins swaying and balancing - Amid the vermilion pavilions, against the jade balustrades; - Glint of the glittering wings of dragon-flies in the light; - Silver filaments, golden flakes settling downwards; - Rippling, quivering flutters; repulse and surrender, - The sun broidered upon the rain, - The rain rustling with the sun. - - Over the roof-tops race the shadows of clouds: - Like horses the shadows of clouds charge down the street. - - II - - O seeded grass, you army of little men - Crawling up the low slopes with quivering quick blades of steel: - You who storm millions of graves, tiny green tentacles of earth, - Interlace your tangled webs tightly over my heart - And do not let me go: - For I would lie here for ever and watch with one eye - The pilgrimaging ants in your dull savage jungles, - While with the other I see the long lines of the slope - Break in mid air, a wave surprisingly arrested; - And above it, wavering, bodiless, colorless, unreal, - The long thin lazy fingers of the heat. - - III - - Not noisily, but solemnly and pale, - In a meditative ecstasy, you entered life, - As for some strange rite, to which you alone held the clue. - Child, life did not give rude strength to you; - From the beginning you would seem to have thrown away, - As something cold and cumbersome, that armor men use against death. - You would perchance look on death face to face and from him wrest the - secret - Whether his face wears oftenest a smile or no? - Strange, old and silent being, there is something - Infinitely vast in your intense tininess: - I think you could point out with a smile some curious star - Far off in the heavens which no man has seen before. - - IV - - The morning is clean and blue, and the wind blows up the clouds: - Now my thoughts, gathered from afar, - Once again in their patched armor, with rusty plumes and blunted swords, - Move out to war. - - - Smoking our morning pipes we shall ride two and two - Through the woods. - For our old cause keeps us together, - And our hatred is so precious not death or defeat can break it. - - God willing, we shall this day meet that old enemy - Who has given us so many a good beating. - Thank God, we have a cause worth fighting for, - And a cause worth losing, and a good song to sing! - - - ARIZONA POEMS - - - MEXICAN QUARTER - - By an alley lined with tumble-down shacks, - And street-lamps askew, half-sputtering, - Feebly glimmering on gutters choked with filth, and dogs - Scratching their mangy backs: - Half-naked children are running about, - Women puff cigarettes in black doorways, - Crickets are crying. - Men slouch sullenly - Into the shadows. - Behind a hedge of cactus, - The smell of a dead horse - Mingles with the smell of tamales frying. - - And a girl in a black lace shawl - Sits in a rickety chair by the square of unglazed window, - And sees the explosion of the stars - Fiercely poised on the velvet sky. - And she seems humming to herself: - “Stars, if I could reach you - (You are so very near that it seems as if I could reach you), - I would give you all to the Madonna’s image - On the gray plastered altar behind the paper flowers, - So that Juan would come back to me, - And we could live again those lazy burning hours, - Forgetting the tap of my fan and my sharp words, - And I would only keep four of you— - Those two blue-white ones overhead, - To put in my ears, - And those two orange ones yonder - To fasten on my shoe-buckles.” - - A little further along the street - A man squats stringing a brown guitar. - The smoke of his cigarette curls round his hair, - And he too is humming, but other words: - “Think not that at your window I wait. - New love is better, the old is turned to hate. - Fate! Fate! All things pass away; - Life is forever, youth is but for a day. - Love again if you may - Before the golden moons are blown out of the sky - And the crickets die. - Babylon and Samarkand - Are mud walls in a waste of sand.” - - - RAIN IN THE DESERT - - The huge red-buttressed mesa over yonder - Is merely a far-off temple where the sleepy sun is burning - Its altar fires of pinyon and toyon for the day. - - The old priests sleep, white-shrouded; - Their pottery whistles lie beside them, the prayer-sticks closely - feathered. - On every mummied face there glows a smile. - - - The sun is rolling slowly - Beneath the sluggish folds of the sky-serpents, - Coiling, uncoiling, blue black, sparked with fires. - - The old dead priests - Feel in the thin dried earth that is heaped about them, - Above the smell of scorching, oozing pinyon, - The acrid smell of rain. - - And now the showers - Surround the mesa like a troop of silver dancers: - Shaking their rattles, stamping, chanting, roaring, - Whirling, extinguishing the last red wisp of light. - - - THE BLUE SYMPHONY - - I - - The darkness rolls upward. - The thick darkness carries with it - Rain and a ravel of cloud. - The sun comes forth upon earth. - - Palely the dawn - Leaves me facing timidly - Old gardens sunken: - And in the gardens is water. - - Sombre wreck-autumnal leaves; - Shadowy roofs - In the blue mist, - And a willow-branch that is broken. - - O old pagodas of my soul, how you glittered across green trees! - - Blue and cool: - Blue, tremulously, - Blow faint puffs of smoke - Across sombre pools. - The damp green smell of rotted wood; - And a heron that cries from out the water. - - II - - Through the upland meadows - I go alone. - For I dreamed of someone last night - Who is waiting for me. - - Flower and blossom, tell me do you know of her? - Have the rocks hidden her voice? - They are very blue and still. - - Long upward road that is leading me, - Light hearted I quit you, - For the long loose ripples of the meadow-grass - Invite me to dance upon them. - - Quivering grass, - Daintily poised - For her foot’s tripping. - - O blown clouds, could I only race up like you! - Oh, the last slopes that are sun-drenched and steep! - - Look, the sky! - Across black valleys - Rise blue-white aloft - Jagged unwrinkled mountains, ranges of death. - - Solitude. Silence. - - III - - One chuckles by the brook for me: - One rages under the stone. - One makes a spout of his mouth, - One whispers—one is gone. - - One over there on the water - Spreads cold ripples - For me - Enticingly. - - The vast dark trees - Flow like blue veils - Of tears - Into the water. - - Sour sprites, - Moaning and chuckling, - What have you hidden from me? - - “In the palace of the blue stone she lies forever - Bound hand and foot.” - - Was it the wind - That rattled the reeds together? - - Dry reeds, - A faint shiver in the grasses. - - IV - - On the left hand there is a temple: - And a palace on the right-hand side. - Foot-passengers in scarlet - Pass over the glittering tide. - - Under the bridge - The old river flows - Low and monotonous - Day after day. - - I have heard and have seen - All the news that has been: - Autumn’s gold and Spring’s green! - - Now in my palace - I see foot-passengers - Crossing the river, - Pilgrims of autumn - In the afternoons. - - Lotus pools; - Petals in the water: - Such are my dreams. - - For me silks are outspread. - I take my ease, unthinking. - - V - - And now the lowest pine-branch - Is drawn across the disk of the sun. - Old friends who will forget me soon, - I must go on - Towards those blue death mountains - I have forgot so long. - - In the marsh grasses - There lies forever - My last treasure, - With the hope of my heart. - - The ice is glazing over; - Torn lanterns flutter, - On the leaves is snow. - - In the frosty evening - Toll the old bell for me - Once, in the sleepy temple. - Perhaps my soul will hear. - - Afterglow: - Before the stars peep - I shall creep into the darkness. - - - - - F. S. Flint - - - POEMS IN UNRHYMED CADENCE - - I - - London, my beautiful, - It is not the sunset - Nor the pale green sky - Shimmering through the curtain - Of the silver birch, - Nor the quietness; - It is not the hopping - Of the little birds - Upon the lawn, - Nor the darkness - Stealing over all things - That moves me. - - But as the moon creeps slowly - Over the tree-tops - Among the stars, - I think of her - And the glow her passing - Sheds on men. - - London, my beautiful, - I will climb - Into the branches - To the moonlit tree-tops, - That my blood may be cooled - By the wind. - - II - - Under the lily shadow - And the gold - And the blue and mauve - That the whin and the lilac - Pour down on the water, - The fishes quiver. - - Over the green cold leaves - And the rippled silver - And the tarnished copper - Of its neck and beak, - Toward the deep black water - Beneath the arches, - The swan floats slowly. - - Into the dark of the arch the swan floats - And the black depth of my sorrow - Bears a white rose of flame. - - - III—IN THE GARDEN - - The grass is beneath my head; - And I gaze - At the thronging stars - In the aisles of night. - - They fall ... they fall.... - I am overwhelmed, - And afraid. - - Each little leaf of the aspen - Is caressed by the wind, - And each is crying. - - And the perfume - Of invisible roses - Deepens the anguish. - - Let a strong mesh of roots - Feed the crimson of roses - Upon my heart; - And then fold over the hollow - Where all the pain was. - - - - - Moireen Fox - - - LIADAIN TO CURITHIR - -_Liadain and Curithir were two poets who lived in Ireland in the seventh -century. They fell in love, but while Curithir was absent making -preparations for their marriage, Liadain, for some unexplained reason, -took the vows of a nun. Curithir in despair became a monk. At first they -continued to see each other, but when this led to the breaking of their -vows, Curithir left Liadain to spend his life in penance and thus save -his soul._ - - I - - If I had known how narrow a prison is love, - Never would I have given the width of the skies - In return for thy kiss, O Curithir, thou my grief! - - If I had known love’s poverty, I would have given - Dúns and forests and ploughlands and begged my bread: - For now I have lost the earth and the stars and my soul. - - If I had known the strength of love, I would have laid - The ridge of the world in ashes to stay his feet: - I would have cried on a stronger lord—on Death. - - II - - I, that was wont to pass by all unmoved - As the long ridge of the tide sweeps to the shore, - Am broken at last on the crags of a pitiless love. - - I, who was wont to see men pale at my glance, - Like the quivering grass am shaken beneath thine eyes; - At thy touch my spirit is captive, my will is lost. - - I would darken the sun and moon to break from thy love, - I would shatter the world to win thee again to my side. - O aching madness of love! Have the dead repose? - Or wilt thou tear my heart in the close-shut grave? - - III - - I have done with blame, I have risen from the cold earth - Where night and day my forehead has known the clay. - With faltering steps I have passed out to the sun. - - Now in the sight of all I stand, that all may know - (For I myself will praise thee and prove their words) - How great was thy wisdom in turning away from me. - - Who that has drunken wine will keep the lees? - Who that has slain a man will wait for revenge? - Who that has had his desire of a woman will stay? - - Farewell, O Curithir, let thy soul be saved! - I have not found a thing that is dearer to thee. - In the eyes of God is it priceless? Who can say! - - My soul is a thing of little worth unto God: - Of less worth unto thee, O Curithir, than my love. - And unto me so small I flung it beneath thy feet. - - IV - - If the dark earth hold a Power that is not God - I pray It to bind up memory lest I die. - - There was a day when Curithir loved me, now it is gone. - It was I that sundered his love from me, I myself; - Or it was God who struck me with madness and mocked. - - If the dark earth hold a Power that is not God - I pray It to hide me for ever away from His face. - - V - - All things are outworn now—grief is dead, - And passion has fallen from me like a withered leaf. - Little it were to me now though Curithir were beside me: - Though he should pass I would not turn my head. - My heart is like a stone in my body. - All I have grasped I loose again from my hands. - - - - - Florence Kiper Frank - - - THE JEWISH CONSCRIPT - - _There are nearly a quarter of a million Jews in the Czar’s army - alone.—Newspaper clipping._ - - They have dressed me up in a soldier’s dress, - With a rifle in my hand, - And have sent me bravely forth to shoot - My own in a foreign land. - - Oh, many shall die for the fields of their homes, - And many in conquest wild; - But I shall die for the fatherland - That murdered my little child. - - How many hundreds of years ago— - The nations wax and cease!— - Did the God of our fathers doom us to bear - The flaming message of peace! - - We are the mock and the sport of time! - Yet why should I complain!— - For a Jew that they hung on the bloody cross, - He also died in vain. - - - THE MOVIES - - She knows a cheap release - From worry and from pain— - The cowboys spur their horses - Over the unending plain. - - The tenement rooms are small; - Their walls press on the brain. - Oh, the dip of the galloping horses - On the limitless, wind-swept plain! - - - YOU - - I go my way complacently, - As self-respecting persons should. - You are to me the rebel thought, - You are the wayward rebel mood. - - What shall we share who are separate? - We part—as alien persons should. - But oh, I have need of the rebel thought, - And a wicked urge to the rebel mood! - - - - - Robert Frost - - - MENDING WALL - - Something there is that doesn’t love a wall, - That sends the frozen ground-swell under it, - And spills the upper boulders in the sun; - And makes gaps even two can pass abreast. - The work of hunters is another thing: - I have come after them and made repair - Where they have left not one stone on stone, - But they would have the rabbit out of hiding, - To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean, - No one has seen them made or heard them made, - But at spring mending-time we find them there. - I let my neighbor know beyond the hill; - And on a day we meet to walk the line - And set the wall between us once again. - We keep the wall between us as we go. - To each the boulders that have fallen to each. - And some are loaves and some so nearly balls - We have to use a spell to make them balance: - “Stay where you are until our backs are turned!” - We wear our fingers rough with handling them. - Oh, just another kind of out-door game, - One on a side. It comes to little more: - There where it is we do not need the wall: - He is all pine and I am apple orchard. - My apple trees will never get across - And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him. - He only says, “Good fences make good neighbors.” - Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder - If I could put a notion in his head: - “Why do they make good neighbors? Isn’t it - Where there are cows? But here there are no cows. - Before I built a wall I’d ask to know - What I was walling in or walling out, - And to whom I was like to give offence. - Something there is that doesn’t love a wall, - That wants it down.” I could say “Elves” to him, - But it’s not elves exactly, and I’d rather - He said it for himself. I see him there - Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top - In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed. - He moves in darkness as it seems to me, - Not of woods only and the shade of trees. - He will not go behind his father’s saying, - And he likes having thought of it so well - He says again, “Good fences make good neighbors.” - - - AFTER APPLE-PICKING - - My long two-pointed ladder’s sticking through a tree - Toward heaven still, - And there’s a barrel that I didn’t fill - Beside it, and there may be two or three - Apples I didn’t pick upon some bough. - But I am done with apple-picking now. - Essence of winter sleep is on the night, - The scent of apples: I am drowsing off. - I cannot rub the strangeness from my sight - I got from looking through a pane of glass - I skimmed this morning from the drinking trough - And held against the world of hoary grass. - It melted, and I let it fall and break. - But I was well - Upon my way to sleep before it fell, - And I could tell - What form my dreaming was about to take. - Magnified apples appear and disappear, - Stem end and blossom end, - And every fleck of russet showing clear. - My instep arch not only keeps the ache, - It keeps the pressure of a ladder-round. - I feel the ladder sway as the boughs bend. - And I keep hearing from the cellar bin - The rumbling sound - Of load on load of apples coming in. - For I have had too much - Of apple-picking: I am overtired - Of the great harvest I myself desired. - There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch, - Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall. - For all - That struck the earth, - No matter if not bruised or spiked with stubble, - Went surely to the cider-apple heap - As of no worth. - One can see what will trouble - This sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is. - Were he not gone, - The woodchuck could say whether it’s like his - Long sleep, as I describe its coming on, - Or just some human sleep. - - - MY NOVEMBER GUEST - - My Sorrow, when she’s here with me, - Thinks these dark days of autumn rain - Are beautiful as days can be; - She loves the bare, the withered tree; - She walks the sodden pasture lane. - - Her pleasure will not let me stay. - She talks and I am fain to list: - She’s glad the birds are gone away, - She’s glad her simple worsted grey - Is silver now with clinging mist. - - The desolate, deserted trees, - The faded earth, the heavy sky, - The beauties she so truly sees, - She thinks I have no eye for these, - And vexes me for reason why. - - Not yesterday I learned to know - The love of bare November days - Before the coming of the snow; - But it were vain to tell her so, - And they are better for her praise. - - - MOWING - - There was never a sound beside the wood but one, - And that was my long scythe whispering to the ground. - What was it it whispered? I knew not well myself; - Perhaps it was something about the heat of the sun, - Something, perhaps, about the lack of sound— - And that was why it whispered and did not speak. - It was no dream of the gift of idle hours, - Or easy cold at the hand of fay or elf: - Anything more than the truth would have seemed too weak - To the earnest love that laid the swale in rows— - Not without feeble-pointed spikes of flowers - (Pale orchises)—and scared a bright green snake. - The fact is the sweetest dream that labor knows. - My long scythe whispered and left the hay to make. - - - STORM FEAR - - When the wind works against us in the dark, - And pelts with snow - The lower chamber window on the east, - And whispers with a sort of stifled bark, - The beast, - “Come out! Come out!”— - It costs no inward struggle not to go, - Ah, no! - I count our strength, - Two and a child, - Those of us not asleep subdued to mark - How the cold creeps as the fire dies at length— - How drifts are piled, - Dooryard and road ungraded, - Till even the comforting barn grows far away, - And my heart owns a doubt - Whether ’tis in us to arise with day - And save ourselves unaided. - - - GOING FOR WATER - - The well was dry beside the door, - And so we went with pail and can - Across the fields behind the house - To seek the brook if still it ran; - - Not loth to have excuse to go, - Because the autumn eve was fair - (Though chill) because the fields were ours, - And by the brook our woods were there. - - We ran as if to meet the moon - That slowly dawned behind the trees, - The barren boughs without the leaves, - Without the birds, without the breeze. - - But once within the wood, we paused - Like gnomes that hid us from the moon, - Ready to run to hiding new - With laughter when she found us soon. - - Each laid on other a staying hand - To listen ere we dared to look, - And in the hush we joined to make - We heard—we knew we heard—the brook. - - A note as from a single place, - A slender tinkling fall that made - Now drops that floated on the pool - Like pearls, and now a silver blade. - - - THE CODE—HEROICS - - There were three in the meadow by the brook, - Gathering up windrows, piling haycocks up, - With an eye always lifted toward the west, - Where an irregular, sun-bordered cloud - Darkly advanced with a perpetual dagger - Flickering across its bosom. Suddenly - One helper, thrusting pitchfork in the ground, - Marched himself off the field and home. One stayed. - The town-bred farmer failed to understand. - - What was there wrong? - Something you said just now. - What did I say? - About our taking pains. - To cock the hay?—because it’s going to shower? - I said that nearly half an hour ago. - I said it to myself as much as you. - - You didn’t know. But James is one big fool. - He thought you meant to find fault with his work. - That’s what the average farmer would have meant. - James had to take his time to chew it over - Before he acted; he’s just got round to act. - - He _is_ a fool if that’s the way he takes me. - Don’t let it bother you. You’ve found out something. - The hand that knows his business won’t be told - To do work faster or better—those two things. - I’m as particular as anyone: - Most likely I’d have served you just the same: - But I know you don’t understand our ways. - You were just talking what was in your mind, - What was in all our minds, and you weren’t hinting. - Tell you a story of what happened once. - I was up here in Salem, at a man’s - Named Sanders, with a gang of four or five, - Doing the haying. No one liked the boss. - He was one of the kind sports call a spider, - All wiry arms and legs that spread out wavy - From a humped body nigh as big as a biscuit. - But work!—that man could work, especially - If by so doing he could get more work - Out of his hired help. I’m not denying - He was hard on himself: I couldn’t find - That he kept any hours—not for himself. - Day-light and lantern-light were one to him: - I’ve heard him pounding in the barn all night. - But what he liked was someone to encourage. - Them that he couldn’t lead he’d get behind - And drive, the way you can, you know, in mowing— - Keep at their heels and threaten to mow their legs off. - I’d seen about enough of his bulling tricks— - We call that bulling. I’d been watching him. - So when he paired off with me in the hayfield - To load the load, thinks I, look out for trouble! - I built the load and topped it off; old Sanders - Combed it down with the rake and said, “O. K.” - Everything went right till we reached the barn - With a big take to empty in a bay. - You understand that meant the easy job - For the man up on top of throwing down - The hay and rolling it off wholesale, - Where, on a mow, it would have been slow lifting. - You wouldn’t think a fellow’d need much urging - Under those circumstances, would you now? - But the old fool seizes his fork in both hands, - And looking up bewhiskered out of the pit, - Shouts like an army captain, “Let her come!” - Thinks I, d’ye mean it? “What was that you said?” - I asked out loud so’s there’d be no mistake. - “Did you say, let her come?” “Yes, let her come.” - He said it over, but he said it softer. - Never you say a thing like that to a man, - Not if he values what he is. God, I’d as soon - Murdered him as left out his middle name. - I’d built the load and knew just where to find it. - Two or three forkfuls I picked lightly round for - Like meditating, and then I just dug in - And dumped the rackful on him in ten lots. - I looked over the side once in the dust - And caught sight of him treading-water-like, - Keeping his head above. “Damn ye,” I says, - “That gets ye!” He squeaked like a squeezed rat. - - That was the last I saw or heard of him. - I cleaned the rack and drove out to cool off. - As I sat mopping the hayseed from my neck, - And sort of waiting to be asked about it, - One of the boys sings out, “Where’s the old man?” - “I left him in the barn, under the hay. - If you want him you can go and dig him out.” - They realized from the way I swobbed my neck - More than was needed, something must be up. - They headed for the barn—I stayed where I was. - They told me afterward: First they forked hay, - A lot of it, out into the barn floor. - Nothing! They listened for him. Not a rustle! - I guess they thought I’d spiked him in the temple - Before I buried him, else I couldn’t have managed. - They excavated more. “Go keep his wife - Out of the barn.” - Some one looked in a window; - And curse me, if he wasn’t in the kitchen, - Slumped way down in a chair, with both his feet - Stuck in the oven, the hottest day that summer. - He looked so mad in back, and so disgusted - There was no one that dared to stir him up - Or let him know that he was being looked at. - Apparently I hadn’t buried him - (I may have knocked him down), but just my trying - To bury him had hurt his dignity. - He had gone to the house so’s not to face me. - He kept away from us all afternoon. - We tended to his hay. We saw him out - After a while picking peas in the garden: - He couldn’t keep away from doing something. - - Weren’t you relieved to find he wasn’t dead? - - No!—and yet I can’t say: it’s hard to tell. - I went about to kill him fair enough. - - You took an awkward way. Did he discharge you? - - Discharge me? No! He knew I did just right. - - - - - Hamlin Garland - - - TO A CAPTIVE CRANE - - Ho, brother! Art thou prisoned too? - Is thy heart hot with restless pain? - I heard the call thy bugle blew - Here by the bleak and chilling main - (Whilst round me shaven parks are spread - And cindered drives wind on and on); - And at thy cry, thy lifted head, - My gladdened heart was westward drawn. - - O splendid bird! your trumpet brings - To my lone heart the prairie springs. - - - THE MOUNTAINS ARE A LONELY FOLK - - The mountains they are silent folk - They stand afar—alone, - And the clouds that kiss their brows at night - Hear neither sigh nor groan. - Each bears him in his ordered place - As soldiers do, and bold and high - They fold their forests round their feet - And bolster up the sky. - - - MAGIC - - Within my hand I hold - A piece of lichen-spotted stone— - Each fleck red-gold— - And with closed eyes I hear the moan - Of solemn winds round naked crags - Of Colorado’s mountains. The snow - Lies deep about me. Gray and old - Hags of cedars, gaunt and bare, - With streaming, tangled hair, - Snarl endlessly. White-winged and proud, - With stately step and queenly air, - A glittering, cool and silent cloud - Upon me sails. - The wind wails, - And from the cañon stern and steep - I hear the furious waters leap. - - - - - Wilfrid Wilson Gibson - - - COLOR - - A blue-black Nubian plucking oranges - At Jaffa by a sea of malachite, - In red tarboosh, green sash, and flowing white - Burnous—among the shadowy memories - That haunt me yet by these bleak northern seas - He lives for ever in my eyes’ delight, - Bizarre, superb in young immortal might— - A god of old barbaric mysteries. - - Maybe he lived a life of lies and lust, - Maybe his bones are now but scattered dust; - Yet, for a moment he was life supreme - Exultant and unchallenged: and my rhyme - Would set him safely out of reach of time - In that old heaven where things are what they seem. - - - OBLIVION - - Near the great pyramid, unshadowed, white, - With apex piercing the white noon-day blaze. - Swathed in white robes beneath the blinding rays - Lie sleeping Bedouins drenched in white-hot light. - About them, searing to the tingling sight, - Swims the white dazzle of the desert ways - Where the sense shudders, witless and adaze, - In a white void with neither depth nor height. - - Within the black core of the pyramid, - Beneath the weight of sunless centuries, - Lapt in dead night King Cheops lies asleep: - Yet in the darkness of his chamber hid - He knows no black oblivion more deep - Than that blind white oblivion of noon skies. - - - TENANTS - - Suddenly, out of dark and leafy ways, - We came upon the little house asleep - In cold blind stillness, shadowless and deep, - In the white magic of the full moon-blaze: - Strangers without the gate, we stood agaze, - Fearful to break that quiet, and to creep - Into the home that had been ours to keep - Through a long year of happy nights and days. - - So unfamiliar in the white moon-gleam, - So old and ghostly like a house of dream - It stood, that over us there stole the dread - That even as we watched it, side by side, - The ghosts of lovers, who had lived and died - Within its walls, were sleeping in our bed. - - - GOLD - - All day the mallet thudded far below - My garret, in an old ramshackle shed - Where ceaselessly, with stiffly nodding head - And rigid motions ever to and fro - A figure like a puppet in a show - Before the window moved till day was dead, - Beating out gold to earn his daily bread, - Beating out thin fine gold-leaf blow on blow. - - And I within my garret all day long - Unto that ceaseless thudding tuned my song, - Beating out golden words in tune and time - To that dull thudding, rhyme on golden rhyme. - But in my dreams all night, in that dark shed, - With aching arms I beat fine gold for bread. - - - ON HAMPSTEAD HEATH - - Against the green flame of the hawthorn-tree, - His scarlet tunic burns; - And livelier than the green sap’s mantling glee - The spring fire tingles through him headily - As quivering he turns - - And stammers out the old amazing tale - Of youth and April weather; - While she, with half-breathed jests that, sobbing, fail, - Sits, tight-lipped, quaking, eager-eyed and pale - Beneath her purple feather. - - - BATTLE - - - THE GOING - - He’s gone. - I do not understand. - I only know - That as he turned to go - And waved his hand, - In his young eyes a sudden glory shone: - And I was dazzled by a sunset glow, - And he was gone. - - - THE JOKE - - He’d even have his joke - While we were sitting tight, - And so he needs must poke - His silly head in sight - To whisper some new jest - Chortling. But as he spoke - A rifle cracked ... - And now God knows when I shall hear the rest! - - - IN THE AMBULANCE - - “Two rows of cabbages, - Two of curly-greens, - Two rows of early peas, - Two of kidney-beans.” - - That’s what he is muttering, - Making such a song, - Keeping other chaps awake, - The whole night long. - - Both his legs are shot away, - And his head is light; - So he keeps on muttering - All the blessed night: - - “Two rows of cabbages, - Two of curly-greens, - Two rows of early peas, - Two of kidney-beans.” - - - HIT - - Out of the sparkling sea - I drew my tingling body clear, and lay - On a low ledge the livelong summer day, - Basking, and watching lazily - White sails in Falmouth Bay. - - My body seemed to burn - Salt in the sun that drenched it through and through, - Till every particle glowed clean and new - And slowly seemed to turn - To lucent amber in a world of blue.... - - I felt a sudden wrench— - A trickle of warm blood— - And found that I was sprawling in the mud - Among the dead men in the trench. - - - THE HOUSEWIFE - - She must go back, she said, - Because she’d not had time to make the bed. - We’d hurried her away - So roughly ... and for all that we could say, - She broke from us, and passed - Into the night, shells falling thick and fast. - - - HILL-BORN - - I sometimes wonder if it’s really true - I ever knew - Another life - Than this unending strife - With unseen enemies in lowland mud; - And wonder if my blood - Thrilled ever to the tune - Of clean winds blowing through an April noon - Mile after sunny mile - On the green ridges of the Windy Gile. - - - THE FEAR - - I do not fear to die - ’Neath the open sky, - To meet death in the fight - Face to face, upright. - - But when at last we creep - Into a hole to sleep, - I tremble, cold with dread, - Lest I wake up dead. - - - BACK - - They ask me where I’ve been, - And what I’ve done and seen. - But what can I reply - Who know it wasn’t I, - But someone, just like me, - Who went across the sea - And with my head and hands - Slew men in foreign lands ... - Though I must bear the blame - Because he bore my name. - - - - - Richard Butler Glaenzer - - - STAR-MAGIC - - Though your beauty be a flower - Of unimagined loveliness, - It cannot lure me tonight; - For I am all spirit. - - As in the billowy oleander, - Full-bloomed, - Each blossom is all but lost - In the next— - One flame in a glow - Of green-veined rhodonite; - So is heaven a crystal magnificence - Of stars - Powdered lightly with blue. - - For this one night - My spirit has turned honey-moth - And has made of the stars - Its flowers. - - So all uncountable are the stars - That heaven shimmers as a web, - Bursting with light - From beyond, - A light exquisite, - Immeasurable! - - For this one night - My spirit has dared, and been caught - In the web of the stars. - - Though your beauty were a net - Of unimagined power, - It could not hold me tonight; - For I am all spirit. - - - - - Douglas Goldring - - - VOYAGES - - I - - To come so soon to this imagined dark— - More velvet-deep than any midnight park! - Palaces hem me in, with blind black walls; - The water is hushed for a voice that never calls. - My gondolier sways silently over his oar. - - II - - _At St. Blaise, à la Zuecca! Oh, my dear, - Laugh your gentle laughter! This old land, - From Provence to Paris—never fear— - All the heart can feel will understand._ - - A small town, a white town, - A town for you and me— - With a _Café Glacier_ in the square, - And schooners at the quay; - And the _terrasse_ of a small hotel - That looks upon the sea! - There gay sounds and sweet sounds - And sounds of peace come through: - The cook sings in the kitchen, - The pink-foot ring-doves coo, - And Julien brings the Pernods - That are bad for me and you. - - _At St. Blaise, à la Zuecca! Oh, my dear, - Laugh your gentle laughter! This old land, - From Provence to Paris—never fear— - All the heart can feel will understand._ - - III - - Waves lap the beach, pines stretch to meet the sea; - A pale light on the horizon lingers and shines, - That might shine round the Graal: and we - Stand very silent, underneath the pines. - - O swift expresses for the spirit’s flight! - Sometimes the moon is like a maid I know, - Looking roguishly back, and flying forward—so - I follow, flashing after. Blessed night! - - IV - - Do you remember, have you been these ways, - Dreaming or waking, after sunny days; - Sailed, in a moment, to imagined lands— - With one to love you, holding both your hands— - To old hot countries where the warm grape clings, - And an old, musical language strikes the ear - Like a caress, most exquisite to hear— - Your soul the voyager and your heart her wings? - - - - - Hermann Hagedorn - - - EARLY MORNING AT BARGIS - - Clear air and grassy lea, - Stream-song and cattle-bell— - Dear man, what fools are we - In prison-walls to dwell! - To live our days apart - From green things and wide skies, - And let the wistful heart - Be cut and crushed with lies! - - Bright peaks!—And suddenly - Light floods the placid dell, - The grass-tops brush my knee: - A good crop it will be, - So all is well! - O man, what fools are we - In prison-walls to dwell! - - - DOORS - - Like a young child who to his mother’s door - Runs eager for the welcoming embrace, - And finds the door shut, and with troubled face - Calls and through sobbing calls, and o’er and o’er - Calling, storms at the panel—so before - A door that will not open, sick and numb, - I listen for a word that will not come, - And know, at last, I may not enter more. - - Silence! And through the silence and the dark - By that closed door, the distant sob of tears - Beats on my spirit, as on fairy shores - The spectral sea; and through the sobbing—hark!— - Down the fair-chambered corridor of years, - The quiet shutting, one by one, of doors. - - - DEPARTURE - - My true love from her pillow rose - And wandered down the summer lane. - She left her house to the wind’s carouse, - And her chamber wide to the rain. - - She did not stop to don her coat, - She did not stop to smooth her bed— - But out she went in glad content - There where the bright path led. - - She did not feel the beating storm, - But fled like a sunbeam, white and frail, - To the sea, to the air, somewhere, somewhere— - I have not found her trail. - - - BROADWAY - - How like the stars are these white, nameless faces— - These far innumerable burning coals! - This pale procession out of stellar spaces, - This Milky Way of souls! - Each in its own bright nebulæ enfurled, - Each face, dear God, a world! - - I fling my gaze out through the silent night: - In those far stars, what gardens, what high halls, - Has mortal yearning built for its delight, - What chasms and what walls? - What quiet mansions where a soul may dwell? - What heaven and what hell? - - - - - Thomas Hardy - - - SHE HEARS THE STORM - - There was a time in former years— - While my roof-tree was his— - When I should have been distressed by fears - At such a night as this. - - I should have murmured anxiously, - “The pricking rain strikes cold; - His road is bare of hedge or tree, - And he is getting old.” - - But now the fitful chimney-roar, - The drone of Thorncombe trees, - The Froom in flood upon the moor, - The mud of Mellstock Leaze, - - The candle slanting sooty wick’d, - The thuds upon the thatch, - The eaves-drops on the window flicked, - The clacking garden-hatch, - - And what they mean to wayfarers, - I scarcely heed or mind; - He has won that storm-tight roof of hers - Which Earth grants all her kind. - - - THE VOICE - - Woman much missed, how you call to me, call to me, - Saying that now you are not as you were - When you had changed from the one who was all to me, - But as at first, when our day was fair. - - Can it be you that I hear? Let me view you, then, - Standing as when I drew near to the town - Where you would wait for me: yes, as I knew you then, - Even to the original air-blue gown! - - Or is it only the breeze, in its listlessness - Travelling across the wet mead to me here, - You being ever consigned to existlessness, - Heard no more again far or near? - Thus I; faltering forward, - Leaves around me falling, - Wind oozing thin through the thorn from norward - And the woman calling. - - - IN THE MOONLIGHT - - “O lonely workman, standing there - In a dream, why do you stare and stare - At her grave, as no other grave there were? - - “If your great gaunt eyes so importune - Her soul by the shine of this corpse-cold moon, - Maybe you’ll raise her phantom soon!” - - “Why, fool, it is what I would rather see - Than all the living folk there be; - But alas, there is no such joy for me!” - - “Ah—she was one you loved, no doubt, - Through good and evil, through rain and drought, - And when she passed, all your sun went out?” - - “Nay: she was the woman I did not love, - Whom all the others were ranked above, - Whom during her life I thought nothing of.” - - - THE MAN HE KILLED - - “Had he and I but met - By some old ancient inn, - We should have sat us down to wet - Right many a nipperkin! - - “But ranged as infantry, - And staring face to face, - I shot at him as he at me, - And killed him in his place. - - “I shot him dead because— - Because he was my foe, - Just so: my foe of course he was; - That’s clear enough; although - - “He thought he’d ’list, perhaps, - Off-hand like—just as I— - Was out of work—had sold his traps— - No other reason why. - - “Yes; quaint and curious war is! - You shoot a fellow down - You’d treat if met where any bar is, - Or help to half-a-crown.” - - - - - Ralph Hodgson - - - THE MYSTERY - - He came and took me by the hand - Up to a red rose tree, - He kept His meaning to Himself - But gave a rose to me. - - I did not pray Him to lay bare - The mystery to me; - Enough the rose was Heaven to smell, - And His own face to see. - - - THREE POEMS - - I - - Babylon—where I go dreaming - When I weary of to-day, - Weary of a world grown gray. - - II - - God loves an idle rainbow, - No less than laboring seas. - - III - - Reason has moons, but moons not hers - Lie mirrored on her sea, - Confounding her astronomers, - But, oh, delighting me! - - - STUPIDITY STREET - - I saw with open eyes - Singing birds sweet - Sold in the shops - For the people to eat, - Sold in the shops of - Stupidity Street. - - I saw in vision - The worm in the wheat, - And in the shops nothing - For people to eat; - Nothing for sale in - Stupidity Street. - - - - - Horace Holley - - - CREATIVE - - Renew the vision of delight - By vigil, praise and prayer, - Till every sinew leaps in might - And every sense is fair. - - - TWILIGHT AT VERSAILLES - - Unfold for men, O God, love’s true, creative day, - To flower our barren souls by mellow sun and noon: - The glory of old thought is still, and cold, and gray, - Like gardens unrenewed beneath the sterile moon. - - - LOVERS - - Whate’er our joy compelled, men’s praise and blame fall hollow, - A voice upon the winds that drown it as they blow: - So fair a vision led, our thought was all to follow; - So strong a passion urged, our will was all to go. - - - - - Helen Hoyt - - - ELLIS PARK - - Little park that I pass through, - I carry off a piece of you - Every morning hurrying down - To my work-day in the town; - Carry you for country there - To make the city ways more fair. - I take your trees, - And your breeze, - Your greenness, - Your cleanness, - Some of your shade, some of your sky, - Some of your calm as I go by; - Your flowers to trim - The pavements grim; - Your space for room in the jostled street - And grass for carpet to my feet. - Your fountains take and sweet bird calls - To sing me from my office walls. - All that I can see - I carry off with me. - But you never miss my theft, - So much treasure you have left. - As I find you, fresh at morning, - So I find you, home returning— - Nothing lacking from your grace. - All your riches wait in place - For me to borrow - On the morrow. - - Do you hear this praise of you, - Little park that I pass through? - - - THE NEW-BORN - - I have heard them in the night— - The cry of their fear, - Because there is no light, - Because they do not hear - Familiar sounds and feel the familiar arm, - And they awake alone. - Yet they have never known - Danger or harm. - What is their dread?— - This dark about their bed? - But they are so lately come - Out of the dark womb - Where they were safely kept. - That blackness was good; - And the silence of that solitude - Wherein they slept - Was kind. - Where did they find - Knowledge of death? - Caution of darkness and cold? - These—of the little, new breath— - Have they a prudence so old? - - - RAIN AT NIGHT - - Are you awake? Do you hear the rain? - How rushingly it strikes upon the ground, - And on the roof, and the wet window-pane! - Sometimes I think it is a comfortable sound, - Making us feel how safe and snug we are: - Closing us off in this dark, away from the dark outside. - The rest of the world seems dim tonight, mysterious and far. - Oh, there is no world left! Only darkness, darkness stretching wide - And full of the blind rain’s immeasurable fall! - - How nothing must we seem unto this ancient thing! - How nothing unto the earth—and we so small! - Oh, wake, wake!—do you not feel my hands cling? - One day it will be raining as it rains tonight; the same wind blow— - Raining and blowing on this house wherein we lie: but you and I— - We shall not hear, we shall not ever know. - O love, I had forgot that we must die. - - - THE LOVER SINGS OF A GARDEN - - Oh, beautiful are the flowers of your garden, - The flowers of your garden are fair: - Blue flowers of your eyes - And dusk flower of your hair; - Dew flower of your mouth - And peony-budded breasts, - And the flower of the curve of your hand - Where my hand rests. - - - SINCE I HAVE FELT THE SENSE OF DEATH - - Since I have felt the sense of death, - Since I have borne its dread, its fear— - Oh, how my life has grown more dear - Since I have felt the sense of death! - Sorrows are good, and cares are small, - Since I have known the loss of all. - - Since I have felt the sense of death, - And death forever at my side— - Oh, how the world has opened wide - Since I have felt the sense of death! - My hours are jewels that I spend, - For I have seen the hours end. - - Since I have felt the sense of death, - Since I have looked on that black night— - My inmost brain is fierce with light - Since I have felt the sense of death. - O dark, that made my eyes to see! - O death, that gave my life to me! - - - - - Ford Madox Hueffer - - - ANTWERP - - I - - Gloom! - An October like November; - August a hundred thousand hours, - And all September, - A hundred thousand, dragging sunlit days, - And half October like a thousand years ... - And doom! - That then was Antwerp ... - In the name of God, - How could they do it? - Those souls that usually dived - Into the dirty caverns of mines; - Who usually hived - In whitened hovels; under ragged poplars; - Who dragged muddy shovels, over the grassy mud, - Lumbering to work over the greasy sods ... - Those men there, with the appearance of clods - Were the bravest men that a usually listless priest of God - Ever shrived ... - And it is not for us to make them an anthem. - If we found words there would come no wind that would fan them - To a tune that the trumpets might blow it, - Shrill through the heaven that’s ours or yet Allah’s, - Or the wide halls of any Valhallas. - We can make no such anthem. So that all that is ours - For inditing in sonnets, pantoums, elegiacs, or lays - Is this: - “In the name of God, how could they do it?” - - II - - For there is no new thing under the sun, - Only this uncomely man with a smoking gun - In the gloom.... - What the devil will he gain by it? - Digging a hole in the mud and standing all day in the rain by it - Waiting his doom; - The sharp blow, the swift outpouring of the blood - Till the trench of gray mud - Is turned to a brown purple drain by it. - Well, there have been scars - - Won in many wars, - Punic, - Lacedæmonian, wars of Napoleon, wars for faith, wars for honor, for - love, for possession, - But this Belgian man in his ugly tunic, - His ugly round cap, shooting on, in a sort of obsession, - Overspreading his miserable land, - Standing with his wet gun in his hand.... - Doom! - He finds that in a sudden scrimmage, - And lies, an unsightly lump on the sodden grass ... - An image that shall take long to pass! - - III - - For the white-limbed heroes of Hellas ride by upon their horses - Forever through our brains. - The heroes of Cressy ride by upon their stallions; - And battalions and battalions and battalions— - The Old Guard, the Young Guard, the men of Minden and of Waterloo, - Pass, for ever staunch, - Stand, for ever true; - And the small man with the large paunch, - And the gray coat, and the large hat, and the hands behind the back, - Watches them pass - In our minds for ever.... - But that clutter of sodden corses - On the sodden Belgian grass— - That is a strange new beauty. - - IV - - With no especial legends of marchings or triumphs or duty, - Assuredly that is the way of it, - The way of beauty.... - - And that is the highest word you can find to say of it. - For you cannot praise it with words - Compounded of lyres and swords, - But the thought of the gloom and the rain - And the ugly coated figure, standing beside a drain, - Shall eat itself into your brain: - And you will say of all heroes, “They fought like the Belgians!” - And you will say, “He wrought like a Belgian his fate out of gloom.” - And you will say, “He bought like a Belgian - His doom.” - And that shall be an honorable name; - “Belgian” shall be an honorable word; - As honorable as the fame of the sword, - As honorable as the mention of the many-chorded lyre, - And his old coat shall seem as beautiful as the fabrics woven in Tyre. - - V - - And what in the world did they bear it for? - I don’t know. - And what in the world did they dare it for? - Perhaps that is not for the likes of me to understand. - They could very well have watched a hundred legions go - Over their fields and between their cities - Down into more southerly regions. - They could very well have let the legions pass through their woods, - And have kept their lives and their wives and their children and cattle - and goods. - I don’t understand. - Was it just love of their land? - Oh, poor dears! - Can any man so love his land? - Give them a thousand thousand pities - And rivers and rivers of tears - To wash off the blood from the cities of Flanders. - - - VI - - This is Charing Cross; - It is midnight; - There is a great crowd - And no light— - A great crowd, all black, that hardly whispers aloud. - Surely, that is a dead woman—a dead mother! - She has a dead face; - She is dressed all in black; - She wanders to the book-stall and back, - At the back of the crowd; - And back again and again back, - She sways and wanders. - - This is Charing Cross; - It is one o’clock. - There is still a great cloud, and very little light; - Immense shafts of shadows over the black crowd - That hardly whispers aloud.... - And now!... That is another dead mother, - And there is another and another and another.... - And little children, all in black, - All with dead faces, waiting in all the waiting-places, - Wandering from the doors of the waiting-room - In the dim gloom. - These are the women of Flanders: - They await the lost. - They await the lost that shall never leave the dock; - They await the lost that shall never again come by the train - To the embraces of all these women with dead faces; - They await the lost who lie dead in trench and barrier and fosse, - In the dark of the night. - This is Charing Cross; it is past one of the clock; - There is very little light. - - There is so much pain. - - - _L’Envoi_: - - And it was for this that they endured this gloom; - This October like November, - That August like a hundred thousand hours, - And that September, - A hundred thousand dragging sunlit days - And half October like a thousand years.... - Oh, poor dears! - - - - - Scharmel Iris - - - AFTER THE MARTYRDOM - - They threw a stone, you threw a stone, - I threw a stone that day. - Although their sharpness bruised his flesh - He had no word to say. - - But for the moan he did not make - To-day I make my moan; - And for the stone I threw at him - My heart must bear a stone. - - - LAMENT - - Lady, your heart has turned to dust, - Your wail is taken by the sea. - The wind is knocking at my heart, - And will not let me be. - - Your moaning smites me in my dreams, - And I must sorrow till I die. - And I shall rove, and I shall weep, - Till in the grave I lie. - - - ITERATION - - My son is dead and I am going blind, - And in the Ishmael-wind of grief - I tremble like a leaf; - I have no mind for any word you say: - My son is dead and I am going blind. - - - EARLY NIGHTFALL - - The pale day drowses on the western steep; - The toiler faints along the marge of sleep - Within the sunset-press, incarnadine, - The sun, a peasant, tramples out his wine. - - Ah, scattered gold rests on the twilight streams; - The poppy opes her scarlet purse of dreams. - Night with the sickle-moon engarners wheat, - And binds the sheaves of stars beneath her feet. - - Rest, weary heart, and every flight-worn bird! - The brooklet of the meadow lies unstirred. - Sleep, every soul, against a comrade breast! - God grant you peace, and guard you in your rest! - - - - - Orrick Johns - - - SONGS OF DELIVERANCE - - - I—THE SONG OF YOUTH - - This is the song of youth, - This is the cause of myself; - I knew my father well and he was a fool, - Therefore will I have my own foot in the path before I take a step; - - I will go only into new lands, - And I will walk on no plank-walks. - The horses of my family are wind-broken, - And the dogs are old, - And the guns rusty; - I will make me a new bow from an ash-tree, - And cut up the homestead into arrows. - - Behold how people stand around! - (There are always crowds of people standing around, - Whose legs have no knees)— - While the engineers put up steel work ... - Is it something to catch the sunlight, - Jewelry and gew-gaw? - I have no time to wait for them to build bridges for me; - Where awful the gap seems stretching there is no gap, - Leaping I take it at once from a thought to a thought. - I can no more walk in the stride of other men - Than be father of their children. - - My treasure lured like a bright star, - And I went to it young and desirous. - Lo, as it stood there in its great chests, - The wise men came up with the keys, - Crying, “Blasphemy, blasphemy!” - For I had broken the locks.... - And when the procession went waving to a funeral, - They cried it again; - For I stayed in my home and spoke truth about the dead. - - Much did I learn waiting in my youth; - At the door of a great man I waited on one foot and then on the other. - The files passed in and out before me to the antechamber, for at that - door I was not favored: - (O costly preferment!) - Yet I watched them coming and going, - And I learned the great man by heart from the stories on their faces. - When presently the retainers arrived, one above the other in a row, - saying: - “The great man is ready,” - I had long been a greater than he. - - - This is the reason for myself: - When I used to go in the races, I had but one prayer, - And I went first before the judges, saying; - “Give everyone a distance, such as you consider best; - I will run scratch.” - - - II—VIRGINS - - I have had one fear in my life— - When I was young I feared virgins; - But I do not any more.... - By contact with them I learn that each is a center, - And has a period of brightness, - And stands epitome in that brief space - Of the Universe! - Ah, the ephemeral eternal! - In virgins’ eyes I would live reflected as in a globe, - And know myself purer than crystal. - - - III—NO PREY AM I - - No prey am I of poor thoughts. - I leave all of my followers; I tire quickly of them; - I send them away from me when they ask too much; for though I live alone - Still will I live, night and day ... - - There is not anything in me save mutation and laughter; - My laughter is like a sword, - Like the piston-rod that defies oceans and grades. - - When I labor it is a song of battle in the broad noon; - For behold the muscles of a man— - They are piston-rods; they are cranes, hydraulic presses, - powder-magazines: - But though my body be as beautiful as a hill crowned with flowers - I will despise it and make it obey me ... - - Is the old love dead? - Then I shall await the new, - To embrace it more sturdily and passionately than ever the old; - And break it under the white force of my laughter - Until it lies passive in my arms. - There is nothing in me but renewal; - If my friend bow his head over me I soon surprise him with shouts of - joy: - For in an instant I am again what I was, - Only with a few moments more of the infusion of earth; - I tell him, the griever, to follow me and he is a griever no more; - He raises his head and must follow. - Yet it is my battle, not his battle, - For in me I absorb others ... - I hail parties and partisans from afar; - Not men but parties are my comrades, - Not persons but nations are my associates. - I shake the hand of nations; - For I am a nation and a party, and majorities do not elect me— - I elect myself. - I swam in the sea, and lo! - The continents assembled like islands off my coast. - My talk is with Homer and Bonaparte, with David and Garibaldi, with - China and Pharaoh and Texas; - When I laugh it is with Lucifer and Rabelais. - A pathfinder is my mistress, one hard to keep and unbridled— - I have no respect for tame women. - My friends and I do not meet every day, - For we are centuries apart, our salutations girdle the globe. - - I have eaten locusts with Jeremiah; - I invite all hatreds and the stings of little creatures— - They enrich me, I glory in my parasites. - - No man shall ever read me, - For I bring about in a gesture what they cannot fathom in a life; - Yet I tell Bob and Harry and Bill— - It costs me nothing to be kind; - If I am a generous adversary, be not deceived, neither be devoted— - It is because I despise you. - Yet if any man claim to be my peer I shall meet him, - For that man has an insolence that I like; - I am beholden to him. - I know the lightning when I see it, - And the toad when I see it... - I warn all pretenders. - Yet before I came it was known of me to the chosen, all that I should - do. - Every tree knew it; - Every lion and every leech knew it— - And called out to meet the new enemy, - The new friend... - What power can deny me? - It was known that I should do not one thing but hundreds, - For I despise my works and make them obey me. - I have my time and I bide it... - It was known that I should turn no whit from my end, until I had - attained it. - - Nothing has scathed me, - Nothing ever, nor ever will. - I have touched pitch, I have revelled in it and rolled in it; - Buried in mire and filth, I laughed long, - And sprang up. - I have loved lust and vain deviltries. - And taken them into my heart— - - Their dirt and their lies—and my heart was aflame - With a new fancy... - Not me can pitch defile! - For the Spring, my sister, rose under my feet - And I was again naked and white, - Ready to dive into the deep pool, green and bottomless, - The medium for heroes, since it is dangerous and beautiful— - The pool of Tomorrow! - It is because I breathe like fishes and live in the waters of Tomorrow - that Death fears me... - - How often I have intercepted thee, O Death! - O windy liar! - Thou canst do nothing against me; - If I command thee to stand back thou art afraid and cowerest, - For I have caught thee often and punished thee... - - I am the greatest laugher of all, - Greater than the sun and the oak-tree, - Than the frog and Apollo; - I laugh all day long! - I laugh at Death, I hail Death, I kiss her on the cheek as a lover his - bride, - But the lover goes not to his bride unless he desire her; - I go not to Death until I am ready. - The strong lover goes not to his bride save when he would people his - land with sons; - Then I, too, I go not to Death, save it be for the labor greater than - all others. - I shall break her with my laughter; - I shall complete her... - Only then shall Death be when I die! - - - - - Joyce Kilmer - - - TREES - - I think that I shall never see - A poem lovely as a tree. - - A tree whose hungry mouth is prest - Against the earth’s sweet flowing breast; - - A tree that looks at God all day, - And lifts her leafy arms to pray; - - A tree that may in summer wear - A nest of robins in her hair; - - Upon whose bosom snow has lain; - Who intimately lives with rain. - - Poems are made by fools like me, - But only God can make a tree. - - - EASTER - - The air is like a butterfly - With frail blue wings. - The happy earth looks at the sky - And sings. - - - - - Alfred Kreymborg - - - AMERICA - - Up and down he goes - With terrible, reckless strides, - Flaunting great lamps - With joyous swings— - One to the East - And one to the West— - And flaunting two words - In a thunderous call - That thrills the hearts of all enemies: - All, One; All, One; All, One; All, One! - Beware that queer, wild, wonderful boy - And his playground—don’t go near! - All, One; All, One; All, One; All, One; - Up and down he goes. - - - OLD MANUSCRIPT - - The sky - Is that beautiful old parchment - In which the sun - And the moon - Keep their diary. - To read it all, - One must be a linguist - More learned than Father Wisdom; - And a visionary - More clairvoyant than Mother Dream. - But to feel it, - One must be an apostle: - One who is more than intimate - In having been, always, - The only confidant— - Like the earth - Or the sea. - - - CÉZANNE - - Our door was shut to the noon-day heat. - We could not see him. - We might not have heard him either— - Resting, dozing, dreaming pleasantly. - But his step was tremendous— - Are mountains on the march? - - He was no man who passed; - But a great faithful horse - Dragging a load - Up the hill. - - - PARASITE - - Good woman: - Don’t love the man. - Love yourself, - As you have done so exquisitely before. - Like that tortoise-shell cat of yours - Washing away the flies; or are they fleas? - You’ve hurt him again? - Good! - Do it often. - No— - He’ll love you the more— - Always. - Remember how he forgave you the last time, - And how he loved you in the forgiving. - Give him an adventure in godhood - And the higher moralities. - Hurt him again. - Fine! - - - - - William Laird - - - TRAÜMEREI AT OSTENDORFF’S - - I ate at Ostendorff’s, and saw a dame - With eager golden eyes, paired with a red, - Bald, chilled, old man. Piercing the clatter came - Keen _Traümerei_. On the sound he bowed his head, - Covered his eyes, and looked on things long sped. - Her white fierce fingers strained, but could not stir - His close-locked hands, nor bring him back to her. - - Let him alone, bright lady; for he clips - A fairer lass than you, with all your fire: - Let him alone; he touches sweeter lips - Than yours he hired, as others yet shall hire: - Leave him the quickening pang of clean desire, - Even though vain: nor taint those spring winds blown - From banks of perished bloom: let him alone. - - Bitter-sweet melody, that call’st to tryst - Love from the hostile dark, would God thy breath - Might break upon him now through thickening mist, - The trumpet-summons of imperial Death; - That now, with fire-clean lips where quivereth - Atoning sorrow, he shall seek the eyes - Long turned towards earth from fields of paradise. - - In vain: by virtue of a far-off smile, - Men may be deaf a space to gross behests - Of nearer voices; for some little while - Sharp pains of youth may burn in old men’s breasts. - But—men must eat, though angels be their guests: - The waiter brought spaghetti; he looked up, - Hemmed, blinked, and fiddled with his coffee-cup. - - - A VERY OLD SONG - - “Daughter, thou art come to die: - Sound be thy sleeping, lass.” - “Well: without lament or cry, - Mother, let me pass.” - - “What things on mould were best of all? - (Soft be thy sleeping, lass.)” - “The apples reddening till they fall - In the sun beside the convent wall. - Let me pass.” - - “Whom on earth hast thou loved best? - (Sound be thy sleeping, lass.)” - “Him that shared with me thy breast; - Thee; and a knight last year our guest. - He hath an heron to his crest. - Let me pass.” - - “What leavest thou of fame or hoard? - (Soft be thy sleeping, lass.)” - “My far-blown shame for thy reward; - To my brother, gold to get him a sword. - Let me pass.” - - “But what wilt leave thy lover, Grim? - (Sound be thy sleeping, lass.)” - “The hair he kissed to strangle him. - Mother, let me pass.” - - - - - D. H. Lawrence - - - A WOMAN AND HER DEAD HUSBAND - - Ah stern cold man, - How can you lie so relentless hard - While I wash you with weeping water! - Ah face, carved hard and cold, - You have been like this, on your guard - Against me, since death began. - - You masquerader! - How can you shame to act this part - Of unswerving indifference to me? - It is not you; why disguise yourself - Against me, to break my heart, - You evader? - - You’ve a warm mouth, - A good warm mouth always sooner to soften - Even than your sudden eyes. - Ah cruel, to keep your mouth - Relentless, however often - I kiss it in drouth. - - You are not he. - Who are you, lying in his place on the bed - And rigid and indifferent to me? - His mouth, though he laughed or sulked, - Was always warm and red - And good to me. - - And his eyes could see - The white moon hang like a breast revealed - By the slipping shawl of stars, - Could see the small stars tremble - As the heart beneath did wield - Systole, diastole. - - And he showed it me - So, when he made his love to me; - And his brows like rocks on the sea jut out, - And his eyes were deep like the sea - With shadow, and he looked at me, - Till I sank in him like the sea, - Awfully. - - Oh, he was multiform— - Which then was he among the manifold? - The gay, the sorrowful, the seer? - I have loved a rich race of men in one— - But not this, this never-warm - Metal-cold—! - - Ah masquerader! - With your steel face white-enamelled, - Were you he, after all, and I never - Saw you or felt you in kissing? - —Yet sometimes my heart was trammelled - With fear, evader! - - Then was it you - After all, this cold, hard man? - —Ah no, look up at me, - Tell me it isn’t true, - That you’re only frightening me! - - You will not stir, - Nor hear me, not a sound. - —Then it was you— - And all this time you were - Like this when I lived with you. - - It is not true, - I am frightened, I am frightened of you - And of everything. - O God!—God too - Has deceived me in everything, - In everything. - - - FIREFLIES IN THE CORN - - _A woman taunts her lover_: - Look at the little darlings in the corn! - The rye is taller than you, who think yourself - So high and mighty: look how its heads are borne - Dark and proud on the sky, like a number of knights - Passing with spears and pennants and manly scorn. - - And always likely!—Oh, if I could ride - With my head held high-serene against the sky - Do you think I’d have a creature like you at my side - With your gloom and your doubt that you love me? - O darling rye, - How I adore you for your simple pride! - - And those bright fireflies wafting in between - And over the swaying cornstalks, just above - All their dark-feathered helmets, like little green - Stars come low and wandering here for love - Of this dark earth, and wandering all serene—! - - How I adore you, you happy things, you dears, - Riding the air and carrying all the time - Your little lanterns behind you: it cheers - My heart to see you settling and trying to climb - The corn-stalks, tipping with fire their spears. - All over the corn’s dim motion, against the blue - Dark sky of night, the wandering glitter, the swarm - Of questing brilliant things:—you joy, you true - Spirit of careless joy: ah, how I warm - My poor and perished soul at the joy of you! - - _The man answers and she mocks_: - You’re a fool, woman. I love you, and you know I do! - —Lord, take his love away, it makes him whine. - And I give you everything that you want me to. - —Lord, dear Lord, do you think he ever _can_ shine? - - - GREEN - - The dawn was apple-green, - The sky was green wine held up in the sun, - The moon was a golden petal between. - - She opened her eyes, and green - They shone, clear like flowers undone - For the first time, now for the first time seen. - - - GRIEF - - The darkness steals the forms of all the queens. - But oh, the palms of her two black hands are red! - It is Death I fear so much, it is not the dead— - Not this gray book, but the red and bloody scenes. - - The lamps are white like snowdrops in the grass; - The town is like a churchyard, all so still - And gray, now night is here: nor will - Another torn red sunset come to pass. - - And so I sit and turn the book of gray, - Feeling the shadows like a blind man reading, - All fearful lest I find some next word bleeding. - Nay, take my painted missal book away. - - - SERVICE OF ALL THE DEAD - - Between the avenue of cypresses - All in their scarlet capes and surplices - Of linen, go the chaunting choristers, - The priests in gold and black, the villagers. - - And all along the path to the cemetery - The round dark heads of men crowd silently; - And black-scarfed faces of women-folk wistfully - Watch at the banner of death, and the mystery. - - And at the foot of a grave a father stands - With sunken head and forgotten, folded hands; - And at the foot of a grave a mother kneels - With pale shut face, nor neither hears nor feels - - The coming of the chaunting choristers - Between the avenue of cypresses, - The silence of the many villagers, - The candle-flames beside the surplices. - - - - - Agnes Lee - - - MOTHERHOOD - - Mary, the Christ long slain, passed silently, - Following the children joyously astir - Under the cedrus and the olive-tree, - Pausing to let their laughter float to her. - Each voice an echo of a voice more dear, - She saw a little Christ in every face; - When lo, another woman, gliding near, - Yearned o’er the tender life that filled the place. - And Mary sought the woman’s hand, and spoke: - “I know thee not, yet know thy memory tossed - With all a thousand dreams their eyes evoke - Who bring to thee a child beloved and lost. - - “I, too, have rocked my little one. - Oh, He was fair! - Yea, fairer than the fairest sun, - And like its rays through amber spun - His sun-bright hair. - Still I can see it shine and shine.” - “Even so,” the woman said, “was mine.” - - “His ways were ever darling ways”— - And Mary smiled— - “So soft, so clinging! Glad relays - Of love were all His precious days. - My little child! - My infinite star! My music fled!” - “Even so was mine,” the woman said. - - Then whispered Mary: “Tell me, thou, - Of thine.” And she: - “Oh, mine was rosy as a bough - Blooming with roses, sent, somehow, - To bloom for me! - His balmy fingers left a thrill - Within my breast that warms me still.” - - Then gazed she down some wilder, darker hour, - And said—when Mary questioned, knowing not: - “Who art thou, mother of so sweet a flower?”— - “I am the mother of Iscariot.” - - - A STATUE IN A GARDEN - - I was a goddess ere the marble found me. - Wind, wind, delay not! - Waft my spirit where the laurel crowned me! - Will the wind stay not? - - Then tarry, tarry, listen, little swallow! - An old glory feeds me— - I lay upon the bosom of Apollo! - Not a bird heeds me. - - For here the days are alien. Oh, to waken - Mine, mine, with calling! - But on my shoulders bare, like hopes forsaken, - The dead leaves are falling. - - The sky is gray and full of unshed weeping - As dim down the garden - I wait and watch the early autumn sweeping. - The stalks fade and harden. - - The souls of all the flowers afar have rallied. - The trees, gaunt, appalling, - Attest the gloom, and on my shoulders pallid - The dead leaves are falling. - - - ON THE JAIL STEPS - - I’ve won the race. - Young man, I’m new! - _Old Sallow-face - Good luck to you!_ - - I’ve turned about, - And paid for sin. - _And you come out, - As I go in._ - - Ten years! but mark, - I am free, free! - _Ten years of dark - Shall gather me._ - - My wife—long-while - She wept her pain. - _She cannot smile; - She weeps again._ - - My little one - Shall know my call. - _Child is there none - For sin grows tall._ - - Now who are you, - Spar of hell’s flood? - _And who, and who, - But your own blood?_ - - - HER GOING - - _The Wife_ - Child, why do you linger beside her portal? - None shall hear you now if you knock or clamor. - All is dark, hidden in heaviest leafage. - None shall behold you. - - _Truth_ - Gone, gone, the dear, the beautiful lady! - I, her comrade, tarry but to lament her. - Ah, the day of her vanishing all things lovely - Shared in her fleetness! - Tell me her going. - - _The Wife_ - You are a child. How tell you? - - _Truth_ - I am a child, yet old as the earliest sorrow. - Talk to me as you would to an old, old woman. - I own the ages. - - _The Wife_ - Voices, they say, gossipped around her dwelling. - She awoke, departing, they say, in silence. - I am glad she is gone. The old hurt fastens. - Hate is upon me. - - It was hard to live down the day, and wonder, - Wonder why the tears were forever welling, - Wonder if on his lips her kiss I tasted - Turning to claim him. - - _Truth_ - Jealousy, mad, brooding blind and unfettered, - Takes its terrible leap over lie and malice. - Who shall question her now in the land of shadow? - Who shall uphold her? - - _The Wife_ - It was hard to know that peace had forsaken - All my house, to greet with a dull endeavor - Babe or book, so to forget a moment - I was forgotten. - - _Truth_ - Who shall question her now in the land of shadow, - Question the mute pale lips, and the marble fingers, - Eyelids fallen on eyes grown dim as the autumn? - Ah, the beloved! - - _The Wife_ - Go, go, bringer of ache and discord! - - _Truth_ - Go I may not. Some, they think to inter me. - Out of the mold and clay my visible raiment - Rises forever. - - _The Wife_ - Hers the sin that lured the light from our threshold, - Hers the sin that I lost his love and grew bitter. - - _Truth_ - Lost his love? You never possessed it, woman. - - _The Wife_ - Sharp tongue, have pity!... - - Yes, I knew. But I loved him, hoping for all. - I said in my heart: “Time shall bring buds to blossom.” - I almost saw the flower of the flame descending. - Then—she came toying. - - He is mine, mine, by the laws of the ages! - Mine, mine, mine—yes, body and spirit! - I am glad she has gone her way to the shadow. - Hate is upon me. - - Oh, the bar over which my soul would see - All that eludes my soul, while he remembers! - You, dispel if you can my avenging passion— - Clouds are before me! - - - - - William Ellery Leonard - - - INDIAN SUMMER - - _After completing a book for one now dead._ - - (_O Earth-and-Autumn of the Setting Sun, - She is not by, to know my task is done!_) - In the brown grasses slanting with the wind, - Lone as a lad whose dog’s no longer near, - Lone as a mother whose only child has sinned, - Lone on the loved hill.... And below me here - The thistle-down in tremulous atmosphere - Along red clusters of the sumach streams; - The shrivelled stalks of goldenrod are sere, - And crisp and white their flashing old racemes. - (... forever ... forever ... forever ...) - This is the lonely season of the year, - This is the season of our lonely dreams. - - (_O Earth-and-Autumn of the Setting Sun - She is not by, to know my task is done!_) - The corn-shocks westward on the stubble plain - Show like an Indian village of dead days; - The long smoke trails behind the crawling train, - And floats atop the distant woods ablaze - With orange, crimson, purple. The low haze - Dims the scarped bluffs above the inland sea, - Whose wide and slaty waters in cold glaze - Await yon full-moon of the night-to-be. - (.... far ... and far ... and far ...) - These are the solemn horizons of man’s ways, - These the horizons of solemn thought to me. - - (_O Earth-and-Autumn of the Setting Sun, - She is not by, to know my task is done!_) - And this the hill she visited, as friend; - And this the hill she lingered on, as bride— - Down in the yellow valley is the end: - They laid her ... in no evening autumn tide ... - Under fresh flowers of that May morn, beside - The queens and cave-women of ancient earth. - - This is the hill ... and over my city’s towers - Across the world from sunset, yonder in air, - Shines, through its scaffoldings, a civic dome - Of piled masonry, which shall be ours - To give, completed, to our children there ... - And yonder far roof of my abandoned home - Shall house new laughter.... Yet I tried ... I tried ... - And, ever wistful of the doom to come, - I built her many a fire for love ... for mirth ... - (When snows were falling on our oaks outside, - Dear, many a winter fire upon the hearth) ... - (... farewell ... farewell ... farewell ...) - We dare not think too long on those who died, - While still so many yet must come to birth. - - - - - Vachel Lindsay - - - GENERAL WILLIAM BOOTH ENTERS INTO HEAVEN - - _To be sung to the tune of_ THE BLOOD OF THE LAMB _with indicated - instruments_. - - Booth led boldly with his big bass drum. - _Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?_ - The saints smiled gravely, and they said, “He’s come.” - _Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?_ [Sidenote: _Bass drums_] - Walking lepers followed, rank on rank, - Lurching bravos from the ditches dank, - Drabs from the alleyways and drug-fiends pale— - Minds still passion-ridden, soul-powers frail! - - Vermin-eaten saints with mouldy breath - Unwashed legions with the ways of death— - _Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?_ - - Every slum had sent its half-a-score - The round world over—Booth had groaned for more. - Every banner that the wide world flies - Bloomed with glory and transcendent dyes. - Big-voiced lasses made their banjos bang! [Sidenote: _Banjos_] - Tranced, fanatical, they shrieked and sang, - _Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?_ - Hallelujah! It was queer to see - Bull-necked convicts with that land make free! - Loons with bazoos blowing blare, blare, blare— - On, on, upward through the golden air. - _Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?_ - - Booth died blind, and still by faith he trod, - Eyes still dazzled by the ways of God. - Booth led boldly and he looked the chief: [Sidenote: _Bass drums slower - and softer_] - Eagle countenance in sharp relief, - Beard a-flying, air of high command - Unabated in that holy land. - - Jesus came from out the Court-House door, - Stretched his hands above the passing poor. - Booth saw not, but led his queer ones there [Sidenote: _Flutes_] - Round and round the mighty Court-House square. - Yet in an instant all that blear review - Marched on spotless, clad in raiment new. - The lame were straightened, withered limbs uncurled - And blind eyes opened on a new sweet world. - - Drabs and vixens in a flash made whole! [Sidenote: _Bass drums louder - and faster_] - Gone was the weasel-head, the snout, the jowl; - Sages and sibyls now, and athletes clean, - Rulers of empires, and of forests green! - - - The hosts were sandalled and their wings were fire— - _Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?_ - But their noise played havoc with the angel-choir. [Sidenote: _Grand - chorus tambourines—all instruments in full blast_] - _Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?_ - Oh, shout Salvation! it was good to see - Kings and princes by the Lamb set free. - The banjos rattled and the tambourines blast - Jing-jing-jingled in the hands of queens! - - And when Booth halted by the curb for prayer - He saw his Master through the flag-filled air. [Sidenote: _Reverently - sung—no instruments_] - Christ came gently with a robe and crown - For Booth the soldier while the throng knelt down. - He saw King Jesus—they were face to face, - And he knelt a-weeping in that holy place. - _Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?_ - - - THE EAGLE THAT IS FORGOTTEN - - _John P. Altgeld: Dec. 30, 1847–March 12, 1902._ - - Sleep softly ... eagle forgotten ... under the stone. - Time has its way with you there, and the clay has its own. - - “We have buried him now,” thought your foes, and in secret rejoiced. - They made a brave show of their mourning, their hatred unvoiced. - They had snarled at you, barked at you, foamed at you day after day; - Now you were ended. They praised you ... and laid you away. - - The others that mourned you in silence and terror and truth, - The widow bereft of her crust, and the boy without youth, - The mocked and the scorned and the wounded, the lame and the poor, - That should have remembered forever ... remember no more. - - Where are those lovers of yours, on what name do they call— - The lost, that in armies wept over your funeral pall? - They call on the names of a hundred high-valiant ones; - A hundred white eagles have risen, the sons of your sons. - The zeal in their wings is a zeal that your dreaming began, - The valor that wore out your soul in the service of man. - - Sleep softly ... eagle forgotten ... under the stone. - Time has its way with you there and the clay has its own. - Sleep on, O brave-hearted, O wise man, that kindled the flame— - To live in mankind is far more than to live in a name; - To live in mankind, far, far more ... than to live in a name. - - - THE CONGO - _A Study of the Negro Race_ - - - I—THEIR BASIC SAVAGERY - - - Fat black bucks in a wine-barrel room, - Barrel-house kings, with feet unstable, - Sagged and reeled and pounded on the table, [Sidenote: _A deep rolling - bass_] - Pounded on the table, - Beat an empty barrel with the handle of a broom, - Hard as they were able, - Boom, boom, BOOM, - With a silk umbrella and the handle of a broom, - Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, BOOM. - THEN I had religion, THEN I had a vision. - I could not turn from their revel in derision. - THEN I SAW THE CONGO, CREEPING THROUGH THE BLACK, [Sidenote: _More - deliberate. Solemnly chanted_] - CUTTING THROUGH THE JUNGLE WITH A GOLDEN TRACK. - Then along that riverbank - A thousand miles - Tattooed cannibals danced in files; - Then I heard the boom of the blood-lust song - And a thigh-bone beating on a tin-pan gong. - - And “BLOOD!” screamed the whistles and the fifes of the warriors, - [Sidenote: _A rapidly piling climax of speed and racket_] - “BLOOD!” screamed the skull-faced, lean witch-doctors; - “Whirl ye the deadly voo-doo rattle, - Harry the uplands, - Steal all the cattle, - Rattle-rattle, rattle-rattle, - Bing! - Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, BOOM!” - A roaring, epic, rag-time tune [Sidenote: _With a philosophic pause_] - From the mouth of the Congo - To the Mountains of the Moon. - Death is an Elephant, - Torch-eyed and horrible, [Sidenote: _Shrilly and with a heavily accented - metre._] - Foam-flanked and terrible. - BOOM, steal the pygmies, - BOOM, kill the Arabs, - BOOM, kill the white men, - HOO, HOO, HOO. - Listen to the yell of Leopold’s ghost [Sidenote: _Like the wind in the - chimney_] - Burning in Hell for his hand-maimed host. - Hear how the demons chuckle and yell - Cutting his hands off, down in Hell. - Listen to the creepy proclamation, - Blown through the lairs of the forest-nation, - Blown past the white-ants’ hill of clay, - Blown past the marsh where the butterflies play:— - “Be careful what you do, [Sidenote: _All the O sounds very golden. Heavy - accents very heavy. Light accents very light. Last line whispered._] - Or Mumbo-Jumbo, God of the Congo, - And all of the other - Gods of the Congo, - Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you, - Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you, - Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you.” - - - II—THEIR IRREPRESSIBLE HIGH SPIRITS - - Wild crap-shooters with a whoop and a call [Sidenote: _Rather shrill and - high_] - Danced the juba in their gambling-hall - And laughed fit to kill, and shook the town, - And guyed the policemen and laughed them down - With a boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, BOOM. - THEN I SAW THE CONGO, CREEPING THROUGH THE BLACK, [Sidenote: _Read - exactly as in first section_] - CUTTING THROUGH THE JUNGLE WITH A GOLDEN TRACK. - A negro fairyland swung into view, [Sidenote: _Lay emphasis on the - delicate ideas._] - A minstrel river - Where dreams come true. - The ebony palace soared on high [Sidenote: _Keep as light-footed as - possible_] - Through the blossoming trees to the evening sky. - The inlaid porches and casements shone - With gold and ivory and elephant-bone. - And the black crowd laughed till their sides were sore - At the baboon butler in the agate door, - And the well-known tunes of the parrot band - That trilled on the bushes of that magic land. - - A troupe of skull-faced witch-men came [Sidenote: _With pomposity_] - Through the agate doorway in suits of flame, - Yea, long-tailed coats with a gold-leaf crust - And hats that were covered with diamond-dust. - And the crowd in the court gave a whoop and a call - And danced the juba from wall to wall. - But the witch-men suddenly stilled the throng [Sidenote: _With a great - deliberation and ghostliness_] - With a stern cold glare, and a stern old song: - “Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you.”... - Just then from the doorway, as fat as shotes [Sidenote: _With - overwhelming assurance, good cheer, and pomp_] - Came the cake-walk princes in their long red coats, - Canes with a brilliant lacquer shine, - And tall silk hats that were red as wine. - And they pranced with their butterfly partners there, [Sidenote: _With - growing speed and sharply marked dance-rhythm_] - Coal-black maidens with pearls in their hair, - Knee-skirts trimmed with the jassamine sweet, - And bells on their ankles and little black feet. - And the couples railed at the chant and the frown - Of the witch-men lean, and laughed them down. - (Oh, rare was the revel, and well worth while - That made those glowering witch-men smile.) - - - The cake-walk royalty then began - To walk for a cake that was tall as a man - To the tune of “Boomlay, boomlay, BOOM,” - While the witch-men laughed, with a sinister air, [Sidenote: _With a - touch of negro dialect, and as rapidly as possible toward the end_] - And sang with the scalawags prancing there: - “Walk with care, walk with care, - Or Mumbo-Jumbo, God of the Congo, - And all of the other - Gods of the Congo, - Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you. - Beware, beware, walk with care, - Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, boom. - Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, boom, - Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, boom, - Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, - BOOM.” - Oh, rare was the revel, and well worth while [Sidenote: _Slow - philosophic calm_] - That made those glowering witch-men smile. - - - III—THE HOPE OF THEIR RELIGION - - A good old negro in the slums of the town [Sidenote: _Heavy bass. With a - literal imitation of camp-meeting racket, and trance_] - Preached at a sister for her velvet gown. - Howled at a brother for his low-down ways, - His prowling, guzzling, sneak-thief days. - Beat on the Bible till he wore it out - Starting the jubilee revival shout. - And some had visions, as they stood on chairs, - And sang of Jacob, and the golden stairs. - And they all repented, a thousand strong, - From their stupor and savagery and sin and wrong, - And slammed with their hymn-books till they shook the room - With “Glory, glory, glory,” - And “Boom, boom, BOOM.” - THEN I SAW THE CONGO, CREEPING THROUGH THE BLACK, - CUTTING THROUGH THE JUNGLE WITH A GOLDEN TRACK. - And the gray sky opened like a new-rent veil [Sidenote: _Exactly as in - the first section. Begin with terror and power, end with joy_] - And showed the apostles with their coats of mail. - In bright white steel they were seated round, - And their fire-eyes watched where the Congo wound. - And the twelve Apostles, from their thrones on high, - Thrilled all the forest with their heavenly cry: [Sidenote: _Sung to the - tune of “Hark, ten thousand harps and voices”_] - “Mumbo-Jumbo will die in the jungle; - Never again will he hoo-doo you, - Never again will he hoo-doo you.” - - - Then along that river, a thousand miles [Sidenote: _With growing - deliberation and joy_] - The vine-snared trees tell down in files. - Pioneer angels cleared the way - For a Congo paradise, for babes at play, - For sacred capitals, for temples clean. - Gone were the skull-faced witch-men lean. - There, where the wild ghost-gods had wailed, [Sidenote: _In a rather - high key—as delicately as possible_] - A million boats of the angels sailed - With oars of silver, and prows of blue - And silken pennants that the sun shone through. - ’Twas a land transfigured, ’twas a new creation. - Oh, a singing wind swept the negro nation, - And on through the backwoods clearing flew:— [Sidenote: _To the tune of - “Hark, ten thousand harps and voices”_] - “Mumbo-Jumbo is dead in the jungle. - Never again will he hoo-doo you. - Never again will he hoo-doo you.” - - Redeemed were the forests, the beasts and the men, - And only the vulture dared again - By the far, lone mountains of the moon - To cry, in the silence, the Congo tune: [Sidenote: _Dying down into a - penetrating, terrified whisper_] - “Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you, - Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you. - Mumbo ... Jumbo ... will ... hoo-doo ... you.” - - - ALADDIN AND THE JINN - - “Bring me soft song,” said Aladdin; - “This tailor-shop sings not at all. - Chant me a word of the twilight, - Of roses that mourn in the fall. - Bring me a song like hashish - That will comfort the stale and the sad, - For I would be mending my spirit, - Forgetting these days that are bad: - Forgetting companions too shallow, - Their quarrels and arguments thin; - Forgetting the shouting muezzin.” - “_I am your slave_,” said the Jinn. - - “Bring me old wines,” said Aladdin, - “I have been a starved pauper too long. - Serve them in vessels of jade and of shell, - Serve them with fruit and with song: - Wines of pre-Adamite Sultans - Digged from beneath the black seas, - New-gathered dew from the heavens - Dripped down from heaven’s sweet trees, - Cups from the angels’ pale tables - That will make me both handsome and wise; - For I have beheld her, the Princess— - Firelight and starlight her eyes! - Pauper I am—I would woo her. - And ... let me drink wine to begin, - Though the Koran expressly forbids it.” - “_I am your slave_,” said the Jinn. - - “Plan me a dome,” said Aladdin, - “That is drawn like the dawn of the moon, - When the sphere seems to rest on the mountains - Half-hidden, yet full-risen soon. - Build me a dome,” said Aladdin, - “That shall cause all young lovers to sigh— - The fulness of life and of beauty, - Peace beyond peace to the eye; - A palace of foam and of opal, - Pure moonlight without and within, - Where I may enthrone my sweet lady.” - “_I am your slave_,” said the Jinn. - - - THE CHINESE NIGHTINGALE - -_A Song in Chinese Tapestries_ - -_Dedicated to S. T. F._ - - “How, how,” he said. “Friend Chang,” I said, - “San Francisco sleeps as the dead— - Ended license, lust and play: - Why do you iron the night away? - Your big clock speaks with a deadly sound, - With a tick and a wail till dawn comes round. - While the monster shadows glower and creep, - What can be better for man than sleep?” - - “I will tell you a secret,” Chang replied; - “My breast with vision is satisfied, - And I see green trees and fluttering wings, - And my deathless bird from Shanghai sings.” - Then he lit five fire-crackers in a pan. - “Pop, pop!” said the fire-crackers, “cra-cra-crack!” - He lit a joss-stick long and black. - Then the proud gray joss in the corner stirred; - On his wrist appeared a gray small bird, - And this was the song of the gray small bird: - - “Where is the princess, loved forever, - Who made Chang first of the kings of men?” - - And the joss in the corner stirred again; - And the carved dog, curled in his arms, awoke, - Barked forth a smoke-cloud that whirled and broke. - It piled in a maze round the ironing-place, - And there on the snowy table wide - Stood a Chinese lady of high degree, - With a scornful, witching, tea-rose face ... - Yet she put away all form and pride, - And laid her glimmering veil aside - With a childlike smile for Chang and for me. - - The walls fell back, night was aflower, - The table gleamed in a moonlit bower, - While Chang, with a countenance carved of stone, - Ironed and ironed, all alone. - And thus she sang to the busy man Chang: - “Have you forgotten ... - Deep in the ages, long, long ago, - I was your sweetheart, there on the sand— - Storm-worn beach of the Chinese land? - We sold our grain in the peacock town - Built on the edge of the sea-sands brown— - Built on the edge of the sea-sands brown ... - - “When all the world was drinking blood - From the skulls of men and bulls, - And all the world had swords and clubs of stone, - We drank our tea in China beneath the sacred spice-trees, - And heard the curled waves of the harbor moan. - And this gray bird, in Love’s first spring, - With a bright-bronze breast and a bronze-brown wing, - Captured the world with his carolling. - Do you remember, ages after, - At last the world we were born to own? - You were the heir of the yellow throne— - The world was the field of the Chinese man - And we were the pride of the sons of Han. - We copied deep books, and we carved in jade, - And wove white silks in the mulberry shade.”... - - “I remember, I remember - That Spring came on forever, - That Spring came on forever,” - Said the Chinese nightingale. - - My heart was filled with marvel and dream, - Though I saw the western street-lamps gleam, - Though dawn was bringing the western day, - Though Chang was a laundryman ironing away ... - Mingled there with the streets and alleys, - The railroad-yard, and the clock-tower bright, - Demon-clouds crossed ancient valleys; - Across wide lotus-ponds of light - I marked a giant firefly’s flight. - - And the lady, rosy-red, - Opened her fan, closed her fan, - Stretched her hand toward Chang, and said: - “Do you remember, - Ages after, - Our palace of heart-red stone? - Do you remember - The little doll-faced children - With their lanterns full of moon-fire, - That came from all the empire - Honoring the throne?— - The loveliest fête and carnival - Our world had ever known? - The sages sat about us - With their heads bowed in their beards, - With proper meditation on the sight. - Confucius was not born; - We lived in those great days - Confucius later said were lived aright ... - And this gray bird, on that day of spring, - With a bright-bronze breast and a bronze-brown wing, - Captured the world with his carolling. - Late at night his tune was spent. - Peasants, - Sages, - Children, - Homeward went, - And then the bronze bird sang for you and me. - We walked alone, our hearts were high and free. - I had a silvery name, I had a silvery name, - I had a silvery name—do you remember - The name you cried beside the tumbling sea?” - - Chang turned not to the lady slim— - He bent to his work, ironing away; - But she was arch and knowing and glowing. - And the bird on his shoulder spoke for him. - - “Darling ... darling ... darling ... darling ...” - Said the Chinese nightingale. - - · · · · · - - The great gray joss on a rustic shelf, - Rakish and shrewd, with his collar awry, - Sang impolitely, as though by himself, - Drowning with his bellowing the nightingale’s cry: - “Back through a hundred, hundred years - Hear the waves as they climb the piers, - Hear the howl of the silver seas, - Hear the thunder! - Hear the gongs of holy China - How the waves and tunes combine - In a rhythmic clashing wonder, - Incantation old and fine: - ‘Dragons, dragons, Chinese dragons; - Red fire-crackers, and green fire-crackers, - And dragons, dragons, Chinese dragons.’” - - Then the lady, rosy-red, - Turned to her lover Chang and said: - “Dare you forget that turquoise dawn - When we stood in our mist-hung velvet lawn, - And worked a spell this great joss taught - Till a God of the Dragons was charmed and caught? - From the flag high over our palace-home - He flew to our feet in rainbow-foam— - A king of beauty and tempest and thunder - Panting to tear our sorrows asunder, - A dragon of fair adventure and wonder. - We mounted the back of that royal slave - With thoughts of desire that were noble and grave. - We swam down the shore to the dragon-mountains, - We whirled to the peaks and the fiery fountains. - To our secret ivory house we were borne. - We looked down the wonderful wing-filled regions - Where the dragons darted in glimmering legions. - Right by my breast the nightingale sang; - The old rhymes rang in the sunlit mist - That we this hour regain— - Song-fire for the brain. - When my hands and my hair and my feet you kissed, - When you cried for your heart’s new pain, - What was my name in the dragon-mist, - In the rings of rainbowed rain?” - - “Sorrow and love, glory and love,” - Said the Chinese nightingale. - “Sorrow and love, glory and love,” - Said the Chinese nightingale. - - And now the joss broke in with his song: - “Dying ember, bird of Chang, - Soul of Chang, do you remember?— - Ere you returned to the shining harbor - There were pirates by ten thousand - Descended on the town - In vessels mountain-high and red and brown, - Moon-ships that climbed the storms and cut the skies. - On their prows were painted terrible bright eyes. - But I was then a wizard and a scholar and a priest; - I stood upon the sand; - With lifted hand I looked upon them - And sunk their vessels with my wizard eyes, - And the stately lacquer-gate made safe again. - Deep, deep below the bay, the sea-weed and the spray, - Embalmed in amber every pirate lies, - Embalmed in amber every pirate lies.” - - Then this did the noble lady say: - “Bird, do you dream of our home-coming day - When you flew like a courier on before - From the dragon-peak to our palace-door, - And we drove the steed in your singing path— - The ramping dragon of laughter and wrath; - And found our city all aglow, - And knighted this joss that decked it so? - There were golden fishes in the purple river - And silver fishes and rainbow fishes. - There were golden junks in the laughing river, - And silver junks and rainbow junks: - There were golden lilies by the bay and river, - And silver lilies and tiger-lilies, - And tinkling wind-bells in the gardens of the town - By the black-lacquer gate - Where walked in state - The kind king Chang - And his sweetheart mate ... - With his flag-born dragon - And his crown of pearl ... and ... jade; - And his nightingale reigning in the mulberry shade, - And sailors and soldiers on the sea-sands brown, - And priests who bowed them down to your song— - By the city called Han, the peacock town, - By the city called Han, the nightingale town, - The nightingale town.” - - Then sang the bird, so strangely gay, - Fluttering, fluttering, ghostly and gray, - A vague, unravelling, answering tune, - Like a long unwinding silk cocoon; - Sang as though for the soul of him - Who ironed away in that bower dim: - - “I have forgotten - Your dragons great, - Merry and mad and friendly and bold. - Dim is your proud lost palace-gate. - I vaguely know - There were heroes of old, - Troubles more than the heart could hold, - There were wolves in the woods - Yet lambs in the fold, - Nests in the top of the almond tree ... - The evergreen tree ... and the mulberry tree ... - Life and hurry and joy forgotten, - Years on years I but half-remember ... - Man is a torch, then ashes soon, - May and June, then dead December, - Dead December, then again June. - Who shall end my dream’s confusion? - Life is a loom, weaving illusion ... - I remember, I remember - There were ghostly veils and laces ... - In the shadowy, bowery places ... - With lovers’ ardent faces - Bending to one another, - Speaking each his part. - They infinitely echo - In the red cave of my heart. - ‘Sweetheart, sweetheart, sweetheart!’ - They said to one another. - They spoke, I think, of perils past. - They spoke, I think, of peace at last. - One thing I remember: - Spring came on forever, - Spring came on forever,” - Said the Chinese nightingale. - - - - - Amy Lowell - - - PATTERNS - - I walk down the garden paths, - And all the daffodils - Are blowing, and the bright blue squills. - I walk down the patterned garden paths - In my stiff, brocaded gown. - - With my powdered hair and jewelled fan, - I too am a rare - Pattern. As I wander down - The garden paths. - - My dress is richly figured, - And the train - Makes a pink and silver stain - On the gravel, and the thrift - Of the borders. - Just a plate of current fashion, - Tripping by in high-heeled, ribboned shoes. - Not a softness anywhere about me, - Only whale-bone and brocade. - And I sink on a seat in the shade - Of a lime tree. For my passion - Wars against the stiff brocade. - The daffodils and squills - Flutter in the breeze - As they please. - And I weep; - For the lime tree is in blossom - And one small flower has dropped upon my bosom. - - And the plashing of waterdrops - In the marble fountain - Comes down the garden paths. - The dripping never stops. - Underneath my stiffened gown - Is the softness of a woman bathing in a marble basin, - A basin in the midst of hedges grown - So thick, she cannot see her lover hiding, - But she guesses he is near, - And the sliding of the water - Seems the stroking of a dear - Hand upon her. - - What is Summer in a fine brocaded gown! - I should like to see it lying in a heap upon the ground. - All the pink and silver crumpled up on the ground. - - I would be the pink and silver as I ran along the paths, - And he would stumble after, - Bewildered by my laughter. - I should see the sun flashing from his sword hilt and the buckles on his - shoes. - I would choose - To lead him in a maze along the patterned paths, - A bright and laughing maze for my heavy-booted lover, - Till he caught me in the shade, - And the buttons of his waistcoat bruised my body as he clasped me, - Aching, melting, unafraid. - With the shadows of the leaves and the sundrops, - And the plopping of the waterdrops, - All about us in the open afternoon— - I am very like to swoon - With the weight of this brocade, - For the sun shifts through the shade. - - Underneath the fallen blossom - In my bosom, - Is a letter I have hid. - It was brought to me this morning by a rider from the Duke. - “Madam, we regret to inform you that Lord Hartwell - Died in action Thursday se’nnight.” - As I read it in the white, morning sunlight, - The letters squirmed like snakes. - “Any answer, Madam?” said my footman. - “No,” I told him. - “See that the messenger takes some refreshment. - No, no answer.” - - And I walked into the garden, - Up and down the patterned pat - In my stiff, correct brocade. - The blue and yellow flowers stood up proudly in the sun, - Each one. - I stood upright too, - Held rigid to the pattern - By the stiffness of my gown. - Up and down I walked, - Up and down. - - In a month he would have been my husband. - In a month, here, underneath this lime, - We would have broke the pattern; - He for me, and I for him, - He as Colonel, I as Lady, - On this shady seat. - He had a whim - That sunlight carried blessing. - And I answered, “It shall be as you have said.” - Now he is dead. - - In Summer and in Winter I shall walk - Up and down - The patterned garden paths - In my stiff, brocaded gown. - The squills and daffodils - Will give place to pillared roses, and to asters, and to snow. - I shall go - Up and down, - In my gown. - Gorgeously arrayed, - Boned and stayed. - And the softness of my body will be guarded from embrace - By each button, hook, and lace. - - For the man who should loose me is dead, - Fighting with the Duke in Flanders, - In a pattern called a war. - Christ! What are patterns for? - - - 1777 - - - I—THE TRUMPET-VINE ARBOR - - The throats of the little red trumpet-flowers are wide open, - And the clangor of brass beats against the hot sunlight. - They bray and blare at the burning sky. - Red! Red! Coarse notes of red, - Trumpeted at the blue sky. - In long streaks of sound, molten metal, - The vine declares itself. - Clang!—from its red and yellow trumpets. - Clang!—from its long, nasal trumpets, - Splitting the sunlight into ribbons, tattered and shot with noise. - - I sit in the cool arbor, in a green and gold twilight. - It is very still, for I cannot hear the trumpets; - I only know that they are red and open, - And that the sun above the arbor shakes with heat. - My quill is newly mended, - And makes fine-drawn lines with its point. - Down the long white paper it makes little lines, - Just lines,—up—down—criss-cross. - My heart is strained out at the pin-point of my quill; - It is thin and writhing like the marks of the pen. - My hand marches to a squeaky tune, - It marches down the paper to a squealing of fifes. - My pen and the trumpet-flowers, - And Washington’s armies away over the smoke-tree to the southwest. - “Yankee Doodle,” my darling! It is you against the British, - Marching in your ragged shoes to batter down King George. - - What have you got in your hat? Not a feather, I wager. - Just a hay-straw, for it is the harvest you are fighting for. - Hay in your hat, and the whites of their eyes for a target! - Like Bunker Hill, two years ago, when I watched all day from the - housetop, - Through father’s spy-glass, - The red city, and the blue, bright water, - And puffs of smoke which you made. - Twenty miles away, - Round by Cambridge, or over the Neck, - But the smoke was white—white! - To-day the trumpet-flowers are red—red— - And I cannot see you fighting; - But old Mr. Dimond has fled to Canada, - And Myra sings “Yankee Doodle” at her milking. - - The red throats of the trumpets bray and clang in the sunshine, - And the smoke-tree puffs dun blossoms into the blue air. - - - II—THE CITY OF FALLING LEAVES - - Leaves fall, - Brown leaves, - Yellow leaves streaked with brown. - They fall, - Flutter, - Fall again. - The brown leaves, - And the streaked yellow leaves, - Loosen on their branches - And drift slowly downwards. - One, - One, two, three, - One, two, five. - All Venice is a falling of autumn leaves, - Brown, - And yellow streaked with brown. - - “That sonnet, Abate, - Beautiful, - I am quite exhausted by it. - Your phrases turn about my heart, - And stifle me to swooning. - Open the window, I beg. - Lord! What a strumming of fiddles and mandolins! - ’Tis really a shame to stop indoors. - Call my maid, or I will make you lace me yourself. - Fie, how hot it is, not a breath of air! - See how straight the leaves are falling. - Marianna, I will have the yellow satin caught up with silver fringe, - It peeps out delightfully from under a mantle. - Am I well painted to-day, _caro Abate mio_? - You will be proud of me at the Ridotto, hey? - Proud of being _cavalier servente_ to such a lady?” - “Can you doubt it, _bellissima Contessa_? - A pinch more rouge on the right cheek, - And Venus herself shines less ...” - “You bore me, Abate; - I vow I must change you! - A letter, Achmet? - Run and look out of the window, Abate. - I will read my letter in peace.” - - The little black slave with the yellow satin turban - Gazes at his mistress with strained eyes. - His yellow turban and black skin - Are gorgeous—barbaric. - The yellow satin dress with its silver flashings - Lies on a chair, - Beside a black mantle and a black mask. - Yellow and black, - Gorgeous—barbaric. - The lady reads her letter, - And the leaves drift slowly - Past the long windows. - “How silly you look, my dear Abate, - With that great brown leaf in your wig. - Pluck it off, I beg you, - Or I shall die of laughing.” - - A yellow wall, - Aflare in the sunlight, - Chequered with shadows, - Shadows of vine-leaves, - Shadows of masks. - Masks coming, printing themselves for an instant, - Then passing on, - More masks always replacing them. - Masks with tricorns and rapiers sticking out behind, - Pursuing masks with veils and high heels, - The sunlight shining under their insteps. - One, - One, two, - One, two, three— - There is a thronging of shadows on the hot wall, - Filigreed at the top with moving leaves. - Yellow sunlight and black shadows, - Yellow and black, - Gorgeous—barbaric. - Two masks stand together, - And the shadow of a leaf falls through them, - Marking the wall where they are not. - From hat-tip to shoulder-tip, - From elbow to sword-hilt, - The leaf falls. - The shadows mingle, - Blur together, - Slide along the wall and disappear. - Gold of mosaics and candles, - And night-blackness lurking in the ceiling beams. - Saint Mark’s glitters with flames and reflections. - A cloak brushes aside, - And the yellow of satin - Licks out over the colored inlays of the pavement. - Under the gold crucifixes - There is a meeting of hands - Reaching from black mantles. - Sighing embraces, bold investigations, - Hide in confessionals, - Sheltered by the shuffling of feet. - Gorgeous—barbaric - In its mail of jewels and gold, - Saint Mark’s looks down at the swarm of black masks; - And outside in the palace gardens brown leaves fall, - Flutter, - Fall. - Brown, - And yellow streaked with brown. - - Blue-black the sky over Venice, - With a pricking of yellow stars. - There is no moon, - And the waves push darkly against the prow - Of the gondola, - Coming from Malamocco - And streaming toward Venice. - It is black under the gondola hood, - But the yellow of a satin dress - Glares out like the eye of a watching tiger. - Yellow compassed about with darkness, - Yellow and black, - Gorgeous—barbaric. - The boatman sings, - It is Tasso that he sings; - The lovers seek each other beneath their mantles, - And the gondola drifts over the lagoon, aslant to the coming dawn. - But at Malamocco in front, - In Venice behind, - Fall the leaves, - Brown, - And yellow streaked with brown. - They fall, - Flutter, - Fall. - - - VENUS TRANSIENS - - Tell me, - Was Venus more beautiful - Than you are, - When she stopped - The crinkled waves, - Drifting shoreward - On her plaited shell? - Was Botticelli’s vision - Fairer than mine; - And were the painted rosebuds - He tossed his lady - Of better worth - Than the words I blow about you - To cover your too great loveliness - As with a gauze - Of misted silver? - - For me, - You stand poised - In the blue and buoyant air, - Cinctured by bright winds, - Treading the sunlight. - And the waves which precede you - Ripple and stir - The sands at my feet. - - - A LADY - - You are beautiful and faded, - Like an old opera tune - Played upon a harpsichord; - Or like the sun-flooded silks - Of an eighteenth century boudoir. - In your eyes - Smoulder the fallen roses of outlived minutes, - And the perfume of your soul - Is vague and suffusing, - With the pungence of sealed spice jars. - Your half-tones delight me, - And I grow mad with gazing - At your blent colors. - - My vigor is a new-minted penny, - Which I cast at your feet. - Gather it up from the dust, - That its sparkle may amuse you. - - - CHINOISERIES - - - REFLECTIONS - - When I looked into your eyes, - I saw a garden - With peonies, and tinkling pagodas, - And round-arched bridges - Over still lakes. - A woman sat beside the water - In a rain-blue, silken garment. - She reached through the water - To pluck the crimson peonies - Beneath the surface, - But as she grasped the stems, - They jarred and broke into white-green ripples, - And as she drew out her hand, - The water-drops dripping from it - Stained her rain-blue dress like tears. - - - FALLING SNOW - - The snow whispers about me, - And my wooden clogs - Leave holes behind me in the snow. - But no one will pass this way - Seeking my footsteps, - And when the temple bell rings again - They will be covered and gone. - - - HOAR-FROST - - In the cloud-gray mornings - I heard the herons flying; - And when I came into my garden, - My silken outer-garment - Trailed over withered leaves. - A dried leaf crumbles at a touch, - But I have seen many Autumns - With herons blowing like smoke - Across the sky. - - - SOLITAIRE - - When night drifts along the streets of the city, - And sifts down between the uneven roofs, - My mind begins to peek and peer. - It plays at ball in old, blue Chinese gardens, - And shakes wrought dice-cups in Pagan temples, - Amid the broken flutings of white pillars. - It dances with purple and yellow crocuses in its hair, - And its feet shine as they flutter over drenched grasses. - How light and laughing my mind is, - When all the good folk have put out their bed-room candles, - And the city is still! - - - A GIFT - - See! I give myself to you, Beloved! - My words are little jars - For you to take and put upon a shelf. - Their shapes are quaint and beautiful, - And they have many pleasant colors and lustres - To recommend them. - Also the scent from them fills the room - With sweetness of flowers and crushed grasses. - - When I shall have given you the last one - You will have the whole of me, - But I shall be dead. - - - RED SLIPPERS - -Red slippers in a shop-window; and outside in the street, flaws of gray, -windy sleet! - - -Behind the polished glass the slippers hang in long threads of red, -festooning from the ceiling like stalactites of blood, flooding the eyes -of passers-by with dripping color, jamming their crimson reflections -against the windows of cabs and tram-cars, screaming their claret and -salmon into the teeth of the sleet, plopping their little round maroon -lights upon the tops of umbrellas. - - -The row of white, sparkling shop-fronts is gashed and bleeding, it -bleeds red slippers. They spout under the electric light, fluid and -fluctuating, a hot rain—and freeze again to red slippers, myriadly -multiplied in the mirror side of the window. - -They balance upon arched insteps like springing bridges of crimson -lacquer; they swing up over curved heels like whirling tanagers sucked -in a wind-pocket; they flatten out, heelless, like July ponds, flared -and burnished by red rockets. - -Snap, snap, they are cracker sparks of scarlet in the white, monotonous -block of shops. - -They plunge the clangor of billions of vermilion trumpets into the crowd -outside, and echo in faint rose over the pavement. - - -People hurry by, for these are only shoes, and in a window farther down -is a big lotus bud of cardboard, whose petals open every few minutes and -reveal a wax doll, with staring bead eyes and flaxen hair, lolling -awkwardly in its flower chair. - -One has often seen shoes, but whoever saw a cardboard lotus bud before? - - -The flaws of gray, windy sleet beat on the shop-window where there are -only red slippers. - - - APOLOGY - - Be not angry with me that I bear - Your colors everywhere, - All through each crowded street, - And meet - The wonder-light in every eye, - As I go by. - - Each plodding wayfarer looks up to gaze, - Blinded by rainbow-haze, - The stuff of happiness, - No less, - Which wraps me in its glad-hued folds - Of peacock golds. - - Before my feet the dusty, rough-paved way - Flushes beneath its gray. - My steps fall ringed with light, - So bright - It seems a myriad suns are strown - About the town. - - Around me is the sound of steepled bells, - And rich perfumèd smells - Hang like a wind-forgotten cloud, - And shroud - Me from close contact with the world. - I dwell, impearled. - - You blazon me with jewelled insignia. - A flaming nebula - Rims in my life. And yet - You set - The word upon me, unconfessed, - To go unguessed. - - - - - Percy Mackaye - - - OLD AGE - - Old Age, the irrigator, - Digs our bosoms straighter, - More workable and deeper still - To turn the ever-running mill - Of nights and days. He makes a trough - To drain our passions off, - That used so beautiful to lie - Variegated to the sky, - On waste moorlands of the heart— - Haunts of idleness, and art - Still half-dreaming. All their piedness, - Rank and wild and shallow wideness, - Desultory splendors, he - Straightens conscientiously - To a practicable sluice - Meant for workaday, plain use. - All the mists of early dawn, - Twilit marshes, being gone - With their glamor, and their stench, - There is left—a narrow trench. - - - SONG FROM “MATER” - - Long ago, in the young moonlight, - I lost my heart to a hero; - Strong and tender and stern and right, - Darker than night, - And terribler than Nero. - Heigh, but he was dear, O! - - And there, to bind our fellowship, - I laughed at him; and a moment after, - I laughed again till he bit his lip, - For the test of love is laughter. - - “Lord and master, look up!” I cried; - “I wreathe your brow with a laurel! - Gloom and wisdom and right and pride - Cast them aside, - And kiss, and cure our quarrel. - Never mind the moral!” - - Alas! with strange and saddened eyes - He looked on me; and my mirth grew dafter, - To feel the flush of his dark surprise; - For the zest of love is laughter. - - Long ago, in the old moonlight, - I lost my hero and lover; - Strong and tender and stern and right, - Never shall night - Nor day his brow uncover. - Ah, my heart, that is over! - - Yet still, for joy of the fellowship - That bound us both through the years long after, - I laugh to think how he bit his lip; - For the test of love— - And the best of love—is laughter. - - - - - Frederic Manning - - - SACRIFICE - - Love suffereth all things, - And we, - Out of the travail and pain of our striving, - Bring unto Thee the perfect prayer: - For the lips of no man utter love, - Suffering even for love’s sake. - - For us no splendid apparel of pageantry— - Burnished breast-plates, scarlet banners, and trumpets - Sounding exultantly. - But the mean things of the earth Thou hast chosen, - Decked them with suffering; - Made them beautiful with the passion for rightness, - Strong with the pride of love. - - Yea, though our praise of Thee slayeth us, - Yet love shall exalt us beside Thee triumphant, - Dying that these live; - And the earth again be beautiful with orchards, - Yellow with wheatfields; - And the lips of others praise Thee, though our lips - Be stopped with earth, and songless. - Yet we shall have brought Thee their praises - Brought unto Thee the perfect prayer: - For the lips of no man utter love, - Suffering even for love’s sake. - - O God of sorrows, - Whose feet come softly through the dews, - Stoop Thou unto us, - For we die so Thou livest, - Our hearts the cups of Thy vintage: - And the lips of no man utter love, - Suffering even for love’s sake. - - - AT EVEN - - Hush ye! Hush ye! My babe is sleeping. - Hush, ye winds, that are full of sorrow! - Hush, ye rains, from your weary weeping! - Give him slumber until to-morrow. - - Hush ye, yet! In the years hereafter, - Surely sorrow is all his reaping; - Tears shall be in the place of laughter, - Give him peace for a while in sleeping. - - Hush ye, hush! he is weak and ailing: - Send his mother his share of weeping. - Hush ye, winds, from your endless wailing; - Hush ye, hush ye, my babe is sleeping! - - - - - John Masefield - - - SHIPS - - I cannot tell their wonder nor make known - Magic that once thrilled through me to the bone; - But all men praise some beauty, tell some tale, - Vent a high mood which makes the rest seem pale, - Pour their heart’s blood to flourish one green leaf, - Follow some Helen for her gift of grief, - And fail in what they mean, whate’er they do: - You should have seen, man cannot tell to you - The beauty of the ships of that my city. - - That beauty now is spoiled by the sea’s pity; - For one may haunt the pier a score of times, - Hearing St. Nicholas bells ring out the chimes, - Yet never see those proud ones swaying home - With mainyards backed and bows a cream of foam, - Those bows so lovely-curving, cut so fine, - Those coulters of the many-bubbled brine, - As once, long since, when all the docks were filled - With that sea-beauty man has ceased to build. - - Yet, though their splendor may have ceased to be - Each played her sovereign part in making me; - Now I return my thanks with heart and lips - For the great queenliness of all those ships. - - And first the first bright memory, still so clear, - An autumn evening in a golden year, - When in the last lit moments before dark - The _Chepica_, a steel-gray lovely barque, - Came to an anchor near us on the flood, - Her trucks aloft in sun-glow red as blood. - - Then come so many ships that I could fill - Three docks with their fair hulls remembered still, - Each with her special memory’s special grace, - Riding the sea, making the waves give place - To delicate high beauty; man’s best strength, - Noble in every line in all their length. - _Ailsa_, _Genista_, ships, with long jibbooms, - The _Wanderer_ with great beauty and strange dooms, - _Liverpool_ (mightiest then) superb, sublime, - The _California_ huge, as slow as time. - The _Copley_ swift, the perfect _J. T. North_, - The loveliest barque my city has sent forth, - Dainty _John Lockett_ well remembered yet, - The splendid _Argus_ with her skysail set, - Stalwart _Drumcliff_, white-blocked, majestic _Sierras_, - Divine bright ships, the water’s standard-bearers; - _Melpomene_, _Euphrosyne_, and their sweet - Sea-troubling sisters of the Fernie fleet; - _Corunna_ (in whom my friend died) and the old - Long since loved _Esmeralda_ long since sold. - _Centurion_ passed in Rio, _Glaucus_ spoken, - _Aladdin_ burnt, the _Bidston_ water-broken, - _Yola_, in whom my friend sailed, _Dawpool_ trim, - Fierce-bowed _Egeria_ plunging to the swim, - _Stanmore_ wide-sterned, sweet _Cupica_, tall _Bard_, - Queen in all harbors with her moon-sail yard. - - Though I tell many, there must still be others, - McVickar Marshall’s ships and Fernie Brothers’, - _Lochs_, _Counties_, _Shires_, _Drums_, the countless lines - Whose house-flags all were once familiar signs - At high main-trucks on Mersey’s windy ways - When sunlight made the wind-white water blaze. - Their names bring back old mornings, when the docks - Shone with their house-flags and their painted blocks, - Their raking masts below the Custom House - And all the marvellous beauty of their bows. - - Familiar steamers, too, majestic steamers, - Shearing Atlantic roller-tops to streamers, - _Umbria_, _Etruria_, noble, still at sea, - The grandest, then, that man had brought to be. - _Majestic_, _City of Paris_, _City of Rome_, - Forever jealous racers, out and home. - - The _Alfred Holt’s_ blue smoke-stacks down the stream, - The fair _Loanda_ with her bows a-cream. - Booth liners, Anchor liners, Red Star liners, - The marks and styles of countless ship-designers, - The _Magdalena_, _Puno_, _Potosi_, - Lost _Cotopaxi_, all well known to me. - - These splendid ships, each with her grace, her glory, - Her memory of old song or comrade’s story, - Still in my mind the image of life’s need, - Beauty in hardest action, beauty indeed. - “They built great ships and sailed them,” sounds most brave, - Whatever arts we have or fail to have. - I touch my country’s mind, I come to grips - With half her purpose, thinking of these ships: - That art untouched by softness, all that line - Drawn ringing hard to stand the test of brine; - That nobleness and grandeur, all that beauty - Born of a manly life and bitter duty; - That splendor of fine bows which yet could stand - The shock of rollers never checked by land; - That art of masts, sail-crowded, fit to break, - Yet stayed to strength and backstayed into rake; - The life demanded by that art, the keen - Eye-puckered, hard-case seamen, silent, lean. - They are grander things than all the art of towns; - Their tests are tempests and the sea that drowns. - They are my country’s line, her great art done - By strong brains laboring on the thought unwon. - They mark our passage as a race of men— - Earth will not see such ships as those again. - - - CARGOES - - Quinquireme of Nineveh from distant Ophir, - Rowing home to haven in sunny Palestine, - With a cargo of ivory, - And apes and peacocks, - Sandalwood, cedarwood, and sweet white wine. - - Stately Spanish galleon coming from the Isthmus, - Dipping through the Tropics by the palm-green shores, - With a cargo of diamonds, - Emeralds, amethysts, - Topazes, and cinnamon, and gold moidores. - - Dirty British coaster with a salt-caked smoke-stack, - Butting through the Channel in the mad March days, - With a cargo of Tyne coal, - Road-rails, pig-lead, - Firewood, iron-ware, and cheap tin trays. - - - WATCHING BY A SICK-BED - - I heard the wind all day, - And what it was trying to say. - I heard the wind all night - Rave as it ran to fight; - After the wind the rain, - And then the wind again - Running across the hill - As it runs still. - - And all day long the sea - Would not let the land be, - But all night heaped her sand - On to the land; - I saw her glimmer white - All through the night, - Tossing the horrid hair - Still tossing there. - - And all day long the stone - Felt how the wind was blown; - And all night long the rock - Stood the sea’s shock; - While, from the window, I - Looked out, and wondered why, - Why at such length - Such force should fight such strength. - - - WHAT AM I, LIFE? - - What am I, Life? A thing of watery salt - Held in cohesion by unresting cells, - Which work they know not why, which never halt, - Myself unwitting where their Master dwells. - I do not bid them, yet they toil, they spin - A world which uses me as I use them; - Nor do I know which end or which begin - Nor which to praise, which pamper, which condemn. - So, like a marvel in a marvel set, - I answer to the vast, as wave by wave - The sea of air goes over, dry or wet, - Or the full moon comes swimming from her cave, - Or the great sun comes forth: this myriad I - Tingles, not knowing how, yet wondering why. - - - - - Edgar Lee Masters - - - SPOON RIVER ANTHOLOGY - - - THE HILL - - _Where are Elmer, Herman, Bert, Tom and Charley, - The weak of will, the strong of arm, the clown, the boozer, the fighter? - All, all, are sleeping on the hill._ - - _One passed in a fever, - One was burned in a mine, - One was killed in a brawl, - One died in a jail, - One fell from a bridge toiling for children and wife— - All, all are sleeping, sleeping, sleeping on the hill._ - - _Where are Ella, Kate, Mag, Lizzie and Edith, - The tender heart, the simple soul, the loud, the proud, the happy one?— - All, all, are sleeping on the hill._ - - _One died in shameful child-birth, - One of a thwarted love, - One at the hands of a brute in a brothel, - One of a broken pride, in the search for heart’s desire, - One after life in far-away London and Paris - Was brought to her little space by Ella and Kate and Mag— - All, all are sleeping, sleeping, sleeping on the hill._ - - - _Where are Uncle Isaac and Aunt Emily, - And old Towny Kincaid and Sevigne Houghton, - And Major Walker who had talked - With venerable men of the revolution?— - All, all, are sleeping on the hill._ - - _They brought them dead sons from the war, - And daughters whom life had crushed, - And their children fatherless, crying— - All, all are sleeping, sleeping, sleeping on the hill._ - - _Where is Old Fiddler Jones - Who played with life all his ninety years, - Braving the sleet with bared breast, - Drinking, rioting, thinking neither of wife nor kin, - Nor gold, nor love, nor heaven? - Lo! he babbles of the fish-frys of long ago, - Of the horse-races of long ago at Clary’s Grove, - Of what Abe Lincoln said - One time at Springfield._ - - - OLLIE M^cGEE - - Have you seen walking through the village - A man with downcast eyes and haggard face? - That is my husband who, by secret cruelty - Never to be told, robbed me of my youth and my beauty; - Till at last, wrinkled and with yellow teeth, - And with broken pride and shameful humility, - I sank into the grave. - But what think you gnaws at my husband’s heart? - The face of what I was, the face of what he made me! - These are driving him to the place where I lie. - In death, therefore, I am avenged. - - - DAISY FRASER - - Did you ever hear of Editor Whedon - Giving to the public treasury any of the money he received - For supporting candidates for office? - Or for writing up the canning factory - To get people to invest? - Or for suppressing the facts about the bank, - When it was rotten and ready to break? - Did you ever hear of the Circuit Judge - Helping anyone except the “Q” railroad, - Or the bankers? Or did Rev. Peet or Rev. Sibley - Give any part of their salary, earned by keeping still, - Or speaking out as the leaders wished them to do, - To the building of the water works? - But I—Daisy Fraser, who always passed - Along the streets through rows of nods and smiles, - And coughs and words such as “there she goes,” - Never was taken before Justice Arnett - Without contributing ten dollars and costs - To the school fund of Spoon River! - - - HARE DRUMMER - - Do the boys and girls still go to Siever’s - For cider, after school, in late September? - Or gather hazel nuts among the thickets - On Aaron Hatfield’s farm when the frosts begin? - For many times with the laughing girls and boys - Played I along the road and over the hills - When the sun was low and the air was cool, - Stopping to club the walnut tree - Standing leafless against a flaming west. - Now, the smell of the autumn smoke, - And the dropping acorns, - And the echoes about the vales - Bring dreams of life. They hover over me. - They question me: - Where are those laughing comrades? - How many are with me, how many - In the old orchards along the way to Siever’s, - And in the woods that overlook - The quiet water? - - - DOC HILL - - I went up and down the streets - Here and there by day and night, - Through all hours of the night caring for the poor who were sick. - Do you know why? - My wife hated me, my son went to the dogs. - And I turned to the people and poured out my love to them. - Sweet it was to see the crowds about the lawns on the day of my funeral, - And hear them murmur their love and sorrow. - But oh, dear God, my soul trembled, scarcely able - To hold to the railing of the new life - When I saw Em Stanton behind the oak tree - At the grave, - Hiding herself, and her grief! - - - FIDDLER JONES - - The earth keeps some vibration going - There in your heart, and that is you. - And if the people find you can fiddle, - Why, fiddle you must, for all your life. - What do you see, a harvest of clover? - Or a meadow to walk through to the river? - The wind’s in the corn; you rub your hands - For beeves hereafter ready for market; - Or else you hear the rustle of skirts - Like the girls when dancing at Little Grove. - To Cooney Potter a pillar of dust - Or whirling leaves meant ruinous drouth; - They looked to me like Red-Head Sammy - Stepping it off, to “Toor-a-Loor.” - How could I till my forty acres - Not to speak of getting more, - With a medley of horns, bassoons and piccolos - Stirred in my brain by crows and robins - And the creak of a wind-mill—only these? - And I never started to plow in my life - That some one did not stop in the road - And take me away to a dance or picnic. - I ended up with forty acres; - I ended up with a broken fiddle— - And a broken laugh, and a thousand memories, - And not a single regret. - - - THOMAS RHODES - - Very well, you liberals, - And navigators into realms intellectual, - You sailors through heights imaginative, - Blown about by erratic currents, tumbling into air pockets, - You Margaret Fuller Slacks, Petits, - And Tennessee Claflin Shopes— - You found with all your boasted wisdom - How hard at the last it is - To keep the soul from splitting into cellular atoms. - While we, seekers of earth’s treasures, - Getters and hoarders of gold, - Are self-contained, compact, harmonized, - Even to the end. - - - EDITOR WHEDON - - To be able to see every side of every question; - To be on every side, to be everything, to be nothing long; - To pervert truth, to ride it for a purpose, - To use great feelings and passions of the human family - For base designs, for cunning ends, - To wear a mask like the Greek actors— - Your eight-page paper—behind which you huddle, - Bawling through the megaphone of big type: - “This is I, the giant.” - Thereby also living the life of a sneak-thief, - Poisoned with the anonymous words - Of your clandestine soul. - To scratch dirt over scandal for money, - And exhume it to the winds for revenge, - Or to sell papers - Crushing reputations, or bodies, if need be, - To win at any cost, save your own life. - To glory in demoniac power, ditching civilization, - As a paranoiac boy puts a log on the track - And derails the express train. - To be an editor, as I was— - Then to lie here close by the river over the place - Where the sewage flows from the village, - And the empty cans and garbage are dumped, - And abortions are hidden. - - - SETH COMPTON - - When I died, the circulating library - Which I built up for Spoon River, - And managed for the good of inquiring minds, - Was sold at auction on the public square, - As if to destroy the last vestige - Of my memory and influence. - For those of you who could not see the virtue - Of knowing Volney’s _Ruins_ as well as Butler’s _Analogy_ - And _Faust_ as well as _Evangeline_, - Were really the power in the village, - And often you asked me, - “What is the use of knowing the evil in the world?” - I am out of your way now, Spoon River— - Choose your own good and call it good. - For I could never make you see - That no one knows what is good - Who knows not what is evil; - And no one knows what is true - Who knows not what is false. - - - HENRY C. CALHOUN - - I reached the highest place in Spoon River, - But through what bitterness of spirit! - The face of my father, sitting speechless, - Child-like, watching his canaries, - And looking at the court-house window - Of the county judge’s room, - And his admonitions to me to seek - My own in life, and punish Spoon River - To avenge the wrong the people did him, - Filled me with furious energy - To seek for wealth and seek for power. - But what did he do but send me along - The path that leads to the grove of the Furies? - I followed the path and I tell you this: - On the way to the grove you’ll pass the Fates, - Shadow-eyed, bent over their weaving. - Stop for a moment, and if you see - The thread of revenge leap out of the shuttle - Then quickly snatch from Atropos - The shears and cut it, lest your sons, - And the children of them and their children - Wear the envenomed robe. - - - PERRY ZOLL - - My thanks, friends of the County Scientific Association, - For this modest boulder, - And its little tablet of bronze. - Twice I tried to join your honored body, - And was rejected, - And when my little brochure - On the intelligence of plants - Began to attract attention - You almost voted me in. - After that I grew beyond the need of you - And your recognition. - Yet I do not reject your memorial stone, - Seeing that I should, in so doing, - Deprive you of honor to yourselves. - - - ARCHIBALD HIGBIE - - I loathed you, Spoon River. I tried to rise above you, - I was ashamed of you. I despised you - As the place of my nativity. - And there in Rome, among the artists, - Speaking Italian, speaking French, - I seemed to myself at times to be free - Of every trace of my origin. - I seemed to be reaching the heights of art - And to breathe the air that the masters breathed, - And to see the world with their eyes. - But still they’d pass my work and say: - “What are you driving at, my friend? - Sometimes the face looks like Apollo’s, - At others it has a trace of Lincoln’s.” - There was no culture, you know, in Spoon River, - And I burned with shame and held my peace. - And what could I do, all covered over - And weighted down with western soil, - Except aspire, and pray for another - Birth in the world, with all of Spoon River - Rooted out of my soul? - - - FATHER MALLOY - - You are over there, Father Malloy, - Where holy ground is, and the cross marks every grave, - Not here with us on the hill— - Us of wavering faith, and clouded vision - And drifting hope, and unforgiven sins. - You were so human, Father Malloy, - Taking a friendly glass sometimes with us, - Siding with us who would rescue Spoon River - From the coldness and the dreariness of village morality. - You were like a traveler who brings a little box of sand - From the wastes about the pyramids - And makes them real and Egypt real. - You were a part of and related to a great past, - And yet you were so close to many of us. - You believed in the joy of life. - You did not seem to be ashamed of the flesh. - You faced life as it is, - And as it changes. - Some of us almost came to you, Father Malloy, - Seeing how your church had divined the heart, - And provided for it, - Through Peter the Flame, - Peter the Rock. - - - LUCINDA MATLOCK - - I went to the dances at Chandlerville, - And played snap-out at Winchester. - One time we changed partners, - Driving home in the moonlight of middle June, - And then I found Davis. - We were married and lived together for seventy years, - Enjoying, working, raising the twelve children, - Eight of whom we lost - Ere I had reached the age of sixty. - I spun, I wove, I kept the house, I nursed the sick, - I made the garden, and for holiday - Rambled over the fields where sang the larks, - And by Spoon River gathering many a shell, - And many a flower and medicinal weed— - Shouting to the wooded hills, singing to the green valleys. - At ninety-six I had lived enough, that is all, - And passed to a sweet repose. - What is this I hear of sorrow and weariness, - Anger, discontent and drooping hopes? - Degenerate sons and daughters, - Life is too strong for you— - It takes life to love Life. - - - ANNE RUTLEDGE - - Out of me unworthy and unknown - The vibrations of deathless music; - “With malice toward none, with charity for all.” - Out of me the forgiveness of millions toward millions, - And the beneficent face of a nation - Shining with justice and truth. - I am Anne Rutledge who sleep beneath these weeds, - Beloved in life of Abraham Lincoln, - Wedded to him, not through union, - But through separation. - Bloom forever, O Republic, - From the dust of my bosom! - - - WILLIAM H. HERNDON - - There by the window in the old house - Perched on the bluff, overlooking miles of valley, - My days of labor closed, sitting out life’s decline, - Day by day did I look in my memory, - As one who gazes in an enchantress’ crystal globe, - And I saw the figures of the past, - As if in a pageant glassed by a shining dream, - Move through the incredible sphere of time. - And I saw a man arise from the soil like a fabled giant - And throw himself over a deathless destiny, - Master of great armies, head of the republic, - Bringing together into a dithyramb of recreative song - The epic hopes of a people; - At the same time Vulcan of sovereign fires, - Where imperishable shields and swords were beaten out - From spirits tempered in heaven. - Look in the crystal! See how he hastens on - To the place where his path comes up to the path - Of a child of Plutarch and Shakespeare. - O Lincoln, actor indeed, playing well your part, - And Booth, who strode in a mimic play within the play, - Often and often I saw you, - As the cawing crows winged their way to the wood - Over my house-top at solemn sunsets, - There by my window, - Alone. - - - RUTHERFORD M^cDOWELL - - They brought me ambrotypes - Of the old pioneers to enlarge. - And sometimes one sat for me— - Some one who was in being - When giant hands from the womb of the world - Tore the republic. - What was it in their eyes?— - For I could never fathom - That mystical pathos of drooped eyelids, - And the serene sorrow of their eyes. - It was like a pool of water, - Amid oak trees at the edge of a forest, - Where the leaves fall, - As you hear the crow of a cock - From a far-off farm house, seen near the hills - Where the third generation lives, and the strong men - And the strong women are gone and forgotten. - And these grand-children and great grand-children - Of the pioneers!— - Truly did my camera record their faces, too, - With so much of the old strength gone, - And the old faith gone, - And the old mastery of life gone, - And the old courage gone, - Which labors and loves and suffers and sings - Under the sun! - - - ARLO WILL - - Did you ever see an alligator - Come up to the air from the mud, - Staring blindly under the full glare of noon? - Have you seen the stabled horses at night - Tremble and start back at the sight of a lantern? - Have you ever walked in darkness - When an unknown door was open before you - And you stood, it seemed, in the light of a thousand candles - Of delicate wax? - Have you walked with the wind in your ears - And the sunlight about you - And found it suddenly shine with an inner splendor? - Out of the mud many times, - Before many doors of light, - Through many fields of splendor, - Where around your steps a soundless glory scatters - Like new-fallen snow, - Will you go through earth, O strong of soul, - And through unnumbered heavens - To the final flame! - - - AARON HATFIELD - - Better than granite, Spoon River, - Is the memory-picture you keep of me - Standing before the pioneer men and women - There at Concord Church on Communion day. - Speaking in broken voice of the peasant youth - Of Galilee who went to the city - And was killed by bankers and lawyers; - My voice mingling with the June wind - That blew over wheat fields from Atterbury; - While the white stones in the burying ground - Around the Church shimmered in the summer sun. - And there, though my own memories - Were too great to bear, were you, O pioneers, - With bowed heads breathing forth your sorrow - For the sons killed in battle and the daughters - And little children who vanished in life’s morning, - Or at the intolerable hour of noon. - But in those moments of tragic silence, - When the wine and bread were passed, - Came the reconciliation for us— - Us the ploughmen and the hewers of wood, - Us the peasants, brothers of the peasant of Galilee— - To us came the Comforter - And the consolation of tongues of flame! - - - WEBSTER FORD - - Do you remember, O Delphic Apollo, - The sunset hour by the river, when Mickey M’Grew - Cried, “There’s a ghost,” and I, “It’s Delphic Apollo”; - And the son of the banker derided us, saying, “It’s light - By the flags at the water’s edge, you half-witted fools.” - And from thence, as the wearisome years rolled on, long after - Poor Mickey fell down in the water tower to his death, - Down, down, through bellowing darkness, I carried - The vision which perished with him like a rocket which falls - And quenches its light in earth, and hid it for fear - Of the son of the banker, calling on Plutus to save me? - Avenged were you for the shame of a fearful heart, - Who left me alone till I saw you again in an hour - When I seemed to be turned to a tree with trunk and branches - Growing indurate, turning to stone, yet burgeoning - In laurel leaves, in hosts of lambent laurel, - Quivering, fluttering, shrinking, fighting the numbness - Creeping into their veins from the dying trunk and branches! - ’Tis vain, O youth, to fly the call of Apollo. - Fling yourselves in the fire, die with a song of spring, - If die you must in the spring. For none shall look - On the face of Apollo and live, and choose you must - ’Twixt death in the flame and death after years of sorrow, - Rooted fast in the earth, feeling the grisly hand, - Not so much in the trunk as in the terrible numbness - Creeping up to the laurel leaves that never cease - To flourish until you fall. O leaves of me - Too sere for coronal wreaths, and fit alone - For urns of memory, treasured, perhaps, as themes - For hearts heroic, fearless singers and livers— - Delphic Apollo! - - - SILENCE - - I have known the silence of the stars and of the sea, - And the silence of the city when it pauses, - And the silence of a man and a maid, - And the silence of the sick - When their eyes roam about the room. - And I ask: For the depths - Of what use is language? - A beast of the field moans a few times - When death takes its young. - And we are voiceless in the presence of realities— - We cannot speak. - - A curious boy asks an old soldier - Sitting in front of the grocery store, - “How did you lose your leg?” - And the old soldier is struck with silence, - Or his mind flies away - Because he cannot concentrate it on Gettysburg. - It comes back jocosely - And he says, “A bear bit it off.” - And the boy wonders, while the old soldier - Dumbly, feebly lives over - The flashes of guns, the thunder of cannon, - The shrieks of the slain, - And himself lying on the ground, - And the hospital surgeons, the knives, - And the long days in bed. - But if he could describe it all - He would be an artist. - But if he were an artist there would be deeper wounds - Which he could not describe. - - There is the silence of a great hatred, - And the silence of a great love, - And the silence of an embittered friendship. - There is the silence of a spiritual crisis, - Through which your soul, exquisitely tortured, - Comes with visions not to be uttered - Into a realm of higher life. - There is the silence of defeat. - There is the silence of those unjustly punished; - And the silence of the dying whose hand - Suddenly grips yours. - There is the silence between father and son, - When the father cannot explain his life, - Even though he be misunderstood for it. - - There is the silence that comes between husband and wife. - There is the silence of those who have failed; - And the vast silence that covers - Broken nations and vanquished leaders. - There is the silence of Lincoln, - Thinking of the poverty of his youth. - And the silence of Napoleon - After Waterloo. - And the silence of Jeanne d’Arc - Saying amid the flames, “Blessed Jesus”— - Revealing in two words all sorrows, all hope. - And there is the silence of age, - Too full of wisdom for the tongue to utter it - In words intelligible to those who have not lived - The great range of life. - - And there is the silence of the dead. - If we who are in life cannot speak - Of profound experiences, - Why do you marvel that the dead - Do not tell you of death? - Their silence shall be interpreted - As we approach them. - - - - - Alice Meynell - - - MATERNITY - - One wept whose only child was dead - New-born, ten years ago. - “Weep not; he is in bliss,” they said. - She answered, “Even so. - - “Ten years ago was born in pain - A child not now forlorn. - But oh, ten years ago, in vain - A mother, a mother was born.” - - - CHIMES - - Brief on a flying night, - From the shaken tower, - A flock of bells take flight, - And go with the hour. - - Like birds from the cote to the gales, - Abrupt—oh, hark!— - A fleet of bells set sails, - And go to the dark. - - Sudden the cold airs swing: - Alone, aloud, - A verse of bells takes wing - And flies with the cloud. - - - - - Max Michelson - - - O BROTHER TREE - - O brother tree! O brother tree! Tell to me, thy brother, - The secret of thy life, - The wonder of thy being. - - My brother tree, my brother tree, - My heart is open to thee— - Reveal me all thy secrets. - - Beloved tree, beloved tree, - I have shattered all my pride. - I love thee, brother, as myself. - Oh, explain to me thy wonders. - - Beloved one, adored one, - I will not babble of it among fools— - I will tell it only to the unspoiled: - Reveal to me thy being. - - I have watched thy leaves in sunshine, - I have heard them in the storm. - My heart drank a droplet of thy holy joy and wonder, - One drop from the ocean of thy wonder. - - I am thy humble brother—I am thine own. - Reveal thy life to me, - Reveal thy calm joy to me, - Reveal to me thy serene knowledge. - - - THE BIRD - - _From a branch - The bird called_: - - I hold your heart - I wash it - And scour it - With bits of song - Like pebbles; - And your doubts - And your sorrows - Fall—drip, drip, drip— - Like dirty water. - I pipe to it - In little notes - Of life clear as a pool, - And of death - Clearer still; - And I swoop with it - In the blue - And in the nest - Of a cloud. - - - STORM - - Storm, - Wild one, - Take me in your whirl, - In your giddy reel, - In your shot-like leaps and flights. - Hear me call—stop and hear. - I know you, blusterer; I know you, wild one— - I know your mysterious call. - - - A HYMN TO NIGHT - - Come, mysterious night; - Descend and nestle to us. - - Descend softly on the houses - We built with pride, - Without worship. - Fold them in your veil, - Spill your shadows. - - Come over our stores and factories, - Hide our pride—our shame— - With your nebulous wings. - - Come down on our cobbled streets: - Unleash your airy hounds. - Come to the sleepers, night; - Light in them your fires. - - - LOVE LYRIC - - Stir— - Shake off sleep. - Your eyes are the soul of clear waters— - Pigeons - In a city street. - - Suns now dead - Have tucked away of their gold for your hair: - My buried mouth still tastes their fires. - - A tender god built your breasts— - Apples of desire; - Their whiteness slakes the throat; - Their form soothes like honey. - - Wake up! - Or the song-bird in my heart - Will peck open the shell of your dreams. - - · · · · · - - Sleep, my own, - Soaring over rivers of fire. - Sleep, my own, - Wading waters of gold. - - Joy is in my heart— - It flutters around in my soul. - ... Softly— - I hear the rosy dreams ... - - - - - Edna St. Vincent Millay - - - GOD’S WORLD - - O world, I cannot hold thee close enough! - Thy winds, thy wide gray skies! - Thy mists, that roll and rise! - Thy woods, this autumn day, that ache and sag - And all but cry with color! That gaunt crag - To crush! To lift the lean of that black bluff! - World, world, I cannot get thee close enough! - - Long have I known a glory in it all - But never knew I this. - Here such a passion is - As stretcheth me apart. Lord, I do fear - Thou’st made the world too beautiful this year. - My soul is all but out of me—let fall - No burning leaf; prithee, let no bird call. - - - ASHES OF LIFE - - Love has gone and left me, and the days are all alike. - Eat I must, and sleep I will—and would that night were here! - But ah, to lie awake and hear the slow hours strike! - Would that it were day again, with twilight near! - - Love has gone and left me, and I don’t know what to do; - This or that or what you will is all the same to me; - But all the things that I begin I leave before I’m through— - There’s little use in anything as far as I can see. - - Love has gone and left me, and the neighbors knock and borrow, - And life goes on forever like the gnawing of a mouse. - And to-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow - There’s this little street and this little house. - - - THE SHROUD - - Death, I say, my heart is bowed - Unto thine, O mother! - This red gown will make a shroud - Good as any other. - - (I, that would not wait to wear - My own bridal things, - In a dress dark as my hair - Made my answerings. - - I, to-night, that till he came - Could not, could not wait, - In a gown as bright as flame - Held for them the gate.) - - Death, I say, my heart is bowed - Unto thine, O mother! - This red gown will make a shroud - Good as any other. - - - - - Harold Monro - - - GREAT CITY - - When I returned at sunset, - The serving-maid was singing softly - Under the dark stairs, and in the house - Twilight had entered like a moon-ray. - Time was so dead I could not understand - The meaning of midday or of midnight, - But like falling waters, falling, hissing, falling, - Silence seemed an everlasting sound. - - I sat in my room, - And watched sunset, - And saw starlight. - I heard the tramp of homing men, - And the last call of the last child; - Then a lone bird twittered, - And suddenly, beyond the housetops, - I imagined dew in the country, - In the hay, on the buttercups; - The rising moon, - The scent of early night, - The songs, the echoes, - Dogs barking, - Day closing, - Gradual slumber, - Sweet rest. - - When all the lamps were lighted in the town - I passed into the street ways and I watched, - Wakeful, almost happy, - And half the night I wandered in the street. - - - YOUTH IN ARMS - - Happy boy, happy boy, - David the immortal-willed, - Youth a thousand thousand times - Slain, but not once killed, - Swaggering again today - In the old contemptuous way; - - Leaning backward from your thigh - Up against the tinselled bar— - Dust and ashes! is it you? - Laughing, boasting, there you are! - First we hardly recognized you - In your modern avatar. - - Soldier, rifle, brown khaki— - Is your blood as happy so? - Where’s your sling or painted shield, - Helmet, pike or bow? - Well, you’re going to the wars— - That is all you need to know. - - Graybeards plotted. They were sad. - Death was in their wrinkled eyes. - At their tables—with their maps, - Plans and calculations—wise - They all seemed; for well they knew - How ungrudgingly Youth dies. - - At their green official baize - They debated all the night - Plans for your adventurous days - Which you followed with delight, - Youth in all your wanderings, - David of a thousand slings. - - - THE STRANGE COMPANION - - _A Fragment_ - - That strange companion came on shuffling feet, - Passed me, then turned, and touched my arm. - - He said (and he was melancholy, - And both of us looked fretfully, - And slowly we advanced together), - He said: “I bring you your inheritance.” - - I watched his eyes; they were dim. - I doubted him, watched him, doubted him ... - But, in a ceremonious way, - He said: “You are too grey: - Come, you must be merry for a day.” - - And I, because my heart was dumb, - Because the life in me was numb, - Cried: “I will come. I _will_ come.” - - So, without another word, - We two jaunted on the street. - I had heard, often heard, - The shuffling of those feet of his, - The shuffle of his feet. - - And he muttered in my ear - Such a wheezy jest - As a man may often hear— - Not the worst, not the best - That a man may hear. - - Then he murmured in my face - Something that was true. - He said: “I have known this long, long while, - All there is to know of you.” - And the light of the lamp cut a strange smile - On his face, and we muttered along the street, - Good enough friends, on the usual beat. - - We lived together long, long. - We were always alone, he and I. - We never smiled with each other; - We were like brother and brother, - Dimly accustomed. - Can a man know - Why he must live, or where he should go? - - He brought me that joke or two, - And we roared with laughter, for want of a smile, - As every man in the world might do. - He who lies all night in bed - Is a fool, and midnight will crush his head. - - When he threw a glass of wine in my face - One night, I hit him, and we parted; - But in a short space - We came back to each other melancholy-hearted, - Told our pain, - Swore we would not part again. - - One night we turned a table over - The body of some slain fool to cover, - And all the company clapped their hands; - So we spat in their faces, - And travelled away to other lands. - - I wish for every man he find - A strange companion so - Completely to his mind - With whom he everywhere may go. - - - - - Harriet Monroe - - - THE HOTEL - - The long resounding marble corridors, the shining parlors with shining - women in them. - The French room, with its gilt and garlands under plump little tumbling - painted Loves. - The Turkish room, with its jumble of many carpets and its stiffly - squared un-Turkish chairs. - The English room, all heavy crimson and gold, with spreading palms - lifted high in round green tubs. - The electric lights in twos and threes and hundreds, made into festoons - and spirals and arabesques, a maze and magic of bright persistent - radiance. - The people sitting in corners by twos and threes, and cooing together - under the glare. - The long rows of silent people in chairs, watching with eyes that see - not while the patient band tangles the air with music. - The bell-boys marching in with cards, and shouting names over and over - into ears that do not heed. - The stout and gorgeous dowagers in lacy white and lilac, bedizened with - many jewels, with smart little scarlet or azure hats on their - gray-streaked hair. - - The business men in trim and spotless suits, who walk in and out with - eager steps, or sit at the desks and tables, or watch the shining - women. - The telephone girls forever listening to far voices, with the silver - band over their hair and the little black caps obliterating their - ears. - The telegraph tickers sounding their perpetual chit—chit-chit from the - uttermost ends of the earth. - The waiters, in black swallow-tails and white aprons, passing here and - there with trays of bottles and glasses. - The quiet and sumptuous bar-room, with purplish men softly drinking in - little alcoves, while the barkeeper, mixing bright liquors, is - rapidly plying his bottles. - The great bedecked and gilded café, with its glitter of a thousand - mirrors, with its little white tables bearing gluttonous dishes - whereto bright forks, held by pampered hands, flicker daintily back - and forth. - The white-tiled, immaculate kitchen, with many little round blue fires, - where white-clad cooks are making spiced and flavored dishes. - The cool cellars filled with meats and fruits, or layered with sealed - and bottled wines mellowing softly in the darkness. - The invisible stories of furnaces and machines, burrowing deep into the - earth, where grimy workmen are heavily laboring. - The many-windowed stories of little homes and shelters and - sleeping-places, reaching up into the night like some miraculous, - high-piled honey-comb of wax-white cells. - The clothes inside of the cells—the stuffs, the silks, the laces; the - elaborate delicate disguises that wait in trunks and drawers and - closets, or bedrape and conceal human flesh. - The people inside of the clothes, the bodies white and young, bodies fat - and bulging, bodies wrinkled and wan, all alike veiled by fine - fabrics, sheltered by walls and roofs, shut in from the sun and - stars. - - The soul inside of the bodies—the naked souls; souls weazen and weak, or - proud and brave; all imprisoned in flesh, wrapped in woven stuffs, - enclosed in thick and painted masonry, shut away with many shadows - from the shining truth. - God inside of the souls, God veiled and wrapped and imprisoned and - shadowed in fold on fold of flesh and fabrics and mockeries; but ever - alive, struggling and rising again, seeking the light, freeing the - world. - - - THE TURBINE - - _To W. S. M._ - - Look at her—there she sits upon her throne - As ladylike and quiet as a nun! - But if you cross her—whew! her thunderbolts - Will shake the earth! She’s proud as any queen, - The beauty—knows her royal business too, - To light the world, and does it night by night - When her gay lord, the sun, gives up his job. - I am her slave; I wake and watch and run - From dark till dawn beside her. All the while - She hums there softly, purring with delight - Because men bring the riches of the earth - To feed her hungry fires. I do her will - And dare not disobey, for her right hand - Is power, her left is terror, and her anger - Is havoc. Look—if I but lay a wire - Across the terminals of yonder switch - She’ll burst her windings, rip her casings off, - And shriek till envious Hell shoots up its flames, - Shattering her very throne. And all her people, - The laboring, trampling, dreaming crowds out there— - Fools and the wise who look to her for light— - Will walk in darkness through the liquid night - Submerged. - - Sometimes I wonder why she stoops - To be my friend—oh yes, who talks to me - And sings away my loneliness; my friend - Though I am trivial and she sublime. - Hard-hearted?—No, tender and pitiful, - As all the great are. Every arrogant grief - She comforts quietly, and all my joys - Dance to her measures through the tolerant night. - She talks to me, tells me her troubles too, - Just as I tell her mine. Perhaps she feels - An ache deep down—that agonizing stab - Of grit grating her bearings; then her voice - Changes its tune, it wails and calls to me - To soothe her anguish, and I run, her slave, - Probe like a surgeon and relieve the pain. - - We have our jokes too, little mockeries - That no one else in all the swarming world - Would see the point of. She will laugh at me - To show her power: maybe her carbon packings - Leak steam, and I run madly back and forth - To keep the infernal fiends from breaking loose: - Suddenly she will throttle them herself - And chuckle softly, far above me there, - At my alarms. - - But there are moments—hush!— - When my turn comes; her slave can be her master, - Conquering her he serves. For she’s a woman, - Gets bored there on her throne, tired of herself, - Tingles with power that turns to wantonness. - Suddenly something’s wrong—she laughs at me, - Bedevils the frail wires with some mad caress - That thrills blind space, calls down ten thousand lightnings - To ruin her pomp and set her spirit free. - Then with this puny hand, swift as her threat, - Must I beat back the chaos, hold in leash - Destructive furies, rescue her—even her— - From the fierce rashness of her truant mood, - And make me lord of far and near a moment, - Startling the mystery. Last night I did it— - Alone here with my hand upon her heart - I faced the mounting fiends and whipped them down; - And never a wink from the long file of lamps - Betrayed her to the world. - - So there she sits, - Mounted on all the ages, at the peak - Of time. The first man dreamed of light, and dug - The sodden ignorance away, and cursed - The darkness; young primeval races dragged - Foundation stones, and piled into the void - Rage and desire; the Greek mounted and sang - Promethean songs and lit a signal fire: - The Roman bent his iron will to forge - Deep furnaces; slow epochs riveted - With hope the secret chambers: till at last - We, you and I, this living age of ours, - A new-winged Mercury, out of the skies - Filch the wild spirit of light, and chain him there - To do her will forever. - - Look, my friend, - Here is a sign! What is this crystal sphere— - This little bulb of glass I lightly lift, - This iridescent bubble a child might blow - Out of its brazen pipe to hold the sun— - What strange toy is it? In my hand it lies - Cold and inert, its puny artery— - That curling cobweb film—ashen and dead. - But now—a twist or two—let it but touch - The hem, far trailing, of my lady’s robe, - And look, the burning life-blood of the stars - Leaps to its heart, and glows against the dark, - Kindling the world. - - Even so I touch her garment, - Her servant through the quiet night; and thus - I lay my hand upon the Pleiades - And feel their throb of fire. Grandly she gives - To me unworthy; woman inscrutable, - Scatters her splendors through my darkness, leads me - Far out into the workshop of the worlds. - There I can feel those infinite energies - Our little earth just gnaws at through the ether, - And see the light our sunshine hides. Out there, - Close to the heart of life, I am at peace. - - - ON THE PORCH - - As I lie roofed in, screened in, - From the pattering rain, - The summer rain— - As I lie - Snug and dry, - And hear the birds complain: - - Oh, billow on billow, - Oh, roar on roar, - Over me wash - The seas of war. - Over me—down—down— - Lunges and plunges - The huge gun with its one blind eye, - The armored train, - And, swooping out of the sky, - The aeroplane. - - Down—down— - The army proudly swinging - Under gay flags, - The glorious dead heaped up like rags, - A church with bronze bells ringing, - A city all towers, - Gardens of lovers and flowers, - The round world swinging - In the light of the sun: - All broken, undone, - All down—under - Black surges of thunder ... - - Oh, billow on billow - Oh, roar on roar, - Over me wash - The seas of war ... - - As I lie roofed in, screened in, - From the pattering rain, - The summer rain— - As I lie - Snug and dry, - And hear the birds complain. - - - THE WONDER OF IT - - How wild, how witch-like weird that life should be! - That the insensate rock dared dream of me, - And take to bursting out and burgeoning— - Oh, long ago—yo ho!— - And wearing green! How stark and strange a thing - That life should be! - - Oh, mystic mad, a rigadoon of glee, - That dust should rise, and leap alive, and flee - A-foot, a-wing, and shake the deeps with cries— - Oh, far away—yo-hay! - What moony masque, what arrogant disguise - That life should be! - - - THE INNER SILENCE - - Noises that strive to tear - Earth’s mantle soft of air - And break upon the stillness where it dwells: - The noise of battle and the noise of prayer, - The cooing noise of love that softly tells - Joy’s brevity, the brazen noise of laughter— - All these affront me not, nor echo after - Through the long memories. - They may not enter the deep chamber where - Forever silence is. - - Silence more soft than spring hides in the ground - Beneath her budding flowers; - Silence more rich than ever was the sound - Of harps through long warm hours. - It’s like a hidden vastness, even as though - Great suns might there beat out their measures slow, - Nor break the hush mightier than they. - There do I dwell eternally, - There where no thought may follow me, - Nor stillest dreams whose pinions plume the way. - - - LOVE SONG - - I love my life, but not too well - To give it to thee like a flower, - So it may pleasure thee to dwell - Deep in its perfume but an hour. - I love my life, but not too well. - - I love my life, but not too well - To sing it note by note away, - So to thy soul the song may tell - The beauty of the desolate day. - I love my life, but not too well. - - I love my life, but not too well - To cast it like a cloak on thine, - Against the storms that sound and swell - Between thy lonely heart and mine. - I love my life, but not too well. - - - A FAREWELL - - Good-by!—no, do not grieve that it is over, - The perfect hour; - That the winged joy, sweet honey-loving rover, - Flits from the flower. - - Grieve not—it is the law. Love will be flying— - Oh, love and all. - Glad was the living—blessed be the dying! - Let the leaves fall. - - - LULLABY - - My little one, sleep softly - Among the toys and flowers. - Sleep softly, O my first-born son, - Through all the long dark hours. - And if you waken far away - I shall be wandering too. - If far away you run and play - My heart must follow you. - - Sleep softly, O my baby, - And smile down in your sleep. - Here are red rose-buds for your bed— - Smile, and I will not weep. - We made our pledge—you did not fear - To go—why then should I? - Though long you sleep, I shall be near; - So hush—we must not cry. - - Sleep softly, dear one, softly— - They can not part us now; - Forever rest here on my breast, - My kiss upon your brow. - What though they hide a little grave - With dream-flowers false or true? - What difference? We will just be brave - Together—I and you. - - - PAIN - - She heard the children playing in the sun, - And through her window saw the white-stemmed trees - Sway like a film of silver in the breeze - Under the purple hills; and one by one - She noted chairs and cabinets, and spun - The pattern of her bed’s pale draperies: - Yet all the while she knew that each of these - Was a dull lie, in irony begun. - For down in hell she lay, whose livid fires - Love may not quench, whose pangs death may not quell. - The round immensity of earth and sky - Shrank to a point that speared her. Loves, desires, - Darkened to torturing ministers of hell, - Whose mockery of joy deepened the lie. - - Little eternities the black hours were, - That no beginning knew, that knew no end. - Day waned, and night came like a faithless friend, - Bringing no joy; till slowly over her - A numbness grew, and life became a blur, - A silence, an oblivion, a dark blend - Of dim lost agonies, whose downward trend - Led into time’s eternal sepulchre. - And yet, when, after aeons infinite - Of dark eclipse she woke—lo, it was day! - The pictures hung upon the walls, each one; - Under the same rose-patterned coverlet - She lay; spring was still young, and still the play - Of happy children sounded in the sun. - - - THE WATER OUZEL - - Little brown surf-bather of the mountains! - Spirit of foam, lover of cataracts, shaking your wings in falling - waters! - Have you no fear of the roar and rush when Nevada plunges— - Nevada, the shapely dancer, feeling her way with slim white fingers? - How dare you dash at Yosemite the mighty— - Tall, white-limbed Yosemite, leaping down, down, over the cliff? - Is it not enough to lean on the blue air of mountains? - Is it not enough to rest with your mate at timber-line, in bushes that - hug the rocks? - Must you fly through mad waters where the heaped-up granite breaks them? - Must you batter your wings in the torrent? - Must you plunge for life or death through the foam? - - - THE PINE AT TIMBER-LINE - - What has bent you, - Warped and twisted you, - Torn and crippled you?— - What has embittered you, - O lonely tree? - - You search the rocks for a footing, - dragging scrawny roots; - You bare your thin breast to the storms, - and fling out wild arms behind you; - You throw back your witch-like head, - with wisps of hair stringing the wind. - - You fight with the snows, - You rail and shriek at the tempests. - Old before your time, you challenge the cold stars. - - Be still, be satisfied! - Stand straight like your brothers in the valley, - The soft green valley of summer down below. - - Why front the endless winter of the peak? - Why seize the lightning in your riven hands? - Why cut the driven wind and shriek aloud? - - Why tarry here? - - - MOUNTAIN SONG - - I have not where to lay my head; - Upon my breast no child shall lie; - For me no marriage feast is spread: - I walk alone under the sky. - - My staff and scrip I cast away— - Light-burdened to the mountain height! - Climbing the rocky steep by day, - Kindling my fire against the night. - - The bitter hail shall flower the peak, - The icy wind shall dry my tears. - Strong shall I be, who am but weak, - When bright Orion spears my fears. - - Under the horned moon I shall rise - Up-swinging on the scarf of dawn. - The sun, searching with level eyes, - Shall take my hand and lead me on. - - Wide flaming pinions veil the West— - Ah, shall I find? and shall I know? - My feet are bound upon the Quest— - Over the Great Divide I go. - - - - - John G. Neihardt - - - PRAYER FOR PAIN - - I do not pray for peace nor ease, - Nor truce from sorrow: - No suppliant on servile knees - Begs here against to-morrow! - - Lean flame against lean flame we flash, - O Fates that meet me fair; - Blue steel against blue steel we clash— - Lay on, and I shall dare! - - But Thou of deeps the awful Deep, - Thou Breather in the clay, - Grant this my only prayer—Oh, keep - My soul from turning gray! - - For until now, whatever wrought - Against my sweet desires, - My days were smitten harps strung taut, - My nights were slumberous lyres. - - And howsoe’er the hard blow rang - Upon my battered shield, - Some lark-like, soaring spirit sang - Above my battle-field. - - And through my soul of stormy night - The zigzag blue flame ran. - I asked no odds—I fought my fight— - Events against a man. - - But now—at last—the gray mist chokes - And numbs me. Leave me pain! - Oh, let me feel the biting strokes, - That I may fight again! - - - ENVOI - - Oh, seek me not within a tomb— - Thou shalt not find me in the clay! - I pierce a little wall of gloom - To mingle with the day! - - I brothered with the things that pass, - Poor giddy joy and puckered grief; - I go to brother with the grass - And with the sunning leaf. - - Not death can sheathe me in a shroud; - A joy-sword whetted keen with pain, - I join the armies of the cloud, - The lightning and the rain. - - Oh, subtle in the sap athrill, - Athletic in the glad uplift, - A portion of the cosmic will, - I pierce the planet-drift. - - My God and I shall interknit - As rain and ocean, breath and air; - And oh, the luring thought of it - Is prayer! - - - - - Yone Noguchi - - - THE POET - - Out of the deep and the dark, - A sparkling mystery, a shape, - Something perfect, - Comes like the stir of the day: - One whose breath is an odor, - Whose eyes show the road to stars, - The breeze in his face, - The glory of heaven on his back. - He steps like a vision hung in air, - Diffusing the passion of eternity; - His abode is the sunlight of morn, - The music of eve his speech: - In his sight, - One shall turn from the dust of the grave, - And move upward to the woodland. - - - I HAVE CAST THE WORLD - - I have cast the world, - and think me as nothing. - Yet I feel cold on snow-falling day, - And happy on flower day. - - - - - Grace Fallow Norton - - - ALLEGRA AGONISTES - - A gleam of gold in gloom and gray, - A call from out a fairer day. - O pang at heart and ebbing blood! - (Hush, bread and salt should be thy mood, - Stern woman of the Brotherhood.) - - Clamor of golden tones and tunes, - Hunt of faint horns, breath of bassoons; - They wound my soul again; I lie - Face earthward in fresh agony. - Oh, give me joy before I die! - - World, world, I could have danced for thee, - And I had tales and minstrelsy; - Kept fairer, I had been more good. - (Hush, bread and salt should be thy mood, - Soul of the breadless Brotherhood.) - - Some thou hast formed to play thy part, - The bold, the cold, the hard of heart. - Thy rue upon my lips I toss. - Rose was my right. O world, the loss, - When Greek limbs writhe upon the cross! - - - MAKE NO VOWS - - I made a vow once, one only. - I was young and I was lonely. - When I grew strong I said: “This vow - Is too narrow for me now. - Who am I to be bound by old oaths? - I will change them as I change my clothes!” - - But that ancient outworn vow - Was like fetters upon me now. - It was hard to break, hard to break; - Hard to shake from me, hard to shake. - - I broke it by day, but it closed upon me at night. - He is not free who is free only in the sun-light. - He is not free who bears fetters in his dreams, - Nor he who laughs only by dark dream-fed streams. - - Oh, it costs much bright coin of strength to live! - Watch, then, where all your strength you give! - For I, who would be so wild and wondrous now, - Must give, give, to break a burdening bitter vow. - - - I GIVE THANKS - - There’s one that I once loved so much - I am no more the same. - I give thanks for that transforming touch. - I tell you not his name. - - He has become a sign to me - For flowers and for fire. - For song he is a sign to me - And for the broken lyre. - - And I have known him in a book - And never touched his hand. - And he is dead—I need not look - For him through his green land. - - Heaven may not be. I have no faith, - But this desire I have— - To take my soul on my last breath, - To lift it like a wave, - - And surge unto his star and say, - His friendship had been heaven; - And pray, for clouds that closed his day - May light at last be given! - - And say, he shone at noon so bright - I learned to run and rejoice! - And beg him for one last delight— - The true sound of his voice. - - There’s one that once moved me so much - I am no more the same; - And I pray I too, I too, may touch - Some heart with singing flame. - - - - - James Oppenheim - - - THE SLAVE - - They set the slave free, striking off his chains.... - Then he was as much of a slave as ever. - - He was still chained to servility, - He was still manacled to indolence and sloth, - He was still bound by fear and superstition, - By ignorance, suspicion, and savagery ... - His slavery was not in the chains, - But in himself ... - - They can only set free men free ... - And there is no need of that: - Free men set themselves free. - - - THE LONELY CHILD - - Do you think, my boy, when I put my arms around you - To still your fears, - That it is I who conquer the dark and the lonely night? - - My arms seem to wrap love about you, - As your little heart fluttering at my breast - Throbs love through me ... - - But, dear one, it is not your father: - Other arms are about you, drawing you near, - And drawing the Earth near, and the Night near, - And your father near.... - - Some day you shall lie alone at nights, - As now your father lies; - And in those arms, as a leaf fallen on a tranquil stream, - Drift into dreams and healing sleep. - - - NOT OVERLOOKED - - Though I am little as all little things, - Though the stars that pass over my tininess are as the sands of the sea, - Though the garment of the night was made for a sky-giant and does not - fit me, - Though even in a city of men I am as nothing, - Yet at times the gift of life is almost more than I can bear.... - I laugh with joyousness, the morning is a blithe holiday; - And in the overrunning of my hardy bliss praise rises for the very - breath I breathe. - - - How soaked the universe is with life— - Not a cranny but is drenched! - Ah, not even I was overlooked! - - - THE RUNNER IN THE SKIES - - Who is the runner in the skies, - With her blowing scarf of stars, - And our earth and sun hovering like bees about her blossoming heart! - Her feet are on the winds where space is deep; - Her eyes are nebulous and veiled; - She hurries through the night to a far lover. - - - - - Patrick Orr - - - ANNIE SHORE AND JOHNNIE DOON - - Annie Shore, ’twas, sang last night - Down in South End saloon; - A tawdry creature in the light, - Painted cheeks, eyes over bright, - Singing a dance-hall tune. - - I’d be forgetting Annie’s singing— - I’d not have thought again— - But for the thing that cried and fluttered - Through all the shrill refrain: - Youth crying above foul words, cheap music, - And innocence in pain. - - They sentenced Johnnie Doon today - For murder, stark and grim; - Death’s none too dear a price, they say, - For such-like men as him to pay; - No need to pity him! - - And Johnnie Doon I’d not be pitying— - I could forget him now— - But for the childish look of trouble - That fell across his brow, - For the twisting hands he looked at dumbly - As if they’d sinned, he knew not how. - - - IN THE MOHAVE - - As I rode down the arroyo through yuccas belled with bloom - I saw a last year’s stalk lift dried hands to the light, - Like age at prayer for death within a careless room, - Like one by day o’ertaken, whose sick desire is night. - - And as I rode I saw a lean coyote lying - All perfect as in life upon a silver dune, - Save that his feet no more could flee the harsh light’s spying, - Save that no more his shadow would cleave the sinking moon. - - O cruel land, where form endures, the spirit fled! - You chill the sun for me with your gray sphinx’s smile, - Brooding in the bright silence above your captive dead, - Where beat the heart of life so brief, so brief a while! - - - - - Seumas O’Sullivan - - - MY SORROW - - My sorrow that I am not by the little dun, - By the lake of the starlings at Rosses under the hill— - And the larks there, singing over the fields of dew, - Or evening there, and the sedges still! - For plain I see now the length of the yellow sand, - And Lissadell far off and its leafy ways, - And the holy mountain whose mighty heart - Gathers into it all the colored days. - My sorrow that I am not by the little dun, - By the lake of the starlings at evening when all is still— - And still in whispering sedges the herons stand. - ’Tis there I would nestle at rest till the quivering moon - Uprose in the golden quiet over the hill. - - - SPLENDID AND TERRIBLE - - Splendid and terrible your love. - The searing pinions of its flight - Flamed but a moment’s space above - The place where ancient memories keep - Their quiet; and the dreaming deep - Moved inly with a troubled light, - And that old passion woke and stirred - Out of its sleep. - - Splendid and terrible your love. - I hold it to me like a flame; - I hold it like a flame above - The empty anguish of my breast. - There let it stay, there let it rest— - Deep in the heart whereto it came - Of old as some wind-wearied bird - Drops to its nest. - - - THE OTHERS - - From our hidden places, - By a secret path, - We come in the moonlight - To the side of the green rath. - - There the night through - We take our pleasure, - Dancing to such a measure - As earth never knew. - - To dance and lilt - And song without a name, - So sweetly chanted - ’Twould put a bird to shame. - - And many a maiden - Is there, of mortal birth, - Her young eyes laden - With dreams of earth. - - Music so piercing wild - And forest-sweet would bring - Silence on blackbirds singing - Their best in the ear of spring. - - And many a youth entrancèd - Moves slow in the dreamy round, - His brave lost feet enchanted - With the rhythm of faery sound. - - Oh, many a thrush and blackbird - Would fall to the dewy ground, - And pine away in silence - For envy of such a sound. - - So the night through, - In our sad pleasure, - We dance to many a measure - That earth never knew. - - - - - Josephine Preston Peabody - - - CRADLE SONG - - I - - Lord Gabriel, wilt thou not rejoice - When at last a little boy’s - Cheek lies heavy as a rose, - And his eyelids close? - - Gabriel, when that hush may be, - This sweet hand all heedfully - I’ll undo, for thee alone, - From his mother’s own. - - Then the far blue highways paven - With the burning stars of heaven - He shall gladden with the sweet - Hasting of his feet— - - Feet so brightly bare and cool, - Leaping, as from pool to pool; - From a little laughing boy - Splashing rainbow joy! - - Gabriel, wilt thou understand - How to keep his hovering hand— - Never shut, as in a bond, - From the bright beyond? - - Nay, but though it cling and close - Tightly as a clinging rose, - Clasp it only so—aright, - Lest his heart take fright. - - (_Dormi, dormi, tu; - The dusk is hung with blue._) - - II - - Lord Michael, wilt not thou rejoice - When at last a little boy’s - Heart, a shut-in murmuring bee, - Turns him into thee? - - Wilt thou heed thine armor well— - To take his hand from Gabriel, - So his radiant cup of dream - May not spill a gleam? - - He will take thy heart in thrall, - Telling o’er thy breastplate all - Colors, in his bubbling speech, - With his hand to each. - - (_Dormi, dormi, tu, - Sapphire is the blue; - Pearl and beryl, they are called, - Chrysoprase and emerald, - Sard and amethyst. - Numbered so, and kissed._) - - Ah, but find some angel word - For thy sharp, subduing sword! - Yea, Lord Michael, make no doubt - He will find it out: - - (_Dormi, dormi, tu!_) - _His eyes will look at you._ - - III - - Last, a little morning space, - Lead him to that leafy place - Where Our Lady sits awake, - For all mothers’ sake. - - Bosomed with the Blessèd One, - He shall mind her of her Son, - Once so folded from all harms, - In her shrining arms. - - (_In her veil of blue, - Dormi, dormi, tu._) - - So—and fare thee well. - Softly—Gabriel ... - When the first faint red shall come, - Bid the Day-star lead him home— - For the bright world’s sake— - To my heart, awake. - - - THE CEDARS - - All down the years the fragrance came, - The mingled fragrance, with a flame, - Of cedars breathing in the sun, - The cedar-trees of Lebanon. - - O thirst of song in bitter air, - And hope, wing-hurt from iron care, - What balm of myrrh and honey, won - From far-off trees of Lebanon! - - Not from these eyelids yet have I - Ever beheld that early sky. - Why do they call me through the sun?— - Even the trees of Lebanon? - - - A SONG OF SOLOMON - - King Solomon was the wisest man - Of all that have been kings. - He built an House unto the Lord; - And he sang of creeping things. - - Of creeping things, of things that fly, - Or swim within the seas; - Of the little weed along the wall, - And of the cedar-trees. - - And happier he, without mistake, - Than all men since alive. - God’s House he built; and he did make - A thousand songs and five. - - - - - Ezra Pound - - - Δώρια - - Be in me as the eternal moods - of the bleak wind, and not - As transient things are— - gaiety of flowers. - Have me in the strong loneliness - of sunless cliffs - And of gray waters. - Let the gods speak softly of us - In days hereafter, - the shadowy flowers of Orcus - Remember thee. - - - THE RETURN - - See, they return; ah, see the tentative - Movements, and the slow feet, - The trouble in the pace and the uncertain - Wavering! - - See, they return, one, and by one, - With fear, as half-awakened; - As if the snow should hesitate - And murmur in the wind, - and half turn back; - These were the “Wing’d-with-Awe,” - inviolable. - - Gods of that wingèd shoe! - With them the silver hounds, - sniffing the trace of air! - - Haie! Haie! - These were the swift to harry; - These the keen-scented; - These were the souls of blood. - - Slow on the leash, - pallid the leash-men! - - - PICCADILLY - - Beautiful, tragical faces— - Ye that were whole, and are so sunken; - And, O ye vile, ye that might have been loved, - That are so sodden and drunken, - Who hath forgotten you? - - O wistful, fragile faces, few out of many! - - The crass, the coarse, the brazen, - God knows I cannot pity them, perhaps, as I should do; - But oh, ye delicate, wistful faces, - Who hath forgotten you? - - - N. Y. - - My City, my beloved, my white! - Ah, slender, - Listen! Listen to me, and I will breathe into thee a soul. - Delicately upon the reed, attend me! - - _Now do I know that I am mad, - For here are a million people surly with traffic; - This is no maid. - Neither could I play upon any reed if I had one._ - - My City, my beloved, - Thou art a maid with no breasts, - Thou art slender as a silver reed. - Listen to me, attend me! - And I will breathe into thee a soul, - And thou shalt live for ever. - - - THE COMING OF WAR: ACTAEON - - An image of Lethe, - and the fields - Full of faint light - but golden, - Gray cliffs, - and beneath them - A sea - Harsher than granite, - unstill, never ceasing; - - High forms - with the movement of gods, - Perilous aspect; - And one said: - “This is Actaeon.” - Actaeon of golden greaves! - - Over fair meadows, - Over the cool face of that field, - Unstill, ever moving, - Host of an ancient people, - The silent cortège. - - - THE GARDEN - - _En robe de parade. Samain_ - - Like a skein of loose silk blown against a wall - She walks by the railing of a path in Kensington Gardens, - And she is dying piece-meal - of a sort of emotional anemia. - - And round about there is a rabble - Of the filthy, sturdy, unkillable infants of the very poor. - They shall inherit the earth. - - In her is the end of breeding. - Her boredom is exquisite and excessive. - - She would like some one to speak to her, - And is almost afraid that I - will commit that indiscretion. - - - ORTUS - - How have I labored? - How have I not labored - To bring her soul to birth, - To give these elements a name and a centre! - - She is beautiful as the sunlight, and as fluid. - She has no name, and no place. - How have I labored to bring her soul into separation; - To give her a name and her being! - - Surely you are bound and entwined, - You are mingled with the elements unborn; - I have loved a stream and a shadow. - - I beseech you enter your life. - I beseech you learn to say “I” - When I question you: - For you are no part, but a whole; - No portion, but a being. - - - THE CHOICE - - It is true that you say the gods are more use to you than fairies, - But for all that I have seen you on a high, white, noble horse, - Like some strange queen in a story. - - It is odd that you should be covered with long robes and trailing - tendrils and flowers; - - It is odd that you should be changing your face and resembling some - other woman to plague me; - It is odd that you should be hiding yourself in the cloud of beautiful - women, who do not concern me. - - And I, who follow every seed-leaf upon the wind! - They will say that I deserve this. - - - THE GARRET - - Come let us pity those who are better off than we are. - Come, my friend, and remember - that the rich have butlers and no friends, - And we have friends and no butlers. - Come let us pity the married and the unmarried. - - Dawn enters with little feet - like a gilded Pavlova, - And I am near my desire. - Nor has life in it aught better - Than this hour of clear coolness, - the hour of waking together. - - - DANCE FIGURE - - _For the Marriage in Cana of Galilee_ - - Dark-eyed, - O woman of my dreams, - Ivory sandaled, - There is none like thee among the dancers, - None with swift feet. - - I have not found thee in the tents, - In the broken darkness. - I have not found thee at the well-head - Among the women with pitchers. - - - Thine arms are as a young sapling under the bark; - Thy face as a river with lights. - - White as an almond are thy shoulders; - As new almonds stripped from the husk. - - They guard thee not with eunuchs; - Not with bars of copper. - Gilt turquoise and silver are in the place of thy rest. - A brown robe, with threads of gold woven in patterns, hast thou gathered - about thee, - O Nathat-Ikanaie, “Tree-at-the-river.” - - As a rillet among the sedge are thy hands upon me; - Thy fingers a frosted stream. - - Thy maidens are white like pebbles; - Their music about thee! - - There is none like thee among the dancers; - None with swift feet. - - - FROM “NEAR PÉRIGORD” - - _Ed eran due in uno, ed uno in due. Inferno, XXVIII, 125._ - - I loved a woman. The stars fell from heaven. - And always our two natures were in strife. - Bewildering spring, and by the Auvezère - Poppies and day’s eyes in the green émail - Rose over us; and we knew all that stream, - And our two horses had traced out the valleys; - Knew the low flooded lands squared out with poplars, - In the young days when the deep sky befriended. - And great wings beat above us in the twilight, - And the great wheels in heaven - Bore us together ... surging ... and apart ... - Believing we should meet with lips and hands. - - High, high and sure ... and then the counterthrust: - “Why do you love me? Will you always love me? - But I am like the grass, I can not love you.” - Or, “Love, and I love and love you, - And hate your mind, not _you_, your soul, your hands.” - - So to this last estrangement, Tairiran! - - There shut up in his castle, Tairiran’s, - She who had nor ears nor tongue save in her hands, - Gone—ah, gone—untouched, unreachable! - She who could never live save through one person, - She who could never speak save to one person, - And all the rest of her a shifting change, - A broken bundle of mirrors ... ! - - - AN IMMORALITY - - Sing we for love and idleness, - Naught else is worth the having. - - Though I have been in many a land, - There is naught else in living. - - And I would rather have my sweet, - Though rose-leaves die of grieving, - - Than do high deeds in Hungary - To pass all men’s believing. - - - THE STUDY IN AESTHETICS - - The very small children in patched clothing, - Being smitten with an unusual wisdom, - Stopped in their play as she passed them - And cried up from their cobbles: - _Guarda! Ahi, guarda! ch’e b’ea!_ - - But three years after this - I heard the young Dante, whose last name I do not know— - For there are, in Sirmione, twenty-eight young Dantes and thirty-four - Catulli; - And there had been a great catch of sardines, - And his elders - Were packing them in the great wooden boxes - For the market in Brescia, and he - Leapt about, snatching at the bright fish - And getting in both of their ways; - And in vain they commanded him to _sta fermo_! - And when they would not let him arrange - The fish in the boxes - He stroked those which were already arranged, - Murmuring for his own satisfaction - This identical phrase: - _Ch’e b’ea_. - - And at this I was mildly abashed. - - - FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS - - Come, my songs, let us express our baser passions. - Let us express our envy for the man with a steady job and no worry about - the future. - - You are very idle, my songs; - I fear you will come to a bad end. - - You stand about the streets. You loiter at the corners and bus-stops, - You do next to nothing at all. - You do not even express our inner nobility; - You will come to a very bad end. - - And I? I have gone half cracked. - I have talked to you so much that I almost see you about me, - Insolent little beasts! Shameless! Devoid of clothing! - - But you, newest song of the lot, - You are not old enough to have done much mischief. - I will get you a green coat out of China - With dragons worked upon it. - I will get you the scarlet silk trousers - From the statue of the infant Christ at Santa Maria Novella; - - Lest they say we are lacking in taste, - Or that there is no caste in this family. - - - VILLANELLE: THE PSYCHOLOGICAL HOUR - - I - - I had over-prepared the event— - that much was ominous. - With middle-aging care - I had laid out just the right books, - I almost turned down the right pages. - - _Beauty is so rare a thing ... - So few drink of my fountain._ - - So much barren regret! - So many hours wasted! - And now I watch from the window - rain, wandering busses. - Their little cosmos is shaken— - the air is alive with that fact. - In their parts of the city - they are played on by diverse forces; - - I had over-prepared the event. - _Beauty is so rare a thing ... - So few drink at my fountain._ - - Two friends: a breath of the forest ... - Friends? Are people less friends - because one has just, at last, found them? - - Twice they promised to come. - “_Between the night and morning_?” - - _Beauty would drink of my mind._ - Youth would awhile forget - my youth is gone from me. - Youth would hear speech of beauty. - - II - - (“Speak up! You have danced so stiffly? - Someone admired your works, - And said so frankly. - - “Did you talk like a fool, - The first night? - The second evening?” - - “_But_ they promised again: - ‘Tomorrow at tea-time.’”) - - III - - Now the third day is here— - no word from either; - No word from her nor him, - Only another man’s note: - “Dear Pound, I am leaving England.” - - - BALLAD OF THE GOODLY FERE - - _Simon Zelotes speaketh it somewhile after the Crucifixion._ - - Ha’ we lost the goodliest fere o’ all - For the priests and the gallows tree? - Aye lover he was of brawny men, - O’ ships and the open sea. - - When they came wi’ a host to take Our Man - His smile was good to see, - “First let these go!” quo’ our Goodly Fere, - “Or I’ll see ye damned,” says he. - - Aye he sent us out through the crossed high spears - And the scorn of his laugh rang free, - “Why took ye not me when I walked about - Alone in the town?” says he. - - Oh we drank his “Hale” in the good red wine - When we last made company. - No capon priest was the Goodly Fere, - But a man o’ men was he. - - I ha’ seen him drive a hundred men - Wi’ a bundle o’ cords swung free, - That they took the high and holy house - For their pawn and treasury. - - They’ll no’ get him a’ in a book, I think, - Though they write it cunningly; - No mouse of the scrolls was the Goodly Fere - But aye loved the open sea. - - If they think they ha’ snared our Goodly Fere - They are fools to the last degree. - “I’ll go to the feast,” quo’ our Goodly Fere, - “Though I go to the gallows tree.” - - “Ye ha’ seen me heal the lame and blind, - And wake the dead,” says he. - “Ye shall see one thing to master all: - ’Tis how a brave man dies on the tree.” - - A son of God was the Goodly Fere - That bade us his brothers be. - I ha’ seen him cow a thousand men. - I have seen him upon the tree. - - He cried no cry when they drave the nails - And the blood gushed hot and free. - The hounds of the crimson sky gave tongue, - But never a cry cried he. - - I ha’ seen him cow a thousand men - On the hills o’ Galilee. - They whined as he walked out calm between, - Wi’ his eyes like the gray o’ the sea. - - Like the sea that brooks no voyaging, - With the winds unleashed and free, - Like the sea that he cowed at Genseret - Wi’ twey words spoke suddently. - - A master of men was the Goodly Fere, - A mate of the wind and sea. - If they think they ha’ slain our Goodly Fere - They are fools eternally. - - I ha’ seen him eat o’ the honey-comb - Sin’ they nailed him to the tree. - - - BALLAD FOR GLOOM - - For God, our God, is a gallant foe - That playeth behind the veil. - - I have loved my God as a child at heart - That seeketh deep bosoms for rest, - I have loved my God as maid to man— - But lo, this thing is best: - - To love your God as a gallant foe - that plays behind the veil, - To meet your God as the night winds meet - beyond Arcturus’ pale. - - I have played with God for a woman, - I have staked with my God for truth, - I have lost to my God as a man, clear-eyed— - His dice be not of ruth. - - For I am made as a naked blade, - But hear ye this thing in sooth: - - Who loseth to God as man to man - Shall win at the turn of the game. - I have drawn my blade where the lightnings meet - But the ending is the same: - Who loseth to God as the sword blades lose - Shall win at the end of the game. - For God, our God, is a gallant foe - that playeth behind the veil. - Whom God deigns not to overthrow - hath need of triple mail. - - - LA FRAISNE - - _Scene: The Ash Wood of Malvern_ - - For I was a gaunt, grave councillor, - Being in all things wise, and very old; - But I have put aside this folly and the cold - That old age weareth for a cloak. - - I was quite strong—at least they said so— - The young men at the sword-play; - But I have put aside this folly, being gay - In another fashion that more suiteth me. - - I have curled mid the boles of the ash wood, - I have hidden my face where the oak - Spread his leaves over me, and the yoke - Of the old ways of men have I cast aside. - - By the still pool of Mar-nan-otha - Have I found me a bride - That was a dog-wood tree some syne. - She hath called me from mine old ways; - She hath hushed my rancor of council, - Bidding me praise - - Naught but the wind that flutters in the leaves. - - She hath drawn me from mine old ways, - Till men say that I am mad; - But I have seen the sorrow of men, and am glad, - For I know that the wailing and bitterness are a folly. - And I? I have put aside all folly and all grief. - I wrapped my tears in an ellum leaf - And left them under a stone; - And now men call me mad because I have thrown - All folly from me, putting it aside - To leave the old barren ways of men, - Because my bride - Is a pool of the wood; and - Though all men say that I am mad - It is only that I am glad— - Very glad, for my bride hath toward me a great love - That is sweeter than the love of women - That plague and burn and drive one away. - - Aie-e! ’Tis true that I am gay, - Quite gay, for I have her alone here - And no man troubleth us. - - Once when I was among the young men ... - And they said I was quite strong, among the young men ... - Once there was a woman ... - ... but I forget ... she was ... - ... I hope she will not come again. - - ... I do not remember ... - I think she hurt me once, but ... - That was very long ago. - - I do not like to remember things any more. - - I like one little band of winds that blow - In the ash trees here: - For we are quite alone, - Here mid the ash trees. - - - THE RIVER-MERCHANT’S WIFE: A LETTER - - While my hair was still cut straight across my forehead - I played about the front gate, pulling flowers. - You came by on bamboo stilts, playing horse; - You walked about my seat, playing with blue plums. - And we went on living in the village of Chokan: - Two small people, without dislike or suspicion. - - At fourteen I married My Lord you. - I never laughed, being bashful. - Lowering my head, I looked at the wall. - Called to, a thousand times, I never looked back. - - At fifteen I stopped scowling, - I desired my dust to be mingled with yours - Forever and forever, and forever. - Why should I climb the look-out? - - At sixteen you departed, - You went into far Ku-to-Yen, by the river of swirling eddies, - And you have been gone five months. - The monkeys make sorrowful noise overhead. - You dragged your feet when you went out. - By the gate now, the moss is grown, the different mosses, - Too deep to clear them away! - The leaves fall early this autumn, in wind. - The paired butterflies are already yellow with August - Over the grass in the west garden— - They hurt me. - I grow older. - If you are coming down through the narrows of the river, - Please let me know beforehand, - And I will come out to meet you, - As far as Cho-fu-Sa. - _From the Chinese of Li Po._ - - - EXILE’S LETTER - -_From the Chinese of Li Po, usually considered the greatest poet of -China: written by him while in exile about 760 A. D., to the Hereditary -War-Councillor of Sho, “recollecting former companionship.”_ - - So-Kin of Rakuho, ancient friend, I now remember - That you built me a special tavern, - By the south side of the bridge at Ten-Shin. - With yellow gold and white jewels - we paid for the songs and laughter, - And we were drunk for month after month, - forgetting the kings and princes. - Intelligent men came drifting in, from the sea - and from the west border, - And with them, and with you especially, - there was nothing at cross-purpose; - And they made nothing of sea-crossing - or of mountain-crossing, - If only they could be of that fellowship. - And we all spoke out our hearts and minds ... - and without regret. - And then I was sent off to South Wei, - smothered in laurel groves, - And you to the north of Raku-hoku, - Till we had nothing but thoughts and memories between us. - And when separation had come to its worst - We met, and travelled together into Sen-Go - Through all the thirty-six folds of the turning and twisting waters; - Into a valley of a thousand bright flowers ... - that was the first valley, - And on into ten thousand valleys - full of voices and pine-winds. - With silver harness and reins of gold, - prostrating themselves on the ground, - Out came the East-of-Kan foreman and his company; - And there came also the “True-man” of Shi-yo to meet me, - Playing on a jewelled mouth-organ. - In the storied houses of San-Ko they gave us - more Sennin music; - Many instruments, like the sound of young phœnix broods. - And the foreman of Kan-Chu, drunk, - Danced because his long sleeves - Wouldn’t keep still, with that music playing. - And I, wrapped in brocade, went to sleep with my head on his lap, - And my spirit so high that it was all over the heavens. - - - And before the end of the day we were scattered like stars or rain. - I had to be off to So, far away over the waters, - You back to your river-bridge. - And your father, who was brave as a leopard, - Was governor in Hei Shu and put down the barbarian rabble. - And one May he had you send for me, despite the long distance; - And what with broken wheels and so on, I won’t say it wasn’t hard - going ... - Over roads twisted like sheep’s guts. - And I was still going, late in the year, - in the cutting wind from the north, - And thinking how little you cared for the cost ... - and you caring enough to pay it. - Then what a reception! - Red jade cups, food well set, on a blue jewelled table; - And I was drunk, and had no thought of returning; - And you would walk out with me to the western corner of the castle, - To the dynastic temple, with the water about it clear as blue jade, - With boats floating, and the sound of mouth-organs and drums, - With ripples like dragon-scales going grass-green on the water, - Pleasure lasting, with courtezans going and coming without hindrance, - With the willow-flakes falling like snow, - And the vermilioned girls getting drunk about sunset, - And the waters a hundred feet deep reflecting green eyebrows— - Eyebrows painted green are a fine sight in young moonlight, - Gracefully painted—and the girls singing back at each other, - Dancing in transparent brocade, - And the wind lifting the song, and interrupting it, - Tossing it up under the clouds. - - - And all this comes to an end, - And is not again to be met with. - I went up to the court for examination, - Tried Layu’s luck, offered the Choyu song, - And got no promotion, - And went back to the East Mountains white-headed. - - And once again we met, later, at the South Bridge head. - And then the crowd broke up—you went north to San palace. - And if you ask how I regret that parting? - It is like the flowers falling at spring’s end, - confused, whirled in a tangle. - What is the use of talking! And there is no end of talking— - There is no end of things in the heart. - - I call in the boy, - Have him sit on his knees to write and seal this, - And I send it a thousand miles, thinking. - - (_Translated by Ezra Pound from the notes of the late Ernest - Fenollosa, and the decipherings of the Professors Mori and Araga._) - - - - - John Reed - - - SANGAR - - _To Lincoln Steffens_ - - Somewhere I read a strange, old, rusty tale - Smelling of war; most curiously named - _The Mad Recreant Knight of the West_. - Once, you have read, the round world brimmed with hate, - Stirred and revolted, flashed unceasingly - Facets of cruel splendor. And the strong - Harried the weak ... - Long past, long past, praise God, - In these fair, peaceful, happy days. - - _The Tale_: - - Eastward the Huns break border, - Surf on a rotten dyke; - They have murdered the Eastern Warder - (His head on a pike). - “Arm thee, arm thee, my father! - Swift rides the Goddes-bane, - And the high nobles gather - On the plain!” - - “O blind world-wrath!” cried Sangar, - “Greatly I killed in youth; - I dreamed men had done with anger - Through Goddes truth!” - Smiled the boy then in faint scorn, - Hard with the battle-thrill; - “Arm thee, loud calls the war-horn - And shrill!” - - He has bowed to the voice stentorian, - Sick with thought of the grave— - He has called for his battered morion - And his scarred glaive. - On the boy’s helm a glove - Of the Duke’s daughter— - In his eyes splendor of love - And slaughter. - - Hideous the Hun advances - Like a sea-tide on sand; - Unyielding, the haughty lances - Make dauntless stand. - And ever amid the clangor, - Butchering Hun and Hun, - With sorrowful face rides Sangar - And his son.... - - Broken is the wild invader - (Sullied, the whole world’s fountains); - They have penned the murderous raider - With his back to the mountains. - Yet though what had been mead - Is now a bloody lake, - Still drink swords where men bleed, - Nor slake. - - Now leaps one into the press— - The hell ’twixt front and front— - Sangar, bloody and torn of dress - (He has borne the brunt). - “Hold!” cries, “Peace! God’s peace! - Heed ye what Christus says—” - And the wild battle gave surcease - In amaze. - - “When will ye cast out hate? - Brothers—my mad, mad brothers— - Mercy, ere it be too late, - These are sons of your mothers. - For sake of Him who died on Tree, - Who of all creatures, loved the least—” - “Blasphemer! God of Battles, He!” - Cried a priest. - - “Peace!” and with his two hands - Has broken in twain his glaive. - Weaponless, smiling he stands— - (Coward or brave?) - “Traitor!” howls one rank, “Think ye - The Hun be our brother?” - And “Fear we to die, craven, think ye?” - The other. - - Then sprang his son to his side, - His lips with slaver were wet, - For he had felt how men died - And was lustful yet; - (On his bent helm a glove - Of the Duke’s daughter, - In his eyes splendor of love - And slaughter)— - - Shouting, “Father no more of mine! - Shameful old man—abhorr’d, - First traitor of all our line!” - Up the two-handed sword. - He smote—fell Sangar—and then - Screaming, red, the boy ran - Straight at the foe, and again - Hell began.... - - Oh, there was joy in Heaven when Sangar came. - Sweet Mary wept, and bathed and bound his wounds, - And God the Father healed him of despair, - And Jesus gripped his hand, and laughed and laughed.... - - - - - Ernest Rhys - - - DAGONET’S CANZONET - - A queen lived in the South; - And music was her mouth, - And sunshine was her hair, - By day, and all the night - The drowsy embers there - Remember’d still the light; - _My soul, was she not fair!_ - - But for her eyes—they made - An iron man afraid; - Like sky-blue pools they were, - Watching the sky that knew - Itself transmuted there - Light blue, or deeper blue; - _My soul, was she not fair!_ - - The lifting of her hands - Made laughter in the lands - Where the sun is, in the South: - But my soul learnt sorrow there - In the secrets of her mouth, - Her eyes, her hands, her hair: - _O soul, was she not fair!_ - - - A SONG OF HAPPINESS - - Ah, Happiness: - Who called you “Earandel”? - (Winter-star, I think, that is); - And who can tell the lovely curve - By which you seem to come, then swerve - Before you reach the middle-earth? - And who is there can hold your wing, - Or bind you in your mirth, - Or win you with a least caress, - Or tear, or kiss, or anything— - Insensate Happiness? - - Once I thought to have you - Fast there in a child: - All her heart she gave you, - Yet you would not stay. - Cruel, and careless, - Not half reconciled, - Pain you cannot bear; - When her yellow hair - Lay matted, every tress; - When those looks of hers, - Were no longer hers, - You went: in a day - She wept you all away. - - Once I thought to give - You, plighted, holily— - No more fugitive, - Returning like the sea: - But they that share so well - Heaven must portion Hell - In their copartnery: - Care, ill fate, ill health, - Came we know not how - And broke our commonwealth. - Neither has you now. - - Some wait you on the road, - Some in an open door - Look for the face you showed - Once there—no more. - You never wear the dress - You danced in yesterday; - Yet, seeming gone, you stay, - And come at no man’s call: - Yet, laid for burial, - You lift up from the dead - Your laughing, spangled head. - - Yes, once I did pursue - You, unpursuable; - Loved, longed for, hoped for you— - Blue-eyed and morning brow’d. - Ah, lovely Happiness! - Now that I know you well, - I dare not speak aloud - Your fond name in a crowd; - Nor conjure you by night, - Nor pray at morning-light, - Nor count at all on you: - - But, at a stroke, a breath, - After the fear of death, - Or bent beneath a load; - Yes, ragged in the dress, - And houseless on the road, - I might surprise you there. - Yes: who of us shall say - When you will come, or where? - Ask children at their play, - The leaves upon the tree, - The ships upon the sea, - Or old men who survived, - And lived, and loved, and wived. - Ask sorrow to confess - Your sweet improvidence, - And prodigal expense - And cold economy, - Ah, lovely Happiness! - - - - - Edwin Arlington Robinson - - - THE MASTER - - _Lincoln as he appeared to one soon after the Civil War_ - - A flying word from here and there - Had sown the name at which we sneered, - But soon the name was everywhere, - To be reviled and then revered: - A presence to be loved and feared, - We cannot hide it, or deny - That we, the gentlemen who jeered, - May be forgotten by and by. - - He came when days were perilous - And hearts of men were sore beguiled, - And having made his note of us, - He pondered and was reconciled. - Was ever master yet so mild - As he, and so untamable? - We doubted, even when he smiled, - Not knowing what he knew so well. - - He knew that undeceiving fate - Would shame us whom he served unsought; - He knew that he must wince and wait— - The jest of those for whom he fought; - He knew devoutly what he thought - Of us and of our ridicule; - He knew that we must all be taught - Like little children in a school. - - We gave a glamour to the task - That he encountered and saw through; - But little of us did he ask, - And little did we ever do. - And what appears if we review - The season when we railed and chaffed?— - It is the face of one who knew - That we were learning while we laughed. - - The face that in our vision feels - Again the venom that we flung, - Transfigured, to the world reveals - The vigilance to which we clung. - Shrewd, hallowed, harassed, and among - The mysteries that are untold— - The face we see was never young, - Nor could it ever have been old. - - For he, to whom we had applied - Our shopman’s test of age and worth, - Was elemental when he died, - As he was ancient at his birth: - The saddest among kings of earth, - Bowed with a galling crown, this man - Met rancor with a cryptic mirth, - Laconic—and Olympian. - - The love, the grandeur, and the fame - Are bounded by the world alone; - The calm, the smouldering, and the flame - Of awful patience were his own: - With him they are forever flown - Past all our fond self-shadowings, - Wherewith we cumber the Unknown - As with inept, Icarian wings. - - For we were not as other men: - ’Twas ours to soar and his to see. - But we are coming down again, - And we shall come down pleasantly; - Nor shall we longer disagree - On what it is to be sublime, - But flourish in our perigee - And have one Titan at a time. - - - JOHN GORHAM - - “Tell me what you’re doing over here, John Gorham— - Sighing hard and seeming to be sorry when you’re not. - Make me laugh or let me go now, for long faces in the moonlight - Are a sign for me to say again a word that you forgot.” - - “I’m over here to tell you what the moon already - May have said or maybe shouted ever since a year ago; - I’m over here to tell you what you are, Jane Wayland, - And to make you rather sorry, I should say, for being so.” - - “Tell me what you’re saying to me now, John Gorham, - Or you’ll never see as much of me as ribbons any more; - I’ll vanish in as many ways as I have toes and fingers, - And you’ll not follow far for one where flocks have been before.” - - “I’m sorry now you never saw the flocks, Jane Wayland; - But you’re the one to make of them as many as you need. - And then about the vanishing: it’s I who mean to vanish; - And when I’m here no longer you’ll be done with me indeed.” - - “That’s a way to tell me what I am, John Gorham! - How am I to know myself until I make you smile? - Try to look as if the moon were making faces at you, - And a little more as if you meant to stay a little while.” - - “You are what it is that over rose-blown gardens - Makes a pretty flutter for a season in the sun. - You are what it is that with a mouse, Jane Wayland, - Catches him and let’s him go and eats him up for fun.” - - “Sure I never took you for a mouse, John Gorham. - All you say is easy, but so far from being true - That I wish you wouldn’t ever be again the one to think so; - For it isn’t cats and butterflies that I would be to you.” - - “All your little animals are in one picture— - One I’ve had before me since a year ago to-night; - And the picture where they live will be of you, Jane Wayland, - Till you find a way to kill them or to keep them out of sight.” - - “Won’t you ever see me as I am, John Gorham, - Leaving out the foolishness and all I never meant? - Somewhere in me there’s a woman, if you know the way to find her— - Will you like me any better if I prove it and repent?” - - “I doubt if I shall ever have the time, Jane Wayland; - And I dare say all this moonlight lying round us might as well - Fall for nothing on the shards of broken urns that are forgotten, - As on two that have no longer much of anything to tell.” - - - RICHARD CORY - - Whenever Richard Cory went down town, - We people on the pavement looked at him: - He was a gentleman from sole to crown, - Clean favored, and imperially slim. - - And he was always quietly arrayed, - And he was always human when he talked; - But still he fluttered pulses when he said, - “Good-morning,” and he glittered when he walked. - - And he was rich—yes, richer than a king, - And admirably schooled in every grace: - In fine, we thought that he was everything - To make us wish that we were in his place. - - So on we worked, and waited for the light, - And went without the meat, and cursed the bread; - And Richard Cory, one calm summer night, - Went home and put a bullet through his head. - - - THE GROWTH OF LORRAINE - - I - - While I stood listening, discreetly dumb, - Lorraine was having the last word with me: - “I know,” she said, “I know it, but you see - Some creatures are born fortunate, and some - Are born to be found out and overcome— - Born to be slaves, to let the rest go free; - And if I’m one of them (and I must be) - You may as well forget me and go home. - - “You tell me not to say these things, I know, - But I should never try to be content: - I’ve gone too far; the life would be too slow. - Some could have done it—some girls have the stuff; - But I can’t do it—I don’t know enough. - I’m going to the devil.” And she went. - - II - - I did not half believe her when she said - That I should never hear from her again; - Nor when I found a letter from Lorraine, - Was I surprised or grieved at what I read: - “Dear friend, when you find this, I shall be dead. - You are too far away to make me stop. - They say that one drop—think of it, one drop!— - Will be enough; but I’ll take five instead. - - “You do not frown because I call you friend; - For I would have you glad that I still keep - Your memory, and even at the end— - Impenitent, sick, shattered—cannot curse - The love that flings, for better or for worse, - This worn-out, cast-out flesh of mine to sleep.” - - - CASSANDRA - - I heard one who said: “Verily, - What word have I for children here? - Your Dollar is your only Word, - The wrath of it your only fear. - - “You build it altars tall enough - To make you see, but you are blind; - You cannot leave it long enough - To look before you or behind. - - “When Reason beckons you to pause, - You laugh and say that you know best; - But what it is you know, you keep - As dark as ingots in a chest. - - “You laugh and answer, ‘We are young; - Oh, leave us now, and let us grow:’ - Not asking how much more of this - Will Time endure or Fate bestow. - - “Because a few complacent years - Have made your peril of your pride, - Think you that you are to go on - Forever pampered and untried? - - “What lost eclipse of history, - What bivouac of the marching stars, - Has given the sign for you to see - Millenniums and last great wars? - - “What unrecorded overthrow - Of all the world has ever known, - Or ever been, has made itself - So plain to you, and you alone? - - “Your Dollar, Dove and Eagle make - A Trinity that even you - Rate higher than you rate yourselves; - It pays, it flatters, and it’s new. - - “And though your very flesh and blood - Be what your Eagle eats and drinks, - You’ll praise him for the best of birds, - Not knowing what the Eagle thinks. - - “The power is yours, but not the sight; - You see not upon what you tread; - You have the ages for your guide, - But not the wisdom to be led. - - “Think you to tread forever down - The merciless old verities? - And are you never to have eyes - To see the world for what it is? - - “Are you to pay for what you have - With all you are?”—No other word - We caught, but with a laughing crowd - Moved on. None heeded, and few heard. - - - - - Carl Sandburg - - - CHICAGO - - Hog-Butcher for the World, - Tool-maker, Stacker of Wheat, - Player with Railroads and the Nation’s Freight-handler; - Stormy, husky, brawling, - City of the Big Shoulders: - - They tell me you are wicked and I believe them, for I have seen your - painted women under the gas lamps luring the farm boys. - And they tell me you are crooked, and I answer, Yes, it is true I have - seen the gunman kill and go free to kill again. - And they tell me you are brutal and my reply is, On the faces of women - and children I have seen the marks of wanton hunger. - - And having answered so I turn once more to those who sneer at this my - city, and I give them back the sneer and say to them: - Come and show me another city with lifted head singing so proud to be - alive and coarse and strong and cunning. - Flinging magnetic curses amid the toil of piling job on job, here is a - tall bold slugger set vivid against the little soft cities; - Fierce as a dog with tongue lapping for action, cunning as a savage - pitted against the wilderness, - Bareheaded, - Shoveling, - Wrecking, - Planning, - Building, breaking, rebuilding, - Under the smoke, dust all over his mouth, laughing with white teeth, - Under the terrible burden of destiny laughing as a young man laughs, - Laughing even as an ignorant fighter laughs who has never lost a battle, - Bragging and laughing that under his wrist is the pulse, and under his - ribs the heart of the people, - Laughing! - Laughing the stormy, husky, brawling laughter of youth; half-naked, - sweating, proud to be Hog-butcher, Tool-maker, Stacker of Wheat, - Player with Railroads, and Freight-handler to the Nation. - - - THE HARBOR - - Passing through huddled and ugly walls, - By doorways where women haggard - Looked from their hunger-deep eyes, - Haunted with shadows of hunger-hands, - Out from the huddled and ugly walls, - I came sudden, at the city’s edge, - On a blue burst of lake, - Long lake waves breaking under the sun - On a spray-flung curve of shore; - And a fluttering storm of gulls, - Masses of great gray wings - And flying white bellies - Veering and wheeling free in the open. - - - SKETCH - - The shadows of the ships - Rock on the crest - In the low blue lustre - Of the tardy and the soft inrolling tide. - - A long brown bar at the dip of the sky - Puts an arm of sand in the span of salt. - - The lucid and endless wrinkles - Draw in, lapse and withdraw. - Wavelets crumble and white spent bubbles - Wash on the floor of the beach. - - Rocking on the crest - In the low blue lustre - Are the shadows of the ships. - - - LOST - - Desolate and lone - All night long on the lake - Where fog trails and mist creeps, - The whistle of a boat - Calls and cries unendingly, - Like some lost child - In tears and trouble - Hunting the harbor’s breast - And the harbor’s eyes. - - - JAN KUBELIK - - Your bow swept over a string, and a long low note quivered to the air. - (A mother of Bohemia sobs over a new child, perfect, learning to suck - milk.) - - Your bow ran fast over all the high strings fluttering and wild. - (All the girls in Bohemia are laughing on a Sunday afternoon in the - hills with their lovers.) - - - AT A WINDOW - - Give me hunger, - O you gods that sit and give - The world its orders. - Give me hunger, pain and want, - Shut me out with shame and failure - From your doors of gold and fame, - Give me your shabbiest, weariest hunger! - - But leave me a little love, - A voice to speak to me in the day end, - A hand to touch me in the dark room - Breaking the long loneliness. - - In the dusk of day-shapes - Blurring the sunset, - One little wandering, western star - Thrust out from the changing shores of shadow. - Let me go to the window, - Watch there the day-shapes of dusk, - And wait and know the coming - Of a little love. - - - THE POOR - - Among the mountains I wandered and saw blue haze and red crag and was - amazed; - On the beach where the long push under the endless tide maneuvers, I - stood silent; - Under the stars on the prairie watching the Dipper slant over the - horizon’s grass, I was full of thoughts. - Great men, pageants of war and labor, soldiers and workers, - mothers lifting their children—these all I touched, and felt the solemn - thrill of them. - And then one day I got a true look at the Poor, millions of the Poor, - patient and toiling; more patient than crags, tides, and stars; - innumerable, patient as the darkness of night—and all broken, humble - ruins of nations. - - - THE ROAD AND THE END - - I shall foot it - Down the roadway in the dusk, - Where shapes of hunger wander - And the fugitives of pain go by. - - I shall foot it - In the silence of the morning, - See the night slur into dawn, - Hear the slow great winds arise - Where tall trees flank the way - And shoulder toward the sky. - - The broken boulders by the road - Shall not commemorate my ruin. - Regret shall be the gravel under foot. - I shall watch for - Slim birds swift of wing - That go where wind and ranks of thunder - Dive the wild processionals of rain. - - The dust of the travelled road - Shall touch my hands and face. - - - KILLERS - - I am singing to you - Soft as a man with a dead child speaks; - Hard as a man in handcuffs, - Held where he can not move: - - Under the sun - Are sixteen million men, - Chosen for shining teeth, - Sharp eyes, hard legs, - And a running of young warm blood in their wrists. - - And a red juice runs on the green grass; - And a red juice soaks the dark soil. - And the sixteen million are killing ... and killing and killing. - - I never forget them day or night: - They beat on my head for memory of them; - They pound on my heart and I cry back to them, - To their homes and women, dreams and games. - - I wake in the night and smell the trenches, - And hear the low stir of sleepers in lines— - Sixteen million sleepers and pickets in the dark: - Some of them long sleepers for always, - Some of them tumbling to sleep to-morrow for always, - Fixed in the drag of the world’s heartbreak, - Eating and drinking, toiling ... on a long job of killing. - - Sixteen million men. - - - NOCTURNE IN A DESERTED BRICKYARD - - Stuff of the moon - Runs on the lapping sand - Out to the longest shadows. - Under the curving willows, - And round the creep of the wave line, - Fluxions of yellow and dusk on the waters - Make a wide dreaming pansy of an old pond in the night. - - - HANDFULS - - Blossoms of babies - Blinking their stories - Come soft - On the dusk and the babble; - Little red gamblers, - Handfuls that slept in the dust. - - Summers of rain, - Winters of drift, - Tell off the years; - And they go back - - Who came soft— - Back to the sod, - To silence and dust; - Gray gamblers, - Handfuls again. - - - UNDER THE HARVEST MOON - - Under the harvest moon, - When the soft silver - Drips shimmering - Over the garden nights, - Death, the gray mocker, - Comes and whispers to you - As a beautiful friend - Who remembers. - - Under the summer roses - When the flagrant crimson - Lurks in the dusk - Of the wild red leaves, - Love, with little hands, - Comes and touches you - With a thousand memories, - And asks you - Beautiful, unanswerable questions. - - - CHOOSE - - The single clenched fist lifted and ready, - Or the open asking hand held out and waiting. - Choose: - For we meet by one or the other. - - - KIN - - Brother, I am fire - Surging under the ocean floor. - I shall never meet you, brother— - Not for years, anyhow; - Maybe thousands of years, brother. - Then I will warm you, - Hold you close, wrap you in circles, - Use you and change you— - Maybe thousands of years, brother. - - - PLACES - - Roses and gold - For you today, - And the flash of flying flags. - - I will have - Ashes, - Dust in my hair, - Crushes of hoofs. - - Your name - Fills the mouth - Of rich man and poor. - Women bring - Armfuls of flowers - And throw on you. - - I go hungry - Down in dreams - And loneliness, - Across the rain - To slashed hills - Where men wait and hope for me. - - - JOY - - Let a joy keep you. - Reach out your hands - And take it when it runs by, - As the Apache dancer - Clutches his woman. - I have seen them - Live long and laugh loud, - Sent on singing, singing, - Smashed to the heart - Under the ribs - With a terrible love. - Joy always, - Joy everywhere— - Let joy kill you! - Keep away from the little deaths. - - - THE GREAT HUNT - - I can not tell you now; - When the wind’s drive and whirl - Blow me along no longer, - And the wind’s a whisper at last— - Maybe I’ll tell you then— - some other time. - - When the rose’s flash to the sunset - Reels to the wrack and the twist, - And the rose is a red bygone, - When the face I love is going - And the gate to the end shall clang, - And it’s no use to beckon or say, “So long”— - Maybe I’ll tell you then— - some other time. - - I never knew any more beautiful than you: - I have hunted you under my thoughts, - I have broken down under the wind - And into the roses looking for you. - I shall never find any - greater than you. - - - OUR PRAYER OF THANKS - - God, - For the gladness here where the sun is shining at evening on the weeds - at the river, - Our prayer of thanks. - - God, - For the laughter of children who tumble barefooted and bareheaded in the - summer grass, - Our prayer of thanks. - - God, - For the sunset and the stars, the women and their white arms that hold - us, - Our prayer of thanks. - - God, - If you are deaf and blind, if this is all lost to you, - God, if the dead in their coffins amid the silver handles on the edge of - town, or the reckless dead of war days thrown unknown in pits, if - these dead are forever deaf and blind and lost, - Our prayer of thanks. - - God, - The game is all your way, the secrets and the signals and the system; - and so, for the break of the game and the first play and the last, - Our prayer of thanks. - - - - - Clara Shanafelt - - - TO THEE - - White foam flower, red flame flower - On my tree of delight. - Lean from the shadow - Like singing in sorrow— - Pale flower of thy smile, flame flower of thy touch, - In my night. - - - CAPRICE - - Who will be naming the wind - That lifts me and leaves me; - Swelleth my budding flame, - Foully bereaves me? - From the land whose forgotten name - Man shall not find, - Blowest thou, wind? - - - A VIVID GIRL - - Her face is fair and smooth and fine, - Childlike, with secret laughter lit, - Drooping in pity, bright with wit, - A flower, a flame—God fashioned it. - Who sees her tastes the sacred wine. - - - INVOCATION - - O glass-blower of time, - Hast blown all shapes at thy fire? - Canst thou no lovelier bell, - No clearer bubble, clear as delight, inflate me— - Worthy to hold such wine - As was never yet trod from the grape, - Since the stars shed their light, since the moon - Troubled the night with her beauty? - - - PASTEL - - She has a clear, wind-sheltered loveliness, - Like pale streams winding far and hills withdrawn - From the bright reaches of the noon. Dawn - Is her lifting fancy, but her heart - Is orchard boughs and dusk and quietness. - - - A GALLANT WOMAN - - She burst fierce wine - From the tough skin of pain, - Like wind that wrings from rigid skies - A scant and bitter gleam, - Long after the autumnal dusk - Has folded all the valleys in. - - - SCHERZO - - The elder’s bridal in July, - Bright as a cloud! - A ripe blonde girl, - Billowing to the ground in foamy petticoats, - With breasts full-blown - Swelling her bodice. - - But later - When the small black-ruddy berries - Tempt the birds to strip the stems, - And the leaves begin to yellow and fall off - While late summer’s still in its green, - Then you look lank and used up, - Elder; - Your big bones stick out, - You’re the kind of woman - Wears bleak at forty. - - I’ll take my constant pleasure - In a willow-tree that ripples silver - All the summer. - And when the winter comes in greasy rags - Like a half-naked beggar, - Lets out the plaited splendor - Of her bright and glancing hair. - - - - - Frances Shaw - - - WHO LOVES THE RAIN - - Who loves the rain - And loves his home, - And looks on life with quiet eyes, - Him will I follow through the storm; - And at his hearth-fire keep me warm; - Nor hell nor heaven shall that soul surprise, - Who loves the rain, - And loves his home, - And looks on life with quiet eyes. - - - THE HARP OF THE WIND - - My house stands high— - Where the harp of the wind - Plays all day, - Plays all night; - And the city light - Is far away. - - Where hangs the harp that the winds play?— - High in the air— - Over the sea? - - The long straight streets of the far-away town, - Where the lines of light go sweeping down, - Are the strings of its minstrelsy. - - And the harp of the wind - Gives to the wind - A song of the city’s tears; - Thin and faint, the cry of a child, - Plaint of the soul unreconciled, - A song of the passing years. - - - THE RAGPICKER - - The Ragpicker sits and sorts her rags: - Silk and homespun and threads of gold - She plucks to pieces and marks with tags; - And her eyes are ice and her fingers cold. - - The Ragpicker sits in the back of my brain; - Keenly she looks me through and through. - One flaming shred I have hidden away— - She shall not have my love for you. - - - COLOGNE CATHEDRAL - - The little white prayers - Of Elspeth Fry - Float up the arches - Into the sky. - - A little black bird - On the belfry high - Pecks at them - As they go by. - - - STAR THOUGHT - - I shall see a star tonight - From a distant mountain height; - From a city you will see - The same star that shines on me. - - ’Tis not of the firmament - On a solar journey bent; - Fixed it is through time and weather;— - ’Tis a thought we hold together. - - - THE CHILD’S QUEST - - My mother twines me roses wet with dew; - Oft have I sought the garden through and through; - I cannot find the tree whereon - My mother’s roses grew. - Seek not, O child, the tree whereon - Thy mother’s roses grew. - - My mother tells me tales of noble deeds; - Oft have I sought her book when no one heeds; - I cannot find the page, alas, - From which my mother reads. - Seek not, O child, to find the page - From which thy mother reads. - - My mother croons me songs all soft and low, - Through the white night where little breezes blow; - Yet never when the morning dawns, - My mother’s songs I know. - Seek not, O child, at dawn of day - Thy mother’s songs to know. - - - LITTLE PAGAN RAIN SONG - - In the dark and peace of my final bed, - The wet grass waving above my head, - At rest from love, at rest from pain, - I lie and listen to the rain. - - Falling, softly falling, - Song of my soul that is free; - Song of my soul that has not forgot - The sleeping body of me. - - When quiet and calm and straight I lie, - High in the air my soul rides by: - Shall I await thee, soul, in vain? - Hark to the answer in the rain. - - Falling, softly falling, - Song of my soul that is free; - Song of my soul that will not forget - The sleeping body of me. - - - - - Constance Lindsay Skinner - - - SONGS OF THE COAST-DWELLERS - - - THE CHIEF’S PRAYER AFTER THE SALMON CATCH - - O Kia-Kunæ, praise! - Thou hast opened thy hand among the stars, - And sprinkled the sea with food; - The catch is great; thy children will live. - See, on the roofs of the villages, the red meat drying; - Another year thou hast encompassed us with life. - Praise! Praise! Kunæ! - O Father, we have waited with shut mouths, - With hearts silent, and hands quiet, - Waited the time of prayer; - Lest with fears we should beset thee, - And pray the unholy prayer of asking. - We waited silently; and thou gavest life. - - Oh, praise! Praise! Praise! - - Open the silent mouths, the shut hearts, my tribe: - Sing high the prayer of Thanksgiving, - The prayer He taught in the beginning to the Kwakiutl— - - The good rejoicing prayer of thanks. - As the sea sings on the wet shore, when the ice thunders back, - And the blue water floats again, warm, shining, living, - So break thy ice-bound heart, and the cold lip’s silence— - Praise Kunæ for life, as wings up-flying, as eagles to the sun. - Praise! Praise! Praise! - - - SONG OF WHIP-PLAITING - - In the dawn I gathered cedar-boughs - For the plaiting of thy whip. - They were wet with sweet drops; - They still thought of the night. - - All alone I shredded cedar-boughs, - Green boughs in the pale light, - Where the morning meets the sea, - And the great mountain stops. - - Earth was very still. - - I heard no sound but the whisper of my knife, - My black flint knife. - It whispered among the white strands of the cedar, - Whispered in parting the sweet cords for thy whip. - O sweet-smelling juice of cedar— - Life-ooze of love! - My knife drips: - Its whisper is the only sound in all the world! - - Finer than young sea-lions’ hairs - Are my cedar-strands: - They are fine as little roots deep down. - (O little roots of cedar - Far, far under the bosom of Tsa-Kumts!— - - They have plaited her through with love.) - Now, into my love-gift - Closely, strongly, I will weave them— - Little strands of pain! - Since I saw thee - Standing with thy torch in my doorway, - Their little roots are deep in me. - - In the dawn I gathered cedar-boughs: - Sweet, sweet was their odor, - They were wet with tears— - The sweetness will not leave my hands, - No, not in salt sea-washings: - Tears will not wash away sweetness, - I shall have sweet hands for thy service. - - (Ah—sometimes—thou wilt be gentle? - Little roots of pain are deep, deep in me - Since I saw thee standing in my doorway.) - - I have quenched thy torch— - I have plaited thy whip. - I am thy Woman! - - - NO ANSWER IS GIVEN - - I am Ah-woa-te, the Hunter. - - I met a maiden in the shadow of the rocks; - Her eyes were strange and clear, - Her fair lips were shaped like the bow of dawning. - I asked her name, - Striking my spear in the deep earth for resting. - - “I am Kantlak, a maiden, named for the Morning. - On the mountain-top I heard two eagles talking— - The word was Love. - They cried it, beating their wings on each other - Until they bled; and she fell, - Yet, falling, still weakly cried it - To him soaring: and died. - I came to a mossy low valley of flowers. - There I saw Men-iak, the white grouse, - (White with chaste dreams, like the Spring Moon, fairer than flowers). - Through the forest a dark bird swooped, with fierce eyes, - And Men-iak flew down to it. - Her white breast is red-dyed, she lies on the moss; - Yet faintly cries the same strange word, - Hunter, will you come to my little fire and tell me - What Love is?” - - I could not see the maiden’s face clearly, for the dusk, - Where she sat by her small fire—only her eyes. - In the little flicker I saw her feet; they were bare— - Tireless, slim brown feet. - I saw how fair her lips were— - I drew nearer to cast my log on the fire. I said: - “Maiden, I am the Hunter. - When dusk ends the chase I leave the Mighty Killing. - Far or near, where gleams some little fire, - I grope through the forest with my heavy log; - Till I find one by the fire, sitting alone without fuel. - I cast my log gladly into the fire—thus, - It grips, the flames mount, the warmth embraces. - - “Almost I can see your face, Woman; - The bow of your fair lips is hot with speeded arrows, - Your strange clear eyes have darkened. - Fear not—our fire will outlast the dark.” - - “Hunter, what of the cold on the bleak hillside - When the log burns gray, and the fire is ashes?” - I replied, “I have never seen this: - When the fire burns low I am asleep.” - She said: “What of me, if I sleep not, and see the ashes?” - I yawned: I said, “I know not; - I wake in the sun and go forth.” - - The bow of her lips was like the moon’s cold circle. - She said, “Hunter, you have told me of Love!” - “It may be so,” I answered. I wished to sleep. - She said, “Already it is ashes.” - I looked and saw that her face was gray, - As if the wind had blown the ashes over it. - I was angry; I said, “Better you had slept.” - She said, “Yes—but I lie bleeding on the moss, - Crying this word.” - I answered, “This is so; but wherefore?” and asked, idly, - “Wherefore remember him who brought to your lone little fire - The log that now is ashes?” - She shivered in the cold dawn; - I saw that her eyes were darker than shadows. - Her fair mouth was like my perfect bow, - But I could fit no more arrows to it. - - She said, “Hunter, see how gray are these rocks - Where we have sheltered our brief night.” - I looked—they were ashen. - She said: “See how they come together here—and here— - As the knees, the breast, the great brow, the forgotten eyes, - Of a woman, - Sitting, waiting, stark and still, - And always gray; - Though hunters camp each night between her knees, - And little fires are kindled and burned out in her hollows.” - It was so; the mountain was a stone woman sitting. - Kantlak said: “She remembers him who turned her fire to ashes; - She waits to know the meaning of her waiting— - Why the love that wounded her can never be cast out.” - - I asked idly, “Who will tell her?”— - And laughed, for the sun was up. I reached for my arrows; - I drew my strong spear from the deep earth by her feet. - Kantlak looked up to the other gray face, and said, - “No answer is given.” - Down to the cold white endless sea-shore - Slowly she went, with bent head. - A young deer cast its leaping shadow on the pool. - I ran upon the bright path, swaying my spear. - - - - - James Stephens - - - WHAT TOMAS AN BUILE SAID IN A PUB - - I saw God. Do you doubt it? - Do you dare to doubt it? - I saw the Almighty Man. His hand - Was resting on a mountain, and - He looked upon the World and all about it: - I saw Him plainer than you see me now, - You mustn’t doubt it. - - He was not satisfied; - His look was all dissatisfied. - His beard swung on a wind far out of sight - Behind the world’s curve, and there was light - Most fearful from His forehead, and He sighed, - “That star went always wrong, and from the start - I was dissatisfied.” - - He lifted up His hand— - I say He heaved a dreadful hand - Over the spinning Earth, then I said: “Stay— - You must not strike it, God; I’m in the way; - And I will never move from where I stand.” - He said, “Dear child, I feared that you were dead,” - And stayed His hand. - - - BESSIE BOBTAIL - - As down the street she wambled slow, - She had not got a place to go: - She had not got a place to fall - And rest herself—no place at all. - She stumped along and wagged her pate - And said a thing was desperate. - - Her face was screwed and wrinkled tight - Just like a nut—and, left and right, - On either side she wagged her head - And said a thing; and what she said - Was desperate as any word - That ever yet a person heard. - - I walked behind her for a while - And watched the people nudge and smile. - But ever as she went she said, - As left and right she swung her head, - —“Oh, God He knows,” and “God He knows:” - And surely God Almighty knows. - - - HATE - - My enemy came high, - And I - Stared fiercely in his face. - My lips went writhing back in a grimace, - And stern I watched him with a narrow eye. - Then, as I turned away, my enemy, - That bitter heart and savage, said to me: - “Some day, when this is past, - When all the arrows that we have are cast, - We may ask one another why we hate, - And fail to find a story to relate. - It may seem to us then a mystery - That we could hate each other.” - Thus said he, - And did not turn away, - Waiting to hear what I might have to say. - But I fled quickly, fearing if I stayed - I might have kissed him as I would a maid. - - - THE WASTE PLACES - - I - - As a naked man I go - Through the desert sore afraid, - Holding up my head although - I’m as frightened as a maid. - - The couching lion there I saw - From barren rocks lift up his eye; - He parts the cactus with his paw, - He stares at me as I go by. - - He would follow on my trace - If he knew I was afraid, - If he knew my hardy face - Hides the terrors of a maid. - - In the night he rises and - He stretches forth, he snuffs the air; - He roars and leaps along the sand, - He creeps and watches everywhere. - - His burning eyes, his eyes of bale, - Through the darkness I can see; - He lashes fiercely with his tail, - He would love to spring at me. - - I am the lion in his lair; - I am the fear that frightens me; - I am the desert of despair - And the nights of agony. - - Night or day, whate’er befall, - I must walk that desert land, - Until I can dare to call - The lion out to lick my hand. - - II - - As a naked man I tread - The gloomy forests, ring on ring, - Where the sun that’s overhead - Cannot see what’s happening. - - There I go: the deepest shade, - The deepest silence pressing me; - And my heart is more afraid - Than a maiden’s heart would be. - - Every day I have to run - Underneath the demon tree, - Where the ancient wrong is done - While I shrink in agony. - - There the demon held a maid - In his arms, and as she, daft, - Screamed again in fear, he laid - His lips upon her lips and laughed. - - And she beckoned me to run, - And she called for help to me, - And the ancient wrong was done - Which is done eternally. - - I am the maiden and the fear; - I am the sunless shade, the strife; - I the demon lips, the sneer - Showing under every life. - - I must tread that gloomy way - Until I shall dare to run - And bear the demon with his prey - From the forest to the sun. - - - HAWKS - - And as we walked the grass was faintly stirred; - We did not speak—there was no need to speak. - Above our heads there flew a little bird, - A silent one who feared that we might seek - Her hard-hid nest. - - Poor little frightened one! - If we had found your nest that sunny day - We would have passed it by; we would have gone - And never looked or frightened you away. - - O little bird! there’s many have a nest, - A hard-found, open place, with many a foe; - And hunger and despair and little rest, - And more to fear than you can know. - - Shield the nests where’er they be, - On the ground or on the tree; - Guard the poor from treachery. - - - DARK WINGS - - Sing while you may, O bird upon the tree! - Although on high, wide-winged above the day, - Chill evening broadens to immensity, - Sing while you may. - - On thee, wide-hovering too, intent to slay, - The hawk’s slant pinion buoys him terribly— - Thus near the end is of thy happy lay. - - The day and thou and miserable me - Dark wings shall cover up and hide away - Where no song stirs of bird or memory: - Sing while you may. - - - - - George Sterling - - - A LEGEND OF THE DOVE - - Soft from the linden’s bough, - Unmoved against the tranquil afternoon, - Eve’s dove laments her now: - “Ah, gone! long gone! shall not I find thee soon?” - - That yearning in his voice - Told not to Paradise a sorrow’s tale: - As other birds rejoice - He sang, a brother to the nightingale. - - By twilight on her breast - He saw the flower sleep, the star awake; - And calling her from rest, - Made all the dawn melodious for her sake. - - And then the Tempter’s breath, - The sword of exile and the mortal chain— - The heritage of death - That gave her heart to dust, his own to pain.... - - In Eden desolate - The seraph heard his lonely music swoon, - As now, reiterate; - “Ah, gone! long gone! shall not I find thee soon?” - - - KINDRED - - Musing, between the sunset and the dark, - As Twilight in unhesitating hands - Bore from the faint horizon’s underlands, - Silvern and chill, the moon’s phantasmal ark, - I heard the sea, and far away could mark - Where that unalterable waste expands - In sevenfold sapphire from the mournful sands, - And saw beyond the deep a vibrant spark. - - There sank the sun Arcturus, and I thought: - Star, by an ocean on a world of thine, - May not a being, born like me to die, - Confront a little the eternal Naught - And watch our isolated sun decline— - Sad for his evanescence, even as I? - - - OMNIA EXEUNT IN MYSTERIUM - - The stranger in my gates—lo! that am I, - And what my land of birth I do not know, - Nor yet the hidden land to which I go. - One may be lord of many ere he die, - And tell of many sorrows in one sigh, - But know himself he shall not, nor his woe, - Nor to what sea the tears of wisdom flow; - Nor why one star is taken from the sky. - - An urging is upon him evermore, - And though he bide, his soul is wanderer, - Scanning the shadows with a sense of haste— - Where fade the tracks of all who went before: - A dim and solitary traveller - On ways that end in evening and the waste. - - - THE LAST DAYS - - The russet leaves of the sycamore - Lie at last on the valley floor— - By the autumn wind swept to and fro - Like ghosts in a tale of long ago. - Shallow and clear the Carmel glides - Where the willows droop on its vine-walled sides. - - The bracken-rust is red on the hill; - The pines stand brooding, somber and still; - Gray are the cliffs, and the waters gray, - Where the seagulls dip to the sea-born spray. - Sad November, lady of rain, - Sends the goose-wedge over again. - - Wilder now, for the verdure’s birth, - Falls the sunlight over the earth; - Kildees call from the fields where now - The banding blackbirds follow the plow; - Rustling poplar and brittle weed - Whisper low to the river-reed. - - Days departing linger and sigh: - Stars come soon to the quiet sky; - Buried voices, intimate, strange, - Cry to body and soul of change; - Beauty, eternal fugitive, - Seeks the home that we cannot give. - - - - - Wallace Stevens - - - PETER QUINCE AT THE CLAVIER - - I - - Just as my fingers on these keys - Make music, so the self-same sounds - On my spirit make a music too. - - Music is feeling then, not sound; - And thus it is that what I feel, - Here in this room, desiring you, - - Thinking of your blue-shadowed silk, - Is music. It is like the strain - Waked in the elders by Susanna: - - Of a green evening, clear and warm, - She bathed in her still garden, while - The red-eyed elders, watching, felt - - The basses of their being throb - In witching chords, and their thin blood - Pulse pizzicati of Hosanna. - - II - - In the green water, clear and warm, - Susanna lay. - She searched - The touch of springs, - And found - Concealed imaginings. - She sighed - For so much melody. - - Upon the bank she stood - In the cool - Of spent emotions. - She felt, among the leaves, - The dew - Of old devotions. - - She walked upon the grass, - Still quavering. - The winds were like her maids, - On timid feet, - Fetching her woven scarves, - Yet wavering. - - A breath upon her hand - Muted the night. - She turned— - A cymbal crashed, - And roaring horns. - - III - - Soon, with a noise like tambourines, - Came her attendant Byzantines. - - They wondered why Susanna cried - Against the elders by her side: - - And as they whispered, the refrain - Was like a willow swept by rain. - - Anon, their lamps’ uplifted flame - Revealed Susanna and her shame. - - And then the simpering Byzantines, - Fled, with a noise like tambourines. - - IV - - Beauty is momentary in the mind— - The fitful tracing of a portal; - But in the flesh it is immortal. - - The body dies; the body’s beauty lives. - So evenings die, in their green going, - A wave, interminably flowing. - So gardens die, their meek breath scenting - The cowl of Winter, done repenting. - So maidens die, to the auroral - Celebration of a maiden’s choral. - - Susanna’s music touched the bawdy strings - Of those white elders; but, escaping, - Left only Death’s ironic scraping. - Now, in its immortality, it plays - On the clear viol of her memory, - And makes a constant sacrament of praise. - - - IN BATTLE - - Death’s nobility again - Beautified the simplest men. - Fallen Winkle felt the pride - Of Agamemnon - When he died. - - What could London’s - Work and waste - Give him— - To that salty, sacrificial taste? - - What could London’s - Sorrow bring— - To that short, triumphant sting? - - - SUNDAY MORNING - - I - - Complacencies of the peignoir, and late - Coffee and oranges in a sunny chair, - And the green freedom of a cockatoo - Upon a rug, mingle to dissipate - The holy hush of ancient sacrifice. - She dreams a little, and she feels the dark - Encroachment of that old catastrophe, - As a calm darkens among water-lights. - The pungent oranges and bright, green wings - Seem things in some procession of the dead, - Winding across wide water, without sound. - The day is like wide water, without sound, - Stilled for the passing of her dreaming feet - Over the seas, to silent Palestine, - Dominion of the blood and sepulchre. - - II - - She hears, upon that water without sound, - A voice that cries: “The tomb in Palestine - Is not the porch of spirits lingering; - It is the grave of Jesus, where he lay.” - We live in an old chaos of the sun, - Or old dependency of day and night, - Or island solitude, unsponsored, free, - Of that wide water, inescapable. - Deer walk upon our mountains, and the quail - Whistle about us their spontaneous cries; - Sweet berries ripen in the wilderness; - And, in the isolation of the sky, - At evening, casual flocks of pigeons make - Ambiguous undulations as they sink, - Downward to darkness, on extended wings. - - III - - She says: “I am content when wakened birds, - Before they fly, test the reality - Of misty fields, by their sweet questionings; - But when the birds are gone, and their warm fields - Return no more, where, then, is paradise?” - There is not any haunt of prophecy, - Nor any old chimera of the grave, - Neither the golden underground, nor isle - Melodious, where spirits gat them home, - Nor visionary South, nor cloudy palm - Remote on heaven’s hill, that has endured - As April’s green endures; or will endure - Like her remembrance of awakened birds, - Or her desire for June and evening, tipped - By the consummation of the swallow’s wings. - - IV - - She says, “But in contentment I still feel - The need of some imperishable bliss.” - Death is the mother of beauty; hence from her, - Alone, shall come fulfilment to our dreams - And our desires. Although she strews the leaves - Of sure obliteration on our paths— - The path sick sorrow took, the many paths - Where triumph rang its brassy phrase, or love - Whispered a little out of tenderness— - She makes the willow shiver in the sun - For maidens who were wont to sit and gaze - Upon the grass, relinquished to their feet. - She causes boys to bring sweet-smelling pears - And plums in ponderous piles. The maidens taste - And stray impassioned in the littering leaves. - - V - - Supple and turbulent, a ring of men - Shall chant in orgy on a summer morn - Their boisterous devotion to the sun— - Not as a god, but as a god might be, - Naked among them, like a savage source. - Their chant shall be a chant of paradise, - Out of their blood, returning to the sky; - And in their chant shall enter, voice by voice, - The windy lake wherein their lord delights, - The trees, like seraphim, and echoing hills, - That choir among themselves long afterward. - They shall know well the heavenly fellowship - Of men that perish and of summer morn— - And whence they came and whither they shall go, - The dew upon their feet shall manifest. - - - - - Ajan Syrian - - - THE SYRIAN LOVER IN EXILE REMEMBERS THEE, LIGHT OF MY LAND - - Rose and amber was the sunset on the river, - Red-rose the hills about Bingariz. - High upon their brows, the black tree-branches - Spread wide across the turquoise sky. - I saw the parrots fly— - A cloud of rising green from the long green grasses, - A mist of gold and green winging fast - Into the gray shadow-silence of the tamarisks. - Pearl-white and wild was the flood below the ford. - I ran down the long hot road to thy door; - Thy door shone—a white flower in the dusk lingering to close. - The stars rose and stood above thy casement. - I cast my cloak and climbed to thee, - To thee, Makhir Subatu! - - · · · · · - - Naked she stood and glistening like the stars over her— - Her hair trailed about her like clouds about the moon— - Naked as the soul seeking love, - As the soul that waits for death. - White with benediction, pendulous, unfolding from the dark - As the crystal sky of morning, she waited, - And leaned her light above the earth of my desire. - Like a world that spins from the hand of Infinity, - Up from the night I leaped— - To thee, Makhir Subatu! - - · · · · · - - Pearl-bright and wild, a flood without a ford, - The River of Love flowed on. - Her eyes were gleaming sails in a storm, - Dipping, swooning, beckoning. - The dawn came and trampled over her; - Gray-arched and wide, the sanctuary of light descended. - It was the altar where I lay; - And I lifted my face at last, praying. - I saw the first glow fall about her, - Like marble pillars coming forth from the shadow. - I raised my hands, thanking the gods - That in love I had grown so tall - I could touch the two lamps in heaven, - The sun and moon hanging in the low heaven beneath her face. - How great through love had I grown - To breathe my flame into the two lamps of heaven! - - O eyes of the eagle and the dove, - Eyes red-starred and white-starred, - Eyes that have too much seen, too much confessed, - Close, close, beneath my kisses! - Tell me no more, demand me no more—it is day. - I see the gold-green rain of parrot-wings - Sparkling athwart the gray and rose-gold morning. - I go from thy closed door down the long lone road - To the ricefields beyond the river, - Beyond the river that has a ford. - - · · · · · - - I came to thee with hope, with desire. I have them no longer. - Sleep, sleep; I am locked in thee. - - · · · · · - - _Thus the exile lover remembers thee, Makhir Subatu!_ - - - - - Rabindranath Tagore - - - FROM “GITANJALI” - - I - - Thou hast made me known to friends whom I knew not. Thou hast given me - seats in homes not my own. Thou hast brought the distant near and - made a brother of the stranger. I am uneasy at heart when I have to - leave my accustomed shelter; I forgot that there abides the old in - the new, and that there also thou abidest. - Through birth and death, in this world or in others, wherever thou - leadest me it is thou, the same, the one companion of my endless life - who ever linkest my heart with bonds of joy to the unfamiliar. When - one knows thee, then alien there is none, then no door is shut. Oh, - grant me my prayer that I may never lose the bliss of the touch of - the One in the play of the many. - - - II - - No more noisy, loud words from me, such is my master’s will. Henceforth - I deal in whispers. The speech of my heart will be carried on in - murmurings of a song. - Men hasten to the King’s market. All the buyers and sellers are there. - But I have my untimely leave in the middle of the day, in the thick - of work. - Let then the flowers come out in my garden, though it is not their time, - and let the midday bees strike up their lazy hum. - Full many an hour have I spent in the strife of the good and the evil, - but now it is the pleasure of my playmate of the empty days to draw - my heart on to him, and I know not why is this sudden call to what - useless inconsequence! - - III - - On the day when the lotus bloomed, alas, my mind was straying, and I - knew it not. My basket was empty and the flower remained unheeded. - Only now and again a sadness fell upon me, and I started up from my - dream and felt a sweet trace of a strange smell in the south wind. - That vague fragrance made my heart ache with longing, and it seemed to - me that it was the eager breath of the summer seeking for its - completion. - I knew not then that it was so near, that it was mine, and this perfect - sweetness had blossomed in the depth of my own heart. - - IV - - By all means they try to hold me secure who love me in this world. But - it is otherwise with thy love, which is greater than theirs, and thou - keepest me free. Lest I forget them they never venture to leave me - alone. But day passes by after day and thou art not seen. - If I call not thee in my prayers, if I keep not thee in my heart—thy - love for me still waits for my love. - - - V - - I was not aware of the moment when I first crossed the threshold of this - life. What was the power that made me open out into this vast mystery - like a bud in the forest at midnight? When in the morning I looked - upon the light I felt in a moment that I was no stranger in this - world, that the inscrutable without name and form had taken me in its - arms in the form of my own mother. Even so, in death the same unknown - will appear as ever known to me. And because I love this life, I know - I shall love death as well. The child cries out when from the right - breast the mother takes it away to find in the very next moment its - consolation in the left one. - - VI - - Thou art the sky and thou art the nest as well. Oh, thou beautiful, - there in the nest it is thy love that encloses the soul with colors - and sounds and odors. There comes the morning with the golden basket - in her right hand bearing the wreath of beauty, silently to crown the - earth. And there comes the evening over the lonely meadows deserted - by herds, through trackless paths, carrying cool draughts of peace in - her golden pitcher from the western ocean of rest. - But there, where spreads the infinite sky for the soul to take her - flight in, reigns the stainless white radiance. There is no day nor - night, nor form nor color, and never never a word. - - - FROM “THE GARDENER” - - I - - Over the green and yellow rice fields sweep the shadows of the autumn - clouds, followed by the swift-chasing sun. - The bees forget to sip their honey; drunken with the light they - foolishly hum and hover; and the ducks in the sandy riverbank clamor - in joy for mere nothing. - - None shall go back home, brothers, this morning, none shall go to work. - We will take the blue sky by storm and plunder the space as we run. - Laughters fly floating in the air like foams in the flood. - Brothers, we shall squander our morning in futile songs. - - II - - Keep me fully glad with nothing. Only take my hand in your hand. - In the gloom of the deepening night take up my heart and play with it as - you list. Bind me close to you with nothing. - I will spread myself out at your feet and lie still. Under this clouded - sky I will meet silence with silence. I will become one with the - night clasping the earth in my breast. - Make my life glad with nothing. - The rains sweep the sky from end to end. Jasmines in the wet untamable - wind revel in their own perfume. The cloud-hidden stars thrill in - secret. Let me fill to the full of my heart with nothing but my own - depth of joy. - - III - - My soul is alight with your infinitude of stars. Your world has broken - upon me like a flood. The flowers of your garden blossom in my body. - The joy of life that is everywhere burns like an incense in my heart. - And the breath of all things plays on my life as on a pipe of reeds. - - IV - - Leave off your works, bride. Listen, the guest has come. Do you hear, he - is gently shaking the fastening chain of the door? - Let not your anklets be loud, and your steps be too hurried to meet him. - Leave off your works, bride; the guest has come, in the evening. - - - No, it is not the wind, bride. Do not be frightened. - It is the full-moon night of April, shadows are pale in the courtyard, - the sky overhead is bright. - Draw your veil over your face if you must, take the lamp from your room - if you fear. - No, it is not the wind, bride; do not be frightened. - - Have no word with him if you are shy, stand aside by the door when you - meet him. - If he asks you questions, lower your eyes in silence, if you wish. - Do not let your bracelets jingle, when, lamp in hand, you lead him in. - Have no word with him if you are shy. - - Have you not finished your works yet, bride? Listen, the guest has come. - Have you not lit the lamp in the cowshed? - Have you not got ready the offering basket for the evening service? - Have you not put the auspicious red mark at the parting of your hair, - and done your toilet for the night? - O bride, do you hear, the guest has come? - Have you not finished your works yet? - - V - - Come as you are, tarry not over your toilet. - If your braiding has come loose, if the parting of your hair be not - straight, if the ribbons of your bodice be not fastened, do not mind. - Come as you are, tarry not over your toilet. - - Come with quick steps over the grass. - If your feet are pale with the dew, if your anklets slacken, if pearls - drop out of your chain, do not mind. - Come with quick steps over the grass. - - - Do you see the clouds wrapping the sky? - Flocks of cranes fly up from the further riverbank and fitful gusts of - wind rush over the heath. - The anxious cattle run to their stalls in the village. - Do you see the clouds wrapping the sky? - - In vain you light your toilet lamp; it flickers and goes out in the - wind. - Surely, who would know that with lamp-black your eyelids are not - touched? For your eyes are darker than rain clouds. - In vain you light your toilet lamp; it goes out. - - Come as you are, tarry not over your toilet. - If the wreath is not woven, who cares? If the wrist-chain has not been - tied, leave it by. - The sky is overcast with clouds; it is late. - Come as you are, tarry not over your toilet. - - VI - - Lest I should know you too easily, you play with me. - You blind me with flashes of laughter to hide your tears. - I know, I know your art; - You never say the word you would. - - Lest I should prize you not, you elude me in a thousand ways. - Lest I should mix you with the crowd, you stand aside. - I know, I know your art; - You never walk the path you would. - - Your claim is more than others; that is why you are silent. - With a playful carelessness you avoid my gifts. - I know, I know your art; - You never accept what you would. - - - VII - - Amidst the rush and roar of life, O beauty, carved in stone, you stand - mute and still, alone and aloof. - Great Time sits enamoured at your feet and repeats to you: - “Speak, speak to me, my love; speak, my mute bride!” - But your speech is shut up in stone, O you immovably fair! - - VIII - - Tell me if this is all true, my lover? tell me if it is true. - When the eyes of me flash their lightning on you, dark clouds in your - breast make stormy answer; - Is it then true that the dew drops fall from the night when I am seen, - and the morning light is glad when it wraps my body? - - Is it true, is it true, that your love travelled alone through ages and - worlds in search of me? that when you found me at last, your age-long - desire found utter peace in my gentle speech, and my eyes and lips - and flowing hair? - - Is it then true that the mystery of the Infinite is written on this - little brow of mine? - Tell me, my lover, if all this is true! - - IX - - With a glance of your eyes you could plunder all the wealth of songs - struck from poets’ harps, fair woman! - But for their praises you have no ear; therefore do I come to praise - you. - You could humble at your feet the proudest heads of all the world; - But it is your loved ones, unknown to fame, whom you choose to worship; - therefore I worship you. - - - Your perfect arms would add glory to kingly splendor with their touch; - But you use them to sweep away the dust, and to make clean your humble - home; therefore I am filled with awe. - - - - - Sara Teasdale - - - LEAVES - - One by one, like leaves from a tree, - All my faiths have forsaken me; - But the stars above my head - Burn in white and delicate red, - And beneath my feet the earth - Brings the sturdy grass to birth. - I who was content to be - But a silken-singing tree, - But a rustle of delight - In the wistful heart of night, - I have lost the leaves that knew - Touch of rain and weight of dew. - Blinded by a leafy crown - I looked neither up nor down— - But the little leaves that die - Have left me room to see the sky; - Now for the first time I know - Stars above and earth below. - - - MORNING - - I went out on an April morning - All alone, for my heart was high. - I was a child of the shining meadow, - I was a sister of the sky. - - There in the windy flood of morning - Longing lifted its weight from me, - Lost as a sob in the midst of cheering, - Swept as a sea-bird out to sea. - - - THE FLIGHT - - Look back with longing eyes and know that I will follow, - Lift me up in your love as a light wing lifts a swallow, - Let our flight be far in sun or windy rain— - _But what if I heard my first love calling me again?_ - - Hold me on your heart as the brave sea holds the foam, - Take me far away to the hills that hide your home; - Peace shall thatch the roof and love shall latch the door— - _But what if I heard my first love calling me once more?_ - - - OVER THE ROOFS - - I said, “I have shut my heart, - As one shuts an open door, - That Love may starve therein - And trouble me no more.” - - But over the roofs there came - The wet new wind of May, - And a tune blew up from the curb - Where the street-pianos play. - - My room was white with the sun - And Love cried out in me, - “I am strong, I will break your heart - Unless you set me free.” - - - DEBT - - What do I owe to you - Who loved me deep and long? - You never gave my spirits wings - Nor gave my heart a song. - - But oh, to him I loved, - Who loved me not at all, - I owe the little gate - That led through heaven’s wall. - - - SONGS IN A HOSPITAL - - - THE BROKEN FIELD - - My soul is a dark ploughed field - In the cold rain; - My soul is a broken field - Ploughed by pain. - - Where windy grass and flowers - Were growing, - The field lies broken now - For another sowing. - - Great Sower, when you tread - My field again, - Scatter the furrows there - With better grain. - - - OPEN WINDOWS - - Out of the window a sea of green trees - Lift their soft boughs like arms of a dancer; - They beckon and call me, “Come out in the sun!” - But I cannot answer. - - I am alone with Weakness and Pain, - Sick abed and June is going, - I cannot keep her, she hurries by - With the silver-green of her garments blowing. - - Men and women pass in the street - Glad of the shining sapphire weather; - But we know more of it than they, - Pain and I together. - - They are the runners in the sun, - Breathless and blinded by the race, - But we are watchers in the shade - Who speak with Wonder face to face. - - - AFTER DEATH - - Now while my lips are living - Their words must stay unsaid, - And will my soul remember - To speak when I am dead? - - Yet if my soul remembered - You would not heed it, dear, - For now you must not listen, - And then you could not hear. - - - IN MEMORIAM F. O. S. - - You go a long and lovely journey, - For all the stars, like burning dew, - Are luminous and luring footprints - Of souls adventurous as you. - - Oh, if you lived on earth elated, - How is it now that you can run - Free of the weight of flesh and faring - Far past the birthplace of the sun? - - - SWALLOW FLIGHT - - I love my hour of wind and light, - I love men’s faces and their eyes, - I love my spirit’s veering flight - Like swallows under evening skies. - - - THE ANSWER - - When I go back to earth - And all my joyous body - Puts off the red and white - That once had been so proud, - If men should pass above - With false and feeble pity, - My dust will find a voice - To answer them aloud: - - “Be still, I am content, - Take back your poor compassion!— - Joy was a flame in me - Too steady to destroy. - Lithe as a bending reed - Loving the storm that sways her— - I found more joy in sorrow - Than you could find in joy.” - - - - - Eunice Tietjens - - - THE BACCHANTE TO HER BABE - - _Scherzo_ - - Come, sprite, and dance! The sun is up, - The wind runs laughing down the sky - That brims with morning like a cup. - Sprite, we must race him, - We must chase him— - You and I! - And skim across the fuzzy heather— - You and joy and I together - Whirling by! - - You merry little roll of fat!— - Made warm to kiss, and smooth to pat, - And round to toy with, like a cub; - To put one’s nozzle in and rub - And breathe you in like breath of kine, - Like juice of vine, - That sets my morning heart a-tingling, - Dancing, jingling, - All the glad abandon mingling - Of wind and wine! - - Sprite, you are love, and you are joy, - A happiness, a dream, a toy, - A god to laugh with, - Love to chaff with, - The sun come down in tangled gold, - The moon to kiss, and spring to hold. - - There was a time once, long ago, - Long—oh, long since ... I scarcely know. - Almost I had forgot ... - There was a time when you were not, - You merry sprite, save as a strain, - The strange dull pain - Of green buds swelling - In warm, straight dwelling - That must burst to the April rain. - A little heavy I was then, - And dull—and glad to rest. And when - The travail came - In searing flame ... - But, sprite, that was so long ago!— - A century!—I scarcely know. - Almost I had forgot - When you were not. - - So, little sprite, come dance with me! - The sun is up, the wind is free! - Come now and trip it, - Romp and skip it, - Earth is young and so are we. - Sprite, you and I will dance together - On the heather, - Glad with all the procreant earth, - With all the fruitage of the trees, - And golden pollen on the breeze, - With plants that bring the grain to birth, - With beast and bird, - Feathered and furred, - With youth and hope and life and love, - And joy thereof— - While we are part of all, we two— - For my glad burgeoning in you! - - So, merry little roll of fat, - Made warm to kiss and smooth to pat - And round to toy with, like a cub, - To put one’s nozzle in and rub, - My god to laugh with, - Love to chaff with, - Come and dance beneath the sky, - You and I! - Look out with those round wondering eyes, - And squirm, and gurgle—and grow wise! - - - THE STEAM SHOVEL - - Beneath my window in a city street - A monster lairs, a creature huge and grim - And only half believed: the strength of him— - Steel-strung and fit to meet - The strength of earth— - Is mighty as men’s dreams that conquer force. - Steam belches from him. He is the new birth - Of old Behemoth, late-sprung from the source - Whence Grendel sprang, and all the monster clan - Dead for an age, now born again of man. - - The iron head, - Set on a monstrous, jointed neck, - Glides here and there, lifts, settles on the red - Moist floor, with nose dropped in the dirt, at beck - Of some incredible control. - He snorts, and pauses couchant for a space, - Then slowly lifts, and tears the gaping hole - Yet deeper in earth’s flank. A sudden race - Of loosened earth and pebbles trickles there - Like blood-drops in a wound. - But he, the monster, swings his load around— - Weightless it seems as air. - His mammoth jaw - Drops widely open with a rasping sound, - And all the red earth vomits from his maw. - - O thwarted monster, born at man’s decree, - A lap-dog dragon, eating from his hand - And doomed to fetch and carry at command, - Have you no longing ever to be free? - In warm, electric days to run a-muck, - Ranging like some mad dinosaur, - Your fiery heart at war - With this strange world, the city’s restless ruck, - Where all drab things that toil, save you alone, - Have life; - And you the semblance only, and the strife? - Do you not yearn to rip the roots of stone - Of these great piles men build, - And hurl them down with shriek of shattered steel, - Scorning your own sure doom, so you may feel, - You too, the lust with which your fathers killed? - Or is your soul in very deed so tame, - The blood of Grendel watered to a gruel, - That you are well content - With heart of flame - Thus placidly to chew your cud of fuel - And toil in peace for man’s aggrandizement? - - Poor helpless creature of a half-grown god, - Blind of yourself and impotent! - At night, - When your forerunners, sprung from quicker sod, - Would range through primal woods, hot on the scent, - Or wake the stars with amorous delight, - You stand, a soiled, unwieldy mass of steel, - Black in the arc-light, modern as your name, - Dead and unsouled and trite; - Till I must feel - - A quick creator’s pity for your shame: - That man, who made you and who gave so much, - Yet cannot give the last transforming touch; - That with the work he cannot give the wage— - For day, no joy of night, - For toil, no ecstasy of primal rage. - - - THE GREAT MAN - - I cannot always feel his greatness. - Sometimes he walks beside me, step by step, - And paces slowly in the ways— - The simple, wingless ways - That my thoughts tread. He gossips with me then, - And finds it good; - Not as an eagle might, his great wings folded, be content - To walk a little, knowing it his choice, - But as a simple man, - My friend. - And I forget. - - Then suddenly a call floats down - From the clear airy spaces, - The great keen, lonely heights of being. - And he who was my comrade hears the call - And rises from my side, and soars, - Deep-chanting, to the heights. - Then I remember. - And my upward gaze goes with him, and I see - Far off against the sky - The glint of golden sunlight on his wings. - - - - - Ridgely Torrence - - - THE BIRD AND THE TREE - - Blackbird, blackbird in the cage, - There’s something wrong tonight. - Far off the sheriff’s footfall dies, - The minutes crawl like last year’s flies - Between the bars, and like an age - The hours are long tonight. - - The sky is like a heavy lid - Out here beyond the door tonight. - What’s that? A mutter down the street. - What’s that? The sound of yells and feet. - For what you didn’t do or did - You’ll pay the score tonight. - - No use to reek with reddened sweat, - No use to whimper and to sweat. - They’ve got the rope; they’ve got the guns, - They’ve got the courage and the guns; - And that’s the reason why tonight - No use to ask them any more. - They’ll fire the answer through the door— - You’re out to die tonight. - - There where the lonely cross-road lies, - There is no place to make replies; - But silence, inch by inch, is there, - And the right limb for a lynch is there; - And a lean daw waits for both your eyes, - Blackbird. - - Perhaps you’ll meet again some place. - Look for the mask upon the face: - That’s the way you’ll know them there— - - A white mask to hide the face. - And you can halt and show them there - The things that they are deaf to now, - And they can tell you what they meant— - To wash the blood with blood. But how - If you are innocent? - - Blackbird singer, blackbird mute, - They choked the seed you might have found. - Out of a thorny field you go— - For you it may be better so— - And leave the sowers of the ground - To eat the harvest of the fruit, - Blackbird. - - - THE SON - - _Southern Ohio Market Town_ - - I heard an old farm-wife, - Selling some barley, - Mingle her life with life - And the name “Charley.” - - Saying: “The crop’s all in, - We’re about through now; - Long nights will soon begin, - We’re just us two now. - - “Twelve bushel at sixty cents, - It’s all I carried— - He sickened making fence; - He was to be married— - - “It feels like frost was near— - His hair was curly. - The spring was late that year, - But the harvest early.” - - - - - Charles Hanson Towne - - - BEYOND THE STARS - - Three days I heard them grieve when I lay dead, - (It was so strange to me that they should weep!) - Tall candles burned about me in the dark, - And a great crucifix was on my breast, - And a great silence filled the lonesome room. - - I heard one whisper, “Lo! the dawn is breaking, - And he has lost the wonder of the day.” - Another came whom I had loved on earth, - And kissed my brow and brushed my dampened hair. - Softly she spoke: “Oh, that he should not see - The April that his spirit bathed in! Birds - Are singing in the orchard, and the grass - That soon will cover him is growing green. - The daisies whiten on the emerald hills, - And the immortal magic that he loved - Wakens again—and he has fallen asleep.” - Another said: “Last night I saw the moon - Like a tremendous lantern shine in heaven, - And I could only think of him—and sob. - For I remembered evenings wonderful - When he was faint with Life’s sad loveliness, - And watched the silver ribbons wandering far - Along the shore, and out upon the sea. - Oh, I remembered how he loved the world, - The sighing ocean and the flaming stars, - The everlasting glamour God has given— - His tapestries that wrap the earth’s wide room. - I minded me of mornings filled with rain - When he would sit and listen to the sound - As if it were lost music from the spheres. - He loved the crocus and the hawthorn-hedge, - He loved the shining gold of buttercups, - And the low droning of the drowsy bees - That boomed across the meadows. He was glad - At dawn or sundown; glad when Autumn came - With her worn livery and scarlet crown, - And glad when Winter rocked the earth to rest. - Strange that he sleeps today when Life is young, - And the wild banners of the Spring are blowing - With green inscriptions of the old delight.” - - I heard them whisper in the quiet room. - I longed to open then my sealed eyes, - And tell them of the glory that was mine. - There was no darkness where my spirit flew, - There was no night beyond the teeming world. - Their April was like winter where I roamed; - Their flowers were like stones where now I fared. - Earth’s day! it was as if I had not known - What sunlight meant!... Yea, even as they grieved - For all that I had lost in their pale place, - I swung beyond the borders of the sky, - And floated through the clouds, myself the air, - Myself the ether, yet a matchless being - Whom God had snatched from penury and pain - To draw across the barricades of heaven. - I clomb beyond the sun, beyond the moon; - In flight on flight I touched the highest star; - I plunged to regions where the Spring is born, - Myself (I asked not how) the April wind, - Myself the elements that are of God. - Up flowery stairways of eternity - I whirled in wonder and untrammeled joy, - An atom, yet a portion of His dream— - His dream that knows no end.... - I was the rain, - I was the dawn, I was the purple east, - I was the moonlight on enchanted nights, - (Yet time was lost to me); I was a flower - For one to pluck who loved me; I was bliss, - And rapture, splendid moments of delight; - And I was prayer, and solitude, and hope; - And always, always, always I was love. - I tore asunder flimsy doors of time, - And through the windows of my soul’s new sight - I saw beyond the ultimate bounds of space. - I was all things that I had loved on earth— - The very moonbeam in that quiet room, - The very sunlight one had dreamed I lost, - The soul of the returning April grass, - The spirit of the evening and the dawn, - The perfume in unnumbered hawthorn-blooms. - There was no shadow on my perfect peace, - No knowledge that was hidden from my heart. - I learned what music meant; I read the years; - I found where rainbows hide, where tears begin; - I trod the precincts of things yet unborn. - - Yea, while I found all wisdom (being dead), - They grieved for me ... I should have grieved for them! - - - - - Louis Untermeyer - - - LANDSCAPES - - The rain was over, and the brilliant air - Made every little blade of grass appear - Vivid and startling—everything was there - With sharpened outlines, eloquently clear, - As though one saw it in a crystal sphere. - - The rusty sumac with its struggling spires; - The goldenrod with all its million fires - (A million torches swinging in the wind); - A single poplar, marvellously thinned, - Half like a naked boy, half like a sword; - Clouds, like the haughty banners of the Lord; - A group of pansies with their shrewish faces, - Little old ladies cackling over laces; - The quaint, unhurried road that curved so well; - The prim petunias with their rich, rank smell; - The lettuce-birds, the creepers in the field— - How bountifully were they all revealed! - How arrogantly each one seemed to thrive— - So frank and strong, so radiantly alive! - - And over all the morning-minded earth - There seemed to spread a sharp and kindling mirth, - Piercing the stubborn stones until I saw - The toad face heaven without shame or awe, - The ant confront the stars, and every weed - Grow proud as though it bore a royal seed; - While all the things that die and decompose - Sent forth their bloom as richly as the rose.... - Oh, what a liberal power that made them thrive - And keep the very dirt that died, alive. - - And now I saw the slender willow-tree - No longer calm or drooping listlessly, - Letting its languid branches sway and fall - As though it danced in some sad ritual; - But rather like a young, athletic girl, - Fearless and gay, her hair all out of curl, - And flying in the wind—her head thrown back, - Her arms flung up, her garments flowing slack, - And all her rushing spirits running over.... - What made a sober tree seem such a rover— - - Or made the staid and stalwart apple-trees, - That stood for years knee-deep in velvet peace, - Turn all their fruit to little worlds of flame, - And burn the trembling orchard there below? - What lit the heart of every golden-glow— - Oh, why was nothing weary, dull, or tame?... - Beauty it was, and keen, compassionate mirth - That drives the vast and energetic earth. - - And, with abrupt and visionary eyes, - I saw the huddled tenements arise. - Here where the merry clover danced and shone - Sprang agonies of iron and of stone; - There, where green Silence laughed or stood enthralled, - Cheap music blared and evil alleys sprawled. - The roaring avenues, the shrieking mills; - Brothels and prisons on those kindly hills— - The menace of these things swept over me; - A threatening, unconquerable sea.... - - A stirring landscape and a generous earth! - Freshening courage and benevolent mirth— - And then the city, like a hideous sore.... - Good God, and what is all this beauty for? - - - “FEUERZAUBER” - - I never knew the earth had so much gold— - The fields run over with it, and this hill - Hoary and old, - Is young with buoyant blooms that flame and thrill. - - Such golden fires, such yellow—lo, how good - This spendthrift world, and what a lavish God— - This fringe of wood, - Blazing with buttercup and goldenrod. - - You too, beloved, are changed. Again I see - Your face grow mystical, as on that night - You turned to me, - And all the trembling world—and you—were white. - - Aye, you are touched; your singing lips grow dumb; - The fields absorb you, color you entire.... - And you become - A goddess standing in a world of fire! - - - ON THE BIRTH OF A CHILD - - _Jerome Epstein—August 8, 1912_ - - Lo—to the battle-ground of life, - Child, you have come, like a conquering shout, - Out of a struggle—into strife; - Out of a darkness—into doubt. - - Girt with the fragile armor of youth, - Child, you must ride into endless wars, - With the sword of protest, the buckler of truth, - And a banner of love to sweep the stars. - - About you the world’s despair will surge; - Into defeat you must plunge and grope— - Be to the faltering an urge; - Be to the hopeless years a hope! - - Be to the darkened world a flame; - Be to its unconcern a blow— - For out of its pain and tumult you came, - And into its tumult and pain you go. - - - IRONY - - Why are the things that have no death - The ones with neither sight nor breath! - Eternity is thrust upon - A bit of earth, a senseless stone. - A grain of dust, a casual clod - Receives the greatest gift of God. - A pebble in the roadway lies— - It never dies. - - The grass our fathers cut away - Is growing on their graves to-day; - The tiniest brooks that scarcely flow - Eternally will come and go. - There is no kind of death to kill - The sands that lie so meek and still.... - But Man is great and strong and wise— - And so he dies. - - - - - Allen Upward - - - SCENTED LEAVES FROM A CHINESE JAR - - - THE ACACIA LEAVES - -The aged man, when he beheld winter approaching, counted the leaves as -they lapsed from the acacia trees; while his son was talking of the -spring. - - - THE BITTER PURPLE WILLOWS - -Meditating on the glory of illustrious lineage I lifted up my eyes and -beheld the bitter purple willows growing round the tombs of the exalted -Mings. - - - THE CORAL FISHER - -The coral fisher, who had been a long time beneath the water, rose to -the surface with nothing in his hand but a spray of crimson seaweed. In -answer to the master of the junk he said, “While I was in the world of -fishes this miserable weed appeared to me more beautiful than coral.” - - - THE DIAMOND - -The poet Wong, after he had delighted a company of mandarins at a feast, -sat silent in the midst of his household. He explained, “The diamond -sparkles only when it is in the light.” - - - THE ESTUARY - -Some one complained to the Master, “After many lessons I do not fully -understand your doctrine.” In response the Master pointed to the tide in -the mouth of the river, and asked, “How wide is the sea in this place?” - - - THE INTOXICATED POET - -A poet, having taken the bridle off his tongue, spoke thus: “More -fragrant than the heliotrope, which blooms all the year round, better -than vermilion letters on tablets of sendal, are thy kisses, thou shy -one!” - - - THE JONQUILS - -I have heard that a certain princess, when she found that she had been -married by a demon, wove a wreath of jonquils and sent it to the lover -of former days. - - - THE MARIGOLD - -Even as the seed of the marigold, carried by the wind, lodges on the -roofs of palaces, and lights the air with flame-colored blossoms, so may -the child-like words of the insignificant poet confer honor on lofty and -disdainful mandarins. - - - THE MERMAID - -The sailor boy who leant over the side of the Junk of Many Pearls, and -combed the green tresses of the sea with his ivory fingers, believing -that he had heard the voice of a mermaid, cast his body down between the -waves. - - - THE MIDDLE KINGDOM - -The emperors of fourteen dynasties, clad in robes of yellow silk -embroidered with the Dragon, wearing gold diadems set with pearls and -rubies, and seated on thrones of incomparable ivory, have ruled over the -Middle Kingdom for four thousand years. - - - THE MILKY WAY - -My mother taught me that every night a procession of junks carrying -lanterns moves silently across the sky, and the water sprinkled from -their paddles falls to the earth in the form of dew. I no longer believe -that the stars are junks carrying lanterns, no longer that the dew is -shaken from their oars. - - - THE ONION - -The child who threw away leaf after leaf of the many-coated onion, to -get to the sweet heart, found in the end that he had thrown away the -heart itself. - - - THE SEA-SHELL - -To the passionate lover, whose sighs come back to him on every breeze, -all the world is like a murmuring sea-shell. - - - THE STUPID KITE - -A kite, while devouring a skylark, complained, “Had I known that thy -flesh was no sweeter than that of a sparrow I should have listened -longer to thy delicious notes.” - - - THE WINDMILL - -The exquisite painter Ko-tsu was often reproached by an industrious -friend for his fits of idleness. At last he excused himself by saying, -“You are a watermill—a windmill can grind only when the wind blows.” - - - THE WORD - -The first time the emperor Han heard a certain Word he said, “It is -strange.” The second time he said, “It is divine.” The third time he -said, “Let the speaker be put to death.” - - - - - John Hall Wheelock - - - SUNDAY EVENING IN THE COMMON - - Look—on the topmost branches of the world - The blossoms of the myriad stars are thick; - Over the huddled rows of stone and brick - A few sad wisps of empty smoke are curled - Like ghosts, languid and sick. - - One breathless moment now the city’s moaning - Fades, and the endless streets seem vague and dim; - There is no sound around the world’s rim, - Save in the distance a small band is droning - Some desolate old hymn. - - Van Wyck, how often have we been together - When this same moment made all mysteries clear— - The infinite stars that brood above us here, - And the gray city in the soft June weather, - So tawdry and so dear! - - - SPRING - - The air is full of dawn and spring; - Outside the room I see - A swallow, like a shaft of light, - Shift sideways suddenly. - - There is no room for death at all - In earth or heaven above; - He never yet believed in death - Who ever learned to love. - - Build me a tomb when I am dead, - But leave a window free - That I may watch the swallow’s flight, - And spring come back to me. - - Build me a tomb of steel and stone, - But leave one window free, - That I may feel the spring come back— - And you come back to me! - - - LIKE MUSIC - - Your body’s motion is like music; - Her stride ecstatical and bright - Moves to the rhythm of dumb music, - The unheard music of delight. - - The silent splendor of the creation - Speaks through your body’s stately strength, - And the lithe harmony of beauty - Undulates through its lovely length. - - And rhythmically your bosom’s arches, - Alternately, with every breath - Lift lifeward in long lines of beauty - And lapse along the slopes of death. - - - THE THUNDER-SHOWER - - The lightning flashed, and lifted - The lids of heaven apart, - The fiery thunder rolled you - All night long through my heart. - - From dreams of you at dawn - I rose to the window ledge: - The storm had passed away, - The lake lapped on the sedge. - - The lyre of heaven trembled - Still with the thought of you, - The twilight on the waters, - And all my spirit, too. - - - SONG - - All my love for my sweet - I bared one day to her. - Carelessly she took it, - And like a conqueror - She bowed the neck of my soul - To fit it to her yoke, - And bridled the lips of Song— - Fear within me awoke! - But Love cried: “Swiftly, swiftly - Bear her along the road; - Beautiful is the goal - And Beauty is the goad.” - - - ALONE - - Ah, never in all my life - Have I ever fled away - From the loneliness that follows - My spirit night and day! - - Though I fly to the dearest face, - It follows without rest— - To the kind heart of love, - And the belovèd breast. - - Though I walk amid the crowd, - Still I walk apart; - Alone, alone I lie - Even at the loved one’s heart. - - - NIRVANA - - Sleep on—I lie at heaven’s high oriels, - Over the stars that murmur as they go - Lighting your lattice-window far below. - And every star some of the glory spells - Whereof I know. - - I have forgotten you, long long ago; - Like the sweet, silver singing of thin bells - Vanished, or music fading faint and low. - Sleep on—I lie at heaven’s high oriels, - Who loved you so. - - - TRIUMPH OF THE SINGER - - I shake my hair in the wind of morning - For the joy within me that knows no bounds. - I echo backward the vibrant beauty - Wherewith heaven’s hollow lute resounds. - - I shed my song on the feet of all men, - On the feet of all shed out like wine; - On the whole and the hurt I shed my bounty, - The beauty within me that is not mine. - - Turn not away from my song, nor scorn me, - Who bear the secret that holds the sky - And the stars together; but know within me - There speaks another more wise than I. - - Nor spurn me here from your heart to hate me, - Yet hate me here if you will. Not so - Myself you hate, but the love within me - That loves you whether you would or no. - - Here love returns with love to the lover - And beauty unto the heart thereof, - And hatred unto the heart of the hater, - Whether he would or no, with love! - - - - - Hervey White - - - LAST NIGHT - - Last night the full moon laid a cloth of white - Within my window, spread upon my bed, - And, with her old-time splendor, asked of me - To share her harvest supper. I arose, - And stepped without to pay my greetings. When, Behold! - The old world flowered again, as it had done - When I was twenty, at the gate of life; - The meadows held untouched their virgin bloom, - The darkling trees with gleaming leaves flashed bright, - Dewy and pendant till the waiting morn; - The shadows lay like cool soft soothing hands - Upon the pastures pulsing with sweet June: - I, too, was young again, and God was just, - And through my blood propelled great future acts— - Big things to do, and thoughts, and voice to speak— - So potent was the charm of my white queen. - It was not till I walked for many miles, - And came back weary to my quiet room, - That I had once more taken back my years, - My cares, my listlessness, and stagnant grief. - And, even as I sit in full faced day, - My memory faintly shadows out this song. - - - I SAW THE CLOUDS - - I saw the clouds among the hills - Trailing their plumes of rainy gray. - The purple of the woods behind - Fell down to where the valley lay - In sweet satiety of rain, - With ripened fruit, and full filled grain. - - I saw the graves, upon the plain, - Of pioneers, who took the land, - And tamed the stubborn elements - Till they were gentle to the hand. - Their children, now in fortune’s ways, - Dwell in their father’s palaces. - - I saw some old forgotten lays; - And treasured volumes I passed by. - They were but repetitions cheap - For any hucksterer to buy. - The clouds, the graves, the worn old song, - I bear them in my heart along. - - - - - Margaret Widdemer - - - THE BEGGARS - - The little pitiful, worn, laughing faces, - Begging of Life for Joy! - - I saw the little daughters of the poor, - Tense from the long day’s working, strident, gay, - Hurrying to the picture-place. There curled - A hideous flushed beggar at the door, - Trading upon his horror, eyeless, maimed, - Complacent in his profitable mask. - They mocked his horror, but they gave to him - From the brief wealth of pay-night, and went in - To the cheap laughter and the tawdry thoughts - Thrown on the screen; in to the seeking hand - Covered by darkness, to the luring voice - Of Horror, boy-masked, whispering of rings, - Of silks, of feathers, bought—so cheap!—with just - Their slender starved child-bodies, palpitant - For beauty, laughter, passion—that is life: - (A frock of satin for an hour’s shame, - A coat of fur for two days’ servitude; - “And the clothes last,” the thought runs on, within - The poor warped girl-minds drugged with changeless days; - “Who cares or knows after the hour is done?”) - —Poor little beggars at Life’s door for Joy! - - The old man crouched there, eyeless, horrible, - Complacent in the marketable mask - That earned his comforts—and they gave to him! - - But ah, the little painted, wistful faces - Questioning Life for Joy! - - - TERESINA’S FACE - - He saw it last of all before they herded in the steerage, - Dark against the sunset where he lingered by the hold, - The tear-stained dusk-rose face of her, the little Teresina, - Sailing out to lands of gold: - - Ah, the days were long, long days, still toiling in the vineyard, - Working for the coins that set him free to go to her, - Where gay it glowed, the flower face of little Teresina, - Where the joy and riches were: - - Hard to find one rose-face where the dark rose-faces cluster, - Where the outland laws are strange and outland voices hum, - (Only one lad’s hoping, and the word of Teresina, - Who would wait for him to come!) - - · · · · · - - God grant he may not find her, since he might not win her freedom, - Nor yet be great enough to love, in such marred, captive wise, - The patient, painted face of her, the little Teresina, - With its cowed, all-knowing eyes! - - - GREEK FOLK SONG - - Under dusky laurel leaf, - Scarlet leaf of rose, - I lie prone, who have known - All a woman knows. - - Love and grief and motherhood, - Fame and mirth and scorn— - These are all shall befall - Any woman born. - - Jewel-laden are my hands, - Tall my stone above— - Do not weep that I sleep, - Who was wise in love. - - Where I walk, a shadow gray - Through gray asphodel, - I am glad, who have had - All that life can tell. - - - - - Florence Wilkinson - - - OUR LADY OF IDLENESS - - They in the darkness gather and ask - Her name, the mistress of their endless task. - - - _The Toilers_ - - Tinsel-makers in factory gloom, - Miners in ethylene pits, - Divers and druggists mixing poisonous bloom; - - Huge hunters, men of brawn, - Half-naked creatures of the tropics, - Furred trappers stealing forth at Labrador dawn; - - Catchers of beetles, sheep-men in bleak sheds, - Pearl-fishers perched on Indian coasts, - Children in stifling towers pulling threads; - - Dark bunchy women pricking intricate laces, - Myopic jewelers’ apprentices, - Arabs who chase the long-legged birds in sandy places: - - They are her invisible slaves, - The genii of her costly wishes, - Climbing, descending, running under waves. - - They strip earth’s dimmest cell, - They burn and drown and stifle - To build her inconceivable and fragile shell. - - - _The Artist-Artisans_ - - They have painted a miracle-shawl - Of cobwebs and whispering shadows, - And trellised leaves that ripple on a wall. - - They have broidered a tissue of cost, - Spun foam of the sea - And lilied imagery of the vanishing frost. - - Her floating skirts have run - Like iridescent marshes, - Or like the tossed hair of a stormy sun. - - Her silver cloak has shone - Blue as a mummy’s beads, - Green as the ice-glints of an Arctic zone. - - She is weary and has lain - At last her body down. - What, with her clothing’s beauty, they have slain! - - - _The Angel With the Sword_ - - Come, brothers, let us lift - Her pitiful body on high, - Her tight-shut hands that take to heaven no gift - But ashes of costly things. - We seven archangels will - Bear her in silence on our flame-tipped wings. - - - _The Toilers_ - - Lo, she is thinner than fire - On a burned mill-town’s edge, - And smaller than a young child’s dead desire. - - Yea, emptier than the wage - Of a spent harlot crying for her beauty, - And grayer than the mumbling lips of age. - - - _A Lost Girl_ - - White as a drowned one’s feet - Twined with the wet sea-bracken, - And naked as a Sin driven from God’s littlest street. - - - STUDENTS - - John Brown and Jeanne at Fontainebleau— - ’Twas Toussaint, just a year ago; - Crimson and copper was the glow - Of all the woods at Fontainebleau. - They peered into that ancient well, - And watched the slow torch as it fell. - John gave the keeper two whole sous, - And Jeanne that smile with which she woos - John Brown to folly. So they lose - The Paris train. But never mind!— - All-Saints are rustling in the wind, - And there’s an inn, a crackling fire— - (It’s _deux-cinquante_, but Jeanne’s desire); - There’s dinner, candles, country wine, - Jeanne’s lips—philosophy divine! - There was a bosquet at Saint Cloud - Wherein John’s picture of her grew - To be a Salon masterpiece— - Till the rain fell that would not cease. - Through one long alley how they raced!— - ’Twas gold and brown, and all a waste - Of matted leaves, moss-interlaced. - Shades of mad queens and hunter-kings - And thorn-sharp feet of dryad-things - Were company to their wanderings; - Then rain and darkness on them drew. - The rich folks’ motors honked and flew. - They hailed an old cab, heaven for two; - The bright Champs-Elysées at last— - Though the cab crawled it sped too fast. - - Paris, upspringing white and gold: - Flamboyant arch and high-enscrolled - War-sculpture, big, Napoleonic— - Fierce chargers, angels histrionic; - The royal sweep of gardened spaces, - The pomp and whirl of columned Places; - The _Rive Gauche_, age-old, gay and gray; - The _impasse_ and the loved café; - The tempting tidy little shops; - The convent walls, the glimpsed tree-tops; - Book-stalls, old men like dwarfs in plays; - Talk, work, and Latin Quarter ways. - - May—Robinson’s, the chestnut trees— - Were ever crowds as gay as these? - The quick pale waiters on a run, - The round green tables, one by one, - Hidden away in amorous bowers— - Lilac, laburnum’s golden showers. - Kiss, clink of glasses, laughter heard, - And nightingales quite undeterred. - And then that last extravagance— - O Jeanne, a single amber glance - Will pay him!—“Let’s play millionaire - For just two hours—on princely fare, - At some hotel where lovers dine - _A deux_ and pledge across the wine!” - They find a damask breakfast-room, - Where stiff silk roses range their bloom. - The garçon has a splendid way - Of bearing in _grand déjeuner_. - Then to be left alone, alone, - High up above Rue Castiglione; - Curtained away from all the rude - Rumors, in silken solitude; - And, John, her head upon your knees— - Time waits for moments such as these. - - - - - Marguerite Wilkinson - - - A WOMAN’S BELOVED - _A Psalm_ - - To what shall a woman liken her beloved, - And with what shall she compare him to do him honor? - He is like the close-folded new leaves of the woodbine, odorless, but - sweet, - Flushed with a new and swiftly rising life, - Strong to grow and give glad shade in summer. - Even thus should a woman’s beloved shelter her in time of anguish. - - And he is like the young robin, eager to try his wings, - For within soft-stirring wings of the spirit has she cherished him, - And with the love of the mother bird shall she embolden him, that his - flight may avail. - - A woman’s beloved is to her as the roots of the willow, - Long, strong, white roots, bedded lovingly in the dark. - Into the depths of her have gone the roots of his strength and of his - pride, - That she may nourish him well and become his fulfilment. - None may tear him from the broad fields where he is planted! - - A woman’s beloved is like the sun rising upon the waters, making the - dark places light, - And like the morning melody of the pine trees. - Truly, she thinks the roses die joyously - If they are crushed beneath his feet. - A woman’s beloved is to her a great void that she may illumine, - A great king that she may crown, a great soul that she may redeem. - And he is also the perfecting of life, - Flowers for the altar, bread for the lips, wine for the chalice. - - You that have known passion, think not that you have fathomed love. - It may be that you have never seen love’s face. - For love thrusts aside storm-clouds of passion to unveil the heavens, - And, in the heart of a woman, only then is love born. - - To what shall I liken a woman’s beloved, - And with what shall I compare him to do him honor? - He is a flower, a song, a struggle, a wild storm, - And, at the last, he is redemption, power, joy, fulfilment and perfect - peace. - - - AN INCANTATION - - O great sun of heaven, harm not my love; - Sear him not with your flame, blind him not with your beauty, - Shine for his pleasure! - - O gray rains of heaven, harm not my love; - Drown not in your torrent the song of his heart, - Lave and caress him. - - O swift winds of heaven, harm not my love; - Bruise not nor buffet him with your rough humor, - Sing you his prowess! - - O mighty triad, strong ones of heaven, - Sun, rain, and wind, be gentle, I charge you— - For your mad mood of wrath have me—I am ready— - But spare him, my lover, most proud and most dear, - O sun, rain and wind, strong ones of heaven! - - - - - William Carlos Williams - - - SICILIAN EMIGRANT’S SONG - - _In New York Harbor_ - - O—eh—lee! La—la! - Donna! Donna! - Blue is the sky of Palermo; - Blue is the little bay; - And dost thou remember the orange and fig, - The lively sun and the sea breeze at evening? - Hey—la! - Donna! Donna! Maria! - - O—eh—li! La—la! - Donna! Donna! - Gray is the sky of this land. - Gray and green is the water. - I see no trees, dost thou? The wind - Is cold for the big woman there with the candle. - Hey—la! - Donna! Donna! Maria! - - O—eh—li! O—la! - Donna! Donna! - I sang thee by the blue waters; - I sing thee here in the gray dawning. - Kiss, for I put down my guitar; - I’ll sing thee more songs after the landing. - O Jesu, I love thee! - Donna! Donna! Maria! - - - PEACE ON EARTH - - The Archer is wake! - The Swan is flying! - Gold against blue - An Arrow is lying. - There is hunting in heaven— - Sleep safe till tomorrow. - - The Bears are abroad! - The Eagle is screaming! - Gold against blue - Their eyes are gleaming! - Sleep! - Sleep safe till tomorrow. - - The Sisters lie - With their arms intertwining; - Gold against blue - Their hair is shining! - The Serpent writhes! - Orion is listening! - - Gold against blue - His sword is glistening! - Sleep! - There is hunting in heaven— - Sleep safe till tomorrow. - - - THE SHADOW - - Soft as the bed in the earth - Where a stone has lain— - So soft, so smooth and so cool, - Spring closes me in - With her arms and her hands. - - Rich as the smell - Of new earth on a stone, - That has lain, breathing - The damp through its pores— - Spring closes me in - With her blossomy hair; - Brings dark to my eyes. - - - METRIC FIGURE - - There is a bird in the poplars— - It is the sun! - The leaves are little yellow fish - Swimming in the river; - The bird skims above them— - Day is on his wings. - Phoenix! - It is he that is making - The great gleam among the poplars. - It is his singing - Outshines the noise - Of leaves clashing in the wind. - - - SUB TERRA - - Where shall I find you— - You, my grotesque fellows - That I seek everywhere - To make up my band? - None, not one - With the earthy tastes I require: - The burrowing pride that rises - Subtly as on a bush in May. - - Where are you this day— - You, my seven-year locusts - With cased wings? - Ah, my beauties, how I long! - That harvest - That shall be your advent— - Thrusting up through the grass, - Up under the weeds, - Answering me— - That shall be satisfying! - The light shall leap and snap - That day as with a million lashes! - - Oh, I have you! - Yes, you are about me in a sense, - Playing under the blue pools - That are my windows. - But they shut you out still - There in the half light— - For the simple truth is - That though I see you clear enough ... - You are not there. - - It is not that—it is you, - You I want, my companions! - - God! if I could only fathom - The guts of shadows!— - You to come with me - Poking into negro houses - With their gloom and smell! - In among children - Leaping around a dead dog! - Mimicking - Onto the lawns of the rich! - You! - To go with me a-tip-toe - Head down under heaven, - Nostrils lipping the wind! - - - SLOW MOVEMENT - - All those treasures that lie in the little bolted box whose tiny space - is - Mightier than the room of the stars, being secret and filled with - dreams: - All those treasures—I hold them in my hand—are straining continually - Against the sides and the lid and the two ends of the little box in - which I guard them; - Crying that there is no sun come among them this great while and that - they weary of shining; - Calling me to fold back the lid of the little box and to give them sleep - finally. - - But the night I am hiding from them, dear friend, is far more desperate - than their night! - And so I take pity on them and pretend to have lost the key to the - little house of my treasures; - For they would die of weariness were I to open it, and not be merely - faint and sleepy - As they are now. - - - POSTLUDE - - Now that I have cooled to you - Let there be gold of tarnished masonry, - Temples soothed by the sun to ruin - That sleep utterly. - Give me hand for the dances, - Ripples at Philae, in and out, - And lips, my Lesbian, - Wall flowers that once were flame. - - Your hair is my Carthage - And my arms the bow, - And our words arrows - To shoot the stars - Who from that misty sea - Swarm to destroy us. - - But you there beside me— - Oh, how shall I defy you, - Who wound me in the night - With breasts shining - Like Venus and like Mars? - The night that is shouting Jason - When the loud eaves rattle - As with waves above me - Blue at the prow of my desire. - - - - - Charles Erskine Scott Wood - - - THE POET IN THE DESERT - _Extracts from the Prologue_ - - I have come into the Desert because my soul is athirst as the Desert is - athirst; - My soul which is the soul of all; universal, not different. - We are athirst for the waters which make beautiful the path - And entice the grass, the willows and poplars, - So that in the heat of the day we may lie in a cool shadow, - Soothed as by the hands of quiet women, listening to the discourse of - running waters as the voices of women, exchanging the confidences of - love. - - · · · · · - - The mountains afar girdle the Desert as a zone of amethyst; - Pale, translucent walls of opal, - Girdling the Desert as Life is girt by Eternity. - They lift their heads high above our tribulation - Into the azure vault of Time; - Theirs are the airy castles which are set upon foundations of sapphire. - My soul goes out to them as the bird to her secret nest. - They are the abode of peace. - - · · · · · - - The flowers bloom in the Desert joyously— - They do not weary themselves with questioning; - They are careless whether they be seen, or praised. - They blossom unto life perfectly and unto death perfectly, leaving - nothing unsaid. - They spread a voluptuous carpet for the feet of the Wind - And to the frolic Breezes which overleap them, they whisper: - “Stay a moment, Brother; plunder us of our passion; - Our day is short, but our beauty is eternal.” - - Never have I found a place, or a season, without beauty. - Neither the sea, where the white stallions champ their bits and rear - against their bridles, - Nor the Desert, bride of the Sun, which sits scornful, apart, - Like an unwooed princess, careless, indifferent. - She spreads her garments, wonderful beyond estimation, - And embroiders continually her mantle. - She is a queen, seated on a throne of gold - In the Hall of Silence. - She insists upon humility. - She insists upon meditation. - She insists that the soul be free. - She requires an answer. - She demands the final reply to thoughts which cannot be answered. - She lights the sun for a torch - And sets up the great cliffs as sentinels: - The morning and the evening are curtains before her chambers. - She displays the stars as her coronet. - She is cruel and invites victims, - Restlessly moving her wrists and ankles, - Which are loaded with sapphires. - Her brown breasts flash with opals. - She slays those who fear her, - But runs her hand lovingly over the brow of those who know her, - Soothing with a voluptuous caress. - She is a courtesan, wearing jewels, - Enticing, smiling a bold smile; - Adjusting her brilliant raiment negligently, - Lying brooding upon her floor which is richly carpeted; - Her brown thighs beautiful and naked. - She toys with the dazzelry of her diadems, - Smiling inscrutably. - She is a nun, withdrawing behind her veil; - Gray, subdued, silent, mysterious, meditative; unapproachable. - She is fair as a goddess sitting beneath a flowering peach-tree, beside - a clear river. - - Her body is tawny with the eagerness of the Sun - And her eyes are like pools which shine in deep cañons. - She is beautiful as a swart woman, with opals at her throat, - Rubies on her wrists and topaz about her ankles. - Her breasts are like the evening and the day stars; - She sits upon her throne of light, proud and silent, indifferent to her - wooers. - The Sun is her servitor, the Stars are her attendants, running before - her. - She sings a song unto her own ears, solitary, but it is sufficient— - It is the song of her being. Oh, if I may sing the song of my being it - will be sufficient. - She is like a jeweled dancer, dancing upon a pavement of gold; - Dazzling, so that the eyes must be shaded. - She wears the stars upon her bosom and braids her hair with the - constellations. - - I know the Desert is beautiful, for I have lain in her arms and she has - kissed me. - I have come to her, that I may know freedom; - That I may lie upon the breast of the Mother and breathe the air of - primal conditions. - I have come out from the haunts of men; - From the struggle of wolves upon a carcass, - To be melted in Creation’s crucible and be made clean; - To know that the law of Nature is freedom. - - - - - Edith Wyatt - - - ON THE GREAT PLATEAU - - In the Santa Clara Valley, far away and far away, - Cool-breathed waters dip and dally, linger towards another day— - Far and far away—far away. - - Slow their floating step, but tireless, terraced down the great Plateau. - Towards our ways of steam and wireless, silver-paced the brookbeds go. - Past the ladder-walled Pueblos, past the orchards, pear and quince, - Where the back-locked river’s ebb flows, miles and miles the valley - glints, - Shining backwards, singing downwards, towards horizons blue and bay. - All the roofs the roads ensconce so dream of visions far away— - Santa Cruz and Ildefonso, Santa Clara, Santa Fé. - Ancient, sacred fears and faiths, ancient, sacred faiths and fears— - Some were real, some were wraiths—Indian, Franciscan years, - Built the Khivas, swung the bells; while the wind sang plain and free, - “Turn your eyes from visioned hells!—look as far as you can see!” - In the Santa Clara Valley, far away and far away, - Dying dreams divide and dally, crystal-terraced waters sally— - Linger towards another day, far and far away—far away. - - As you follow where you find them, up along the high Plateau, - In the hollows left behind them Spanish chapels fade below— - Shaded court and low corrals. In the vale the goat-herd browses. - Hollyhocks are seneschals by the little buff-walled houses. - Over grassy swale and alley have you ever seen it so— - Up the Santa Clara Valley, riding on the Great Plateau? - Past the ladder-walled Pueblos, past the orchards, pear and quince, - Where the trenchèd waters’ ebb flows, miles and miles the valley glints, - Shining backwards, singing downwards towards horizons blue and bay. - All the haunts the bluffs ensconce so breathe of visions far away, - As you ride near Ildefonso back again to Santa Fé. - Pecos, mellow with the years, tall-walled Taos—who can know - Half the storied faiths and fears haunting green New Mexico? - Only from her open places down arroyos blue and bay, - - One wild grace of many graces dallies towards another day. - Where her yellow tufa crumbles, something stars and grasses know, - Something true, that crowns and humbles, shimmers from the Great - Plateau: - Blows where cool-paced waters dally from the stillness of Puyé, - Down the Santa Clara Valley through the world from far away— - Far and far away—far away. - - - SUMMER HAIL - - Once the heavens’ gabled door - Opened: down a stabled floor, - Down the thunders, something galloped far and wide, - Glancing far and fleet - Down the silver street— - And I knew of nothing, nothing else beside. - _Pitty patty polt— - Shoe the wild colt! - Here a nail! There a nail! - Pitty patty polt!_ - - Good and badness, die away. - Strength and swiftness down the day, - Dapple happy down my glancing silver street! - Oh, the touch of summer cold!— - Beauty swinging quick and bold, - Dipping, dappling where the distant roof-tops meet! - _Pitty patty polt— - Shoe the wild colt!_ - - Listen, dusty care: - Through a magic air, - Once I watched the way of perfect splendor ride, - Swishing far and gray, - Buoyant and gay— - And I knew of nothing, nothing else beside. - Good and badness, go your ways, - Vanish far and fleet. - Strength and swiftness run my days, - Down my silver street. - Little care, forevermore - Be you lesser than before. - Mighty frozen rain, - Come! oh, come again! - Let the heavens’ door be rended - With the touch of summer cold— - Dappling hoof-beats clatter splendid, - Infinitely gay and bold! - _Pitty patty polt— - Shoe the wild colt! - Here a nail and there a nail! - Pitty patty polt!_ - - Once the heavens’ gabled door - Opened: down the stabled floor, - Down the thunders something galloped wide and far; - Something dappled far and fleet, - Glancing down my silver street, - And I saw the ways of life just as they are. - _Pitty patty polt— - Shoe the wild colt! - Here a nail! There a nail! - Pitty patty polt!_ - - - TO F. W. - - You are my companion - Down the silver road, - Still and many-changing, - Infinitely changing. - You are my companion. - Something sings in lives— - Days of walking on and on, - Deep beyond all singing, - Wonderful past singing. - - Wonderful our road, - Long and many-changing, - Infinitely changing. - This, more wonderful— - We are here together, - You and I together, - I am your companion; - You are my companion, - My own, true companion. - - Let the road-side fade: - Morning on the mountain-top, - Hours along the valley, - Days of walking on and on, - Pulse away in silence, - In eternal silence. - Let the world all fade, - Break and pass away. - Yet will this remain, - Deep beyond all singing, - My own true companion, - Beautiful past singing: - We were here together— - On this earth together; - I was your companion, - You were my companion, - My own true companion. - - - A CITY AFTERNOON - - Green afternoon serene and bright, along my street you sail away - Sun-dappled like a ship of light that glints upon a rippled bay. - Afar, freight-engines call and toll; the sprays flash on the fragrant - grass; - The children and the nurses stroll; the charging motors plunge and pass. - Invisibly the shadows grow, empurpling in a rising tide - The walks where light-gowned women go, white curb, gray asphalt - iris-dyed. - A jolting trolley shrills afar; nasturtiums blow, and ivy vines; - Wet scents of turf and black-smoothed tar float down the rooftrees’ - vergent lines. - Where will you go, my afternoon, that glints so still and swift away, - Blue-shaded like a ship of light bound outward from a wimpled bay? - Oh—thrilling, pulsing, dark and bright, shall you, your work, your pain, - your mirth, - Fly into the immortal night and silence of our mother earth? - She bore all Eden’s green and dew, and Persia’s scented wine and rose, - And, flowering white against the blue, acanthus leaf and marbled pose. - And deep the Maenad’s choric dance, Crusader’s cross, and heathen crest - Lie sunk with rose and song and lance all veiled and vanished in her - breast. - - And all those afternoons once danced and sparkled in the sapphire light - And iris shade as you have glanced, green afternoon, in vibrant flight. - - As, down dim vistas, echoing, dead afternoons entreat our days, - What breath of beauty will you sing to souls unseen and unknown ways? - How close and how unanswering, green afternoon, you pulse away, - So little and so great a thing—deep towards the bourne of every day. - - - - - BIBLIOGRAPHY - - -The editors desire to express their thanks to the poets represented in -this anthology; also to the publishers of books marked with an asterisk -(*), and to the editors and publishers of magazines listed below, for -their very kind permission to use the poems here reprinted. - -The endeavor has been to list below all the books of verse, or books -about poetry, thus far printed by the poets quoted in this anthology: -and then to refer the reader to magazines which first published the -quoted poems, and to some of the anthologies which have included them. -It has been impossible, however, to note in every case the magazine in -which a poem was first printed, the records not being included in the -volumes from which they are taken; but we have tried to credit -especially certain periodicals which make a specialty of this subject. - -A recent revision of the bibliography, for the ninth edition, enables -the editors to include all titles of books published up to Oct. 1st, -1919. - - - CONRAD AIKEN - - Earth Triumphant Macmillan Co., New York: 1914 - - * Turns and Movies Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston: 1916 - - The Jig of Forslin Four Seas Co., Boston: 1916 - - Nocturne of Remembered Spring Four Seas Co.: 1917 - - The Charnel Rose: Senlin, a Four Seas Co.: 1918 - Biography - - In _Poetry_: Sept., 1915 (Vol. VI). - - - ZOË AKINS - - * Interpretations Grant Richards, London: 1912 - - * Interpretations Mitchell Kennerley, New York: 1914 - - In _Poetry_: Jan., 1915 (Vol. V). - - - RICHARD ALDINGTON - - * Images, Old and New Poetry Bookshop, London: 1915 - - * Images, Old and New Four Seas Co., Boston: 1916 - - Reverie (ed. of 50) Clerk’s Press, Cleveland: 1917 - - War and Love Four Seas Co.: 1919 - - Images of War Beaumont Press, London: 1919 - - In _Poetry_: Jan., 1914 (Vol. III); Oct., 1915 (Vol. VII); Oct., 1912 - (Vol. I). - In _Some Imagist Poets_: I-II Houghton Mifflin Co.: 1915, 1916 - - In _Des Imagistes_ Albert & Chas. Boni, New York: 1914 - - - MARY ALDIS - - * Flashlights Duffield & Co., New York: 1916 - - In _Others: An Anthology of the New Alf. A. Knopf, N.Y.: 1916 - Verse_ - - - WALTER CONRAD ARENSBERG - - Poems Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston: 1914 - - * Idols Houghton Mifflin Co.: 1916 - - In _Others: An Anthology of the New Alf. A. Knopf, N. Y.: 1916 - Verse_ - - - WILTON AGNEW BARRETT - - In _Poetry_: Oct., 1915 (Vol. VII). - - - JOSEPH WARREN BEACH - - Sonnets of the Head and Heart Richard G. Badger, Boston: 1903 - - In _Poetry_: May, 1915 (Vol. VI). - - - WILLIAM ROSE BENÉT - - Merchants from Cathay Century Co., New York: 1913 - - * The Falconer of God Yale Univ. Press, New Haven, Conn.: - 1914 - - The Great White Wall Yale Univ. Press: 1916 - - The Burglar of the Zodiac Yale Univ. Press: 1918 - - In _Poetry_: June, 1914 (Vol. IV); - April, 1916 (Vol. VIII). - - - MAXWELL BODENHEIM - - Minna and Myself Pagan Pub. Co., New York: 1918 - - In _Poetry_: Aug., 1914 (Vol. IV). - - In _Others_: Sept., 1915 (Vol. I). - - In _Others: An Anthology of the New Alf. A. Knopf, N. Y.: 1916 - Verse_ - - In _Catholic Anthology_ Elkin Mathews, London: 1915 - - - GORDON BOTTOMLEY - - * Chambers of Imagery: Series I-II Elkin Mathews, London: 1912 - - Laodice and Danaë Four Seas Co., Boston: 1916 - - In _Georgian Poetry_: I-II Poetry Bookshop, London: 1912, 1915 - - - ROLLO BRITTEN - - In _Poetry_: June, 1913 (Vol. - III). - - - RUPERT BROOKE - - * The Collected Poems of Rupert John Lane Co., London and N. Y.: - Brooke 1915 - - Selected Poems Sidgwick & Jackson, London: 1917 - - Rupert Brooke, a Memoir, by Edward John Lane Co.: 1918 - Marsh - - In _Poetry_: Oct., 1914 (Vol. V); - April, 1915 (Vol. VI). - - In _New Numbers_ Privately printed, London: - 1914–1915 - - In _Georgian Poetry_: I-II Poetry Bookshop, London: 1912, 1915 - - - WITTER BYNNER - - An Ode to Harvard and Other Poems Small, Maynard & Co.: 1907 - - Tiger Mitchell Kennerley, New York: 1913 - - The Little King Mitchell Kennerley: 1914 - - * The New World Mitchell Kennerley: 1915 - - Iphigenia in Tauris Mitchell Kennerley: 1916 - - Grenstone Poems Fred. A. Stokes Co.: 1917 - - A Canticle of Praise (Ltd. ed.) Privately printed by John Henry - Nash, San Francisco: 1919 - - The Beloved Stranger Alf. A. Knopf, N. Y.: 1919 - - In _Poetry_: April, 1914 (Vol. - IV); Feb., 1913 (Vol. I). - - - JOSEPH CAMPBELL (Seosamh MacCathmhaoil) - - The Garden of the Bees Erskine Mayne, Belfast: 1905 - - The Rushlight Maunsel & Co., Ltd., Dublin: 1906 - - The Gilly of Christ Maunsel & Co., Ltd.: 1907 - - The Man-Child Loch Press, London: 1907 - - The Mountainy Singer Maunsel & Co., Ltd.: 1909 - - Mearing Stones Maunsel & Co., Ltd.: 1911 - - Judgment: a Play Maunsel & Co., Ltd.: 1912 - - *Irishy Maunsel & Co., Ltd.: 1913 - - Earth of Cualann Maunsel & Co., Ltd.: 1917 - - The Mountainy Singer Four Seas Co., Boston: 1919 - - In _Poetry_: March, 1916 (Vol. - VII). - - - NANCY CAMPBELL - - The Little People Arthur Humphreys, London: 1910 - - Agnus Dei Maunsel & Co., Ltd., Dublin: 1912 - - In _Poetry_: Aug., 1915 (Vol. VI). - - - SKIPWITH CANNÉLL - - In _Poetry_: Sept., 1914 (Vol. IV). - - In _Others: An Anthology of the New Alf. A. Knopf, N. Y.: 1916 - Verse_ - - - WILLA SIBERT CATHER - - April Twilights Richard G. Badger, Boston: 1903 - - In _McClure’s Magazine_: June, 1909 (Vol. XXXIII); June, 1912 (Vol. - XXXIX). - - - PADRAIC COLUM - - * Wild Earth Maunsel & Co., Ltd., Dublin: 1910 - (_cir._) - - * Wild Earth and Other Poems Henry Holt & Co., New York: 1916 - - In _Poetry_: July, 1915 (Vol. VI); - March, 1914 (Vol. III). - - In _Others_: Dec., 1915 (Vol. I). - - - GRACE HAZARD CONKLING - - * Afternoons of April Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston: 1915 - - In _Poetry_: Nov., 1915 (Vol. VII). - - - ALICE CORBIN (Mrs. Wm. P. Henderson) - - * The Spinning Woman of the Sky Ralph Fletcher Seymour, Chicago: - 1912 - - In _Poetry_: Dec., 1914 (Vol. V); Jan., 1916 (Vol. VII); Dec., 1912 - (Vol. I). - In _Catholic Anthology_ Elkin Mathews, London: 1915 - - - ADELAIDE CRAPSEY - - * Verse The Manas Press, Rochester, N. Y.: - 1915 - - A Study in English Metrics Alf. A. Knopf, New York: 1918 - - In _Others_: March, 1916 (Vol. II). - - In _Others: An Anthology of the New Alf. A. Knopf, N. Y.: 1916 - Verse_ - - - H. D. (Mrs. Richard Aldington) - - * Sea-garden: Imagist Poems Constable & Co., Ltd., London; - Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston: 1916 - - In _Poetry_: Jan., 1913 (Vol. I); - March, 1915 (Vol. V). - - In _Des Imagistes_ Albert & Chas. Boni, New York: 1914 - - In _Some Imagist Poets_: I-II Houghton Mifflin Co.: 1915, 1916 - - - MARY CAROLYN DAVIES - - Songs Univ. of Cal. Press, Berkeley, - Cal.: 1914 (_cir._) - - The Drums in our Street Macmillan Co.: 1918 - - The Slave with Two Faces (a play) Egmont Arens, New York: 1918 - - A Little Freckled Person (child Houghton Mifflin Co.: 1919 - verse) - - Youth Riding Macmillan Co.: 1919 - - In _Others_: July, 1915 (Vol. II). - - In _Others: An Anthology of the New Alf. A. Knopf, N. Y.: 1916 - Verse_ - - - FANNIE STEARNS DAVIS (Mrs. Augustus McK. Gifford) - - Myself and I Macmillan Co., New York: 1914 - - Crack O’Dawn Macmillan Co.: 1915 - - In _Poetry_: March, 1913 (Vol. I). - - In _Atlantic Monthly_: Jan., 1913 - (Vol. CXI). - - - WALTER DE LA MARE - - Songs of Childhood Longmans, Green & Co., London: - 1902, 1916 - - Poems John Murray, London: 1906 - - A Child’s Day Constable & Co., Ltd., London: 1912 - - Peacock Pie Constable & Co., Ltd.: 1913 - - * The Listeners Constable & Co., Ltd.: 1912 - - * The Listeners Henry Holt & Co., New York: 1915 - - The Sunken Garden and Other Poems Beaumont Press, London: 1917 - (Ltd. ed.) - - Peacock Pie Henry Holt & Co.: 1917 - - Motley and Other Poems Henry Holt & Co.: 1918 - - In _Georgian Poetry_: I-II Poetry Bookshop, London: 1912, 1915 - - - LEE WILSON DODD - - A Modern Alchemist Richard G. Badger, Boston: 1906 - - * The Middle Miles Yale Univ. Press, New Haven, Conn.: - 1915 - - In _Poetry_: Jan., 1915 (Vol. V). - - - JOHN DRINKWATER - - Cophetua David Nutt, London: 1912 - - Rebellion David Nutt: 1914 - - * Swords and Ploughshares Sidgwick & Jackson, London: 1915 - - Olton Pools Sidgwick & Jackson: 1916 - - Poems: 1908–1914 Sidgwick & Jackson: 1917 - - Pawns: Three Poetic Plays Sidgwick & Jackson: 1917 - - Tides Sidgwick & Jackson: 1917 - - Loyalties Sidgwick & Jackson: 1919 - - In _Poetry_: Dec., 1915 (Vol. VII). - - In _Georgian Poetry_: I-II Poetry Bookshop, London: 1912, 1915 - - - LOUISE DRISCOLL - - In _Poetry_: Nov., 1914 (Vol. V). - - - DOROTHY DUDLEY (Mrs. Henry B. Harvey) - - In _Poetry_: June, 1915 (Vol. VI). - - - HELEN DUDLEY - - In _Poetry_: Oct., 1912 (Vol. I), - Aug., 1914 (Vol. IV). - - - MAX EASTMAN - - * Child of the Amazons and Other Mitchell Kennerley: 1913 - Poems - - Colors of Life Alf. A. Knopf, New York: 1918 - - The Enjoyment of Poetry Chas. Scribner’s Sons, New York: - 1913 - - - T. S. ELIOT - - Prufrock and Other Observations The Egoist, Ltd., London: 1917 - - Ezra Pound, his Metric and Poetry Alf. A. Knopf, New York: 1917 - - In _Others_: Sept., 1915 (Vol. I). - - In _Others: An Anthology of the New Alf. A. Knopf, N. Y.: 1916 - Verse_ - - In _Catholic Anthology_ Elkin Mathews, London: 1915 - - - ARTHUR DAVISON FICKE - - From the Isles Samurai Press, Cranleigh and - London: 1907 - - The Happy Princess and Other Poems Small, Maynard & Co.: 1907 - - The Earth Passion Samurai Press: 1908 - - The Breaking of Bonds Mitchell Kennerley, New York: 1910 - - Twelve Japanese Painters Ralph Fletcher Seymour Co., - Chicago: 1913 - - Mr. Faust Mitchell Kennerley: 1913 - - * Sonnets of a Portrait Painter Mitchell Kennerley: 1914 - - * The Man on the Hilltop Mitchell Kennerley: 1915 - - An April Elegy Mitchell Kennerley: 1917 - - In _Poetry_: March, 1915 (Vol. V); - Feb., 1913 (Vol. I). - - In _The Forum_: Aug., 1914 (Vol. - LII). - - - JOHN GOULD FLETCHER - - Fire and Wine Grant Richards, London: 1913 - - Fool’s Gold Max Goschen, Ltd., London: 1913 - - The Dominant City Max Goschen, Ltd.: 1913 - - The Book of Nature Constable & Co., Ltd., London: 1913 - - Visions of the Evening Erskine McDonald, London: 1913 - - * Irradiations Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston: 1916 - - * Goblins and Pagodas Houghton Mifflin Co.: 1916 - - The Tree of Life Chatto & Windus, London: 1918 - - Japanese Prints Four Seas Co., Boston: 1918 - - In _Poetry_: Dec., 1913 (Vol. III); - March, 1916 (Vol. VI); Sept., - 1914 (Vol. IV). - - In _Some Imagist Poets_: I-II Houghton Mifflin Co.: 1915, 1916 - - - F. S. FLINT - - In the Net of the Stars Elkin Mathews, London: 1909 - - * Cadences Poetry Bookshop, London: 1915 - - The Mosella of Decimus Magnus The Egoist, London: 1916 - Ansonius - - Philip II (translated from the Constable & Co., Ltd., London: 1916 - French of Emile Verhaeren) - - The Love Poems of Emile Verhaeren Constable & Co., Ltd.: 1916 - (Translated from French) - - The Closed Door (from French of John Lane Co., London & New York: - Jean de Bosschère) 1917 - - In _Poetry_: July, 1913 (Vol. II). - - In _Des Imagistes_ Albert & Chas. Boni, New York: 1914 - - In _Some Imagist Poets_: I-II Houghton Mifflin Co.: 1915, 1916 - - - MOIREEN FOX (Mrs. a Cheavasa) - - Liadain and Curithir B. H. Blackwell, Oxford, Eng.: 1917 - - Midyir and Etain Candle Press, Dublin: 1918 - - In _Poetry_: March, 1915 (Vol. V). - - - FLORENCE KIPER FRANK - - Cinderelline Dramatic Publ. Co., Chicago: 1913 - - * The Jew to Jesus and Other Poems Mitchell Kennerley: 1915 - - In _Poetry_: Nov., 1914 (Vol. V). - - - ROBERT FROST - - * A Boy’s Will David Nutt, London: 1913 - - * A Boy’s Will Henry Holt & Co., New York: 1915 - - * North of Boston David Nutt, London: 1914 - - * North of Boston Henry Holt & Co., New York: 1915 - - Mountain Interval Henry Holt & Co.: 1916 - - In _Poetry_: Feb., 1914 (Vol. III). - - - HAMLIN GARLAND - - Prairie Songs Stone & Kimball, Chicago: 1893 - - In _Poetry_: Nov. 1913 (Vol. III). - - - WILFRID WILSON GIBSON - - The Golden Helm Elkin Mathews, London: 1903 - - The Nets of Love Elkin Mathews, London: 1905 - - On the Threshold Samurai Press, Cranleigh & London: - 1907 - - The Stonefolds Samurai Press: 1907 - - The Web of Life Samurai Press: 1908 - - Fires I-II Elkin Mathews, London: 1912 - - Daily Bread Elkin Mathews, London: 1913 - - Womenkind Adams & Black, London: 1913 - - Womenkind Macmillan Co., New York: 1912 - - * Borderlands Elkin Mathews, London: 1914 - - * Thoroughfares Elkin Mathews, London: 1914 - - * Borderlands and Thoroughfares Macmillan Co., New York: 1914 - - * Battle and Other Poems Elkin Mathews, London; Macmillan - Co., New York: 1916 - - Daily Bread Macmillan Co., New York: 1916 - - Fires Macmillan Co., New York: 1916 - - Livelihood Macmillan Co., N. Y. & London: 1917 - - Collected Works Macmillan Co., N. Y. & London: 1917 - - Hill Tracks Macmillan Co., N. Y. & London: 1918 - - In _Poetry_: March, 1916 (Vol. - III); June, 1914 (Vol. IV); Aug., - 1915 (Vol. VI). - - In _Georgian Poetry_: I-II Poetry Bookshop, London: 1912, 1915 - - - RICHARD BUTLER GLAENZER - - Beggar and King Yale Univ. Press, New Haven, Conn.: - 1917 - - In _Poetry_: July, 1914 (Vol. IV). - - - DOUGLAS GOLDRING - - A Country Boy Adelphi Press, London: 1910 - - Streets Max Goschen, London: 1912 - - In the Town Selwyn & Blount, London: 1916 - - *On the Road Selwyn & Blount, London: 1916 - - In _Poetry_: May, 1915 (Vol. VI). - - - HERMANN HAGEDORN - - The Silver Blade Alfred Unger, Berlin: 1907 - - The Woman of Corinth (out of print) Houghton Mifflin Co.: 1908 - - A Troop of the Guard and Other Houghton Mifflin Co.: 1909 - Poems (out of print) - - * Poems and Ballads Macmillan Co., New York: 1909 - - The Great Maze and The Heart of Macmillan Co.: 1916 - Youth - - Hymn of Free Peoples Triumphant Macmillan Co.: 1918 - - In _Poetry_: Sept., 1915 (Vol. VI). - - - THOMAS HARDY - - Wessex Poems, and Other Verses Macmillan & Co., Ltd., London - - Wessex Poems, and Other Verses Harper & Bros., N. Y.: 1899 - - Poems of the Past and the Present Macmillan & Co., Ltd., London - - Poems of the Past and the Present Harper & Bros., N. Y.: 1901 - - The Dynasts: a Drama in Three Parts Macmillan & Co.: 1904 - - The Dynasts: a Drama in Three Parts Macmillan Co., N. Y.: 1904 - - * Time’s Laughing-stocks Macmillan & Co., Ltd., London: 1909 - - * Satires of Circumstance Macmillan & Co., Ltd., London: 1914 - - Selected Poems Macmillan & Co., Ltd., London: 1916 - - Moments of Vision and Miscellaneous Macmillan & Co., Ltd. 1917 - Verse - - - RALPH HODGSON - - * Eve Flying Fame, London: 1913 - - The Bull Flying Fame: 1913 - - * The Mystery Flying Fame: 1913 - - The Song of Honour (out of print) Flying Fame: 1913 - - Seven Broadsides (Decorated by Flying Fame: 1913 - Lovat Fraser) - - All the above re-issued by the Poetry Bookshop, London: 1914 - Poems Macmillan Co., New York: 1917 - - The Last Blackbird and Other Lines George Allen & Unwin, Ltd., London; - Macmillan Co., New York: 1917 - - In _Georgian Poetry_: 1913–1915 Poetry Bookshop, London: 1915 - - - HORACE HOLLEY - - The Inner Garden Sherman French & Co., Boston: 1913 - - The Stricken King Shakespeare Head Press, - Stafford-on-Avon: 1913 - - Divinations and Creation Mitchell Kennerley, New York: 1916 - - In _Poetry_: May, 1915 (Vol. VI). - - In _Others: An Anthology of the New Alf. A. Knopf, N. Y.: 1916 - Verse_ - - - HELEN HOYT - - In _Poetry_: Aug., 1913 (Vol. II); - Aug., 1915 (Vol. VI). - - In _Masses_: Dec., 1915 (Vol. - VIII). - - In _Others: An Anthology of the New Verse_ Alf. A. Knopf, N. Y.: - 1916 - - - FORD MADOX HUEFFER - - Collected Poems Max Goschen, London: 1914 - - * Antwerp Poetry Bookshop, London: 1915 - - On Heaven and Poems Written on John Lane Co., London & New York: - Active Service 1918 - - - SCHARMEL IRIS - - * Lyrics of a Lad Seymour Daughaday & Co., Chicago: - 1914 - - In _Poetry_: Dec., 1914 (Vol. V). - - - ORRICK JOHNS - - Asphalt and Other Poems Alf. A. Knopf, New York: 1917 - - In _Poetry_: Feb., 1914 (Vol. III). - - In _Catholic Anthology_ Elkin Mathews: 1915 - - In _Others: An Anthology of the New Alf. A. Knopf, N. Y.: 1916 - Verse_ - - - JOYCE KILMER - - Summer of Love Doubleday Page & Co.: 1911 - - * Trees and Other Poems George H. Doran Co., New York: 1914 - - Main Street and Other Poems George H. Doran Co.: 1917 - - Joyce Kilmer: Poems, Essays and George H. Doran Co.: 1918 - Letters; with a Memoir by Robert - Coates Holliday - - In _Poetry_: Aug., 1913 (Vol. II); - April, 1914 (Vol. IV). - - - ALFRED KREYMBORG - - * Mushrooms John Marshall Co., Ltd., New York: - 1916 - - Plays for Poem-mimes The Other Press, New York: 1918 - - In _Poetry_: Feb., 1916 (Vol. VII). - - In _Catholic Anthology_ Elkin Mathews, London: 1915 - - In _Others: An Anthology of the New Alf. A. Knopf, N. Y.: 1916 - Verse_ - - - WILLIAM LAIRD - - In _Poetry_: Sept., 1914 (Vol. IV); - July, 1913 (Vol. II). - - - D. H. LAWRENCE - - Love Poems and Others Duckworth, London: 1913 - - * Amores Duckworth, London: 1916 - - * Amores B. W. Huebsch, New York: 1916 - - Look! We have Come Through Chatto & Windus, London: 1917 - - Look! We have Come Through B. W. Huebsch: 1918 - - New Poems Martin Secker, London: 1918 - - In _Poetry_: Jan., 1914 (Vol. III); - Dec., 1914 (Vol. V). - - In _Some Imagist Poets_: I-II Houghton Mifflin Co.: 1915, 1916 - - In _Georgian Poetry_: I-II Poetry Bookshop, London: 1912, 1915 - - - AGNES LEE (Mrs. Otto Freer) - - Verses for Children Copeland and Day, Boston: 1898 - - Verses for Children Small, Maynard & Co., Boston: 1901 - - The Border of the Lake Sherman, French & Co., Boston: 1910 - - * The Sharing Sherman, French & Co.: 1914 - - Théophile Gautier’s Émaux et Camées George D. Sproul, New York: 1903 - (Translation) - - Fernand Gregh’s La Maison de Dodd, Mead & Co., New York: 1907 - l’Enfance (Translation) - - In _Poetry_: Oct., 1914 (Vol. V). - - - WILLIAM ELLERY LEONARD - - The Vaunt of Man and Other Poems B. W. Huebsch, N. Y.: 1913 - - Fragments of Empedocles, translated Open Court Pub. Co., Chicago: 1908 - into English verse - - Aesop and Hyssop (fables in verse) Open Court Pub. Co.: 1912 - - Of the Nature of Things, by J. M. Dent & Sons, London; E. P. - Lucretius, translated into blank Dutton & Co., New York: 1916 - verse - - In _Poetry_: Oct., 1913 (Vol. III). - - - VACHEL LINDSAY - - Rhymes to be Traded for Bread Privately printed, Springfield, - Ill.: 1912 - - The Village Magazine Privately printed, Springfield, - Ill.: 1912 - - * General William Booth Enters into Mitchell Kennerley, 1913; Macmillan - Heaven and Other Poems Co.: 1916 - - * The Congo and Other Poems Macmillan Co.: 1915 - - The Chinese Nightingale and Other Macmillan Co.: 1917 - Poems - - In _Poetry_: Jan., 1913 (Vol. I); April, 1914 (Vol. IV); Feb., 1915 - (Vol. V). - - - AMY LOWELL - - * A Dome of Many-coloured Glass Houghton Mifflin Co.: 1912 - - * A Dome of Many-coloured Glass Macmillan Co., New York: 1914 - - * Sword Blades and Poppy Seed Macmillan Co.: 1914 - - Men, Women and Ghosts Macmillan Co.: 1916 - - Can Grande’s Castle Macmillan Co.: 1918 - - Pictures of the Floating World Macmillan Co.: 1919 - - Six French Poets—Studies in Macmillan Co.: 1915 - Contemporary Literature - - Tendencies in Modern American Macmillan Co.: 1917 - Poetry - - In _Poetry_: Aug., 1916 (Vol. - VIII); April, 1915 (Vol. VI); - April, 1914 (Vol. IV); Sept., - 1915 (Vol. VI); July, 1913 (Vol. - II). - - In _The Little Review_: Aug., 1915 - (Vol. II). - - - PERCY MACKAYE - - Poems Macmillan Co., New York: 1909 - - Lincoln: Centenary Ode Macmillan Co.: 1909 - - Uriel and Other Poems Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston: 1912 - - The Present Hour Macmillan Co.: 1914 - - The Sistine Eve and Other Poems Macmillan Co.: 1915 - (reprint of Poems, 1909) - - * Collected Poems Macmillan Co.: 1916 - - Poems and Plays (2 vols.) Macmillan Co.: 1916 - - - FREDERIC MANNING - - The Vigil of Brunhilde John Murray, London: 1905 - - Poems John Murray, London: 1908 - - Eidola John Murray, London; E. P. Dutton & - Co., N. Y.: 1917 - - In _Poetry_: June, 1913 (Vol. II). - - - JOHN MASEFIELD - - * Salt Water Ballads Grant Richards, London: 1902 - - Ballads (out of print) Elkin Mathews, London: 1903 - - Ballads and Poems Elkin Mathews, London: 1910 - - The Everlasting Mercy Sidgwick & Jackson, London: 1911 - - The Widow in the Bye Street Sidgwick & Jackson, London: 1912 - - The Everlasting Mercy and the Widow Macmillan Co., New York: 1912 - in the Bye Street - - The Story of a Round-house and Macmillan Co., N. Y.: 1912 - Other Poems (including Dauber) - - The Daffodil Fields Macmillan Co., N. Y.: 1913 - - The Daffodil Fields Wm. Heinemann, London: 1913 - - Dauber Wm. Heinemann, London: 1914 - - Philip the King and Other Poems Macmillan Co., N. Y.: 1914 - - Philip the King Wm. Heinemann, London: 1914 - - John M. Synge: a Few Personal Macmillan Co., N. Y.: 1915 - Recollections (Edition limited to - 500) - - Good Friday and Other Poems Macmillan Co., N. Y.: 1916 - - Good Friday and Other Poems Wm. Heinemann, London: 1916 - - * Sonnets Macmillan Co., N. Y.: 1916 - * Salt-water Poems and Ballads Macmillan Co., N. Y.: 1916 - (reprint) - - Lollingdon Downs and Other Poems Wm. Heinemann, London; Macmillan - Co., N. Y.: 1917 - - Rosas (autographed ed.) Macmillan Co., N. Y.: 1917 - - Poems and Plays (collected, 2 Macmillan Co., N. Y.: 1918 - vols.) - - A Poem and Two Plays Wm. Heinemann, London: 1919 - - In _Georgian Poetry_: I-II Poetry Bookshop, London: 1912, 1915 - - - EDGAR LEE MASTERS - - A Book of Verses Way & Williams, Chicago: 1898 - - Maximilian, a Tragedy in blank Richard G. Badger: 1902 - verse - - The Blood of the Prophets, by Rooks Press, Chicago: 1905 - Dexter Wallace - - Songs and Sonnets, by Webster Ford Rooks Press: 1911 - - * Spoon River Anthology Macmillan Co.: 1915 - - * Songs and Satires Macmillan Co.: 1916 - - The Great Valley Macmillan Co.: 1916 - - Spoon River Anthology (with Macmillan Co.: 1916 - additions) - - Toward the Gulf Macmillan Co.: 1918 - - Starved Rock Macmillan Co.: 1919 - - In _Reedy’s Mirror_: 1914. - - In _Poetry_: Feb., 1915 (Vol. V). - - In _Catholic Anthology_ Elkin Mathews, London: 1915 - - - ALICE MEYNELL - - Poems John Lane Co., London: 1896 - - Poems Copeland & Day, Boston: 1896 - - * Later Poems John Lane Co., London and N. Y.: - 1902 - - * Poems (including above) Chas. Scribner’s Sons, N. Y.: 1913 - - In _Poetry_: March, 1913 (Vol. I). - - - MAX MICHELSON - - In _Poetry_: July, 1915 (Vol. VI); - May, 1916 (Vol. III). - - - EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY - - Renascence and Other Poems Mitchell Kennerley, New York: 1917 - - In _The Forum_: July, 1913; Oct., - 1914; Aug., 1915. - - - HAROLD MONRO - - Judas Sampson Low, London: 1908 - - Before Dawn Constable & Co., Ltd., London: 1911 - - * Children of Love Poetry Bookshop, London: 1914 - - Trees Poetry Bookshop, London: 1915 - - In _Catholic Anthology_ Elkin Mathews, London: 1915 - - In _Georgian Poetry_: I-II Poetry Bookshop, London: 1912, 1915 - - - HARRIET MONROE - - Valeria and Other Poems Privately printed: 1892 - - Valeria and Other Poems A. C. McClurg & Co., Chicago: 1893 - - Columbian Ode (with decorations by W. Irving Way & Co., Chicago: 1893 - Will. H. Bradley) - - The Passing Show Houghton Mifflin Co.: 1903 - - * You and I Macmillan Co.: 1914 - - In _Poetry_: Feb., 1914 (Vol. III); - Sept., 1914 (Vol. III); Aug., - 1915 (Vol. IV). - - In _Catholic Anthology_ Elkin Mathews: 1915 - - - JOHN G. NEIHARDT - - The Divine Enchantment James T. White & Co., N. Y.: 1900 - (_cir._) - - A Bundle of Myrrh Outing Co., New York: 1907 - - * Man-Song Mitchell Kennerley, New York: 1909 - - The Stranger at the Gate Mitchell Kennerley: 1912 - - The Song of Hugh Glass Macmillan Co., New York: 1915 - - * The Quest (Collected Lyrics) Macmillan Co.: 1916 - - The Song of Three Friends Macmillan Co.: 1919 - - - YONE NOGUCHI - - From the Eastern Sea Privately printed, London: 1906; - Elkin Mathews, London: 1910; Japan - Press, Tokio: 1910 - - * The Pilgrimage The Valley Press, Kamalsura, Japan: - 1909; Elkin Mathews,London; - Mitchell Kennerley, New York: 1912 - - Spirit of Japanese Poetry E. P. Dutton & Co., New York: 1914 - - - GRACE FALLOW NORTON - - Little Gray Songs from St. Joseph’s Houghton Mifflin Co.: 1912 - - * The Sister of the Wind Houghton Mifflin Co.: 1914 - - Roads Houghton Mifflin Co.: 1916 - - What is Your Legion? Houghton Mifflin Co.: 1916 - - In _Poetry_: Jan., 1914 (Vol. III); - Dec., 1915 (Vol. VII). - - - JAMES OPPENHEIM - - Monday Morning and Other Poems Sturgis & Walton Co., N. Y.: 1909 - - The Pioneers B. W. Huebsch, New York: 1910 - - * Songs for the New Age Century Co., New York: 1914 - - War and Laughter Century Co., New York: 1916 - - The Book of Self Alf. A. Knopf, New York: 1917 - - - PATRICK ORR - - In _Poetry_: Jan., 1915 (Vol. V). - - - SEUMAS O’SULLIVAN - - New Songs (in collaboration) O’Donoghue, Dublin: 1904 - - The Twilight People Whaley, Dublin: 1905 - - Verses, Sacred and Profane Maunsel & Co., Ltd., Dublin: 1908 - - The Earth Lover New Nation Press, Dublin: 1909 - - Selected Lyrics Thos. B. Mosher, Portland, Maine: - 1910 - - Poems Maunsel & Co., Ltd.: 1912 - - An Epilogue and Other Poems Maunsel & Co., Ltd.: 1914 - - Requiem and Other Poems Privately ptd., Dublin: 1917 - - The Rosses and Other Poems Maunsel & Co., Ltd.: 1918 - - In _Poetry_: Dec., 1914 (Vol. V). - - - JOSEPHINE PRESTON PEABODY (Mrs. Lionel S. Marks) - - Marlowe, A Drama Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston: 1901 - - The Singing Leaves Houghton Mifflin Co.: 1908 - - Fortune and Men’s Eyes Houghton Mifflin Co.: 1909 - - * The Singing Man Houghton Mifflin Co.: 1911 - - The Piper Houghton Mifflin Co.: 1911 - - The Wolf of Gubbio Houghton Mifflin Co.: 1914 - - * Harvest Moon Houghton Mifflin Co.: 1916 - - - EZRA POUND - - A Lume Spento (ed. of 100) Autonelli, Venice, Italy: 1908 - - A Quinzaine for this Yule Pollock, London (100); Elkin - Mathews, London (100): 1908 - - * Personæ Elkin Mathews, London: 1909 - - * Exultations Elkin Mathews: 1909 - - Provença Small, Maynard & Co., Boston: 1910 - - Canzoni Elkin Mathews, London: 1911 - - * Ripostes Stephen Swift & Co., Ltd., London: - 1912 - - Sonnets and Ballate of Guido Small, Maynard & Co., Boston; - Cavalcanti Stephen Swift & Co., London: 1912 - - * Poems (Vols. I-II) Elkin Mathews: 1913 - - * Cathay Elkin Mathews: 1915 - - * Lustra Elkin Mathews: 1916 - - * Lustra, with Earlier Poems Alfred A. Knopf, New York: 1917 - - Certain Noble Plays of Japan, Cuala Press, Dundrum, Ireland: 1916 - trans. by Ernest Fenollosa and - Ezra Pound, with Introd. by W. B. - Yeats - - Noh, or Accomplishment: a Study of Macmillan & Co., Ltd., London; Alf. - the Classical Stage of Japan with A. Knopf, New York: 1917 - trans. of 15 plays, by E. F. & E. - P. - - Pavannes and Divisions (prose Alf. A. Knopf: 1918 - essays) - - In _Poetry_: April, 1913 (Vol. II); - Nov., 1913 (Vol. III); March, - 1915 (Vol. V); Dec., 1915 (Vol. - VII). - - In _Catholic Anthology_ Elkin Mathews, London: 1915 - - In _Others: An Anthology of the New Alf. A. Knopf, N. Y.: 1916 - Verse_ - - - JOHN REED - - * Sangar Privately printed, Riverside, - Conn.: 1912 - - The Day in Bohemia Privately printed, Riverside, - Conn.: 1913 - - Tamburlaine and Other Poems Fred. C. Bursch, Riverside, Conn.: - 1916 - - In _Poetry_: Dec., 1912 (Vol. I). - - - ERNEST RHYS - - The Great Cockney Tragedy T. Fisher Unwin, London: 1891 - - A London Rose and Other Rhymes John Lane, London: 1894 - - Welsh Ballads David Nutt, London: 1898 - - Guenevere J. M. Dent & Sons, Ltd., London: - 1905 - - Lays of the Round Table J. M. Dent & Sons, Ltd.: 1905 - - Enid J. M. Dent & Sons, Ltd.: 1908 - - The Masque of the Grail Elkin Mathews, London: 1908 - - The Leaf-burners J. M. Dent & Sons, Ltd.: 1916 - - In _Poetry_: Sept., 1913 (Vol. II); - Jan., 1913 (Vol. I). - - - EDWIN ARLINGTON ROBINSON - - The Torrent and the Night Before Privately printed, Gardiner, Me.: - (out of print) 1896 - - The Children of the Night Richard G. Badger: 1897 - - Captain Craig Houghton Mifflin Co.: 1902 - - * The Children of the Night. Chas. Scribner’s Sons, New York: - 1905 - - * The Town Down the River Chas. Scribner’s Sons: 1910 - - * Captain Craig Macmillan Co., New York: 1915 - - * The Man Against the Sky Macmillan Co.: 1916 - - Merlin Macmillan Co.: 1917 - - - CARL SANDBURG - - * Chicago Poems Henry Holt & Co., New York: 1916 - - Cornhuskers Henry Holt & Co.: 1918 - - In _Poetry_: March, 1914 (Vol. - III); Oct., 1915 (Vol. VII); - June, 1914 (Vol. IV). - - In _Catholic Anthology_ Elkin Mathews, London: 1915 - - In _Others: An Anthology of the New Alf. A. Knopf, N. Y.: 1916 - Verse_ - - - CLARA SHANAFELT - - In _Poetry_: Oct., 1913 (Vol. III); - May, 1915 (Vol. VI); June, 1916 - (Vol. VII). - - - FRANCES SHAW - - Ragdale Book of Verse Privately printed, Lake Forest, - Ill.: 1911 - - Songs of a Baby’s Day A. C. McClurg & Co., Chicago: 1917 - - In _Poetry_: March, 1914 (Vol. - III); July, 1915 (Vol. VI). - - - CONSTANCE LINDSAY SKINNER - - In _Poetry_: Oct., 1914 (Vol. V). - - - JAMES STEPHENS - - * Insurrections Maunsel & Co., Ltd., Dublin: 1909 - - * Insurrections Macmillan Co., New York: 1912 - - The Hill of Vision Macmillan Co.: 1912 - - The Hill of Vision Maunsel & Co., Ltd.: 1912 - - * Songs from the Clay Macmillan Co., New York: 1914 - - * The Adventures of Seumas Beg Macmillan & Co., Ltd., London: 1915 - - * The Rocky Road to Dublin (same Macmillan Co., N. Y.: 1915 - contents as Seumas Beg) - - Green Branches Maunsel & Co., Ltd., Dublin; - Macmillan Co., N. Y.: 1916 - - Reincarnations Macmillan Co.: 1917 - - In _Poetry_: Aug., 1914 (Vol. IV). - In _Georgian Poetry_: I—II Poetry Bookshop, London: 1912, 1915 - - - GEORGE STERLING - - The Testimony of the Suns A. M. Robertson, San Francisco: - 1903 - - A Wine of Wizardry A. M. Robertson: 1909 - - The House of Orchids A. M. Robertson: 1911 - - * Beyond the Breakers A. M. Robertson: 1914 - - Yosemite A. M. Robertson: 1915 - - The Evanescent City A. M. Robertson: 1915 - - Ode on Opening of Panama Pacific A. M. Robertson: 1915 - International Exposition - - The Caged Eagle A. M. Robertson: 1916 - - In _Poetry_: Dec., 1912 (Vol. I). - - - WALLACE STEVENS - - In _Poetry_: Nov., 1915 (Vol. VII). - - In _Others_: Aug., 1915 (Vol. I). - - In _Others: An Anthology of the New Alf. A. Knopf, N. Y.: 1916 - Verse_ - - - AJAN SYRIAN - - In _Poetry_: June, 1915 (Vol. VI). - - - RABINDRANATH TAGORE - - Gitanjali Privately printed by the India - Society, London: 1912 - - * Gitanjali Macmillan & Co., Ltd., London: 1913 - - * Gitanjali Macmillan Co., New York: 1913 - - * The Gardener Macmillan Co., N. Y. and London: - 1913 - - Chitra India Society, London: 1913 - - Chitra Macmillan Co., N. Y. and London: - 1913 - - Songs of Kabir (translation) India Society, London: 1914 - - Songs of Kabir Macmillan Co., N. Y. and London: - 1914 - - The Crescent Moon Macmillan Co., N. Y. and London: - 1914 - - The Post-office Macmillan Co., N. Y. and London: - 1914 - - The King of the Dark Chamber Macmillan Co., N. Y. and London: - 1914 - - Fruit-gathering Macmillan Co., N. Y. and London: - 1916 - - Stray Birds Macmillan Co., N. Y. and London: - 1916 - - The Cycle of Spring Macmillan Co., N. Y. and London: - 1917 - - Gitanjali and Fruit-gathering Macmillan Co.: 1918 - (1 vol., illus’d) - - Lover’s Gift and Crossing Macmillan Co., N. Y. and London: - 1918 - - Gitanjali (popular ed.) Four Seas Co., Boston: 1919 - - In _Poetry_: Dec., 1912 (Vol. I); - June, 1913 (Vol. II). - - - SARA TEASDALE - - Sonnets to Duse Poet-lore Co., Boston: 1907 - - Helen of Troy and Other Poems G. P. Putnam’s Sons, New York: 1911 - - * Rivers to the Sea Macmillan Co., New York: 1915 - - Love Songs Macmillan Co.: 1917 - - Sonnets to Duse Four Seas Co., Boston: 1919 - - In _Poetry_: Oct., 1915 (Vol. VII); - March, 1914 (Vol. III). - - In _Yale Review_: July, 1916 (Vol. - V). - - - EUNICE TIETJENS - - Profiles from China Ralph Fletcher Seymour, Chicago: - 1917; Alf. A. Knopf, N. Y.: 1919 - - Body and Raiment Alf. A. Knopf: 1919 - - In _Poetry_: March, 1915 (Vol. V); - Sept., 1914 (Vol. IV). - - In _The Century_: June, 1915 (Vol. - XC). - - - RIDGELY TORRENCE - - The House of a Hundred Lights Small, Maynard & Co., Boston: 1900 - - El Dorado: A Tragedy John Lane Co., New York: 1903 - - Abelard and Heloise Chas. Scribner’s Sons, New York: - 1907 - - Plays for a Negro Theatre Macmillan Co., New York: 1917 - - In _Poetry_: April, 1916 (Vol. VI). - - In _The New Republic_, Feb. 26, - 1916. - - - CHARLES HANSON TOWNE - - The Quiet Singer Mitchell Kennerley, New York: 1908 - - Manhattan Mitchell Kennerley: 1909 - - Youth Mitchell Kennerley: 1910 - - * Beyond the Stars and Other Poems Mitchell Kennerley: 1912 - - To-day and To-morrow Geo. H. Doran Co., New York: 1916 - - Autumn Loiterers Geo. H. Doran Co.: 1917 - - In _Poetry_: Nov., 1912 (Vol. I). - - - LOUIS UNTERMEYER - - The Younger Quire (out of print) The Moods Publishing Co.: 1911 - - First Love Sherman French & Co.: 1911 - - * Challenge Century Co., New York: 1914 - - “... and Other Poets” Henry Holt & Co., New York: 1916 - - These Times Henry Holt & Co.: 1917 - - Poems of Heinrich Heine (trans.) Henry Holt & Co.: 1917 - - The New Era in American Poetry Henry Holt & Co.: 1919 - - - ALLEN UPWARD - - _In Poetry_: Sept., 1913 (Vol. II). - - - JOHN HALL WHEELOCK - - The Human Fantasy (out of print) Sherman French & Co.: 1911 - - * The Beloved Adventure Sherman French & Co.: 1912 - - * Love and Liberation Sherman French & Co.: 1913 - - Dust and Light Charles Scribner’s Sons: 1919 - - In _Poetry_: Aug., 1913 (Vol. II); - Nov., 1915 (Vol. VII). - - - HERVEY WHITE - - New Songs for Old Maverick Press, Woodstock, N. Y.: 1910 - - * A Ship of Souls Maverick Press: 1910 - - In an Old Man’s Garden Maverick Press: 1910 - - The Adventures of Young Maverick Maverick Press: 1911 - - - MARGARET WIDDEMER (Mrs. Robert Haven Schauffler) - - * The Factories with Other Lyrics John C. Winston Co., Philadelphia: - 1915; Henry Holt & Co., New York: - 1917 - - Old Road to Paradise Henry Holt & Co.: 1918 - - In _Poetry_: Nov., 1912 (Vol. I); Aug., 1913 (Vol. II); Feb., 1915 - (Vol. V). - - - FLORENCE WILKINSON (Mrs. Wilfrid Muir Evans) - - * The Far Country McClure Phillips & Co., New York: - 1906 - - * The Ride Home Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston: 1916 - - In _Poetry_: Dec., 1913 (Vol. III), - Jan., 1916 (Vol. VII). - - - MARGUERITE WILKINSON - - * In Vivid Gardens Sherman French & Co., Boston: 1911 - - By a Western Wayside Privately printed: 1913 - - Mars, a Modern Morality Play Privately printed: 1915 - - New Voices: an Introduction to Macmillan Co.: 1919 - Contemporary Poetry - - - WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS - - The Tempers Elkin Mathews, London: 1913 - - Al Que Quiere Four Seas Co., Boston: 1917 - - Kora in Hell: Improvisations Four Seas Co.: 1919 - - In _Poetry_: June, 1913 (Vol. II); - May, 1915 (Vol. VI). - - In _Others: An Anthology of the New Alf. A. Knopf, N. Y.: 1916 - Verse_ - - - CHARLES ERSKINE SCOTT WOOD - - The Masque of Love Walter Hill, Chicago: 1904 - - * The Poet in the Desert Privately printed, Portland, Ore.: - 1915 - - The Poet in the Desert (new Privately printed, Portland: 1918 - version) - - Maia: a Sonnet Sequence (limited Privately printed, Portland, Ore.: - illustrated ed.) 1918 - - - EDITH WYATT - - The Wind in the Corn and Other D. Appleton & Co., New York: 1917 - Poems - - In _Poetry_: Jan., 1915 (Vol. V). - - In _McClure’s Magazine_: Aug., - 1911. - - - Printed in the United States of America. - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES - - - 1. Silently corrected typographical errors and variations in spelling. - 2. Archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings retained as printed. - 3. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_. - 4. 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- page-break-before: always; } - .sni {margin-left: 3.5em; margin-right: 0em; float: right; clear: right; } - .x-ebookmaker .sni { float: right; } - .x-ebookmaker p.dropcap:first-letter { float: left; } - </style> - </head> - <body> - -<div style='text-align:center; font-size:1.2em; font-weight:bold'>The Project Gutenberg eBook of The New Poetry, by Various</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and -most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms -of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online -at <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you -are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the -country where you are located before using this eBook. -</div> - -<p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: The New Poetry</p> -<p style='display:block; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:0;'>An Anthology</p> - -<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: Various</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Editor: Harriet Monroe and Alice Corbin Henderson</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: July 9, 2021 [eBook #65807]</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Character set encoding: UTF-8</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Produced by: Richard Tonsing and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)</div> - -<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE NEW POETRY ***</div> - -<div class='tnotes covernote'> - -<p class='c000'><strong>Transcriber’s Note:</strong></p> - -<p class='c000'>The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.</p> - -</div> - -<div class='nf-center-c0'> - <div class='nf-center'> - <div><span class='color_red'>This ebook (originally published in 1920) was created in honour of Distributed Proofreaders 20th Anniversary.</span></div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='chapter ph1'> - -<div class='nf-center-c0'> -<div class='nf-center c001'> - <div>THE NEW POETRY</div> - </div> -</div> - -</div> - -<div class='figcenter id001'> -<img src='images/i_ii.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' /> -</div> - -<div class='nf-center-c0'> -<div class='nf-center c001'> - <div>THE MACMILLAN COMPANY</div> - <div class='c002'>NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO · DALLAS · ATLANTA · SAN FRANCISCO</div> - <div class='c002'>MACMILLAN & CO., <span class='sc'>Limited</span></div> - <div class='c002'>LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA · MELBOURNE</div> - <div class='c002'>THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, <span class='sc'>Ltd.</span> TORONTO</div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='titlepage'> - -<div> - <h1 class='c003'>THE NEW POETRY<br /> <br /> <span class='xlarge'>AN ANTHOLOGY</span></h1> -</div> - -<div class='nf-center-c0'> -<div class='nf-center c004'> - <div>EDITED BY</div> - <div class='c002'><span class='large'>HARRIET MONROE</span></div> - <div class='c002'>AND</div> - <div class='c002'><span class='large'>ALICE CORBIN HENDERSON</span></div> - <div class='c002'><span class='small'>EDITORS OF “POETRY”</span></div> - <div class='c004'><em>WITH REVISED BIBLIOGRAPHY</em></div> - <div class='c004'>New York</div> - <div class='c002'><span class='large'>THE MACMILLAN COMPANY</span></div> - <div class='c002'>1920</div> - <div class='c002'><em>All rights reserved</em></div> - </div> -</div> - -</div> - -<div class='nf-center-c0'> -<div class='nf-center c001'> - <div><span class='small'><span class='sc'>Copyright, 1917,</span></span></div> - <div><span class='small'>By</span> THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.</div> - <div class='c002'><span class='small'>Set up and electrotyped. Published February, 1917.</span></div> - <div class='c004'><span class='small'>Norwood Press:</span></div> - <div class='c002'><span class='small'>Berwick & Smith Co., Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.</span></div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='chapter'> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_v'>v</span> - <h2 class='c005'>INTRODUCTION</h2> -</div> - -<p class='c006'>During the last three or four years there has been a remarkable -renascence of poetry in both America and England, and an equally -extraordinary revival of public interest in the art.</p> - -<p class='c007'>The editors of this anthology wish to present in convenient form -representative work of the poets who are to-day creating what is -commonly called “the new poetry,”—a phrase no doubt rash and -most imperfectly descriptive, since the new in art is always the -elder old, but one difficult to replace with any form of words more -exact. Much newspaper controversy, and a number of special -magazines, testify to the demand for such a book; also many letters -to the editors of <cite>Poetry</cite> asking for information—letters not only -from individual lovers of the art, but also from college professors -and literary clubs or groups, who have begun to feel that the poetry -of to-day is a vital force no longer to be ignored. Indeed, many -critics feel that poetry is coming nearer than either the novel or -the drama to the actual life of to-day. The magazine <cite>Poetry</cite>, -ever since its foundation in October, 1912, has encouraged this -new spirit in the art, and the anthology is a further effort on the -part of its editors to present the new spirit to the public.</p> - -<p class='c007'>What is the new poetry? and wherein does it differ from the -old? The difference is not in mere details of form, for much poetry -infused with the new spirit conforms to the old measures and -rhyme-schemes. It is not merely in diction, though the truly -modern poet rejects the so-called “poetic” shifts of language—the -<em>deems</em>, <em>’neaths</em>, <em>forsooths</em>, etc., the inversions and high-sounding -rotundities, familiar to his predecessors: all the rhetorical excesses -through which most Victorian poetry now seems “over-apparelled,” -as a speaker at a <cite>Poetry</cite> dinner—a lawyer, not a -poet—put it in pointing out what the new movement is aiming at. -These things are important, but the difference goes deeper than details -of form, strikes through them to fundamental integrities.</p> - -<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_vi'>vi</span>The new poetry strives for a concrete and immediate realization -of life; it would discard the theory, the abstraction, the remoteness, -found in all classics not of the first order. It is less vague, less -verbose, less eloquent, than most poetry of the Victorian period -and much work of earlier periods. It has set before itself an ideal -of absolute simplicity and sincerity—an ideal which implies an -individual, unstereotyped diction; and an individual, unstereotyped -rhythm. Thus inspired, it becomes intensive rather than -diffuse. It looks out more eagerly than in; it becomes objective. -The term “exteriority” has been applied to it, but this is incomplete. -In presenting the concrete object or the concrete environment, -whether these be beautiful or ugly, it seeks to give more -precisely the emotion arising from them, and thus widens immeasurably -the scope of the art.</p> - -<p class='c007'>All this implies no disrespect for tradition. The poets of to-day -do not discard tradition because they follow the speech of to-day -rather than that of Shakespeare’s time, or strive for organic rhythm -rather than use a mold which has been perfected by others. On the -contrary, they follow the great tradition when they seek a vehicle -suited to their own epoch and their own creative mood, and resolutely -reject all others.</p> - -<p class='c007'>Great poetry has always been written in the language of contemporary -speech, and its theme, even when legendary, has always -borne a direct relation with contemporary thought, contemporary -imaginative and spiritual life. It is this direct relation which the -more progressive modern poets are trying to restore. In this -effort they discard not only archaic diction but also the shop-worn -subjects of past history or legend, which have been through the -centuries a treasure-trove for the second-rate.</p> - -<p class='c007'>This effort at modern speech, simplicity of form, and authentic -vitality of theme, is leading our poets to question the authority of -the accepted laws of English verse, and to study other languages, -ancient and modern, in the effort to find out what poetry really is. -It is a strange fact that, in the common prejudice of cultivated -people during the four centuries from just before 1400 to just -before 1800, nothing was accepted as poetry in English that did not -<span class='pageno' id='Page_vii'>vii</span>walk in the iambic measure. Bits of Elizabethan song and of -Dryden’s two musical odes, both beating four-time instead of the -iambic three, were outlandish intrusions too slight to count. To -write English poetry, a man must measure his paces according to -the iambic foot-rule; and he must mark off his lines with rhymes, or -at least marshal them in the pentameter movement of blank verse.</p> - -<p class='c007'>The first protest against this prejudice, which long usage had -hardened into law, came in the persons of four or five great poets—Burns, -Coleridge, Keats, Shelley, Byron—who puzzled the ears of -their generation with anapæsts and other four-time measures, and -who carried into their work a certain immediacy of feeling and -imagery—a certain modern passion of life—which even Cowper, -Thompson and a few others of their time, though they had written -of things around them, had scarcely attained. Quarterly critics -and London moralists blinked and gasped, but at last the bars -had to go down for these great radicals. And before long the -extreme virtuosity of Swinburne had widened still further the -musical range of the English language.</p> - -<p class='c007'>By the time Whitman appeared, the ear of the average reader—that -formidable person—was attuned to anapæsts, dactyls, -choriambics, sapphics, rhymed or unrhymed. He could not call -them by name, but he was docile to all possible intricacies of -pattern in any closely woven metrical scheme. But Whitman gave -him a new shock. Here was a so-called poet who discarded all -traditional patterns, and wove a carpet of his own. Once more the -conservatives protested: was this poetry? and, if so, why? If -poetry was not founded on the long-accepted metrical laws, then -how could they distinguish it from prose, and thus keep the labels -and catalogues in order? What was Whitman’s alleged poetry but -a kind of freakish prose, invented to set forth a dangerous anarchistic -philosophy?</p> - -<p class='c007'>It would take too long to analyze the large rhythms of Whitman’s -free verse; but the mere fact that he wrote free verse and -called it poetry, and that other poets—men like Rossetti, Swinburne, -Symonds, even the reluctant Emerson—seemed to agree -that it was poetry, this fact alone was, in the opinion of the conservatives, -<span class='pageno' id='Page_viii'>viii</span>a challenge to four centuries of English poets. And this -challenge, repeated by later poets, compels us to inquire briefly -into the origins of English poetry, in the effort to get behind and -underneath the instinctive prejudice that English poetry, to be -poetry, must conform to prescribed metres.</p> - -<p class='c007'>Chaucer, great genius that he was, an aristocrat by birth and -breeding, and a democrat by feeling and sympathy—Chaucer may -have had it in his power to turn the whole stream of English poetry -into either the French or the Anglo-Saxon channel. Knowing and -loving the old French epics better than the Norse sagas, he naturally -chose the French channel, and he was so great and so beloved -that his world followed him. Thus there was no longer any -question—the iambic measure and rhyme, both dear to the French-trained -ears of England’s Norman masters, became fixed as the -standard type of poetic form.</p> - -<p class='c007'>But it was possibly a toss-up—the scale hung almost even in that -formative fourteenth century. If Chaucer’s contemporary Langland—the -great democrat, revolutionist, mystic—had had Chaucer’s -authority and universal sympathy, English poetry might -have followed his example instead of Chaucer’s; and Shakespeare, -Milton and the rest might have been impelled by common practice -to use—or modify—the curious, heavy, alliterative measure of -<cite>Piers Ploughman</cite>, which now sounds so strange to our ears:</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>In a somer seson,</div> - <div class='line'>When softe was the sonne,</div> - <div class='line'>I shoop me into shroudes</div> - <div class='line'>As I a sheep weere;</div> - <div class='line'>In habite as an heremite</div> - <div class='line'>Unholy of werkes,</div> - <div class='line'>Wente wide in this world</div> - <div class='line'>Wondres to here.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c007'>Though we must rejoice that Chaucer prevailed with his French -forms, Langland reminds us that poetry—even English poetry—is -older than rhyme, older than the iambic measure, older than all the -metrical patterns which now seem so much a part of it. If our -criticism is to have any value, it must insist upon the obvious truth -<span class='pageno' id='Page_ix'>ix</span>that poetry existed before the English language began to form itself -out of the débris of other tongues, and that it now exists in forms of -great beauty among many far-away peoples who never heard of our special rules.</p> - -<p class='c007'>Perhaps the first of these disturbing influences from afar to be -felt in modern English poetry was the Celtic renascence, the wonderful -revival of interest in old Irish song, which became manifest -in translations and adaptations of the ancient Gaelic lyrics and epics, -made by W. B. Yeats, Lady Gregory, Douglas Hyde and others.</p> - -<p class='c007'>This influence was most powerful because it came to us directly, -not at second-hand, through the English work of two poets of -genius, Synge and Yeats. These great men, fortified and inspired -by the simplicity and clarity of primitive Celtic song, had little -patience with the “over-appareled” art of Tennyson and his -imitators. They found it stiffened by rhetoric, by a too conscious -morality leading to pulpit eloquence, and by second-hand bookish -inspirations; and its movement they found hampered, thwarted of -freedom, by a too slavish acceptance of ready-made schemes of -metre and rhyme. The surprises and irregularities, found in all -great art because they are inherent in human feeling, were being -ruled out of English poetry, which consequently was stiffening -into forms too fixed and becoming more and more remote -from life. As Mr. Yeats said in Chicago:</p> - -<p class='c007'>“We were weary of all this. We wanted to get rid not only of -rhetoric but of poetic diction. We tried to strip away everything -that was artificial, to get a style like speech, as simple as the simplest -prose, like a cry of the heart.”</p> - -<p class='c007'>It is scarcely too much to say that “the new poetry”—if we -may be allowed the phrase—began with these two great Irish -masters. Think what a contrast to even the simplest lyrics of -Tennyson the pattern of their songs presents, and what a contrast -their direct outright human feeling presents to the somewhat -culture-developed optimism of Browning, and the science-inspired -pessimism of Arnold. Compared with these Irishmen the best -of their predecessors seem literary. This statement does not imply -any measure of ultimate values, for it is still too early to estimate -<span class='pageno' id='Page_x'>x</span>them. One may, for example, believe Synge to be the greatest -poet-playwright in English since Shakespeare, and one of the -great poets of the world; but a few more decades must pass before -such ranking can have authority.</p> - -<p class='c007'>At the same time other currents were influencing progressive -minds toward even greater freedom of form. Strangely enough, -Whitman’s influence was felt first in France. It reached England, -and finally America, indirectly from Paris, where the poets, stimulated -by translations of the great American, especially Bajazette’s, -and by the ever-adventurous quality of French scholarship, have -been experimenting with free verse ever since Mallarmé. The -great Irish poets felt the French influence—it was part of the -education which made them realize that English poetry had become -narrow, rigid, and insular. Yeats has held usually, though -never slavishly, to rhyme and a certain regularity of metrical -form—in which, however, he makes his own tunes; but Synge -wrote his plays in that wide borderland between prose and verse, -in a form which, whatever one calls it, is essentially poetry, for it -has passion, glamour, magic, rhythm, and glorious imaginative life.</p> - -<p class='c007'>This borderland between prose and verse is being explored now -as never before in English; except, perhaps in the King James -translation of the Bible. The modern “vers-libertines,” as they -have been wittily called, are doing pioneer work in an heroic effort -to get rid of obstacles that have hampered the poet and separated -him from his audience. They are trying to make the modern -manifestations of poetry less a matter of rules and formulæ, and -more a thing of the spirit, and of organic as against imposed, -rhythm. In this enthusiastic labor they are following not only a -strong inward impulse, not only the love of freedom which Chaucer -followed—and Spenser and Shakespeare, Shelley and Coleridge -and all the masters—but they are moved also by influences from -afar. They have studied the French <i><span lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">symbolistes</span></i> of the ’nineties, -and the more recent Parisian <i><span lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">vers-libristes</span></i>. Moreover, some of -them have listened to the pure lyricism of the Provençal troubadours, -have studied the more elaborate mechanism of early -Italian sonneteers and canzonists, have read Greek poetry from a -<span class='pageno' id='Page_xi'>xi</span>new angle of vision; and last, but perhaps most important of all, -have bowed to winds from the East.</p> - -<p class='c007'>In the nineteenth century the western world—the western -æsthetic world—discovered the orient. Someone has said that -when Perry knocked at the gates of Japan, these opened, not to -let us in, but to let the Japanese out. Japanese graphic art, especially, -began almost at once to kindle progressive minds. Whistler, -of course, was the first great creative artist to feel the influence of -their instinct for balance and proportion, for subtle harmonies of -color and line, for the integrity of beauty in art as opposed to the -moralizing and sentimental tendencies which had been intruding -more and more.</p> - -<p class='c007'>Poetry was slower than the graphic arts to feel the oriental influence, -because of the barrier of language. But European scholarship -had long dabbled with Indian, Persian and Sanskrit literatures, -and Fitzgerald even won over the crowd to some remote suspicion -of their beauty by meeting Omar half-way, and making a great -poem out of the marriage, not only of two minds, but of two -literary traditions. Then a few airs from Japan blew in—a few -translations of <i><span lang="ja-latn" xml:lang="ja-latn">hokku</span></i> and other forms—which showed the stark -simplicity and crystal clarity of the art among Japanese poets. -And of late the search has gone further: we begin to discover a -whole royal line of Chinese poets of a thousand or more years ago; -and we are trying to search out the secrets of their delicate and -beautiful art. The task is difficult, because our poets, ignorant of -Chinese, have to get at these masters through the literal translations -of scholars. But even by this round-about way, poets like -Allen Upward, Ezra Pound, Helen Waddell and a few others, give -us something of the rare flavor, the special exquisite perfume, of the -original. And of late the Indian influence has been emphasized by -the great Bengali poet and sage, Rabindranath Tagore, whose -mastery of English makes him a poet in two languages.</p> - -<p class='c007'>This oriental influence is to be welcomed because it flows from -deep original streams of poetic art. We should not be afraid to -learn from it; and in much of the work of the imagists, and other -radical groups, we find a more or less conscious, and more or less -<span class='pageno' id='Page_xii'>xii</span>effective, yielding to that influence. We find something of the -oriental directness of vision and simplicity of diction, also now and -then a hint of the unobtrusive oriental perfection of form -and delicacy of feeling.</p> - -<p class='c007'>All these influences, which tend to make the art of poetry, especially -poetry in English, less provincial, more cosmopolitan, are -by no means a defiance of the classic tradition. On the contrary, -they are an endeavor to return to it at its great original sources, and -to sweep away artificial laws—the <i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">obiter dicta</span></i> of secondary minds—which -have encumbered it. There is more of the great authentic -classic tradition, for example, in the <cite>Spoon River Anthology</cite> than in -the <cite>Idylls of the King</cite>, <cite>Balaustian’s Adventure</cite>, and <cite>Sohrab and -Rustum</cite> combined. And the free rhythms of Whitman, Mallarmé, -Pound, Sandburg and others, in their inspired passages, are more -truly in line with the biblical, the Greek, the Anglo-Saxon, and -even the Shakespearean tradition, than all the exact iambics of -Dryden and Pope, the patterned alexandrines of Racine, or the -closely woven metrics of Tennyson and Swinburne.</p> - -<p class='c007'>Whither the new movement is leading no one can tell with -exactness, nor which of its present manifestations in England and -America will prove permanently valuable. But we may be sure -that the movement is toward greater freedom of spirit and form, -and a more enlightened recognition of the international scope, the -cosmopolitanism, of the great art of poetry, of which the English -language, proud as its record is, offers but a single phase. As part -of such a movement, even the most extravagant experiments, the -most radical innovations, are valuable, for the moment at least, as -an assault against prejudice. And some of the radicals of to-day -will be, no doubt, the masters of to-morrow—a phenomenon common -in the history of the arts.</p> - -<hr class='c009' /> - -<p class='c007'>It remains only to explain the plan of this anthology, its inclusions -and omissions.</p> - -<p class='c007'>It has seemed best to include no poems published before 1900, -even though, as in a few cases, the poets were moved by the new -impulses. For example, those two intensely modern, nobly impassioned, -<span class='pageno' id='Page_xiii'>xiii</span>lyric poets, Emily Dickinson and the Shropshire Lad -(Alfred Edward Housman)—the one dead, the other fortunately -still living—both belong, by date of publication, to the ’nineties. -The work of poets already, as it were, enshrined—whether by -fame, or death, or both—has also not been quoted: poets whose -works are already, in a certain sense, classics, and whose books are -treasured by all lovers of the art—like Synge and Moody and Riley, -too early gone from us, and William Butler Yeats, whose later verse -is governed, even more than his earlier, by the new austerities.</p> - -<p class='c007'>Certain other omissions are more difficult to explain, because -they may be thought to imply a lack of consideration which we do -not feel. The present Laureate, Robert Bridges, even in the late -’eighties and early ’nineties, was led by his own personal taste, -especially in his <cite>Shorter Poems</cite>, toward austere simplicity of subject, -diction and style. But his most representative poems were -written before 1900. Rudyard Kipling has been inspired at times -by the modern muse, but his best poems also antedate 1900. -This is true also of Louise Imogen Guiney and Bliss Carman, -though most of their work, like that of Arthur Symons and the -late Stephen Phillips and Anna Hempstead Branch, belongs, by -its affinities, to the earlier period. And Alfred Noyes, whatever -the date of his poems, bears no immediate relation to the more -progressive modern movement in the art.</p> - -<p class='c007'>On the other hand, we have tried to be hospitable to the adventurous, -the experimental, because these are the qualities of -pioneers, who look forward, not backward, and who may lead on, -further than we can see as yet, to new domains of the ever-conquering -spirit of beauty.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-r'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>H. M.</em></div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c010'><em><span class='sc'>Note.</span> A word about the typography of this volume. No rigid system of -lineation, indention, etc., has been imposed upon the poets who very kindly -lend us their work. For example, sonnets are printed with or without indention -according to the individual preference of the poet; also other rhymed -forms, such as quatrains rhyming alternately; as well as various forms of -free verse. Punctuation and spelling are more uniform, although a certain -liberty has been conceded in words like</em> gray <em>or</em> grey, <em>the color of which seems -to vary with the spelling, and in the use of dots, dashes, commas, colons, etc.</em></p> - -<div class='chapter'> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_xv'>xv</span> - <h2 class='c005'>TABLE OF CONTENTS</h2> -</div> - -<table class='table0' summary='TABLE OF CONTENTS'> - <tr> - <td class='c011' colspan='3'><span class='sc'>Conrad Aiken</span>:</td> - <td class='c012'>PAGE</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Music I Heard</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_1'>1</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Dead Cleopatra</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_1'>1</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Dancing Adairs</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_2'>2</a></td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011' colspan='3'><span class='sc'>Zoë Akins</span>:</td> - <td class='c012'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>The Tragedienne</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_3'>3</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>I Am the Wind</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_3'>3</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Conquered</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_4'>4</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>The Wanderer</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_4'>4</a></td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011' colspan='3'><span class='sc'>Richard Aldington</span>:</td> - <td class='c012'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>The Poplar</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_5'>5</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Lesbia</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_6'>6</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Images, I-VI</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_6'>6</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Choricos</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_7'>7</a></td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011' colspan='3'><span class='sc'>Mary Aldis</span>:</td> - <td class='c012'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Barberries</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_10'>10</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>When You Come</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_11'>11</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Flash-lights, I-III</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_12'>12</a></td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011' colspan='3'><span class='sc'>Walter Conrad Arensberg</span>:</td> - <td class='c012'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Voyage à l’Infini</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_13'>13</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>At Daybreak</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_14'>14</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>To Hasekawa</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_14'>14</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Dialogue</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_14'>14</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Song of the Souls Set Free</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_15'>15</a></td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011' colspan='3'><span class='sc'>Wilton Agnew Barrett</span>:</td> - <td class='c012'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>A New England Church</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_15'>15</a></td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011' colspan='3'><span class='sc'>Joseph Warren Beach</span>:</td> - <td class='c012'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Rue Bonaparte</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_16'>16</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>The View at Gunderson’s</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_17'>17</a></td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011' colspan='3'><span class='pageno' id='Page_xvi'>xvi</span><span class='sc'>William Rose Benét</span>:</td> - <td class='c012'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>The Falconer of God</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_18'>18</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>The Horse Thief</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_20'>20</a></td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011' colspan='3'><span class='sc'>Maxwell Bodenheim</span>:</td> - <td class='c012'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>The Rear Porches of an Apartment-Building</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_24'>24</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>The Interne</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_24'>24</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>The Old Jew</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_25'>25</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>The Miner</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_25'>25</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>To an Enemy</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_25'>25</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>To a Discarded Steel Rail</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_26'>26</a></td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011' colspan='3'><span class='sc'>Gordon Bottomley</span>:</td> - <td class='c012'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Night and Morning Songs:</td> - <td class='c012'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'>My Moon</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_26'>26</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'>Elegiac Mood</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_27'>27</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'>Dawn</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_27'>27</a></td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011' colspan='3'><span class='sc'>Rollo Britten</span>:</td> - <td class='c012'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Bird of Passion</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_28'>28</a></td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011' colspan='3'><span class='sc'>Rupert Brooke</span>:</td> - <td class='c012'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Retrospect</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_28'>28</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Nineteen-Fourteen:</td> - <td class='c012'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'>I. Peace</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_29'>29</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'>II. Safety</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_30'>30</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'>III. The Dead</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_30'>30</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'>IV. The Dead</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_31'>31</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'>V. The Soldier</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_31'>31</a></td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011' colspan='3'><span class='sc'>Witter Bynner</span>:</td> - <td class='c012'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>To Celia:</td> - <td class='c012'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'>I. Consummation</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_32'>32</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'>II. During a Chorale by Cesar Franck</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_33'>33</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'>III. Songs Ascending</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_34'>34</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Grieve not for Beauty</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_34'>34</a></td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011' colspan='3'><span class='sc'>Joseph Campbell</span>:</td> - <td class='c012'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>At Harvest</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_35'>35</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>On Waking</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_36'>36</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>The Old Woman</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_38'>38</a></td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011' colspan='3'><span class='pageno' id='Page_xvii'>xvii</span><span class='sc'>Nancy Campbell</span>:</td> - <td class='c012'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>The Apple-Tree</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_38'>38</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>The Monkey</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_39'>39</a></td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011' colspan='3'><span class='sc'>Skipwith Cannéll</span>:</td> - <td class='c012'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>The Red Bridge</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_40'>40</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>The King</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_41'>41</a></td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011' colspan='3'><span class='sc'>Willa Sibert Cather</span>:</td> - <td class='c012'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>The Palatine (In the “Dark Ages.”)</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_43'>43</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Spanish Johnny</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_44'>44</a></td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011' colspan='3'><span class='sc'>Padraic Colum</span>:</td> - <td class='c012'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Polonius and the Ballad Singers</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_45'>45</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>The Sea Bird to the Wave</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_49'>49</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Old Men Complaining</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_49'>49</a></td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011' colspan='3'><span class='sc'>Grace Hazard Conkling</span>:</td> - <td class='c012'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Refugees (Belgium—1914)</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_52'>52</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>“The Little Rose is Dust, My Dear”</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_53'>53</a></td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011' colspan='3'><span class='sc'>Alice Corbin</span>:</td> - <td class='c012'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>O World</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_53'>53</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Two Voices</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_54'>54</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Love Me at Last</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_55'>55</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Humoresque</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_55'>55</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>One City Only</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_55'>55</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Apparitions, I-II</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_57'>57</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>The Pool</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_57'>57</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Music</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_58'>58</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>What Dim Arcadian Pastures</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_59'>59</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Nodes</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_59'>59</a></td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011' colspan='3'><span class='sc'>Adelaide Crapsey</span>:</td> - <td class='c012'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Cinquains:</td> - <td class='c012'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'>November Night</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_60'>60</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'>Triad</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_60'>60</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'>Susanna and the Elders</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_61'>61</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'>The Guarded Wound</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_61'>61</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'>The Warning</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_61'>61</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'>Fate Defied</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_61'>61</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_xviii'>xviii</span> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>The Pledge</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_61'>61</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Expenses</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_62'>62</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Adventure</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_62'>62</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Dirge</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_62'>62</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Song</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_62'>62</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>The Lonely Death</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_63'>63</a></td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011' colspan='3'><span class='fss'>H. D.</span>:</td> - <td class='c012'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Hermes of the Ways, I-II</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_63'>63</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Priapus (Keeper of Orchards)</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_65'>65</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>The Pool</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_66'>66</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Oread</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_66'>66</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>The Garden, I-II</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_66'>66</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Moonrise</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_67'>67</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>The Shrine, I-IV</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_68'>68</a></td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011' colspan='3'><span class='sc'>Mary Carolyn Davies</span>:</td> - <td class='c012'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Cloistered</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_71'>71</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Songs of a Girl, I-V</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_72'>72</a></td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011' colspan='3'><span class='sc'>Fannie Stearns Davis</span>:</td> - <td class='c012'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Profits</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_73'>73</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Souls</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_74'>74</a></td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011' colspan='3'><span class='sc'>Walter de la Mare</span>:</td> - <td class='c012'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>The Listeners</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_74'>74</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>An Epitaph</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_75'>75</a></td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011' colspan='3'><span class='sc'>Lee Wilson Dodd</span>:</td> - <td class='c012'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>The Temple</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_76'>76</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>The Comrade</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_77'>77</a></td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011' colspan='3'><span class='sc'>John Drinkwater</span>:</td> - <td class='c012'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Sunrise on Rydal Water</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_78'>78</a></td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011' colspan='3'><span class='sc'>Louise Driscoll</span>:</td> - <td class='c012'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>The Metal Checks</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_80'>80</a></td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011' colspan='3'><span class='pageno' id='Page_xix'>xix</span><span class='sc'>Dorothy Dudley</span>:</td> - <td class='c012'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>La Rue de la Montagne Sainte-Gèneviève</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_84'>84</a></td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011' colspan='3'><span class='sc'>Helen Dudley</span>:</td> - <td class='c012'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>To One Unknown</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_86'>86</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Song</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_86'>86</a></td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011' colspan='3'><span class='sc'>Max Eastman</span>:</td> - <td class='c012'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Diogenes</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_87'>87</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>In March</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_87'>87</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>At the Aquarium</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_87'>87</a></td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011' colspan='3'><span class='sc'>T. S. Eliot</span>:</td> - <td class='c012'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Portrait of a Lady, I-III</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_88'>88</a></td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011' colspan='3'><span class='sc'>Arthur Davison Ficke</span>:</td> - <td class='c012'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Meeting</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_92'>92</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Among Shadows</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_93'>93</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>The Three Sisters</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_93'>93</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Portrait of an Old Woman</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_93'>93</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>I am Weary of Being Bitter</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_94'>94</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>From “Sonnets of a Portrait Painter”</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_95'>95</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Like Him Whose Spirit</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_95'>95</a></td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011' colspan='3'><span class='sc'>John Gould Fletcher</span>:</td> - <td class='c012'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Irradiations, I-IV</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_96'>96</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Arizona Poems:</td> - <td class='c012'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'>Mexican Quarter</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_98'>98</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'>Rain in the Desert</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_99'>99</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>The Blue Symphony, I-V</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_100'>100</a></td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011' colspan='3'><span class='sc'>F. S. Flint</span>:</td> - <td class='c012'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Poems in Unrhymed Cadence, I-III</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_104'>104</a></td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011' colspan='3'><span class='sc'>Moireen Fox</span>:</td> - <td class='c012'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Liadain to Curithir, I-V</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_106'>106</a></td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011' colspan='3'><span class='sc'>Florence Kiper Frank</span>:</td> - <td class='c012'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>The Jewish Conscript</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_108'>108</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>The Movies</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_109'>109</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>You</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_109'>109</a></td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011' colspan='3'><span class='pageno' id='Page_xx'>xx</span><span class='sc'>Robert Frost</span>:</td> - <td class='c012'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Mending Wall</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_110'>110</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>After Apple-Picking</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_111'>111</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>My November Guest</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_112'>112</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Mowing</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_113'>113</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Storm Fear</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_113'>113</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Going for Water</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_114'>114</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>The Code—Heroics</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_115'>115</a></td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011' colspan='3'><span class='sc'>Hamlin Garland</span>:</td> - <td class='c012'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>To a Captive Crane</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_119'>119</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>The Mountains are a Lonely Folk</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_119'>119</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Magic</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_119'>119</a></td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011' colspan='3'><span class='sc'>Wilfrid Wilson Gibson</span>:</td> - <td class='c012'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Color</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_120'>120</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Oblivion</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_121'>121</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Tenants</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_121'>121</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Gold</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_122'>122</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>On Hampstead Heath</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_122'>122</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Battle:</td> - <td class='c012'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'>The Going</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_123'>123</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'>The Joke</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_123'>123</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'>In the Ambulance</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_123'>123</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'>Hit</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_124'>124</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'>The Housewife</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_124'>124</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'>Hill-born</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_125'>125</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'>The Fear</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_125'>125</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'>Back</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_125'>125</a></td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011' colspan='3'><span class='sc'>Richard Butler Glaenzer</span>:</td> - <td class='c012'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Star-Magic</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_126'>126</a></td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011' colspan='3'><span class='sc'>Douglas Goldring</span>:</td> - <td class='c012'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Voyages, I-IV</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_127'>127</a></td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011' colspan='3'><span class='sc'>Hermann Hagedorn</span>:</td> - <td class='c012'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Early Morning at Bargis</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_128'>128</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Doors</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_129'>129</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Departure</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_129'>129</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Broadway</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_130'>130</a></td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011' colspan='3'><span class='pageno' id='Page_xxi'>xxi</span><span class='sc'>Thomas Hardy</span>:</td> - <td class='c012'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>She Hears the Storm</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_130'>130</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>The Voice</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_131'>131</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>In the Moonlight</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_132'>132</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>The Man He Killed</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_132'>132</a></td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011' colspan='3'><span class='sc'>Ralph Hodgson</span>:</td> - <td class='c012'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>The Mystery</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_133'>133</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Three Poems, I-III</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_133'>133</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Stupidity Street</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_134'>134</a></td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011' colspan='3'><span class='sc'>Horace Holley</span>:</td> - <td class='c012'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Three Poems:</td> - <td class='c012'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'>Creative</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_134'>134</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'>Twilight at Versailles</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_135'>135</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'>Lovers</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_135'>135</a></td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011' colspan='3'><span class='sc'>Helen Hoyt</span>:</td> - <td class='c012'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Ellis Park</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_135'>135</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>The New-Born</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_136'>136</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Rain at Night</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_137'>137</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>The Lover Sings of a Garden</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_137'>137</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Since I Have Felt the Sense of Death</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_138'>138</a></td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011' colspan='3'><span class='sc'>Ford Madox Hueffer</span>:</td> - <td class='c012'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Antwerp, I-VI</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_138'>138</a></td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011' colspan='3'><span class='sc'>Scharmel Iris</span>:</td> - <td class='c012'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>After the Martyrdom</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_143'>143</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Lament</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_143'>143</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Iteration</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_144'>144</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Early Nightfall</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_144'>144</a></td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011' colspan='3'><span class='sc'>Orrick Johns</span>:</td> - <td class='c012'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Songs of Deliverance:</td> - <td class='c012'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'>I. The Song of Youth</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_144'>144</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'>II. Virgins</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_146'>146</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'>III. No Prey Am I</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_146'>146</a></td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011' colspan='3'><span class='pageno' id='Page_xxii'>xxii</span><span class='sc'>Joyce Kilmer</span>:</td> - <td class='c012'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Trees</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_150'>150</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Easter</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_150'>150</a></td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011' colspan='3'><span class='sc'>Alfred Kreymborg</span>:</td> - <td class='c012'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>America</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_151'>151</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Old Manuscript</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_151'>151</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Cézanne</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_152'>152</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Parasite</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_152'>152</a></td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011' colspan='3'><span class='sc'>William Laird</span>:</td> - <td class='c012'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Traümerei at Ostendorff’s</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_153'>153</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>A Very Old Song</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_154'>154</a></td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011' colspan='3'><span class='sc'>D. H. Lawrence</span>:</td> - <td class='c012'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>A Woman and Her Dead Husband</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_155'>155</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Fireflies in the Corn</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_157'>157</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Green</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_158'>158</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Grief</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_158'>158</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Service of All the Dead</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_159'>159</a></td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011' colspan='3'><span class='sc'>Agnes Lee</span>:</td> - <td class='c012'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Motherhood</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_159'>159</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>A Statue in a Garden</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_161'>161</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>On the Jail Steps</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_161'>161</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Her Going</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_162'>162</a></td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011' colspan='3'><span class='sc'>William Ellery Leonard</span>:</td> - <td class='c012'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Indian Summer</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_165'>165</a></td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011' colspan='3'><span class='sc'>Vachel Lindsay</span>:</td> - <td class='c012'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>General William Booth Enters into Heaven</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_166'>166</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>The Eagle that is Forgotten</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_168'>168</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>The Congo (A Study of the Negro Race):</td> - <td class='c012'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'>I. Their Basic Savagery</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_169'>169</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'>II. Their Irrepressible High Spirits</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_171'>171</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'>III. The Hope of Their Religion</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_172'>172</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Aladdin and the Jinn</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_174'>174</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>The Chinese Nightingale</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_175'>175</a></td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011' colspan='3'><span class='pageno' id='Page_xxiii'>xxiii</span><span class='sc'>Amy Lowell</span>:</td> - <td class='c012'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Patterns</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_182'>182</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>1777:</td> - <td class='c012'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'>I. The Trumpet-Vine Arbor</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_186'>186</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'>II. The City of Falling Leaves</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_187'>187</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Venus Transiens</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_191'>191</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>A Lady</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_192'>192</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Chinoiseries:</td> - <td class='c012'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'>Reflections</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_192'>192</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'>Falling Snow</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_193'>193</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'>Hoar-frost</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_193'>193</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Solitaire</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_193'>193</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>A Gift</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_194'>194</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Red Slippers</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_194'>194</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Apology</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_195'>195</a></td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011' colspan='3'><span class='sc'>Percy Mackaye</span>:</td> - <td class='c012'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Old Age</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_196'>196</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Song from “Mater”</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_197'>197</a></td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011' colspan='3'><span class='sc'>Frederic Manning</span>:</td> - <td class='c012'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Sacrifice</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_198'>198</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>At Even</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_199'>199</a></td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011' colspan='3'><span class='sc'>John Masefield</span>:</td> - <td class='c012'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Ships</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_200'>200</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Cargoes</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_203'>203</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Watching by a Sick-Bed</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_203'>203</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>What am I, Life?</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_204'>204</a></td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011' colspan='3'><span class='sc'>Edgar Lee Masters</span>:</td> - <td class='c012'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Spoon River Anthology:</td> - <td class='c012'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'>The Hill</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_205'>205</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'>Ollie M<sup>c</sup>Gee</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_206'>206</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'>Daisy Fraser</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_207'>207</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'>Hare Drummer</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_207'>207</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'>Doc Hill</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_208'>208</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'>Fiddler Jones</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_208'>208</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_xxiv'>xxiv</span> </td> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'>Thomas Rhodes</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_209'>209</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'>Editor Whedon</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_210'>210</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'>Seth Compton</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_210'>210</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'>Henry C. Calhoun</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_211'>211</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'>Perry Zoll</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_212'>212</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'>Archibald Higbie</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_212'>212</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'>Father Malloy</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_213'>213</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'>Lucinda Matlock</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_213'>213</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'>Anne Rutledge</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_214'>214</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'>William H. Herndon</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_215'>215</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'>Rutherford M<sup>c</sup>Dowell</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_215'>215</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'>Arlo Will</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_216'>216</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'>Aaron Hatfield</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_217'>217</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'>Webster Ford</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_218'>218</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Silence</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_219'>219</a></td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011' colspan='3'><span class='sc'>Alice Meynell</span>:</td> - <td class='c012'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Maternity</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_221'>221</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Chimes</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_221'>221</a></td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011' colspan='3'><span class='sc'>Max Michelson</span>:</td> - <td class='c012'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>O Brother Tree</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_222'>222</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>The Bird</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_223'>223</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Storm</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_223'>223</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>A Hymn to Night</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_224'>224</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Love Lyric</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_224'>224</a></td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011' colspan='3'><span class='sc'>Edna St. Vincent Millay</span>:</td> - <td class='c012'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>God’s World</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_225'>225</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Ashes of Life</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_226'>226</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>The Shroud</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_226'>226</a></td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011' colspan='3'><span class='sc'>Harold Monro</span>:</td> - <td class='c012'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Great City</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_227'>227</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Youth in Arms</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_228'>228</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>The Strange Companion</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_229'>229</a></td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011' colspan='3'><span class='pageno' id='Page_xxv'>xxv</span><span class='sc'>Harriet Monroe</span>:</td> - <td class='c012'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>The Hotel</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_231'>231</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>The Turbine</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_233'>233</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>On the Porch</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_236'>236</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>The Wonder of It</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_237'>237</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>The Inner Silence</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_238'>238</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Love Song</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_238'>238</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>A Farewell</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_239'>239</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Lullaby</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_239'>239</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Pain</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_240'>240</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>The Water Ouzel</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_241'>241</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>The Pine at Timber-Line</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_242'>242</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Mountain Song</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_242'>242</a></td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011' colspan='3'><span class='sc'>John G. Neihardt</span>:</td> - <td class='c012'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Prayer for Pain</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_243'>243</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Envoi</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_244'>244</a></td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011' colspan='3'><span class='sc'>Yone Noguchi</span>:</td> - <td class='c012'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>The Poet</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_245'>245</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>I Have Cast the World</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_246'>246</a></td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011' colspan='3'><span class='sc'>Grace Fallow Norton</span>:</td> - <td class='c012'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Allegra Agonistes</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_246'>246</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Make No Vows</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_247'>247</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>I Give Thanks</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_247'>247</a></td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011' colspan='3'><span class='sc'>James Oppenheim</span>:</td> - <td class='c012'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>The Slave</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_248'>248</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>The Lonely Child</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_249'>249</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Not Overlooked</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_249'>249</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>The Runner in the Skies</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_250'>250</a></td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011' colspan='3'><span class='sc'>Patrick Orr</span>:</td> - <td class='c012'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Annie Shore and Johnnie Doon</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_250'>250</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>In the Mohave</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_251'>251</a></td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011' colspan='3'><span class='pageno' id='Page_xxvi'>xxvi</span><span class='sc'>Seumas O’Sullivan</span>:</td> - <td class='c012'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>My Sorrow</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_252'>252</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Splendid and Terrible</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_252'>252</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>The Others</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_253'>253</a></td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011' colspan='3'><span class='sc'>Josephine Preston Peabody</span>:</td> - <td class='c012'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Cradle Song, I-III</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_254'>254</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>The Cedars</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_256'>256</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>A Song of Solomon</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_257'>257</a></td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011' colspan='3'><span class='sc'>Ezra Pound</span>:</td> - <td class='c012'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'><span lang="grc" xml:lang="grc">Δώρια</span></td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_257'>257</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>The Return</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_258'>258</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Piccadilly</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_259'>259</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>N. Y.</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_259'>259</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>The Coming of War: Actaeon</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_260'>260</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>The Garden</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_260'>260</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Ortus</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_261'>261</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>The Choice</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_261'>261</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>The Garret</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_262'>262</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Dance Figure</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_262'>262</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>From “Near Périgord”</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_263'>263</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>An Immorality</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_264'>264</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>The Study in Aesthetics</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_265'>265</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Further Instructions</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_265'>265</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Villanelle: The Psychological Hour, I-III</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_266'>266</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Ballad of the Goodly Fere</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_268'>268</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Ballad for Gloom</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_270'>270</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>La Fraisne</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_271'>271</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>The River-Merchant’s Wife: A Letter (from the Chinese of Li Po.)</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_273'>273</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Exile’s Letter (From the Chinese of Li Po.)</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_274'>274</a></td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011' colspan='3'><span class='sc'>John Reed</span>:</td> - <td class='c012'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Sangar</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_277'>277</a></td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011' colspan='3'><span class='sc'>Ernest Rhys</span>:</td> - <td class='c012'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Dagonet’s Canzonet</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_280'>280</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>A Song of Happiness</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_281'>281</a></td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011' colspan='3'><span class='pageno' id='Page_xxvii'>xxvii</span><span class='sc'>Edwin Arlington Robinson</span>:</td> - <td class='c012'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>The Master</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_283'>283</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>John Gorham</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_285'>285</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Richard Cory</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_287'>287</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>The Growth of Lorraine, I-II</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_287'>287</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Cassandra</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_288'>288</a></td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011' colspan='3'><span class='sc'>Carl Sandburg</span>:</td> - <td class='c012'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Chicago</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_290'>290</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>The Harbor</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_291'>291</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Sketch</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_292'>292</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Lost</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_292'>292</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Jan Kubelik</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_293'>293</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>At a Window</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_293'>293</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>The Poor</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_294'>294</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>The Road and the End</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_294'>294</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Killers</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_295'>295</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Nocturne in a Deserted Brickyard</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_296'>296</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Handfuls</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_296'>296</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Under the Harvest Moon</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_297'>297</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Choose</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_297'>297</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Kin</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_298'>298</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Places</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_298'>298</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Joy</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_299'>299</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>The Great Hunt</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_299'>299</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Our Prayer of Thanks</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_300'>300</a></td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011' colspan='3'><span class='sc'>Clara Shanafelt</span>:</td> - <td class='c012'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>To Thee</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_301'>301</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Caprice</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_301'>301</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>A Vivid Girl</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_301'>301</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Invocation</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_302'>302</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Pastel</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_302'>302</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>A Gallant Woman</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_302'>302</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Scherzo</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_303'>303</a></td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011' colspan='3'><span class='sc'>Frances Shaw</span>:</td> - <td class='c012'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Who Loves the Rain</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_304'>304</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>The Harp of the Wind</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_304'>304</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_xxviii'>xxviii</span> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>The Ragpicker</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_305'>305</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Cologne Cathedral</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_305'>305</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Star Thought</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_305'>305</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>The Child’s Quest</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_306'>306</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Little Pagan Rain Song</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_306'>306</a></td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011' colspan='3'><span class='sc'>Constance Lindsay Skinner</span>:</td> - <td class='c012'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Songs of the Coast-Dwellers:</td> - <td class='c012'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'>The Chief’s Prayer after the Salmon Catch</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_307'>307</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'>Song of Whip-Plaiting</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_308'>308</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'>No Answer is Given</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_309'>309</a></td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011' colspan='3'><span class='sc'>James Stephens</span>:</td> - <td class='c012'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>What Tomas An Buile said in a Pub</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_312'>312</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Bessie Bobtail</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_313'>313</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Hate</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_313'>313</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>The Waste Places, I-II</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_314'>314</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Hawks</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_316'>316</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Dark Wings</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_317'>317</a></td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011' colspan='3'><span class='sc'>George Sterling</span>:</td> - <td class='c012'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>A Legend of the Dove</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_317'>317</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Kindred</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_318'>318</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Omnia Exeunt in Mysterium</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_318'>318</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>The Last Days</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_319'>319</a></td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011' colspan='3'><span class='sc'>Wallace Stevens</span>:</td> - <td class='c012'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Peter Quince at the Clavier, I-IV</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_320'>320</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>In Battle</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_322'>322</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Sunday Morning, I-V</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_323'>323</a></td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011' colspan='3'><span class='sc'>Ajan Syrian</span>:</td> - <td class='c012'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>The Syrian Lover in Exile Remembers Thee, Light of my Land</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_325'>325</a></td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011' colspan='3'><span class='sc'>Rabindranath Tagore</span>:</td> - <td class='c012'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>From “Gitanjali,” I-VI</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_327'>327</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>From “The Gardener,” I-IX</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_329'>329</a></td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011' colspan='3'><span class='pageno' id='Page_xxix'>xxix</span><span class='sc'>Sara Teasdale</span>:</td> - <td class='c012'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Leaves</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_334'>334</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Morning</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_334'>334</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>The Flight</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_335'>335</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Over the Roofs</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_335'>335</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Debt</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_336'>336</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Songs in a Hospital:</td> - <td class='c012'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'>The Broken Field</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_336'>336</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'>Open Windows</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_336'>336</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>After Death</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_337'>337</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>In Memoriam F. O. S.</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_337'>337</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Swallow Flight</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_338'>338</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>The Answer</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_338'>338</a></td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011' colspan='3'><span class='sc'>Eunice Tietjens</span>:</td> - <td class='c012'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>The Bacchante to Her Babe</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_339'>339</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>The Steam Shovel</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_341'>341</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>The Great Man</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_343'>343</a></td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011' colspan='3'><span class='sc'>Ridgely Torrence</span>:</td> - <td class='c012'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>The Bird and the Tree</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_344'>344</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>The Son</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_345'>345</a></td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011' colspan='3'><span class='sc'>Charles Hanson Towne</span>:</td> - <td class='c012'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Beyond the Stars</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_346'>346</a></td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011' colspan='3'><span class='sc'>Louis Untermeyer</span>:</td> - <td class='c012'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Landscapes</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_348'>348</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Feuerzauber</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_350'>350</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>On the Birth of a Child</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_351'>351</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Irony</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_352'>352</a></td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011' colspan='3'><span class='sc'>Allen Upward</span>:</td> - <td class='c012'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Scented Leaves from a Chinese Jar:</td> - <td class='c012'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'>The Acacia Leaves</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_352'>352</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'>The Bitter Purple Willows</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_352'>352</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'>The Coral Fisher</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_353'>353</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'>The Diamond</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_353'>353</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'>The Estuary</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_353'>353</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'>The Intoxicated Poet</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_353'>353</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_xxx'>xxx</span> </td> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'>The Jonquils</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_353'>353</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'>The Marigold</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_353'>353</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'>The Mermaid</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_354'>354</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'>The Middle Kingdom</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_354'>354</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'>The Milky Way</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_354'>354</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'>The Onion</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_354'>354</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'>The Sea-Shell</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_354'>354</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'>The Stupid Kite</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_354'>354</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'>The Windmill</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_355'>355</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011'>The Word</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_355'>355</a></td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011' colspan='3'><span class='sc'>John Hall Wheelock</span>:</td> - <td class='c012'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Sunday Evening in the Common</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_355'>355</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Spring</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_356'>356</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Like Music</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_356'>356</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>The Thunder-Shower</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_357'>357</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Song</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_357'>357</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Alone</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_358'>358</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Nirvana</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_358'>358</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Triumph of the Singer</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_358'>358</a></td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011' colspan='3'><span class='sc'>Hervey White</span>:</td> - <td class='c012'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Last Night</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_359'>359</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>I Saw the Clouds</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_360'>360</a></td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011' colspan='3'><span class='sc'>Margaret Widdemer</span>:</td> - <td class='c012'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>The Beggars</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_361'>361</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Teresina’s Face</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_362'>362</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Greek Folk Song</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_362'>362</a></td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011' colspan='3'><span class='sc'>Florence Wilkinson</span>:</td> - <td class='c012'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Our Lady of Idleness</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_363'>363</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Students</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_365'>365</a></td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011' colspan='3'><span class='sc'>Marguerite Wilkinson</span>:</td> - <td class='c012'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>A Woman’s Beloved—A Psalm</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_367'>367</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>An Incantation</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_368'>368</a></td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011' colspan='3'><span class='pageno' id='Page_xxxi'>xxxi</span><span class='sc'>William Carlos Williams</span>:</td> - <td class='c012'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Sicilian Emigrant’s Song</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_369'>369</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Peace on Earth</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_370'>370</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>The Shadow</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_371'>371</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Metric Figure</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_371'>371</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Sub Terra</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_372'>372</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Slow Movement</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_373'>373</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Postlude</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_374'>374</a></td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011' colspan='3'><span class='sc'>Charles Erskine Scott Wood</span>:</td> - <td class='c012'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>“The Poet in the Desert”—Extracts from the Prologue</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_375'>375</a></td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011' colspan='3'><span class='sc'>Edith Wyatt</span>:</td> - <td class='c012'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>On the Great Plateau</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_377'>377</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>Summer Hail</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_379'>379</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>To F. W.</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_380'>380</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'> </td> - <td class='c011' colspan='2'>A City Afternoon</td> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_382'>382</a></td> - </tr> -</table> - -<div class='chapter ph1'> - -<div class='nf-center-c0'> -<div class='nf-center c001'> - <div>THE NEW POETRY</div> - </div> -</div> - -</div> - -<div class='chapter'> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_1'>1</span> - <h2 class='c005'>Conrad Aiken</h2> -</div> -<h3 class='c013'>MUSIC I HEARD</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Music I heard with you was more than music,</div> - <div class='line'>And bread I broke with you was more than bread.</div> - <div class='line'>Now that I am without you, all is desolate,</div> - <div class='line'>All that was once so beautiful is dead.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Your hands once touched this table and this silver,</div> - <div class='line'>And I have seen your fingers hold this glass.</div> - <div class='line'>These things do not remember you, beloved:</div> - <div class='line'>And yet your touch upon them will not pass.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>For it was in my heart you moved among them,</div> - <div class='line'>And blessed them with your hands and with your eyes.</div> - <div class='line'>And in my heart they will remember always:</div> - <div class='line'>They knew you once, O beautiful and wise!</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>DEAD CLEOPATRA</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Dead Cleopatra lies in a crystal casket,</div> - <div class='line'>Wrapped and spiced by the cunningest of hands.</div> - <div class='line'>Around her neck they have put a golden necklace</div> - <div class='line'>Her tatbebs, it is said, are worn with sands.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Dead Cleopatra was once revered in Egypt—</div> - <div class='line'>Warm-eyed she was, this princess of the south.</div> - <div class='line'>Now she is very old and dry and faded,</div> - <div class='line'>With black bitumen they have sealed up her mouth.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_2'>2</span>Grave-robbers pulled the gold rings from her fingers,</div> - <div class='line'>Despite the holy symbols across her breast;</div> - <div class='line'>They scared the bats that quietly whirled above her.</div> - <div class='line'>Poor lady! she would have been long since at rest</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>If she had not been wrapped and spiced so shrewdly,</div> - <div class='line'>Preserved, obscene, to mock black flights of years.</div> - <div class='line'>What would her lover have said, had he foreseen it?</div> - <div class='line'>Had he been moved to ecstasy, or tears?</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>O sweet clean earth from whom the green blade cometh!—</div> - <div class='line'>When we are dead, my best-beloved and I,</div> - <div class='line'>Close well above us that we may rest forever,</div> - <div class='line'>Sending up grass and blossoms to the sky.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>DANCING ADAIRS</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Behold me, in my chiffon, gauze and tinsel,</div> - <div class='line'>Flitting out of the shadow into the spotlight,</div> - <div class='line'>And into the shadow again, without a whisper!—</div> - <div class='line'>Firefly’s my name, I am evanescent.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'>Firefly’s your name. You are evanescent.</div> - <div class='line in2'>But I follow you as remorselessly as darkness,</div> - <div class='line in2'>And shut you in and enclose you, at last, and always,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Till you are lost, as a voice is lost in silence.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Till I am lost, as a voice is lost in silence....</div> - <div class='line'>Are you the one who would close so cool about me?</div> - <div class='line'>My fire sheds into and through you and beyond you:</div> - <div class='line'>How can your fingers hold me? I am elusive.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'>How can my fingers hold you? You are elusive?</div> - <div class='line in2'>Yes, you are flame; but I surround and love you,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Always extend beyond you, cool, eternal,</div> - <div class='line in2'>To take you into my heart’s great void of silence.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_3'>3</span>You shut me into your heart’s great void of silence....</div> - <div class='line'>O sweet and soothing end for a life of whirling!</div> - <div class='line'>Now I am still, whose life was mazed with motion.</div> - <div class='line'>Now I sink into you, for love of sleep.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='chapter'> - <h2 class='c005'>Zoë Akins</h2> -</div> - -<h3 class='c013'>THE TRAGEDIENNE</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>A storm is riding on the tide;</div> - <div class='line'>Grey is the day and grey the tide,</div> - <div class='line'>Far-off the sea-gulls wheel and cry—</div> - <div class='line'>A storm draws near upon the tide;</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>A city lifts its minarets</div> - <div class='line'>To winds that from the desert sweep,</div> - <div class='line'>And prisoned Arab women weep</div> - <div class='line'>Below the domes and minarets;</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Upon a hill in Thessaly</div> - <div class='line'>Stand broken columns in a line</div> - <div class='line'>About a cold forgotten shrine,</div> - <div class='line'>Beneath a moon in Thessaly:</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>But in the world there is no place</div> - <div class='line'>So desolate as your tragic face.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>I AM THE WIND</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>I am the wind that wavers,</div> - <div class='line in2'>You are the certain land;</div> - <div class='line'>I am the shadow that passes</div> - <div class='line in2'>Over the sand.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_4'>4</span>I am the leaf that quivers,</div> - <div class='line in2'>You the unshaken tree;</div> - <div class='line'>You are the stars that are steadfast,</div> - <div class='line in2'>I am the sea.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>You are the light eternal—</div> - <div class='line in2'>Like a torch I shall die;</div> - <div class='line'>You are the surge of deep music,</div> - <div class='line in2'>I but a cry!</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>CONQUERED</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>O pale! O vivid! dear!</div> - <div class='line in2'>O disillusioned eyes</div> - <div class='line'>Forever near!</div> - <div class='line in2'>O Dream, arise!</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>I will not turn away</div> - <div class='line in2'>From the face I loved again;</div> - <div class='line'>Your beauty may sway</div> - <div class='line in2'>My life with pain.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>I will drink the wine you pour,</div> - <div class='line in2'>I will seek to put asunder</div> - <div class='line'>Our ways no more—</div> - <div class='line in2'>O Love! O Wonder!</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>THE WANDERER</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>The ships are lying in the bay,</div> - <div class='line in2'>The gulls are swinging round their spars;</div> - <div class='line'>My soul as eagerly as they</div> - <div class='line in2'>Desires the margin of the stars.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>So much do I love wandering,</div> - <div class='line in2'>So much I love the sea and sky,</div> - <div class='line'>That it will be a piteous thing</div> - <div class='line in2'>In one small grave to lie.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='chapter'> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_5'>5</span> - <h2 class='c005'>Richard Aldington</h2> -</div> - -<h3 class='c013'>THE POPLAR</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Why do you always stand there shivering</div> - <div class='line'>Between the white stream and the road?</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>The people pass through the dust</div> - <div class='line'>On bicycles, in carts, in motor-cars;</div> - <div class='line'>The wagoners go by at dawn;</div> - <div class='line'>The lovers walk on the grass path at night.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Stir from your roots, walk, poplar!</div> - <div class='line'>You are more beautiful than they are.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>I know that the white wind loves you,</div> - <div class='line'>Is always kissing you and turning up</div> - <div class='line'>The white lining of your green petticoat.</div> - <div class='line'>The sky darts through you like blue rain,</div> - <div class='line'>And the grey rain drips on your flanks</div> - <div class='line'>And loves you.</div> - <div class='line'>And I have seen the moon</div> - <div class='line'>Slip his silver penny into your pocket</div> - <div class='line'>As you straightened your hair;</div> - <div class='line'>And the white mist curling and hesitating</div> - <div class='line'>Like a bashful lover about your knees.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>I know you, poplar;</div> - <div class='line'>I have watched you since I was ten.</div> - <div class='line'>But if you had a little real love,</div> - <div class='line'>A little strength,</div> - <div class='line'>You would leave your nonchalant idle lovers</div> - <div class='line'>And go walking down the white road</div> - <div class='line'>Behind the wagoners.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>There are beautiful beeches</div> - <div class='line'>Down beyond the hill.</div> - <div class='line'>Will you always stand there shivering?</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_6'>6</span> - <h3 class='c014'>LESBIA</h3> -</div> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Grow weary if you will, let me be sad.</div> - <div class='line'>Use no more speech now;</div> - <div class='line'>Let the silence spread gold hair above us,</div> - <div class='line'>Fold on delicate fold.</div> - <div class='line'>Use no more speech;</div> - <div class='line'>You had the ivory of my life to carve....</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>And Picus of Mirandola is dead;</div> - <div class='line'>And all the gods they dreamed and fabled of,</div> - <div class='line'>Hermes, and Thoth and Bêl are rotten now,</div> - <div class='line'>Rotten and dank.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>And through it all I see your pale Greek face;</div> - <div class='line'>Tenderness</div> - <div class='line'>Makes me eager as a little child to love you,</div> - <div class='line'>You morsel left half-cold on Cæsar’s plate.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>IMAGES</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in24'>I</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Like a gondola of green scented fruits</div> - <div class='line'>Drifting along the dank canals at Venice,</div> - <div class='line'>You, O exquisite one,</div> - <div class='line'>Have entered my desolate city.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in24'>II</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>The blue smoke leaps</div> - <div class='line'>Like swirling clouds of birds vanishing.</div> - <div class='line'>So my love leaps forth towards you,</div> - <div class='line'>Vanishes and is renewed.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in24'><span class='pageno' id='Page_7'>7</span>III</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>A rose-yellow moon in a pale sky</div> - <div class='line'>When the sunset is faint vermilion</div> - <div class='line'>In the mist among the tree-boughs,</div> - <div class='line'>Art thou to me.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in24'>IV</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>As a young beech-tree on the edge of a forest</div> - <div class='line'>Stands still in the evening,</div> - <div class='line'>Yet shudders through all its leaves in the light air</div> - <div class='line'>And seems to fear the stars—</div> - <div class='line'>So are you still and so tremble.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in24'>V</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>The red deer are high on the mountain,</div> - <div class='line'>They are beyond the last pine trees.</div> - <div class='line'>And my desires have run with them.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in24'>VI</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>The flower which the wind has shaken</div> - <div class='line'>Is soon filled again with rain;</div> - <div class='line'>So does my mind fill slowly with misgiving</div> - <div class='line'>Until you return.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>CHORICOS</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>The ancient songs</div> - <div class='line'>Pass deathward mournfully.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Cold lips that sing no more, and withered wreaths,</div> - <div class='line'>Regretful eyes and drooping breasts and wings—</div> - <div class='line'>Symbols of ancient songs</div> - <div class='line'>Mournfully passing</div> - <div class='line'>Down to the great white surges,</div> - <div class='line'>Watched of none</div> - <div class='line'>Save the frail sea-birds</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_8'>8</span>And the lithe pale girls,</div> - <div class='line'>Daughters of Okeanos.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>And the songs pass</div> - <div class='line'>From the green land</div> - <div class='line'>Which lies upon the waves as a leaf</div> - <div class='line'>On the flowers of hyacinth;</div> - <div class='line'>And they pass from the waters,</div> - <div class='line'>The manifold winds and the dim moon,</div> - <div class='line'>And they come,</div> - <div class='line'>Silently winging through soft Kimmerian dusk,</div> - <div class='line'>To the quiet level lands</div> - <div class='line'>That she keeps for us all,</div> - <div class='line'>That she wrought for us all for sleep</div> - <div class='line'>In the silver days of the earth’s dawning—</div> - <div class='line'>Prosperine, daughter of Zeus.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>And we turn from the Kuprian’s breasts,</div> - <div class='line'>And we turn from thee,</div> - <div class='line'>Phoibos Apollon,</div> - <div class='line'>And we turn from the music of old</div> - <div class='line'>And the hills that we loved and the meads,</div> - <div class='line'>And we turn from the fiery day,</div> - <div class='line'>And the lips that were over-sweet;</div> - <div class='line'>For silently</div> - <div class='line'>Brushing the fields with red-shod feet,</div> - <div class='line'>With purple robe</div> - <div class='line'>Searing the flowers as with a sudden flame,</div> - <div class='line'>Death,</div> - <div class='line'>Thou hast come upon us.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>And of all the ancient songs</div> - <div class='line'>Passing to the swallow-blue halls</div> - <div class='line'>By the dark streams of Persephone,</div> - <div class='line'>This only remains:</div> - <div class='line'>That in the end we turn to thee,</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_9'>9</span>Death,</div> - <div class='line'>That we turn to thee, singing</div> - <div class='line'>One last song.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>O Death,</div> - <div class='line'>Thou art an healing wind</div> - <div class='line'>That blowest over white flowers</div> - <div class='line'>A-tremble with dew;</div> - <div class='line'>Thou art a wind flowing</div> - <div class='line'>Over long leagues of lonely sea;</div> - <div class='line'>Thou art the dusk and the fragrance;</div> - <div class='line'>Thou art the lips of love mournfully smiling;</div> - <div class='line'>Thou art the pale peace of one</div> - <div class='line'>Satiate with old desires;</div> - <div class='line'>Thou art the silence of beauty,</div> - <div class='line'>And we look no more for the morning;</div> - <div class='line'>We yearn no more for the sun,</div> - <div class='line'>Since with thy white hands,</div> - <div class='line'>Death,</div> - <div class='line'>Thou crownest us with the pallid chaplets,</div> - <div class='line'>The slim colorless poppies</div> - <div class='line'>Which in thy garden alone</div> - <div class='line'>Softly thou gatherest.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>And silently;</div> - <div class='line'>And with slow feet approaching;</div> - <div class='line'>And with bowed head and unlit eyes,</div> - <div class='line'>We kneel before thee.</div> - <div class='line'>And thou, leaning towards us,</div> - <div class='line'>Caressingly layest upon us</div> - <div class='line'>Flowers from thy thin cold hands,</div> - <div class='line'>And, smiling as a chaste woman</div> - <div class='line'>Knowing love in her heart,</div> - <div class='line'>Thou sealest our eyes</div> - <div class='line'>And the illimitable quietude</div> - <div class='line'>Comes gently upon us.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='chapter'> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_10'>10</span> - <h2 class='c005'>Mary Aldis</h2> -</div> - -<h3 class='c013'>BARBERRIES</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>You say I touch the barberries</div> - <div class='line'>As a lover his mistress?</div> - <div class='line'>What a curious fancy!</div> - <div class='line'>One must be delicate, you know—</div> - <div class='line'>They have bitter thorns.</div> - <div class='line'>You say my hand is hurt?</div> - <div class='line'>Oh no, it was my breast,</div> - <div class='line'>It was crushed and pressed.</div> - <div class='line'>I mean—why yes, of course, of course—</div> - <div class='line'>There is a bright drop—isn’t there?—</div> - <div class='line'>Right on my finger;</div> - <div class='line'>Just the color of a barberry,</div> - <div class='line'>But it comes from my heart.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Do you love barberries?</div> - <div class='line'>In the autumn</div> - <div class='line'>When the sun’s desire</div> - <div class='line'>Touches them to a glory of crimson and gold?</div> - <div class='line'>I love them best then.</div> - <div class='line'>There is something splendid about them:</div> - <div class='line'>They are not afraid</div> - <div class='line'>Of being warm and glad and bold;</div> - <div class='line'>They flush joyously,</div> - <div class='line'>Like a cheek under a lover’s kiss;</div> - <div class='line'>They bleed cruelly</div> - <div class='line'>Like a dagger wound in the breast;</div> - <div class='line'>They flame up madly for their little hour,</div> - <div class='line'>Knowing they must die.</div> - <div class='line'>Do you love barberries?</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_11'>11</span> - <h3 class='c014'>WHEN YOU COME</h3> -</div> - -<p class='c015'>“<em>There was a girl with him for a time. She took him to her room -when he was desolate and warmed him and took care of him. One day -he could not find her. For many weeks he walked constantly in that -locality in search of her.</em>”—From <cite>Life of Francis Thompson</cite>.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>When you come tonight</div> - <div class='line'>To our small room</div> - <div class='line'>You will look and listen—</div> - <div class='line'>I shall not be there.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>You will cry out your dismay</div> - <div class='line'>To the unheeding gods;</div> - <div class='line'>You will wait and look and listen—</div> - <div class='line'>I shall not be there.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>There is a part of you I love</div> - <div class='line'>More than your hands in mine at rest;</div> - <div class='line'>There is a part of you I love</div> - <div class='line'>More than your lips upon my breast.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>There is a part of you I wound</div> - <div class='line'>Even in my caress;</div> - <div class='line'>There is a part of you withheld</div> - <div class='line'>I may not possess.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>There is a part of you I hate—</div> - <div class='line'>Your need of me</div> - <div class='line'>When you would be alone,</div> - <div class='line'>Alone and free.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>When you come tonight</div> - <div class='line'>To our small room</div> - <div class='line'>You will look and listen—</div> - <div class='line'>I shall not be there.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_12'>12</span> - <h3 class='c014'>FLASH-LIGHTS</h3> -</div> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in24'>I</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Candles toppling sideways in tomato cans</div> - <div class='line'>Sputter and sizzle at head and foot.</div> - <div class='line'>The gaudy patterns of a patch-work quilt</div> - <div class='line'>Lie smooth and straight</div> - <div class='line'>Save where upswelling over a silent shape.</div> - <div class='line'>A man in high boots stirs something on a rusty stove</div> - <div class='line'>Round and round and round,</div> - <div class='line'>As a new cry like a bleating lamb’s</div> - <div class='line'>Pierces his brain.</div> - <div class='line'>After a time the man busies himself</div> - <div class='line'>With hammer and nails and rough-hewn lumber,</div> - <div class='line'>But fears to strike a blow.</div> - <div class='line'>Outside the moonlight sleeps white upon the plain</div> - <div class='line'>And the bark of a coyote shrills across the night.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in24'>II</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>A smell of musk</div> - <div class='line'>Comes to him pungently through the darkness.</div> - <div class='line'>On the screen</div> - <div class='line'>Scenes from foreign lands,</div> - <div class='line'>Released by the censor,</div> - <div class='line'>Shimmer in cool black and white</div> - <div class='line'>Historic information.</div> - <div class='line'>He shifts his seat sideways, sideways—</div> - <div class='line'>A seeking hand creeps to another hand,</div> - <div class='line'>And a leaping flame</div> - <div class='line'>Illuminates the historic information.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in24'>III</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Within the room, sounds of weeping</div> - <div class='line'>Low and hushed:</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_13'>13</span>Without, a man, beautiful with the beauty</div> - <div class='line'>Of young strength,</div> - <div class='line'>Holds pitifully to the handle of the door.</div> - <div class='line'>He hiccoughs and turns away,</div> - <div class='line'>While a hand-organ plays,</div> - <div class='line'>“The hours I spend with thee, dear heart.”</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='chapter'> - <h2 class='c005'>Walter Conrad Arensberg</h2> -</div> - -<h3 class='c013'>VOYAGE À L’INFINI</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>The swan existing</div> - <div class='line'>Is like a song with an accompaniment</div> - <div class='line'>Imaginary.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Across the grassy lake,</div> - <div class='line'>Across the lake to the shadow of the willows,</div> - <div class='line'>It is accompanied by an image—</div> - <div class='line'>As by Debussy’s</div> - <div class='line'>“<i><span lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Reflets dans l’eau</span></i>.”</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>The swan that is</div> - <div class='line'>Reflects</div> - <div class='line'>Upon the solitary water—breast to breast</div> - <div class='line'>With the duplicity:</div> - <div class='line'>“<em>The other one!</em>”</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>And breast to breast it is confused.</div> - <div class='line'>O visionary wedding! O stateliness of the procession!</div> - <div class='line'>It is accompanied by the image of itself</div> - <div class='line'>Alone.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>At night</div> - <div class='line'>The lake is a wide silence,</div> - <div class='line'>Without imagination.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_14'>14</span> - <h3 class='c014'>AT DAYBREAK</h3> -</div> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>I had a dream and I awoke with it—</div> - <div class='line'>Poor little thing that I had not unclasped</div> - <div class='line'>After the kiss good-by.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>And at the surface how it gasped—</div> - <div class='line'>This thing that I had loved in the unlit</div> - <div class='line'>Depth of the drowsy sea....</div> - <div class='line'>Ah me!</div> - <div class='line'>This thing with which I drifted toward the sky.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Driftwood upon a wave—</div> - <div class='line'>Senseless the motion that it gave.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>TO HASEKAWA</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Perhaps it is no matter that you died.</div> - <div class='line in2'>Life’s an <em>incognito</em> which you saw through:</div> - <div class='line'>You never told on life—you had your pride;</div> - <div class='line in2'>But life has told on you.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>DIALOGUE</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Be patient, Life, when Love is at the gate,</div> - <div class='line'>And when he enters let him be at home.</div> - <div class='line'>Think of the roads that he has had to roam.</div> - <div class='line'>Think of the years that he has had to wait.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>But if I let Love in I shall be late.</em></div> - <div class='line'><em>Another has come first—there is no room.</em></div> - <div class='line'><em>And I am thoughtful of the endless loom—</em></div> - <div class='line'><em>Let Love be patient, the importunate.</em></div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>O Life, be idle and let Love come in,</div> - <div class='line'>And give thy dreamy hair that Love may spin.</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_15'>15</span><em>But Love himself is idle with his song.</em></div> - <div class='line'><em>Let Love come last, and then may Love last long.</em></div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Be patient, Life, for Love is not the last.</div> - <div class='line'>Be patient now with Death, for Love has passed.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>SONG OF THE SOULS SET FREE</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Wrap the earth in cloudy weather</div> - <div class='line'>For a shroud.</div> - <div class='line'>We have slipped the earthly tether,</div> - <div class='line'>We’re above the cloud.</div> - <div class='line'>Peep and draw the cloud together,</div> - <div class='line'>Peep upon the bowed.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>What can they be bowing under,</div> - <div class='line'>Wild and wan?</div> - <div class='line'>Peep, and draw the cloud asunder,</div> - <div class='line'>Peep, and wave a dawn.</div> - <div class='line'>It will make them rise and wonder</div> - <div class='line'>Whether we are gone.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='chapter'> - <h2 class='c005'>Wilton Agnew Barrett</h2> -</div> - -<h3 class='c013'>A NEW ENGLAND CHURCH</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>The white church on the hill</div> - <div class='line in2'>Looks over the little bay—</div> - <div class='line'>A beautiful thing on the hill</div> - <div class='line in2'>When the mist is gray;</div> - <div class='line'>When the hill looks old, and the air turns cold</div> - <div class='line in2'>With the dying day!</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>The white church on the hill—</div> - <div class='line in2'>A Greek in a Puritan town—</div> - <div class='line'>Was built on the brow of the hill</div> - <div class='line in2'>For John Wesley’s God’s renown,</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_16'>16</span>And a conscience old set a steeple cold</div> - <div class='line in2'>On its Grecian crown.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>In a storm of faith on the hill</div> - <div class='line in2'>Hands raised it over the bay.</div> - <div class='line'>When the night is clear on the hill,</div> - <div class='line in2'>It stands up strong and gray;</div> - <div class='line'>But its door is old, and the tower points cold</div> - <div class='line in2'>To the Milky Way.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>The white church on the hill</div> - <div class='line in2'>Looks lonely over the town.</div> - <div class='line'>Dim to them under the hill</div> - <div class='line in2'>Is its God’s renown,</div> - <div class='line'>And its Bible old, and its creed grown cold,</div> - <div class='line in2'>And the letters brown.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='chapter'> - <h2 class='c005'>Joseph Warren Beach</h2> -</div> - -<h3 class='c013'>RUE BONAPARTE</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>You that but seek your modest rolls and coffee,</div> - <div class='line'>When you have passed the bar, and have saluted</div> - <div class='line'>Its watchful madam, then pray enter softly</div> - <div class='line'>The inner chamber, even as one who treads</div> - <div class='line'>The haunts of mating birds, and watch discreetly</div> - <div class='line'>Over your paper’s edge. There in the corner,</div> - <div class='line'>Obscure, ensconced behind the uncovered table,</div> - <div class='line'>A man and woman keep their silent tryst.</div> - <div class='line'>Outside the morning floods the pavement sweetly;</div> - <div class='line'>Yonder aloft a maid throws back the shutters;</div> - <div class='line'>The hucksters utter modulated cries</div> - <div class='line'>As wistful as some old pathetic ballad.</div> - <div class='line'>Within the brooding lovers, unaware,</div> - <div class='line'>Sit quiet hand in hand, or in low whispers</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_17'>17</span>Communicate a more articulate love.</div> - <div class='line'>Sometimes she plays with strings and, gently leaning</div> - <div class='line'>Against his shoulder, shows him childish tricks.</div> - <div class='line'>She has not touched the glass of milk before her,</div> - <div class='line'>Her breakfast and the price of their admittance.</div> - <div class='line'>She has a look devoted and confiding</div> - <div class='line'>And might be pretty were not life so hard.</div> - <div class='line'>But he, gaunt as his rusty bicycle</div> - <div class='line'>That stands against the table, and with features</div> - <div class='line'>So drawn and stark, has only futile strength.</div> - <div class='line'>The love they cherish in this stolen meeting</div> - <div class='line'>Through all the day that follows makes her sweeter,</div> - <div class='line'>And him perhaps it only leaves more bitter.</div> - <div class='line'>But you that have not love at all, old men</div> - <div class='line'>That warm your fingers by this fire, discreetly</div> - <div class='line'>Play out your morning game of dominoes.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>THE VIEW AT GUNDERSON’S</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Sitting in his rocker waiting for your tea,</div> - <div class='line'>Gazing from his window, this is what you see:</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>A cat that snaps at flies; a track leading down</div> - <div class='line'>By log-built shanties gray and brown;</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>The corner of a barn, and tangled lines of fence</div> - <div class='line'>Of rough-hewn pickets standing dense;</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>The ghost of a tree on a dull, wet day;</div> - <div class='line'>And the blanket fog where lies the bay.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>But when he’s seen the last of you,</div> - <div class='line'>Sitting in his rocker, what’s <em>his</em> view?</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>(For there he sits, day in, day out,</div> - <div class='line'>Nursing his leg—and his dreams, no doubt.)</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_18'>18</span>The snow-slide up behind the <i><span lang="nl" xml:lang="nl">gaard</span></i>;</div> - <div class='line'>The farm beside old Trondjem <em>fjord</em>;</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Daughters seven with their cold blue eyes,</div> - <div class='line'>And the great pine where his father lies;</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>The boat that brought him over the sea;</div> - <div class='line'>And the toothless woman who makes his tea.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>(Their picture, framed on the rough log wall,</div> - <div class='line'>Proves she had teeth when he was tall.)</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>He sees the balsam thick on the hill,</div> - <div class='line'>And all he’s cleared with a stubborn will.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>And last he sees the full-grown son</div> - <div class='line'>For whom he hoards what he has won.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>You saw little worth the strife:</div> - <div class='line'>What he sees is one man’s life.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='chapter'> - <h2 class='c005'>William Rose Benét</h2> -</div> - -<h3 class='c013'>THE FALCONER OF GOD</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>I flung my soul to the air like a falcon flying.</div> - <div class='line'>I said, “Wait on, wait on, while I ride below!</div> - <div class='line in6'>I shall start a heron soon</div> - <div class='line in6'>In the marsh beneath the moon—</div> - <div class='line'>A strange white heron rising with silver on its wings,</div> - <div class='line in10'>Rising and crying</div> - <div class='line in8'>Wordless, wondrous things;</div> - <div class='line in6'>The secret of the stars, of the world’s heart-strings</div> - <div class='line in8'>The answer to their woe.</div> - <div class='line'>Then stoop thou upon him, and grip and hold him so!”</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_19'>19</span>My wild soul waited on as falcons hover.</div> - <div class='line'>I beat the reedy fens as I trampled past.</div> - <div class='line in6'>I heard the mournful loon</div> - <div class='line in6'>In the marsh beneath the moon.</div> - <div class='line'>And then, with feathery thunder, the bird of my desire</div> - <div class='line in10'>Broke from the cover</div> - <div class='line in8'>Flashing silver fire.</div> - <div class='line in6'>High up among the stars I saw his pinions spire.</div> - <div class='line in10'>The pale clouds gazed aghast</div> - <div class='line'>As my falcon stooped upon him, and gript and held him fast.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>My soul dropped through the air—with heavenly plunder?—</div> - <div class='line'>Gripping the dazzling bird my dreaming knew?</div> - <div class='line in6'>Nay! but a piteous freight,</div> - <div class='line in6'>A dark and heavy weight</div> - <div class='line'>Despoiled of silver plumage, its voice forever stilled—</div> - <div class='line in10'>All of the wonder</div> - <div class='line in8'>Gone that ever filled</div> - <div class='line in6'>Its guise with glory. O bird that I have killed,</div> - <div class='line in8'>How brilliantly you flew</div> - <div class='line'>Across my rapturous vision when first I dreamed of you!</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Yet I fling my soul on high with new endeavor,</div> - <div class='line'>And I ride the world below with a joyful mind.</div> - <div class='line in6'><em>I shall start a heron soon</em></div> - <div class='line in6'><em>In the marsh beneath the moon—</em></div> - <div class='line'><em>A wondrous silver heron its inner darkness fledges!</em></div> - <div class='line in10'>I beat forever</div> - <div class='line in8'>The fens and the sedges.</div> - <div class='line in6'>The pledge is still the same—for all disastrous pledges,</div> - <div class='line in10'>All hopes resigned!</div> - <div class='line'>My soul still flies above me for the quarry it shall find!</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_20'>20</span> - <h3 class='c014'>THE HORSE THIEF</h3> -</div> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>There he moved, cropping the grass at the purple canyon’s lip.</div> - <div class='line in2'>His mane was mixed with the moonlight that silvered his snow-white side,</div> - <div class='line'>For the moon sailed out of a cloud with the wake of a spectral ship.</div> - <div class='line in2'>I crouched and I crawled on my belly, my lariat coil looped wide.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Dimly and dark the mesas broke on the starry sky.</div> - <div class='line in2'>A pall covered every color of their gorgeous glory at noon.</div> - <div class='line'>I smelt the yucca and mesquite, and stifled my heart’s quick cry,</div> - <div class='line in2'>And wormed and crawled on my belly to where he moved against the moon!</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Some Moorish barb was that mustang’s sire. His lines were beyond all wonder.</div> - <div class='line in2'>From the prick of his ears to the flow of his tail he ached in my throat and eyes.</div> - <div class='line'>Steel and velvet grace! As the prophet says, God had “clothed his neck with thunder.”</div> - <div class='line in2'>Oh, marvelous with the drifting cloud he drifted across the skies!</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>And then I was near at hand—crouched, and balanced, and cast the coil;</div> - <div class='line in2'>And the moon was smothered in cloud, and the rope through my hands with a rip!</div> - <div class='line'>But somehow I gripped and clung, with the blood in my brain aboil,—</div> - <div class='line in2'>With a turn round the rugged tree-stump there on the purple canyon’s lip.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_21'>21</span>Right into the stars he reared aloft, his red eye rolling and raging.</div> - <div class='line in2'>He whirled and sunfished and lashed, and rocked the earth to thunder and flame.</div> - <div class='line'>He squealed like a regular devil horse. I was haggard and spent and aging—</div> - <div class='line in2'>Roped clean, but almost storming clear, his fury too fierce to tame.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>And I cursed myself for a tenderfoot moon-dazzled to play the part,</div> - <div class='line in2'>But I was doubly desperate then, with the posse pulled out from town,</div> - <div class='line'>Or I’d never have tried it. I only knew I must get a mount and a start.</div> - <div class='line in2'>The filly had snapped her foreleg short. I had had to shoot her down.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>So there he struggled and strangled, and I snubbed him around the tree.</div> - <div class='line in2'>Nearer, a little nearer—hoofs planted, and lolling tongue—</div> - <div class='line'>Till a sudden slack pitched me backward. He reared right on top of me.</div> - <div class='line in2'>Mother of God—that moment! He missed me ... and up I swung.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Somehow, gone daft completely and clawing a bunch of his mane,</div> - <div class='line in2'>As he stumbled and tripped in the lariat, there I was—up and astride</div> - <div class='line'>And cursing for seven counties! And the mustang? <em>Just insane!</em></div> - <div class='line in2'>Crack-bang! went the rope; we cannoned off the tree—then—gods, that ride!</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>A rocket—that’s all, a rocket! I dug with my teeth and nails.</div> - <div class='line in2'>Why, we never hit even the high spots (though I hardly remember things),</div> - <div class='line'>But I heard a monstrous booming like a thunder of flapping sails</div> - <div class='line in2'>When he spread—well, <em>call</em> me a liar!—when he spread those wings, those wings!</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_22'>22</span>So white that my eyes were blinded, thick-feathered and wide unfurled</div> - <div class='line in2'>They beat the air into billows. We sailed, and the earth was gone.</div> - <div class='line'>Canyon and desert and mesa withered below, with the world.</div> - <div class='line in2'>And then I knew that mustang; for I—was Bellerophon!</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Yes, glad as the Greek, and mounted on a horse of the elder gods,</div> - <div class='line in2'>With never a magic bridle or a fountain-mirror nigh!</div> - <div class='line'><em>My chaps and spurs and holster must have looked it?</em> What’s the odds?</div> - <div class='line in2'>I’d a leg over lightning and thunder, careering across the sky!</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>And forever streaming before me, fanning my forehead cool,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Flowed a mane of molten silver; and just before my thighs</div> - <div class='line'>(As I gripped his velvet-muscled ribs, while I cursed myself for a fool),</div> - <div class='line in2'>The steady pulse of those pinions—their wonderful fall and rise!</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>The bandanna I bought in Bowie blew loose and whipped from my neck.</div> - <div class='line in2'>My shirt was stuck to my shoulders and ribboning out behind.</div> - <div class='line'>The stars were dancing, wheeling and glancing, dipping with smirk and beck.</div> - <div class='line in2'>The clouds were flowing, dusking and glowing. We rode a roaring wind.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>We soared through the silver starlight to knock at the planets’ gates.</div> - <div class='line in2'>New shimmering constellations came whirling into our ken.</div> - <div class='line'>Red stars and green and golden swung out of the void that waits</div> - <div class='line in2'>For man’s great last adventure; the Signs took shape—and then</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>I knew the lines of that Centaur the moment I saw him come!</div> - <div class='line in2'>The musical-box of the heavens all around us rolled to a tune</div> - <div class='line'>That tinkled and chimed and trilled with silver sounds that struck you dumb,</div> - <div class='line in2'>As if some archangel were grinding out the music of the moon.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_23'>23</span>Melody-drunk on the Milky Way, as we swept and soared hilarious,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Full in our pathway, sudden he stood—the Centaur of the Stars,</div> - <div class='line'>Flashing from head and hoofs and breast! I knew him for Sagittarius.</div> - <div class='line in2'>He reared, and bent and drew his bow. He crouched as a boxer spars.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Flung back on his haunches, weird he loomed—then leapt—and the dim void lightened.</div> - <div class='line in2'>Old White Wings shied and swerved aside, and fled from the splendor-shod.</div> - <div class='line'>Through a flashing welter of worlds we charged. I knew why my horse was frightened.</div> - <div class='line in2'>He <em>had</em> two faces—a dog’s and a man’s—that Babylonian god!</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Also, he followed us real as fear. Ping! went an arrow past.</div> - <div class='line in2'>My broncho buck-jumped, humping high. We plunged ... I guess that’s all!</div> - <div class='line'>I lay on the purple canyon’s lip, when I opened my eyes at last—</div> - <div class='line in2'>Stiff and sore and my head like a drum, but I broke no bones in the fall.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>So you know—and now you may string me up. Such was the way you caught me.</div> - <div class='line in2'>Thank you for letting me tell it straight, though you never could greatly care.</div> - <div class='line'>For I took a horse that wasn’t mine!... But there’s one the heavens brought me,</div> - <div class='line in2'>And I’ll hang right happy, because I know he is waiting for me up there.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>From creamy muzzle to cannon-bone, by God, he’s a peerless wonder!</div> - <div class='line in2'>He is steel and velvet and furnace-fire, and death’s supremest prize;</div> - <div class='line'>And never again shall be roped on earth that neck that is “clothed with thunder” ...</div> - <div class='line in2'>String me up, Dave! Go dig my grave! <em>I rode him across the skies!</em></div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='chapter'> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_24'>24</span> - <h2 class='c005'>Maxwell Bodenheim</h2> -</div> - -<h3 class='c013'>THE REAR-PORCHES OF AN APARTMENT-BUILDING</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>A sky that has never known sun, moon or stars,</div> - <div class='line'>A sky that is like a dead, kind face,</div> - <div class='line'>Would have the color of your eyes,</div> - <div class='line'>O servant-girl, singing of pear-trees in the sun,</div> - <div class='line'>And scraping the yellow fruit you once picked</div> - <div class='line'>When your lavender-white eyes were alive....</div> - <div class='line'>On the porch above you are two women,</div> - <div class='line'>Whose faces have the color of brown earth that has never felt rain.</div> - <div class='line'>The still wet basins of ponds that have been drained</div> - <div class='line'>Are their eyes.</div> - <div class='line'>They knit gray rosettes and nibble cakes....</div> - <div class='line'>And on the top-porch are three children</div> - <div class='line'>Gravely kissing each others’ foreheads—</div> - <div class='line'>And an ample nurse with a huge red fan....</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>The passing of the afternoon to them</div> - <div class='line'>Is but the lengthening of blue-black shadows on brick walls.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>THE INTERNE</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Oh, the agony of having too much power!</div> - <div class='line'>In my passive palm are hundreds of lives.</div> - <div class='line'>Strange alchemy!—they drain my blood:</div> - <div class='line'>My heart becomes iron; my brain copper; my eyes silver; my lips brass.</div> - <div class='line'>Merely by twitching a supple finger, I twirl lives from me—strong-winged,</div> - <div class='line'>Or fluttering and broken.</div> - <div class='line'>They are my children, I am their mother and father.</div> - <div class='line'>I watch them live and die.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_25'>25</span> - <h3 class='c014'>THE OLD JEW</h3> -</div> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>No fawn-tinged hospital pajamas could cheat him of his austerity,</div> - <div class='line'>Which tamed even the doctors with its pure fire.</div> - <div class='line'>They examined him; made him bow to them:</div> - <div class='line'>Massive altars were they, at whose swollen feet grovelled a worshiper.</div> - <div class='line'>Then they laughed, half in scorn of him; and there came a miracle.</div> - <div class='line'>The little man was above them at a bound.</div> - <div class='line'>His austerity, like an irresistible sledge-hammer, drove them lower and lower:</div> - <div class='line'>They dwindled while he soared.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>THE MINER</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Those on the top say they know you, Earth—they are liars.</div> - <div class='line'>You are my father, and the silence I work in is my mother.</div> - <div class='line'>Only the son knows his father.</div> - <div class='line'>We are alike—sweaty, inarticulate of soul, bending under thick knowledge.</div> - <div class='line'>I drink and shout with my brothers when above you—</div> - <div class='line'>Like most children we soon forget the parents of our souls.</div> - <div class='line'>But you avidly grip us again—we pay for the little noise of life we steal.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>TO AN ENEMY</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>I despise my friends more than you.</div> - <div class='line'>I would have known myself, but they stood before the mirrors</div> - <div class='line'>And painted on them images of the virtues I craved.</div> - <div class='line'>You came with sharpest chisel, scraping away the false paint.</div> - <div class='line'>Then I knew and detested myself, but not you:</div> - <div class='line'>For glimpses of you in the glasses you uncovered</div> - <div class='line'>Showed me the virtues whose images you destroyed.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_26'>26</span> - <h3 class='c014'>TO A DISCARDED STEEL RAIL</h3> -</div> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Straight strength pitched into the surliness of the ditch,</div> - <div class='line'>A soul you have—strength has always delicate secret reasons.</div> - <div class='line'>Your soul is a dull question.</div> - <div class='line'>I do not care for your strength, but for your stiff smile at Time—</div> - <div class='line'>A smile which men call rust.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='chapter'> - <h2 class='c005'>Gordon Bottomley</h2> -</div> - -<h3 class='c013'>NIGHT AND MORNING SONGS</h3> - -<h4 class='c013'>MY MOON</h4> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>My moon was lit in an hour of lilies;</div> - <div class='line'>The apple-trees seemed older than ever.</div> - <div class='line'>It rose from matted trees that sever</div> - <div class='line'>The oats from the meadow, and woke the fillies</div> - <div class='line'>That reared in dew and gleamed with dew</div> - <div class='line'>And ran like water and shadow, and cried.</div> - <div class='line'>It moistened and veiled the oats yet new,</div> - <div class='line'>And seemed to drip long drops of the tide,</div> - <div class='line'>Of the mother-sea so lately left.</div> - <div class='line'>Feathers of flower were each bereft</div> - <div class='line'>Of color and stem, and floated low;</div> - <div class='line'>Another lily opened then</div> - <div class='line'>And lost a little gold dust; but when</div> - <div class='line'>The lime-boughs lifted there seemed to go</div> - <div class='line'>Some life of the moon, like breath that moves</div> - <div class='line'>Or parting glances that flutter and strain—</div> - <div class='line'>A ghost with hands the color of doves</div> - <div class='line'>And feet the color of rain.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_27'>27</span> - <h4 class='c013'>ELEGIAC MOOD</h4> -</div> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>From song and dream for ever gone</div> - <div class='line'>Are Helen, Helen of Troy,</div> - <div class='line'>And Cleopatra made to look upon,</div> - <div class='line'>And many a daring boy—</div> - <div class='line'>Young Faust and Sigurd and Hippolytus:</div> - <div class='line'>They are twice dead and we must find</div> - <div class='line'>Great ladies yet unblemished by the mind,</div> - <div class='line'>Heroes and acts not cold for us</div> - <div class='line'>In amber or spirits of too many words.</div> - <div class='line'>Ay, these are murdered by much thinking on.</div> - <div class='line'>I hanker even for new shapes of swords,</div> - <div class='line'>More different sins, and raptures not yet done.</div> - <div class='line'>Yet, as I wait on marvels, such a bird</div> - <div class='line'>As maybe Sigurd heard—</div> - <div class='line'>A thrush—alighting with a little run</div> - <div class='line'>Out-tops the daisies as it passes</div> - <div class='line'>And peeps bright-eyed above the grasses.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h4 class='c013'>DAWN</h4> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>A thrush is tapping a stone</div> - <div class='line'>With a snail-shell in its beak;</div> - <div class='line'>A small bird hangs from a cherry</div> - <div class='line'>Until the stem shall break.</div> - <div class='line'>No waking song has begun,</div> - <div class='line'>And yet birds chatter and hurry</div> - <div class='line'>And throng in the elm’s gloom</div> - <div class='line'>Because an owl goes home.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='chapter'> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_28'>28</span> - <h2 class='c005'>Rollo Britten</h2> -</div> - -<h3 class='c013'>BIRD OF PASSION</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Leave the lovely words unsaid;</div> - <div class='line'>For another thought is fled</div> - <div class='line'>From my dream-entangled mind.</div> - <div class='line'>Bird of passion, unenshrined,</div> - <div class='line'>I can never phrase thee quite—</div> - <div class='line'>So I speed thee on thy flight,</div> - <div class='line'>Unembodied thus forever,</div> - <div class='line'>Floating in a mist that never</div> - <div class='line'>May be raised. Thou art one</div> - <div class='line'>Of the black-winged birds that run,</div> - <div class='line'>With uncomprehended flight,</div> - <div class='line'>Unimpeded down the night.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='chapter'> - <h2 class='c005'>Rupert Brooke</h2> -</div> - -<h3 class='c013'>RETROSPECT</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>In your arms was still delight,</div> - <div class='line'>Quiet as a street at night;</div> - <div class='line'>And thoughts of you, I do remember,</div> - <div class='line'>Were green leaves in a darkened chamber,</div> - <div class='line'>Were dark clouds in a moonless sky.</div> - <div class='line'>Love, in you, went passing by,</div> - <div class='line'>Penetrative, remote, and rare,</div> - <div class='line'>Like a bird in the wide air;</div> - <div class='line'>And, as the bird, it left no trace</div> - <div class='line'>In the heaven of your face.</div> - <div class='line'>In your stupidity I found</div> - <div class='line'>The sweet hush after a sweet sound.</div> - <div class='line'>All about you was the light</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_29'>29</span>That dims the graying end of night;</div> - <div class='line'>Desire was the unrisen sun,</div> - <div class='line'>Joy the day not yet begun,</div> - <div class='line'>With tree whispering to tree,</div> - <div class='line'>Without wind, quietly.</div> - <div class='line'>Wisdom slept within your hair,</div> - <div class='line'>And Long-suffering was there,</div> - <div class='line'>And, in the flowing of your dress,</div> - <div class='line'>Undiscerning Tenderness.</div> - <div class='line'>And when you thought, it seemed to me,</div> - <div class='line'>Infinitely, and like a sea,</div> - <div class='line'>About the slight world you had known</div> - <div class='line'>Your vast unconsciousness was thrown....</div> - <div class='line'>O haven without wave or tide!</div> - <div class='line'>Silence, in which all songs have died!</div> - <div class='line'>Holy book, where hearts are still!</div> - <div class='line'>And home at length under the hill!</div> - <div class='line'>O mother quiet, breasts of peace,</div> - <div class='line'>Where love itself would faint and cease!</div> - <div class='line'>O infinite deep I never knew,</div> - <div class='line'>I would come back, come back to you,</div> - <div class='line'>Find you, as a pool unstirred,</div> - <div class='line'>Kneel down by you, and never a word,</div> - <div class='line'>Lay my head, and nothing said,</div> - <div class='line'>In your hands, ungarlanded;</div> - <div class='line'>And a long watch you would keep;</div> - <div class='line'>And I should sleep, and I should sleep!</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>NINETEEN-FOURTEEN</h3> - -<h4 class='c013'>I—PEACE</h4> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Now, God be thanked who has matched us with his hour,</div> - <div class='line in2'>And caught our youth, and wakened us from sleeping!</div> - <div class='line'>With hand made sure, clear eye, and sharpened power,</div> - <div class='line in2'>To turn, as swimmers into cleanness leaping,</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_30'>30</span>Glad about a world grown old and cold and weary;</div> - <div class='line in2'>Leave the sick hearts that honor could not move,</div> - <div class='line'>And half-men, and their dirty songs and dreary,</div> - <div class='line in2'>And all the little emptiness of love!</div> - <div class='line'>Oh! we, who have known shame, we have found release there,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Where there’s no ill, no grief, but sleep has mending,</div> - <div class='line in4'>Naught broken save this body, lost but breath;</div> - <div class='line'>Nothing to shake the laughing heart’s long peace there,</div> - <div class='line in2'>But the only agony, and that has ending;</div> - <div class='line in4'>And the worst friend and enemy is but Death.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h4 class='c013'>II—SAFETY</h4> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Dear! of all happy in the hour, most blest</div> - <div class='line in2'>He who has found our hid security,</div> - <div class='line'>Assured in the dark tides of the world that rest,</div> - <div class='line in2'>And heard our word, “Who is so safe as we?”</div> - <div class='line'>We have found safety with all things undying.</div> - <div class='line in2'>The winds, and morning, tears of men and mirth,</div> - <div class='line'>The deep night and birds singing, and clouds flying,</div> - <div class='line in2'>And sleep, and freedom, and the autumnal earth.</div> - <div class='line'>We have built a house that is not for Time’s throwing.</div> - <div class='line in2'>We have gained a peace unshaken by pain for ever.</div> - <div class='line'>War knows no power. Safe shall be my going,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Secretly armed against all death’s endeavor;</div> - <div class='line'>Safe though all safety’s lost; safe where men fall;</div> - <div class='line'>And if these poor limbs die, safest of all.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h4 class='c013'>III—THE DEAD</h4> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Blow out, you bugles, over the rich Dead!</div> - <div class='line in2'>There’s none of these so lonely and poor of old,</div> - <div class='line in2'>But, dying, has made us rarer gifts than gold.</div> - <div class='line'>These laid the world away; poured out the red</div> - <div class='line'>Sweet wine of youth; gave up the years to be</div> - <div class='line in2'>Of work and joy, and that unhoped serene</div> - <div class='line in2'>That men call age; and those who would have been</div> - <div class='line'>Their sons they gave, their immortality.</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_31'>31</span>Blow, bugles, blow! They brought us, for our dearth,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Holiness, lacked so long, and Love, and Pain.</div> - <div class='line'>Honor has come back, as a king, to earth,</div> - <div class='line in2'>And paid his subjects with a royal wage;</div> - <div class='line'>And Nobleness walks in our ways again;</div> - <div class='line in2'>And we have come into our heritage.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h4 class='c013'>IV—THE DEAD</h4> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>These hearts were woven of human joys and cares,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Washed marvellously with sorrow, swift to mirth.</div> - <div class='line'>The years had given them kindness. Dawn was theirs,</div> - <div class='line in2'>And sunset, and the colors of the earth.</div> - <div class='line'>These had seen movement, and heard music; known</div> - <div class='line in2'>Slumber and waking; loved; gone proudly friended;</div> - <div class='line'>Felt the quick stir of wonder; sat alone;</div> - <div class='line in2'>Touched flowers and furs, and cheeks. All this is ended.</div> - <div class='line'>There are waters blown by changing winds to laughter</div> - <div class='line'>And lit by the rich skies, all day. And after,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Frost, with a gesture, stays the waves that dance</div> - <div class='line'>And wandering loveliness. He leaves a white</div> - <div class='line in2'>Unbroken glory, a gathered radiance,</div> - <div class='line'>A width, a shining peace, under the night.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h4 class='c013'>V—THE SOLDIER</h4> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>If I should die, think only this of me:</div> - <div class='line in2'>That there’s some corner of a foreign field</div> - <div class='line'>That is for ever England. There shall be</div> - <div class='line in2'>In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;</div> - <div class='line'>A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,</div> - <div class='line'>A body of England’s, breathing English air,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.</div> - <div class='line'>And think, this heart, all evil shed away,</div> - <div class='line in2'>A pulse in the eternal mind, no less</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_32'>32</span>Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;</div> - <div class='line in2'>Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;</div> - <div class='line'>And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,</div> - <div class='line in2'>In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='chapter'> - <h2 class='c005'>Witter Bynner</h2> -</div> - -<h3 class='c013'>TO CELIA</h3> - -<h4 class='c013'>I—CONSUMMATION</h4> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>There was a strangeness on your lips,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Lips that had been so sure;</div> - <div class='line'>You still were mine but in eclipse,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Beside me but obscure.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>There was a cloud upon your heart;</div> - <div class='line in2'>For, Celia, where you lay,</div> - <div class='line'>Death, come to break your life apart,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Had led your love away.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Through the cold distance of your eyes</div> - <div class='line in2'>You could no longer see.</div> - <div class='line'>But when you died, you heard me rise</div> - <div class='line in2'>And followed suddenly.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>And close beside me, looking down</div> - <div class='line in2'>As I did on the dead,</div> - <div class='line'>You made of time a wedding-gown,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Of space a marriage-bed.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>I took, in you, death for a wife,</div> - <div class='line in2'>You married death in me,</div> - <div class='line'>Singing, “There is no other life,</div> - <div class='line in2'>No other God than we!”</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_33'>33</span> - <h4 class='c013'>II—DURING A CHORALE BY CESAR FRANCK</h4> -</div> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>In an old chamber softly lit</div> - <div class='line in2'>We heard the Chorale played,</div> - <div class='line'>And where you sat, an exquisite</div> - <div class='line'>Image of Life and lover of it,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Death sang a serenade.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>I know now, Celia, what you heard,</div> - <div class='line in2'>And why you turned and smiled.</div> - <div class='line'>It was the white wings of a bird</div> - <div class='line'>Offering flight, and you were stirred</div> - <div class='line in2'>Like an adventurous child.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Death sang: “Oh, lie upon your bier,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Uplift your countenance!”</div> - <div class='line'>Death bade me be your cavalier,</div> - <div class='line'>Called me to march and shed no tear,</div> - <div class='line in2'>But sing to you and dance.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>And when you followed, lured and led</div> - <div class='line in2'>By those mysterious wings,</div> - <div class='line'>And when I heard that you were dead,</div> - <div class='line'>I could not weep. I sang instead,</div> - <div class='line in2'>As a true lover sings.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'> · · · · ·</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Today a room is softly lit;</div> - <div class='line in2'>I hear the Chorale played.</div> - <div class='line'>And where you come, an exquisite</div> - <div class='line'>Image of Death and lover of it,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Life sings a serenade.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_34'>34</span> - <h4 class='c013'>III—SONGS ASCENDING</h4> -</div> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Love has been sung a thousand ways—</div> - <div class='line in2'>So let it be;</div> - <div class='line'>The songs ascending in your praise</div> - <div class='line'>Through all my days</div> - <div class='line in2'>Are three.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Your cloud-white body first I sing;</div> - <div class='line in2'>Your love was heaven’s blue,</div> - <div class='line'>And I, a bird, flew carolling</div> - <div class='line'>In ring on ring</div> - <div class='line in2'>Of you.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Your nearness is the second song;</div> - <div class='line in2'>When God began to be,</div> - <div class='line'>And bound you strongly, right or wrong,</div> - <div class='line'>With his own thong,</div> - <div class='line in2'>To me.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>But oh, the song, eternal, high,</div> - <div class='line in2'>That tops these two!—</div> - <div class='line'>You live forever, you who die,</div> - <div class='line'>I am not I</div> - <div class='line in2'>But you.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>GRIEVE NOT FOR BEAUTY</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Grieve not for the invisible, transported brow</div> - <div class='line'>On which like leaves the dark hair grew,</div> - <div class='line'>Nor for the lips of laughter that are now</div> - <div class='line'>Laughing inaudibly in sun and dew,</div> - <div class='line'>Nor for those limbs that, fallen low</div> - <div class='line'>And seeming faint and slow,</div> - <div class='line'>Shall yet pursue</div> - <div class='line'>More ways of swiftness than the swallow dips</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_35'>35</span>Among ... and find more winds than ever blew</div> - <div class='line'>The straining sails of unimpeded ships!</div> - <div class='line'>Mourn not!—yield only happy tears</div> - <div class='line'>To deeper beauty than appears!</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='chapter'> - <h2 class='c005'>Joseph Campbell</h2> -</div> - -<h3 class='c013'>AT HARVEST</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Earth travails,</div> - <div class='line'>Like a woman come to her time.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>The swaying corn-haulms</div> - <div class='line'>In the heavy places of the field</div> - <div class='line'>Cry to be gathered.</div> - <div class='line'>Apples redden, and drop from their rods.</div> - <div class='line'>Out of their sheath of prickly leaves</div> - <div class='line'>The marrows creep, fat and white.</div> - <div class='line'>The blue pallor of ripeness</div> - <div class='line'>Comes on the fruit of the vine-branch.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Fecund and still fecund</div> - <div class='line'>After æons of bearing:</div> - <div class='line'>Not old, not dry, not wearied out;</div> - <div class='line'>But fresh as when the unseen Right Hand</div> - <div class='line'>First moved on Brí,</div> - <div class='line'>And the candle of day was set,</div> - <div class='line'>And dew fell from the stars’ feet,</div> - <div class='line'>And cloths of greenness covered thee.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Let me kiss thy breasts:</div> - <div class='line'>I am thy son and lover.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Womb-fellow am I of the sunburnt oat,</div> - <div class='line'>Friendly gossip of the mearings;</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_36'>36</span>Womb-fellow of the dark and sweet-scented apple;</div> - <div class='line'>Womb-fellow of the gourd and of the grape:</div> - <div class='line'>Like begotten, like born.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>And yet without a lover’s knowledge</div> - <div class='line'>Of thy secrets</div> - <div class='line'>I would walk the ridges of the hills,</div> - <div class='line'>Kindless and desolate.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>What were the storm-driven moon to me,</div> - <div class='line'>Seed of another father?</div> - <div class='line'>What the overflowing</div> - <div class='line'>Of the well of dawn?</div> - <div class='line'>What the hollow,</div> - <div class='line'>Red with rowan fire?</div> - <div class='line'>What the king-fern?</div> - <div class='line'>What the belled heath?</div> - <div class='line'>What the drum of grouse’s wing,</div> - <div class='line'>Or glint of spar,</div> - <div class='line'>Caught from the pit</div> - <div class='line'>Of a deserted quarry?</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Let me kiss thy breasts:</div> - <div class='line'>I am thy son and lover.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>ON WAKING</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Sleep, gray brother of death,</div> - <div class='line'>Has touched me,</div> - <div class='line'>And passed on.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>I arise, facing the east—</div> - <div class='line'>Pearl-doored sanctuary</div> - <div class='line'>From which light,</div> - <div class='line'>Hand-linked with dew and fire,</div> - <div class='line'>Dances.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_37'>37</span>Hail, essence, hail!</div> - <div class='line'>Fill the windows of my soul</div> - <div class='line'>With beauty:</div> - <div class='line'>Pierce and renew my bones:</div> - <div class='line'>Pour knowledge into my heart</div> - <div class='line'>As wine.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Cualann is bright before thee.</div> - <div class='line'>Its rocks melt and swim:</div> - <div class='line'>The secret they have kept</div> - <div class='line'>From the ancient nights of darkness</div> - <div class='line'>Flies like a bird.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>What mourns?</div> - <div class='line'>Cualann’s secret flying,</div> - <div class='line'>A lost voice</div> - <div class='line'>In endless fields.</div> - <div class='line'>What rejoices?</div> - <div class='line'>My voice lifted praising thee.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Praise! Praise! Praise!</div> - <div class='line'>Praise out of trumpets, whose brass</div> - <div class='line'>Is the unyoked strength of bulls;</div> - <div class='line'>Praise upon harps, whose strings</div> - <div class='line'>Are the light movements of birds;</div> - <div class='line'>Praise of leaf, praise of blossom,</div> - <div class='line'>Praise of the red-fibred clay;</div> - <div class='line'>Praise of grass,</div> - <div class='line'>Fire-woven veil of the temple;</div> - <div class='line'>Praise of the shapes of clouds;</div> - <div class='line'>Praise of the shadows of wells;</div> - <div class='line'>Praise of worms, of fetal things,</div> - <div class='line'>And of the things in time’s thought</div> - <div class='line'>Not yet begotten.</div> - <div class='line'>To thee, queller of sleep,</div> - <div class='line'>Looser of the snare of death.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_38'>38</span> - <h3 class='c014'>THE OLD WOMAN</h3> -</div> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>As a white candle</div> - <div class='line in2'>In a holy place,</div> - <div class='line'>So is the beauty</div> - <div class='line in2'>Of an agèd face.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>As the spent radiance</div> - <div class='line in2'>Of the winter sun,</div> - <div class='line'>So is a woman</div> - <div class='line in2'>With her travail done.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Her brood gone from her,</div> - <div class='line in2'>And her thoughts as still</div> - <div class='line'>As the waters</div> - <div class='line in2'>Under a ruined mill.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='chapter'> - <h2 class='c005'>Nancy Campbell</h2> -</div> - -<h3 class='c013'>THE APPLE-TREE</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>I saw the archangels in my apple-tree last night,</div> - <div class='line'>I saw them like great birds in the starlight—</div> - <div class='line'>Purple and burning blue, crimson and shining white.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>And each to each they tossed an apple to and fro,</div> - <div class='line'>And once I heard their laughter gay and low;</div> - <div class='line'>And yet I felt no wonder that it should be so.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>But when the apple came one time to Michael’s lap</div> - <div class='line'>I heard him say: “The mysteries that enwrap</div> - <div class='line'>The earth and fill the heavens can be read here, mayhap.”</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_39'>39</span>Then Gabriel spoke: “I praise the deed, the hidden thing.”</div> - <div class='line'>“The beauty of the blossom of the spring</div> - <div class='line'>I praise,” cried Raphael. Uriel: “The wise leaves I sing.”</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>And Michael: “I will praise the fruit, perfected, round,</div> - <div class='line'>Full of the love of God, herein being bound</div> - <div class='line'>His mercies gathered from the sun and rain and ground.”</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>So sang they till a small wind through the branches stirred,</div> - <div class='line'>And spoke of coming dawn; and at its word</div> - <div class='line'>Each fled away to heaven, winged like a bird.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>THE MONKEY</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>I saw you hunched and shivering on the stones,</div> - <div class='line'>The bleak wind piercing to your fragile bones,</div> - <div class='line'>Your shabby scarlet all inadequate:</div> - <div class='line'>A little ape that had such human eyes</div> - <div class='line'>They seemed to hide behind their miseries—</div> - <div class='line'>Their dumb and hopeless bowing down to fate—</div> - <div class='line'>Some puzzled wonder. Was your monkey soul</div> - <div class='line'>Sickening with memories of gorgeous days,</div> - <div class='line'>Of tropic playfellows and forest ways,</div> - <div class='line'>Where, agile, you could swing from bole to bole</div> - <div class='line'>In an enchanted twilight with great flowers</div> - <div class='line'>For stars; or on a bough the long night hours</div> - <div class='line'>Sit out in rows, and chatter at the moon?</div> - <div class='line'>Shuffling you went, your tiny chilly hand</div> - <div class='line'>Outstretched for what you did not understand;</div> - <div class='line'>Your puckered mournful face begging a boon</div> - <div class='line'>That but enslaved you more. They who passed by</div> - <div class='line'>Saw nothing sorrowful; gave laugh or stare,</div> - <div class='line'>Unheeding that the little antic there</div> - <div class='line'>Played in the gutter such a tragedy.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='chapter'> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_40'>40</span> - <h2 class='c005'>Skipwith Cannéll</h2> -</div> - -<h3 class='c013'>THE RED BRIDGE</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>The arches of the red bridge</div> - <div class='line'>Are stronger than ever:</div> - <div class='line'>The arches of the scarlet bridge</div> - <div class='line'>Are of rough, bleak stone.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>(Why should such massive arches be the span</div> - <div class='line in4'>From cloud to tenuous cloud?)</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Let us not seek omens in the guts</div> - <div class='line in4'>Of newly slain fowls;</div> - <div class='line'>Leaving such play to the children,</div> - <div class='line'>Let us pluck wild swans</div> - <div class='line in4'>From under the moon;</div> - <div class='line'>Or, challenging strong, terrible men,</div> - <div class='line in4'>Let us slay them and seek truth</div> - <div class='line in8'>In their smoking entrails.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Let us fling runners</div> - <div class='line in4'>Across the red bridge,</div> - <div class='line'>Deep-lunged runners who will return to us</div> - <div class='line'>With tidings of the far countries</div> - <div class='line'>And the strange seas!</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>There be many terrible men</div> - <div class='line'>Going out upon the bridge,</div> - <div class='line'>Through the little door</div> - <div class='line in4'>That is by the steps from the river.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_41'>41</span> - <h3 class='c014'>THE KING</h3> -</div> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Seven full-paunched eunuchs came to me,</div> - <div class='line'>Bearing before them upon a silver shield</div> - <div class='line'>The secrets of my enemy.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>As they crossed my threshold to stand,</div> - <div class='line'>With stately and hypocritical gesture</div> - <div class='line'>In a row before me,</div> - <div class='line'>One stumbled.</div> - <div class='line'>The dull, incurious eyes of the others</div> - <div class='line'>Blazed into no laughter,</div> - <div class='line'>Only a haggard malice</div> - <div class='line'>At the discomfiture</div> - <div class='line'>Of their companion.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Why should such <em class='gesperrt'>Things</em> have power</div> - <div class='line'>Not spoken for in the rules of men?</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line c004'>I would not receive them.</div> - <div class='line'>With my head covered I motioned them</div> - <div class='line'>To go forth from my presence.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Where shall I find an enemy</div> - <div class='line'>Worthy of me as him they defaced?</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>As they left me,</div> - <div class='line'>Bearing with them</div> - <div class='line'>Lewd shield and scarlet crown,</div> - <div class='line'>One paused upon the threshold,</div> - <div class='line'>Insolent,</div> - <div class='line'>To sniff a flower.</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_42'>42</span>Even him I permitted to go forth</div> - <div class='line'>Safely.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'> · · · · ·</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Therefore</div> - <div class='line'>I have renounced my kingdom;</div> - <div class='line'>In a little bronze boat I have set sail</div> - <div class='line'>Out</div> - <div class='line'>Upon the sea.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>There is no land, and the sea</div> - <div class='line'>Is black like the cypresses waiting</div> - <div class='line'>At midnight in the place of tombs;</div> - <div class='line'>Is black like the pool of ink</div> - <div class='line'>In the palm of a soothsayer.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line c004'>My boat</div> - <div class='line'>Fears the white-lipped waves</div> - <div class='line'>That snatch at her,</div> - <div class='line'>Hungrily,</div> - <div class='line'>Furtively,</div> - <div class='line'>As they steal past like cats</div> - <div class='line'>Into the night:</div> - <div class='line'>And beneath me, in their hidden places,</div> - <div class='line'>The great fishes talk of me</div> - <div class='line'>In a tongue I have forgotten.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='chapter'> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_43'>43</span> - <h2 class='c005'>Willa Sibert Cather</h2> -</div> - -<h3 class='c013'>THE PALATINE</h3> - -<div class='nf-center-c0'> -<div class='nf-center c002'> - <div><em>In the “Dark Ages”</em></div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>“Have you been with the King to Rome,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Brother, big brother?”</div> - <div class='line'>“I’ve been there and I’ve come home.</div> - <div class='line in2'>Back to your play, little brother.”</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>“Oh, how high is Cæsar’s house,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Brother, big brother?”</div> - <div class='line'>“Goats about the doorways browse;</div> - <div class='line'>Night-hawks nest in the burnt roof-tree.</div> - <div class='line'>Home of the wild bird and home of the bee,</div> - <div class='line'>A thousand chambers of marble lie</div> - <div class='line'>Wide to the sun and the wind and the sky.</div> - <div class='line'>Poppies we find amongst our wheat</div> - <div class='line'>Grow on Cæsar’s banquet seat.</div> - <div class='line'>Cattle crop and neat-herds drowse</div> - <div class='line'>On the floors of Cæsar’s house.”</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>“But what has become of Cæsar’s gold,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Brother, big brother?”</div> - <div class='line'>“The times are bad and the world is old—</div> - <div class='line'>Who knows the where of the Cæsar’s gold?</div> - <div class='line'>Night comes black o’er the Cæsar’s hill;</div> - <div class='line'>The wells are deep and the tales are ill;</div> - <div class='line'>Fireflies gleam in the damp and mold—</div> - <div class='line'>All that is left of the Cæsar’s gold.</div> - <div class='line in2'>Back to your play, little brother.”</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>“What has become of the Cæsar’s men,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Brother, big brother?”</div> - <div class='line'>“Dogs in the kennel and wolf in the den</div> - <div class='line'>Howl for the fate of the Cæsar’s men,</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_44'>44</span>Slain in Asia, slain in Gaul,</div> - <div class='line'>By Dacian border and Persian wall.</div> - <div class='line'>Rhineland orchard and Danube fen</div> - <div class='line'>Fatten their roots on Cæsar’s men.”</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>“Why is the world so sad and wide,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Brother, big brother?”</div> - <div class='line'>“Saxon boys by their fields that bide</div> - <div class='line'>Need not know if the world is wide.</div> - <div class='line'>Climb no mountain but Shere-end Hill,</div> - <div class='line'>Cross no water but goes to mill.</div> - <div class='line'>Ox in the stable and cow in the byre,</div> - <div class='line'>Smell of the wood-smoke and sleep by the fire;</div> - <div class='line'>Sun-up in seed-time—a likely lad</div> - <div class='line'>Hurts not his head that the world is sad.</div> - <div class='line in2'>Back to your play, little brother.”</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>SPANISH JOHNNY</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>The old West, the old time,</div> - <div class='line in2'>The old wind singing through</div> - <div class='line'>The red, red grass a thousand miles—</div> - <div class='line in2'>And, Spanish Johnny, you!</div> - <div class='line'>He’d sit beside the water ditch</div> - <div class='line in2'>When all his herd was in,</div> - <div class='line'>And never mind a child, but sing</div> - <div class='line in2'>To his mandolin.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>The big stars, the blue night,</div> - <div class='line in2'>The moon-enchanted lane;</div> - <div class='line'>The olive man who never spoke,</div> - <div class='line in2'>But sang the songs of Spain.</div> - <div class='line'>His speech with men was wicked talk—</div> - <div class='line in2'>To hear it was a sin;</div> - <div class='line'>But those were golden things he said</div> - <div class='line in2'>To his mandolin.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_45'>45</span>The gold songs, the gold stars,</div> - <div class='line in2'>The word so golden then;</div> - <div class='line'>And the hand so tender to a child—</div> - <div class='line in2'>Had killed so many men.</div> - <div class='line'>He died a hard death long ago</div> - <div class='line in2'>Before the Road came in—</div> - <div class='line'>The night before he swung, he sang</div> - <div class='line in2'>To his mandolin.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='chapter'> - <h2 class='c005'>Padraic Colum</h2> -</div> - -<h3 class='c013'>POLONIUS AND THE BALLAD SINGERS</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>A gaunt-built woman and her son-in-law—</div> - <div class='line'>A broad-faced fellow, with such flesh as shows</div> - <div class='line'>Nothing but easy nature—and his wife,</div> - <div class='line'>The woman’s daughter, who spills all her talk</div> - <div class='line'>Out of a wide mouth, but who has eyes as gray</div> - <div class='line'>As Connemara, where the mountain-ash</div> - <div class='line'>Shows berries red indeed: they enter now—</div> - <div class='line'>Our country singers!</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>“Sing, my good woman, sing us some romance</div> - <div class='line'>That has been round your chimney-nooks so long</div> - <div class='line'>’Tis nearly native; something blown here</div> - <div class='line'>And since made racy—like yon tree, I might say,</div> - <div class='line'>Native by influence if not by species,</div> - <div class='line'>Shaped by our winds. You understand, I think?”</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>“I’ll sing the song, sir.”</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in8'>To-night you see my face—</div> - <div class='line in8'>Maybe nevermore you’ll gaze</div> - <div class='line in4'>On the one that for you left his friends and kin;</div> - <div class='line in8'><span class='pageno' id='Page_46'>46</span>For by the hard commands</div> - <div class='line in8'>Of the lord that rules these lands</div> - <div class='line in4'>On a ship I’ll be borne from Cruckaunfinn!</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in8'>Oh, you know your beauty bright</div> - <div class='line in8'>Has made him think delight</div> - <div class='line in4'>More than from any fair one he will gain;</div> - <div class='line in8'>Oh, you know that all his will</div> - <div class='line in8'>Strains and strives around you till</div> - <div class='line in4'>As the hawk upon his hand you are as tame!</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in8'>Then she to him replied:</div> - <div class='line in8'>I’ll no longer you deny,</div> - <div class='line in4'>And I’ll let you have the pleasure of my charms;</div> - <div class='line in8'>For to-night I’ll be your bride,</div> - <div class='line in8'>And whatever may betide</div> - <div class='line in4'>It’s we will lie in one another’s arms!</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>“You should not sing</div> - <div class='line'>With body doubled up and face aside—</div> - <div class='line'>There is a climax here—‘It’s we will lie’—</div> - <div class='line'>Hem—passionate! And what does your daughter sing?”</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>“A song I like when I do climb bare hills—</div> - <div class='line'>’Tis all about a hawk.”</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in8'>No bird that sits on rock or bough</div> - <div class='line in10'>Has such a front as thine;</div> - <div class='line in8'>No king that has made war his trade</div> - <div class='line in10'>Such conquest in his eyne!</div> - <div class='line in8'>I mark thee rock-like on the rock</div> - <div class='line in10'>Where none can see a shape.</div> - <div class='line in8'>I climb, but thou dost climb with wings,</div> - <div class='line in10'>And like a wish escape,</div> - <div class='line in14'>She said—</div> - <div class='line in10'>And like a wish escape!</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in8'><span class='pageno' id='Page_47'>47</span>No maid that kissed his bonny mouth</div> - <div class='line in10'>Of another mouth was glad;</div> - <div class='line in8'>Such pride was in our chieftain’s eyes,</div> - <div class='line in10'>Such countenance he had!</div> - <div class='line in8'>But since they made him fly the rocks,</div> - <div class='line in10'>Thou, creature, art my quest.</div> - <div class='line in8'>Then lift me with thy steady eyes.</div> - <div class='line in10'>If then to tear my breast,</div> - <div class='line in14'>She said—</div> - <div class='line in10'>If then to tear my breast!</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>“The songs they have</div> - <div class='line'>Are the last relics of the feudal world:</div> - <div class='line'>Women will keep them—byzants, doubloons,</div> - <div class='line'>When men will take up songs that are as new</div> - <div class='line'>As dollar bills. What song have you, young man?”</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>“A song my father had, sir. It was sent him</div> - <div class='line'>From across the sea, and there was a letter with it,</div> - <div class='line'>Asking my father to put it to a tune</div> - <div class='line'>And sing it all roads. He did that, in troth,</div> - <div class='line'>And five pounds of tobacco were sent with the song</div> - <div class='line'>To fore-reward him. I’ll sing it for you now—</div> - <div class='line'><em>The Baltimore Exile</em>.”</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>The house I was bred in—ah, does it remain?</div> - <div class='line'>Low walls and loose thatch standing lone in the rain,</div> - <div class='line'>With the clay of the walls coming through with its stain,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Like the blackbird’s left nest in the briar!</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Does a child there give heed to the song of the lark,</div> - <div class='line'>As it lifts and it drops till the fall of the dark,</div> - <div class='line'>When the heavy-foot kine trudge home from the paurk,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Or do none but the red-shank now listen?</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_48'>48</span>The sloe-bush, I know, grows close to the well,</div> - <div class='line'>And its long-lasting blossoms are there, I can tell,</div> - <div class='line'>When the kid that was yeaned when the first ones befell</div> - <div class='line in2'>Can jump to the ditch that they grow on!</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>But there’s silence on all. Then do none ever pass</div> - <div class='line'>On the way to the fair or the pattern or mass?</div> - <div class='line'>Do the gray-coated lads drive the ball through the grass</div> - <div class='line in2'>And speed to the sweep of the hurl?</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>O youths of my land! Then will no Bolivar</div> - <div class='line'>Ever muster your ranks for delivering war?</div> - <div class='line'>Will your hopes become fixed and beam like a star?</div> - <div class='line in2'>Will they pass like the mists from your fields?</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>The swan and the swallows, the cuckoo and crake,</div> - <div class='line'>May visit my land and find hillside and lake.</div> - <div class='line'>And I send my song. I’ll not see her awake—</div> - <div class='line in2'>I’m too old a bird to uncage now!</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>“Silver’s but lead in exchange for songs,</div> - <div class='line'>But take it and spend it.”</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>“We will. And may we meet your honor’s like</div> - <div class='line'>Every day’s end.”</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>“A tune is more lasting than the voice of the birds.”</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>“A song is more lasting than the riches of the world.”</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c007'><span class='sc'>Note.</span> <em>The last stanza in the first ballad sung is a fragment of an old -country song; the rest of it, with the other two ballads, is invented. But they -are all in the convention of songs still sung by strolling ballad-singers. -I have written the common word for pasture-field “paurk” so as not to give a -wrong association: it might be written “park,” as Burns, using the word in -the same sense, writes it. “Paurk” or “park” is Gaelic for pasture field, -and is always used in Irish country speech in that sense. The two last -lines spoken are translations of a Gaelic phrase which has been used by -Dr. Douglas Hyde as a motto for his collection of Connacht love songs. P. C.</em></p> - -<div> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_49'>49</span> - <h3 class='c014'>THE SEA BIRD TO THE WAVE</h3> -</div> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>On and on,</div> - <div class='line'>O white brother!</div> - <div class='line'>Thunder does not daunt thee!</div> - <div class='line'>How thou movest!</div> - <div class='line'>By thine impulse—</div> - <div class='line'>With no wing!</div> - <div class='line'>Fairest thing</div> - <div class='line'>The wide sea shows me!</div> - <div class='line'>On and on</div> - <div class='line'>O white brother!</div> - <div class='line'>Art thou gone!</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>OLD MEN COMPLAINING</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>First Old Man</em></div> - <div class='line in8'><em>He threw his crutched stick down: there came</em></div> - <div class='line in8'><em>Into his face the anger flame,</em></div> - <div class='line in8'><em>And he spoke viciously of one</em></div> - <div class='line in8'><em>Who thwarted him—his son’s son.</em></div> - <div class='line in8'><em>He turned his head away.</em>—“I hate</div> - <div class='line in8'>Absurdity of language, prate</div> - <div class='line in8'>From growing fellows. We’d not stay</div> - <div class='line in8'>About the house the whole of a day</div> - <div class='line in12'>When we were young,</div> - <div class='line in8'>Keeping no job and giving tongue!</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in8'>“Not us in troth! We would not come</div> - <div class='line in8'>For bit or sup, but stay from home</div> - <div class='line in8'>If we gave answers, or we’d creep</div> - <div class='line in8'>Back to the house, and in we’d peep</div> - <div class='line in8'>Just like a corncrake.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in8'>“My grandson and his comrades take</div> - <div class='line in8'>A piece of coal from you, from me</div> - <div class='line in8'>A log, or sod of turf, maybe;</div> - <div class='line in8'><span class='pageno' id='Page_50'>50</span>And in some empty place they’ll light</div> - <div class='line in8'>A fire, and stay there all night,</div> - <div class='line in8'>A wisp of lads! Now understand</div> - <div class='line in8'>The blades of grass under my hand</div> - <div class='line in8'>Would be destroyed by company!</div> - <div class='line in8'>There’s no good company: we go</div> - <div class='line in8'>With what is lowest to the low!</div> - <div class='line in8'>He stays up late, and how can he</div> - <div class='line in8'>Rise early? Sure he lags in bed,</div> - <div class='line in8'>And she is worn to a thread</div> - <div class='line in8'>With calling him—his grandmother.</div> - <div class='line in8'>She’s an old woman, and she must make</div> - <div class='line in8'>Stir when the birds are half awake</div> - <div class='line in8'>In dread he’d lose this job like the other!”</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line c004'><em>Second Old Man</em></div> - <div class='line in8'>“They brought yon fellow over here,</div> - <div class='line in8'>And set him up for an overseer:</div> - <div class='line in8'>Though men from work are turned away</div> - <div class='line in8'>That thick-necked fellow draws full pay—</div> - <div class='line in8'>Three pounds a week.... They let burn down</div> - <div class='line in8'>The timber yard behind the town</div> - <div class='line in8'>Where work was good; though firemen stand</div> - <div class='line in8'>In boots and brasses big and grand</div> - <div class='line in8'>The crow of a cock away from the place.</div> - <div class='line in8'>And with the yard they let burn too</div> - <div class='line in8'>The clock in the tower, the clock I knew</div> - <div class='line in8'>As well as I know the look in my face.”</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line c004'><em>Third Old Man</em></div> - <div class='line in8'>“The fellow you spoke of has broken his bounds—</div> - <div class='line in8'>He came to skulk inside of these grounds:</div> - <div class='line in8'>Behind the bushes he lay down</div> - <div class='line in8'>And stretched full hours in the sun.</div> - <div class='line in8'>He rises now, and like a crane</div> - <div class='line in8'>He looks abroad. He’s off again:</div> - <div class='line in8'><span class='pageno' id='Page_51'>51</span>Three pounds a week, and still he owes</div> - <div class='line in8'>Money in every street he goes,</div> - <div class='line in8'>Hundreds of pounds where we’d not get</div> - <div class='line in8'>The second shilling of a debt.”</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line c004'><em>First Old Man</em></div> - <div class='line in8'>“Old age has every impediment</div> - <div class='line in8'>Vexation and discontent;</div> - <div class='line in8'>The rich have more than we: for bit</div> - <div class='line in8'>The cut of bread, and over it</div> - <div class='line in8'>The scrape of hog’s lard, and for sup</div> - <div class='line in8'>Warm water in a cup.</div> - <div class='line in8'>But different sorts of feeding breaks</div> - <div class='line in8'>The body more than fasting does</div> - <div class='line in8'>With pains and aches.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in8'>“I’m not too badly off, for I</div> - <div class='line in8'>Have pipe and tobacco, a place to lie,</div> - <div class='line in8'>A nook to myself; but from my hand</div> - <div class='line in8'>Is taken the strength to back command—</div> - <div class='line in8'>I’m broken, and there’s gone from me</div> - <div class='line in8'>The privilege of authority.”</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in10'><em>I heard them speak—</em></div> - <div class='line in10'><em>The old men heavy on the sod,</em></div> - <div class='line in10'><em>Letting their angers come</em></div> - <div class='line in10'><em>Between them and the thought of God.</em></div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='chapter'> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_52'>52</span> - <h2 class='c005'>Grace Hazard Conkling</h2> -</div> - -<h3 class='c013'>REFUGEES</h3> - -<div class='nf-center-c0'> -<div class='nf-center c002'> - <div><em>Belgium—1914</em></div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>“Mother, the poplars cross the moon;</div> - <div class='line in2'>The road runs on, so white and far,</div> - <div class='line'>We shall not reach the city soon:</div> - <div class='line in2'>Oh, tell me where we are!”</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>“Have patience, patience, little son,</div> - <div class='line in2'>And we shall find the way again:</div> - <div class='line'>(God show me the untraveled one!</div> - <div class='line in2'>God give me rest from men!)”</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>“Mother, you did not tell me why</div> - <div class='line in2'>You hurried so to come away.</div> - <div class='line'>I saw big soldiers riding by;</div> - <div class='line in2'>I should have liked to stay.”</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>“Hush, little man, and I will sing</div> - <div class='line in2'>Just like a soldier, if I can—</div> - <div class='line'>They have a song for everything.</div> - <div class='line in2'>Listen, my little man!</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>“This is the soldiers’ marching song:</div> - <div class='line in2'>We’ll play this is the village street—”</div> - <div class='line'>“Yes, but this road is very long,</div> - <div class='line in2'>And stones have hurt my feet.”</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>“Nay, little pilgrim, up with you!</div> - <div class='line in2'>And yonder field shall be the town.</div> - <div class='line'>I’ll show you how the soldiers do</div> - <div class='line in2'>Who travel up and down.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_53'>53</span>“They march and sing and march again,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Not minding all the stones and dust:</div> - <div class='line'>They go, (God grant me rest from men!)</div> - <div class='line in2'>Forward, because they must.”</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>“Mother, I want to go to sleep.”</div> - <div class='line in2'>“No, darling! Here is bread to eat!</div> - <div class='line'>(O God, if thou couldst let me weep,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Or heal my broken feet!)”</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>“THE LITTLE ROSE IS DUST, MY DEAR”</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>The little rose is dust, my dear;</div> - <div class='line in2'>The elfin wind is gone</div> - <div class='line'>That sang a song of silver words</div> - <div class='line in2'>And cooled our hearts with dawn.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>And what is left to hope, my dear,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Or what is left to say?</div> - <div class='line'>The rose, the little wind and you</div> - <div class='line in2'>Have gone so far away.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='chapter'> - <h2 class='c005'>Alice Corbin</h2> -</div> - -<h3 class='c013'>O WORLD</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>O world that changes under my hand,</div> - <div class='line in2'>O brown world, bitter and bright,</div> - <div class='line'>And full of hidden recesses</div> - <div class='line in2'>Of love and light—</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>O world, what use would there be to me</div> - <div class='line in2'>Of power beyond power</div> - <div class='line'>To change, or establish new balance,</div> - <div class='line in2'>To build, or deflower?</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_54'>54</span>O world, what use would there be?</div> - <div class='line in2'>Had I the Creator’s fire,</div> - <div class='line'>I could not build you nearer</div> - <div class='line in2'>To my heart’s desire!</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>TWO VOICES</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>There is a country full of wine</div> - <div class='line'>And liquor of the sun,</div> - <div class='line'>Where sap is running all the year,</div> - <div class='line'>And spring is never done,</div> - <div class='line'>Where all is good as it is fair,</div> - <div class='line'>And love and will are one.</div> - <div class='line'>Old age may never come there,</div> - <div class='line'>But ever in to-day</div> - <div class='line'>The people talk as in a dream</div> - <div class='line'>And laugh slow time away.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>But would you stay as now you are,</div> - <div class='line'>Or as a year ago?</div> - <div class='line'>Oh, not as then, for then how small</div> - <div class='line'>The wisdom we did owe!</div> - <div class='line'>Or if forever as to-day,</div> - <div class='line'>How little we could know!</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Then welcome age, and fear not sorrow;</div> - <div class='line'>To-day’s no better than to-morrow,</div> - <div class='line'>Or yesterday that flies.</div> - <div class='line'>By the low light in your eyes,</div> - <div class='line'>By the love that in me lies,</div> - <div class='line'>I know we grow more lovely</div> - <div class='line'>Growing wise.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_55'>55</span> - <h3 class='c014'>LOVE ME AT LAST</h3> -</div> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Love me at last, or if you will not,</div> - <div class='line in4'>Leave me;</div> - <div class='line'>Hard words could never, as these half-words,</div> - <div class='line in4'>Grieve me:</div> - <div class='line'>Love me at last—or leave me.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Love me at last, or let the last word uttered</div> - <div class='line in4'>Be but your own;</div> - <div class='line'>Love me, or leave me—as a cloud, a vapor,</div> - <div class='line in4'>Or a bird flown.</div> - <div class='line'>Love me at last—I am but sliding water</div> - <div class='line in4'>Over a stone.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>HUMORESQUE</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>To some the fat gods</div> - <div class='line'>Give money,</div> - <div class='line'>To some love;</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>But the gods have given me</div> - <div class='line'>Money <em class='gesperrt'>and</em> love:</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Not <em class='gesperrt'>too much</em> money,</div> - <div class='line'>Nor <em class='gesperrt'>quite enough</em> love!</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>To some the fat gods</div> - <div class='line'>Give money,</div> - <div class='line'>To some love.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>ONE CITY ONLY</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>One city only, of all I have lived in,</div> - <div class='line'>And one house of that city, belong to me ...</div> - <div class='line'>I remember the mellow light of afternoon</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_56'>56</span>Slanting across brick buildings on the waterfront,</div> - <div class='line'>And small boats at rest on the floating tide,</div> - <div class='line'>And larger boats at rest in the near-by harbor;</div> - <div class='line'>And I know the tidal smell, and the smell of mud,</div> - <div class='line'>Uncovering oyster flats, and the brown bare toes of small negroes</div> - <div class='line'>With the mud oozing between them;</div> - <div class='line'>And the little figures leaping from log to log,</div> - <div class='line'>And the white children playing among them—</div> - <div class='line'>I remember how I played among them.</div> - <div class='line'>And I remember the recessed windows of the gloomy halls</div> - <div class='line'>In the darkness of decaying grandeur,</div> - <div class='line'>The feel of cool linen in the cavernous bed,</div> - <div class='line'>And the window curtain swaying gently</div> - <div class='line'>In the night air;</div> - <div class='line'>All the half-hushed noises of the street</div> - <div class='line'>In the southern town,</div> - <div class='line'>And the thrill of life—</div> - <div class='line'>Like a hand in the dark</div> - <div class='line'>With its felt, indeterminate meaning:</div> - <div class='line'>I remember that I knew there the stirring of passion,</div> - <div class='line'>Fear, and the knowledge of sin,</div> - <div class='line'>Tragedy, laughter, death....</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>And I remember, too, on a dead Sunday afternoon</div> - <div class='line'>In the twilight,</div> - <div class='line'>When there was no one else in the house,</div> - <div class='line'>My self suddenly separated itself</div> - <div class='line'>And left me alone,</div> - <div class='line'>So that the world lay about me, lifeless.</div> - <div class='line'>I could not touch it, or feel it, or see it;</div> - <div class='line'>Yet I was there.</div> - <div class='line'>The sensation lingers:</div> - <div class='line'>Only the most vital threads</div> - <div class='line'>Hold me at all to living ...</div> - <div class='line'>Yet I only live truly when I think of that house;</div> - <div class='line'>Only enter then into being.</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_57'>57</span>One city only of all I have lived in,</div> - <div class='line'>And one house of that city, belong to me.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>APPARITIONS</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in24'>I</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>A thin gray shadow on the edge of thought</div> - <div class='line'>Hiding its wounds:</div> - <div class='line'>These are the wounds of sorrow—</div> - <div class='line'>It was my hand that made them;</div> - <div class='line'>And this gray shadow that resembles you</div> - <div class='line'>Is my own heart, weeping ...</div> - <div class='line'>You sleep quietly beneath the shade</div> - <div class='line'>Of willows in the south.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in24'>II</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>When the cold dawn stood above the house-tops,</div> - <div class='line'>Too late I remembered the cry</div> - <div class='line'>In the night of a wild bird flying</div> - <div class='line'>Through the rain-filled sky.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>THE POOL</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Do you remember the dark pool at Nîmes,</div> - <div class='line'>The pool that had no bottom?</div> - <div class='line'>Shadowed by Druids ere the Romans came—</div> - <div class='line'>Dark, still, with little bubbles rising</div> - <div class='line'>So quietly level with its rim of stone</div> - <div class='line'>That one stood shuddering with the breathless fear</div> - <div class='line'>Of one short step?</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>My little sister stood beside the pool</div> - <div class='line'>As dark as that of Nîmes.</div> - <div class='line'>I saw her white face as she took the plunge;</div> - <div class='line'>I could not follow her, although I tried.</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_58'>58</span>The silver bubbles circled to the brink,</div> - <div class='line'>And then the water parted:</div> - <div class='line'>With dream-white face my little sister rose</div> - <div class='line'>Dripping from that dark pool, and took the hands</div> - <div class='line'>Outstretched to meet her.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>I may not speak to her of all she’s seen;</div> - <div class='line'>She may not speak to me of all she knows,</div> - <div class='line'>Because her words mean nothing:</div> - <div class='line'>She chooses them</div> - <div class='line'>As one to whom our language is quite strange,</div> - <div class='line'>As children make queer words with lettered blocks</div> - <div class='line'>Before they know the way....</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>My little sister stood beside the pool—</div> - <div class='line'>I could not plunge in with her, though I tried.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>MUSIC</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>The ancient songs</em></div> - <div class='line'><em>Pass deathward mournfully.</em></div> - <div class='line in22'><em>R. A.</em></div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>The old songs</div> - <div class='line'>Die.</div> - <div class='line'>Yes, the old songs die.</div> - <div class='line'>Cold lips that sang them,</div> - <div class='line'>Cold lips that sang them—</div> - <div class='line'>The old songs die,</div> - <div class='line'>And the lips that sang them</div> - <div class='line'>Are only a pinch of dust.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>I saw in Pamplona</div> - <div class='line'>In a musty museum—</div> - <div class='line'>I saw in Pamplona</div> - <div class='line'>In a buff-colored museum—</div> - <div class='line'>I saw in Pamplona</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_59'>59</span>A memorial</div> - <div class='line'>Of the dead violinist;</div> - <div class='line'>I saw in Pamplona</div> - <div class='line'>A memorial</div> - <div class='line'>Of Pablo Sarasate.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Dust was inch-deep on the cases,</div> - <div class='line'>Dust on the stick-pins and satins,</div> - <div class='line'>Dust on the badges and orders,</div> - <div class='line'>On the wreath from the oak of Guernica!</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>The old songs</div> - <div class='line'>Die—</div> - <div class='line'>And the lips that sang them.</div> - <div class='line'>Wreaths, withered and dusty,</div> - <div class='line'>Cuff-buttons with royal insignia,</div> - <div class='line'>These, in a musty museum,</div> - <div class='line'>Are all that is left of Sarasate.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>WHAT DIM ARCADIAN PASTURES</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>What dim Arcadian pastures</div> - <div class='line in2'>Have I known</div> - <div class='line'>That suddenly, out of nothing,</div> - <div class='line in2'>A wind is blown,</div> - <div class='line'>Lifting a veil and a darkness,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Showing a purple sea—</div> - <div class='line'>And under your hair the faun’s eyes</div> - <div class='line in2'>Look out on me?</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>NODES</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>The endless, foolish merriment of stars</div> - <div class='line in2'>Beside the pale cold sorrow of the moon,</div> - <div class='line'>Is like the wayward noises of the world</div> - <div class='line in2'>Beside my heart’s uplifted silent tune.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_60'>60</span>The little broken glitter of the waves</div> - <div class='line in2'>Beside the golden sun’s intense white blaze,</div> - <div class='line'>Is like the idle chatter of the crowd</div> - <div class='line in2'>Beside my heart’s unwearied song of praise.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>The sun and all the planets in the sky</div> - <div class='line in2'>Beside the sacred wonder of dim space,</div> - <div class='line'>Are notes upon a broken, tarnished lute</div> - <div class='line in2'>That God will someday mend and put in place.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>And space, beside the little secret joy</div> - <div class='line in2'>Of God that sings forever in the clay,</div> - <div class='line'>Is smaller than the dust we can not see,</div> - <div class='line in2'>That yet dies not, till time and space decay.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>And as the foolish merriment of stars</div> - <div class='line in2'>Beside the cold pale sorrow of the moon,</div> - <div class='line'>My little song, my little joy, my praise,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Beside God’s ancient, everlasting rune.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='chapter'> - <h2 class='c005'>Adelaide Crapsey</h2> -</div> - -<h3 class='c013'>CINQUAINS</h3> - -<h4 class='c013'>NOVEMBER NIGHT</h4> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Listen.</div> - <div class='line'>With faint dry sound,</div> - <div class='line'>Like steps of passing ghosts,</div> - <div class='line'>The leaves, frost-crisp’d, break from the trees</div> - <div class='line'>And fall.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h4 class='c013'>TRIAD</h4> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>These be</div> - <div class='line'>Three silent things:</div> - <div class='line'>The falling snow ... the hour</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_61'>61</span>Before the dawn ... the mouth of one</div> - <div class='line'>Just dead.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h4 class='c013'>SUSANNA AND THE ELDERS</h4> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>“Why do</div> - <div class='line'>You thus devise</div> - <div class='line'>Evil against her?” “For that</div> - <div class='line'>She is beautiful, delicate;</div> - <div class='line'>Therefore.”</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h4 class='c013'>THE GUARDED WOUND</h4> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>If it</div> - <div class='line'>Were lighter touch</div> - <div class='line'>Than petal of flower resting</div> - <div class='line'>On grass, oh still too heavy it were,</div> - <div class='line'>Too heavy!</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h4 class='c013'>THE WARNING</h4> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Just now,</div> - <div class='line'>Out of the strange</div> - <div class='line'>Still dusk ... as strange, as still ...</div> - <div class='line'>A white moth flew. Why am I grown</div> - <div class='line'>So cold?</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h4 class='c013'>FATE DEFIED</h4> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>As it</div> - <div class='line'>Were tissue of silver</div> - <div class='line'>I’ll wear, O fate, thy grey,</div> - <div class='line'>And go mistily radiant, clad</div> - <div class='line'>Like the moon.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>THE PLEDGE</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>White doves of Cytherea, by your quest</div> - <div class='line in2'>Across the blue Heaven’s bluest highest air,</div> - <div class='line'>And by your certain homing to Love’s breast,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Still to be true and ever true—I swear.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_62'>62</span> - <h3 class='c014'>EXPENSES</h3> -</div> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Little my lacking fortunes show</div> - <div class='line in2'>For this to eat and that to wear;</div> - <div class='line'>Yet laughing, Soul, and gaily go!</div> - <div class='line in2'>An obol pays the Stygian fare.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>ADVENTURE</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Sun and wind and beat of sea,</div> - <div class='line'>Great lands stretching endlessly ...</div> - <div class='line'>Where be bonds to bind the free?</div> - <div class='line'>All the world was made for me!</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>DIRGE</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Never the nightingale,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Oh, my dear,</div> - <div class='line'>Never again the lark</div> - <div class='line in2'>Thou wilt hear;</div> - <div class='line'>Though dusk and the morning still</div> - <div class='line'>Tap at thy window-sill,</div> - <div class='line'>Thou ever love call and call</div> - <div class='line'>Thou wilt not hear at all,</div> - <div class='line in2'>My dear, my dear.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>SONG</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>I make my shroud, but no one knows—</div> - <div class='line'>So shimmering fine it is and fair,</div> - <div class='line'>With stitches set in even rows.</div> - <div class='line'>I make my shroud, but no one knows.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>In door-way where the lilac blows,</div> - <div class='line'>Humming a little wandering air,</div> - <div class='line'>I make my shroud and no one knows,</div> - <div class='line'>So shimmering fine it is and fair.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_63'>63</span> - <h3 class='c014'>THE LONELY DEATH</h3> -</div> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>In the cold I will rise, I will bathe</div> - <div class='line'>In waters of ice; myself</div> - <div class='line'>Will shiver, and shrive myself,</div> - <div class='line'>Alone in the dawn, and anoint</div> - <div class='line'>Forehead and feet and hands;</div> - <div class='line'>I will shutter the windows from light,</div> - <div class='line'>I will place in their sockets the four</div> - <div class='line'>Tall candles and set them a-flame</div> - <div class='line'>In the grey of the dawn; and myself</div> - <div class='line'>Will lay myself straight in my bed,</div> - <div class='line'>And draw the sheet under my chin.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='chapter'> - <h2 class='c005'>H. D.</h2> -</div> - -<h3 class='c013'>HERMES OF THE WAYS</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in16'>I</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>The hard sand breaks,</div> - <div class='line'>And the grains of it</div> - <div class='line'>Are clear as wine.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Far off over the leagues of it,</div> - <div class='line'>The wind,</div> - <div class='line'>Playing on the wide shore,</div> - <div class='line'>Piles little ridges,</div> - <div class='line'>And the great waves</div> - <div class='line'>Break over it.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>But more than the many-foamed ways</div> - <div class='line'>Of the sea,</div> - <div class='line'>I know him</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_64'>64</span>Of the triple path-ways.</div> - <div class='line'>Hermes,</div> - <div class='line'>Who awaiteth.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Dubious,</div> - <div class='line'>Facing three ways,</div> - <div class='line'>Welcoming wayfarers,</div> - <div class='line'>He whom the sea-orchard</div> - <div class='line'>Shelters from the west,</div> - <div class='line'>From the east</div> - <div class='line'>Weathers sea-wind;</div> - <div class='line'>Fronts the great dunes.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Wind rushes</div> - <div class='line'>Over the dunes,</div> - <div class='line'>And the coarse, salt-crusted grass</div> - <div class='line'>Answers.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Heu,</div> - <div class='line'>It whips round my ankles!</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in16'>II</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Small is</div> - <div class='line'>This white stream,</div> - <div class='line'>Flowing below ground</div> - <div class='line'>From the poplar-shaded hill,</div> - <div class='line'>But the water is sweet.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Apples on the small trees</div> - <div class='line'>Are hard,</div> - <div class='line'>Too small,</div> - <div class='line'>Too late ripened</div> - <div class='line'>By a desperate sun</div> - <div class='line'>That struggles through sea-mist.</div> - <div class='line'>The boughs of the trees</div> - <div class='line'>Are twisted</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_65'>65</span>By many bafflings;</div> - <div class='line'>Twisted are</div> - <div class='line'>The small-leafed boughs.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>But the shadow of them</div> - <div class='line'>Is not the shadow of the mast head</div> - <div class='line'>Nor of the torn sails.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Hermes, Hermes,</div> - <div class='line'>The great sea foamed,</div> - <div class='line'>Gnashed its teeth about me;</div> - <div class='line'>But you have waited,</div> - <div class='line'>Where sea-grass tangles with</div> - <div class='line'>Shore-grass.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>PRIAPUS</h3> - -<div class='nf-center-c0'> -<div class='nf-center c002'> - <div><em>Keeper of Orchards</em></div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>I saw the first pear</div> - <div class='line'>As it fell.</div> - <div class='line'>The honey-seeking, golden-banded,</div> - <div class='line'>The yellow swarm</div> - <div class='line'>Was not more fleet than I,</div> - <div class='line'>(Spare us from loveliness!)</div> - <div class='line'>And I fell prostrate,</div> - <div class='line'>Crying,</div> - <div class='line'>“Thou hast flayed us with thy blossoms;</div> - <div class='line'>Spare us the beauty</div> - <div class='line'>Of fruit-trees!”</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>The honey-seeking</div> - <div class='line'>Paused not,</div> - <div class='line'>The air thundered their song,</div> - <div class='line'>And I alone was prostrate.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>O rough-hewn</div> - <div class='line'>God of the orchard,</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_66'>66</span>I bring thee an offering;</div> - <div class='line'>Do thou, alone unbeautiful</div> - <div class='line'>(Son of the god),</div> - <div class='line'>Spare us from loveliness.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>The fallen hazel-nuts,</div> - <div class='line'>Stripped late of their green sheaths,</div> - <div class='line'>The grapes, red-purple,</div> - <div class='line'>Their berries</div> - <div class='line'>Dripping with wine,</div> - <div class='line'>Pomegranates already broken,</div> - <div class='line'>And shrunken figs,</div> - <div class='line'>And quinces untouched,</div> - <div class='line'>I bring thee as offering.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>THE POOL</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Are you alive?</div> - <div class='line'>I touch you—</div> - <div class='line'>You quiver like a sea-fish.</div> - <div class='line'>I cover you with my net.</div> - <div class='line'>What are you, banded one?</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>OREAD</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Whirl up, sea—</div> - <div class='line'>Whirl your pointed pines.</div> - <div class='line'>Splash your great pines</div> - <div class='line'>On our rocks.</div> - <div class='line'>Hurl your green over us—</div> - <div class='line'>Cover us with your pools of fir.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>THE GARDEN</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in12'>I</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>You are clear,</div> - <div class='line'>O rose, cut in rock.</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_67'>67</span>I could scrape the color</div> - <div class='line'>From the petals,</div> - <div class='line'>Like spilt dye from a rock.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>If I could break you</div> - <div class='line'>I could break a tree.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>If I could stir</div> - <div class='line'>I could break a tree,</div> - <div class='line'>I could break you.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in12'>II</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>O wind, rend open the heat,</div> - <div class='line'>Cut apart the heat,</div> - <div class='line'>Slit it to tatters.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Fruit cannot drop</div> - <div class='line'>Through this thick air;</div> - <div class='line'>Fruit cannot fall into heat</div> - <div class='line'>That presses up and blunts</div> - <div class='line'>The points of pears,</div> - <div class='line'>And rounds grapes.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Cut the heat:</div> - <div class='line'>Plough through it,</div> - <div class='line'>Turning it on either side</div> - <div class='line'>Of your path.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>MOONRISE</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Will you glimmer on the sea?</div> - <div class='line'>Will you fling your spear-head</div> - <div class='line'>On the shore?</div> - <div class='line'>What note shall we pitch?</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_68'>68</span>We have a song,</div> - <div class='line'>On the bank we share our arrows—</div> - <div class='line'>The loosed string tells our note:</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>O flight,</em></div> - <div class='line'><em>Bring her swiftly to our song.</em></div> - <div class='line'><em>She is great,</em></div> - <div class='line'><em>We measure her by the pine-trees.</em></div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>THE SHRINE</h3> - -<div class='nf-center-c0'> -<div class='nf-center c002'> - <div>“<em>She watches over the sea</em>”</div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in20'>I</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Are your rocks shelter for ships?—</div> - <div class='line'>Have you sent galleys from your beach,</div> - <div class='line'>Are you graded—a safe crescent—</div> - <div class='line'>Where the tide lifts them back to port?</div> - <div class='line'>Are you full and sweet,</div> - <div class='line'>Tempting the quiet</div> - <div class='line'>To depart in their trading ships?</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Nay, you are great, fierce, evil—</div> - <div class='line'>You are the land-blight.</div> - <div class='line'>You have tempted men</div> - <div class='line'>But they perished on your cliffs.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Your lights are but dank shoals,</div> - <div class='line'>Slate and pebble and wet shells</div> - <div class='line'>And sea-weed fastened to the rocks.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>It was evil—evil</div> - <div class='line'>When they found you,</div> - <div class='line'>When the quiet men looked at you.</div> - <div class='line'>They sought a headland</div> - <div class='line'>Shaded with ledge of cliff</div> - <div class='line'>From the wind-blast.</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_69'>69</span>But you—you are unsheltered,</div> - <div class='line'>Cut with the weight of wind.</div> - <div class='line'>You shudder when it strikes,</div> - <div class='line'>Then lift, swelled with the blast.</div> - <div class='line'>You sink as the tide sinks,</div> - <div class='line'>You shrill under hail and sound,</div> - <div class='line'>Thunder when thunder sounds.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>You are useless:</div> - <div class='line'>When the tides swirl</div> - <div class='line'>Your boulders cut and wreck</div> - <div class='line'>The staggering ships.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in20'>II</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>You are useless,</div> - <div class='line'>O grave, O beautiful.</div> - <div class='line'>The landsmen tell it—I have heard—</div> - <div class='line'>You are useless.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>And the wind sounds with this</div> - <div class='line'>And the sea</div> - <div class='line'>Where rollers shot with blue</div> - <div class='line'>Cut under deeper blue.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Oh, but stay tender, enchanted</div> - <div class='line'>Where wave-lengths cut you</div> - <div class='line'>Apart from all the rest—</div> - <div class='line'>For we have found you,</div> - <div class='line'>We watch the splendor of you,</div> - <div class='line'>We thread throat on throat of freesia</div> - <div class='line'>For your shelf.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>You are not forgot,</div> - <div class='line'>O plunder of lilies,</div> - <div class='line'>Honey is not more sweet</div> - <div class='line'>Than the salt stretch of your beach.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in20'><span class='pageno' id='Page_70'>70</span>III</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Stay—stay—</div> - <div class='line'>But terror has caught us now.</div> - <div class='line'>We passed the men in ships,</div> - <div class='line'>We dared deeper than the fisher-folk;</div> - <div class='line'>And you strike us with terror,</div> - <div class='line'>O bright shaft.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Flame passes under us</div> - <div class='line'>And sparks that unknot the flesh—</div> - <div class='line'>Sorrow, splitting bone from bone,</div> - <div class='line'>Splendors thwart our eyes</div> - <div class='line'>And rifts in the splendor,</div> - <div class='line'>Sparks and scattered light.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Many warned of this,</div> - <div class='line'>Men said:</div> - <div class='line'>“There are wrecks on the fore-beach,</div> - <div class='line'>Wind will beat your ship,</div> - <div class='line'>There is no shelter in that headland;</div> - <div class='line'>It is useless waste, that edge,</div> - <div class='line'>That front of rock—</div> - <div class='line'>Sea-gulls clang beyond the breakers,</div> - <div class='line'>None venture to that spot.”</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in20'>IV</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>But hail—</div> - <div class='line'>As the tide slackens,</div> - <div class='line'>As the wind beats out,</div> - <div class='line'>We hail this shore—</div> - <div class='line'>We sing to you,</div> - <div class='line'>Spirit between the headlands</div> - <div class='line'>And the further rocks.</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_71'>71</span>Though oak-beams split,</div> - <div class='line'>Though boats and sea-men flounder,</div> - <div class='line'>And the strait grind sand with sand</div> - <div class='line'>And cut boulders to sand and drift—</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Your eyes have pardoned our faults,</div> - <div class='line'>Your hands have touched us;</div> - <div class='line'>You have leaned forward a little</div> - <div class='line'>And the waves can never thrust us back</div> - <div class='line'>From the splendor of your ragged coast.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='chapter'> - <h2 class='c005'>Mary Carolyn Davies</h2> -</div> - -<h3 class='c013'>CLOISTERED</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>To-night the little girl-nun died.</div> - <div class='line in2'>Her hands were laid</div> - <div class='line'>Across her breast; the last sun tried</div> - <div class='line in2'>To kiss her quiet braid;</div> - <div class='line'>And where the little river cried,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Her grave was made.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>The little girl-nun’s soul, in awe,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Went silently</div> - <div class='line'>To where her brother Christ she saw,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Under the Living Tree;</div> - <div class='line'>He sighed, and his face seemed to draw</div> - <div class='line in2'>Her tears, to see.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>He laid his hands on her hands mild,</div> - <div class='line in2'>And gravely blessed;</div> - <div class='line'>“Blind, they that kept you so,” he smiled,</div> - <div class='line in2'>With tears unguessed.</div> - <div class='line'>“Saw they not Mary held a child</div> - <div class='line in2'>Upon her breast?”</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_72'>72</span> - <h3 class='c014'>SONGS OF A GIRL</h3> -</div> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in28'>I</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Perhaps,</div> - <div class='line'>God, planting Eden,</div> - <div class='line'>Dropped, by mistake, a seed</div> - <div class='line'>In Time’s neighbor-plot,</div> - <div class='line'>That grew to be</div> - <div class='line'>This hour?</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in28'>II</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>You and I picked up Life and looked at it curiously;</div> - <div class='line'>We did not know whether to keep it for a plaything or not.</div> - <div class='line'>It was beautiful to see, like a red firecracker,</div> - <div class='line'>And we knew, too, that it was lighted.</div> - <div class='line'>We dropped it while the fuse was still burning....</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in28'>III</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>I am going to die too, flower, in a little while—</div> - <div class='line'>Do not be so proud.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in28'>IV</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>The sun is dying</div> - <div class='line'>Alone</div> - <div class='line'>On an island</div> - <div class='line'>In the bay.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Close your eyes, poppies—</div> - <div class='line'>I would not have you see death,</div> - <div class='line'>You are so young!</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in28'>V</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>The sun falls</div> - <div class='line'>Like a drop of blood</div> - <div class='line'>From some hero.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>We,</div> - <div class='line'>Who love pain,</div> - <div class='line'>Delight in this.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='chapter'> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_73'>73</span> - <h2 class='c005'>Fannie Stearns Davis</h2> -</div> - -<h3 class='c013'>PROFITS</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Yes, stars were with me formerly.</div> - <div class='line'>(I also knew the wind and sea;</div> - <div class='line'>And hill-tops had my feet by heart.</div> - <div class='line'>Their shagged heights would sting and start</div> - <div class='line'>When I came leaping on their backs.</div> - <div class='line'>I knew the earth’s queer crooked cracks,</div> - <div class='line'>Where hidden waters weave a low</div> - <div class='line'>And druid chant of joy and woe.)</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>But stars were with me most of all.</div> - <div class='line'>I heard them flame and break and fall.</div> - <div class='line'>Their excellent array, their free</div> - <div class='line'>Encounter with Eternity,</div> - <div class='line'>I learned. And it was good to know</div> - <div class='line'>That where God walked, I too might go.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Now, all these things are passed. For I</div> - <div class='line'>Grow very old and glad to die.</div> - <div class='line'>What did they profit me, say you,</div> - <div class='line'>These distant bloodless things I knew?</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Profit? What profit hath the sea</div> - <div class='line'>Of her deep-throated threnody?</div> - <div class='line'>What profit hath the sun, who stands</div> - <div class='line'>Staring on space with idle hands?</div> - <div class='line'>And what should God Himself acquire</div> - <div class='line'>From all the aeons’ blood and fire?</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>My profit is as theirs: to be</div> - <div class='line'>Made proof against mortality:</div> - <div class='line'>To know that I have companied</div> - <div class='line'>With all that shines and lives, amid</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_74'>74</span>So much the years sift through their hands,</div> - <div class='line'>Most mortal, windy, worthless sands.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>This day I have great peace. With me</div> - <div class='line'>Shall stars abide eternally!</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>SOULS</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>My soul goes clad in gorgeous things,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Scarlet and gold and blue.</div> - <div class='line'>And at her shoulder sudden wings</div> - <div class='line in2'>Like long flames flicker through.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>And she is swallow-fleet, and free</div> - <div class='line in2'>From mortal bonds and bars.</div> - <div class='line'>She laughs, because eternity</div> - <div class='line in2'>Blossoms for her with stars!</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>O folk who scorn my stiff gray gown,</div> - <div class='line in2'>My dull and foolish face,</div> - <div class='line'>Can ye not see my soul flash down,</div> - <div class='line in2'>A singing flame through space?</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>And folk, whose earth-stained looks I hate,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Why may I not divine</div> - <div class='line'>Your souls, that must be passionate,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Shining and swift, as mine?</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='chapter'> - <h2 class='c005'>Walter de la Mare</h2> -</div> - -<h3 class='c013'>THE LISTENERS</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>“Is there anybody there?” said the Traveller,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Knocking on the moonlit door;</div> - <div class='line'>And his horse in the silence champed the grasses</div> - <div class='line in2'>Of the forest’s ferny floor;</div> - <div class='line'>And a bird flew up out of the turret,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Above the Traveller’s head;</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_75'>75</span>And he smote upon the door again a second time;</div> - <div class='line in2'>“Is there anybody there?” he said.</div> - <div class='line'>But no one descended to the Traveller;</div> - <div class='line in2'>No head from the leaf-fringed sill</div> - <div class='line'>Leaned over and looked into his grey eyes,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Where he stood perplexed and still.</div> - <div class='line'>But only a host of phantom listeners</div> - <div class='line in2'>That dwelt in the lone house then</div> - <div class='line'>Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight</div> - <div class='line in2'>To that voice from the world of men:</div> - <div class='line'>Stood thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark stair,</div> - <div class='line in2'>That goes down to the empty hall,</div> - <div class='line'>Hearkening in an air stirred and shaken</div> - <div class='line in2'>By the lonely Traveller’s call.</div> - <div class='line'>And he felt in his heart their strangeness,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Their stillness answering his cry,</div> - <div class='line'>While his horse moved, cropping the dark turf,</div> - <div class='line in2'>’Neath the starred and leafy sky;</div> - <div class='line'>For he suddenly smote on the door, even</div> - <div class='line in2'>Louder, and lifted his head:—</div> - <div class='line'>“Tell them I came, and no one answered</div> - <div class='line in2'>That I kept my word,” he said.</div> - <div class='line'>Never the least stir made the listeners,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Though every word he spake</div> - <div class='line'>Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house</div> - <div class='line in2'>From the one man left awake:</div> - <div class='line'>Ay, they heard his foot upon the stirrup,</div> - <div class='line in2'>And the sound of iron on stone,</div> - <div class='line'>And how the silence surged softly backward,</div> - <div class='line in2'>When the plunging hoofs were gone.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>AN EPITAPH</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Here lies a most beautiful lady:</div> - <div class='line'>Light of step and heart was she;</div> - <div class='line'>I think she was the most beautiful lady</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_76'>76</span>That ever was in the West Country.</div> - <div class='line'>But beauty vanishes; beauty passes;</div> - <div class='line'>However rare—rare it be;</div> - <div class='line'>And when I crumble, who will remember</div> - <div class='line'>This lady of the West Country?</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='chapter'> - <h2 class='c005'>Lee Wilson Dodd</h2> -</div> - -<h3 class='c013'>THE TEMPLE</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Hear me, brother!</div> - <div class='line'>Boldly I stepped into the Temple,</div> - <div class='line'>Into the Temple where the God dwells</div> - <div class='line'>Veiled with Seven Veils,</div> - <div class='line'>Into the Temple of Unbroken Silence:</div> - <div class='line'>And my joyous feet shod with crimson sandals</div> - <div class='line'>Rang out on the tesselated pavement,</div> - <div class='line'>Rang out fearlessly</div> - <div class='line'>Like a challenge and a cry!</div> - <div class='line'>And there—in that shrouded solitude,</div> - <div class='line'>There—before the Seven Veils,</div> - <div class='line'>There—because of youth and youth’s madness,</div> - <div class='line'>Because of love and love’s unresting heart,</div> - <div class='line'>There did I sing three songs!</div> - <div class='line'>And my first song praised the eyes of a wanton;</div> - <div class='line'>And my second song praised the lips of a wanton;</div> - <div class='line'>And my third song praised the feet of a dancing girl!</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Thus did I desecrate the Temple,</div> - <div class='line'>Thus did I stand before the Seven Veils,</div> - <div class='line'>Proudly!</div> - <div class='line'>Thus did I wait upon the God’s Voice—</div> - <div class='line'>Proudly!—</div> - <div class='line'>And the sudden shaft of death....</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_77'>77</span>But no Voice stirred the Seven Veils,</div> - <div class='line'>Though I stood long....</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>And my knees shook,</div> - <div class='line'>My bones were afraid....</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Swiftly I loosed the crimson sandals,</div> - <div class='line'>And, tearing them from off my feet,</div> - <div class='line'>Crept shuddering forth!</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Hear me, brother!</div> - <div class='line'>Now am I as one stricken with palsy,</div> - <div class='line'>Now am I sick with the close ache of terror,</div> - <div class='line'>Now am I as one who, having tasted poison,</div> - <div class='line'>Cowers, waiting for the pang!</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c007'><em>For the God spake not....</em></p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>And the sense of my littleness is upon me:</div> - <div class='line'>And I am a worm in my own sight,</div> - <div class='line'>Trodden and helpless;</div> - <div class='line'>A casual grain of sand</div> - <div class='line'>Indistinguishable amid a million grains:</div> - <div class='line'>And I take no pleasure now in youth</div> - <div class='line'>Nor in youth’s madness,</div> - <div class='line'>In love</div> - <div class='line'>Nor in love’s unresting heart;</div> - <div class='line'>And I praise no longer the eyes of a wanton,</div> - <div class='line'>Nor the lips of a wanton,</div> - <div class='line'>Nor the light feet of a dancing girl.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>THE COMRADE</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Call me friend or foe,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Little I care!</div> - <div class='line'>I go with all who go</div> - <div class='line in2'>Daring to dare.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_78'>78</span>I am the force,</div> - <div class='line in2'>I am the fire,</div> - <div class='line'>I am the secret source</div> - <div class='line in2'>Of desire.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>I am the urge,</div> - <div class='line in2'>The spur and thong:</div> - <div class='line'>Moon of the tides that surge</div> - <div class='line in2'>Into song!</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Call me friend or foe,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Little care I,</div> - <div class='line'>I go with all who go</div> - <div class='line in2'>Singing to die.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Call me friend or foe....</div> - <div class='line in2'>Taking to give,</div> - <div class='line'>I go with all who go</div> - <div class='line in2'>Dying to live.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='chapter'> - <h2 class='c005'>John Drinkwater</h2> -</div> - -<h3 class='c013'>SUNRISE ON RYDAL WATER</h3> - -<div class='nf-center-c0'> -<div class='nf-center c002'> - <div><em>To E. de S.</em></div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Come down at dawn from windless hills</div> - <div class='line in2'>Into the valley of the lake,</div> - <div class='line'>Where yet a larger quiet fills</div> - <div class='line in2'>The hour, and mist and water make</div> - <div class='line'>With rocks and reeds and island boughs</div> - <div class='line in2'>One silence and one element,</div> - <div class='line'>Where wonder goes surely as once</div> - <div class='line in2'>It went</div> - <div class='line in4'>By Galilean prows.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_79'>79</span>Moveless the water and the mist,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Moveless the secret air above,</div> - <div class='line'>Hushed, as upon some happy tryst</div> - <div class='line in2'>The poised expectancy of love;</div> - <div class='line'>What spirit is it that adores</div> - <div class='line in2'>What mighty presence yet unseen?</div> - <div class='line'>What consummation works apace</div> - <div class='line in2'>Between</div> - <div class='line in4'>These rapt enchanted shores?</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Never did virgin beauty wake</div> - <div class='line in2'>Devouter to the bridal feast</div> - <div class='line'>Than moves this hour upon the lake</div> - <div class='line in2'>In adoration to the east.</div> - <div class='line'>Here is the bride a god may know,</div> - <div class='line in2'>The primal will, the young consent,</div> - <div class='line'>Till surely upon the appointed mood</div> - <div class='line in2'>Intent</div> - <div class='line in4'>The god shall leap—and, lo,</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Over the lake’s end strikes the sun—</div> - <div class='line in2'>White, flameless fire; some purity</div> - <div class='line'>Thrilling the mist, a splendor won</div> - <div class='line in2'>Out of the world’s heart. Let there be</div> - <div class='line'>Thoughts, and atonements, and desires;</div> - <div class='line in2'>Proud limbs, and undeliberate tongue;</div> - <div class='line'>Where now we move with mortal care</div> - <div class='line in2'>Among</div> - <div class='line in4'>Immortal dews and fires.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>So the old mating goes apace,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Wind with the sea, and blood with thought,</div> - <div class='line'>Lover with lover; and the grace</div> - <div class='line in2'>Of understanding comes unsought</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_80'>80</span>When stars into the twilight steer,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Or thrushes build among the may,</div> - <div class='line'>Or wonder moves between the hills,</div> - <div class='line in2'>And day</div> - <div class='line in4'>Comes up on Rydal mere.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='chapter'> - <h2 class='c005'>Louise Driscoll</h2> -</div> - -<h3 class='c013'>THE METAL CHECKS</h3> - -<p class='c016'>[<em>The scene is a bare room, with two shaded windows at the back, and a fireplace -between them with a fire burning low. The room contains a few -plain chairs, and a rough wooden table on which are piled many small -wooden trays. <span class='sc'>The Counter</span>, who is Death, sits at the table. He -wears a loose gray robe, and his face is partly concealed by a gray veil. -<span class='sc'>The Bearer</span> is the World, that bears the burden of War. He wears a -soiled robe of brown and green and he carries on his back a gunny-bag -filled with the little metal disks that have been used for the identification -of the slain common soldiers.</em>]</p> -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>The Bearer</em></div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in4'>Here is a sack, a gunny sack,</div> - <div class='line in6'>A heavy sack I bring.</div> - <div class='line in4'>Here is toll of many a soul—</div> - <div class='line in6'>But not the soul of a king.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in4'>This is the toll of common men,</div> - <div class='line in6'>Who lived in the common way;</div> - <div class='line in4'>Lived upon bread and wine and love,</div> - <div class='line in6'>In the light of the common day.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in4'>This is the toll of working men,</div> - <div class='line in6'>Blood and brawn and brain.</div> - <div class='line in4'>Who shall render us again</div> - <div class='line in6'>The worth of all the slain?</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_81'>81</span><em>The Counter</em></div> - <div class='line in4'>Pour them out on the table here.</div> - <div class='line in6'><em class='gesperrt'>Clickety</em>—<em class='gesperrt'>clickety</em>—<em class='gesperrt'>clack</em>!</div> - <div class='line in4'>For every button a man went out,</div> - <div class='line in4'>And who shall call him back?</div> - <div class='line in6'><em class='gesperrt'>Clickety</em>—<em class='gesperrt'>clickety</em>—<em class='gesperrt'>clack</em>!</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in4'>One—two—three—four—</div> - <div class='line in6'>Every disk a soul!</div> - <div class='line in4'>Three score—four score—</div> - <div class='line in4'>So many boys went out to war.</div> - <div class='line in4'>Pick up that one that fell on the floor—</div> - <div class='line in6'>Didn’t you see it roll?</div> - <div class='line in4'>That was a man a month ago.</div> - <div class='line in4'>This was a man. Row upon row—</div> - <div class='line in4'>Pile them in tens and count them so.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line c004'><em>The Bearer</em></div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in4'>I have an empty sack.</div> - <div class='line in6'>It is not large. Would you have said</div> - <div class='line in4'>That I could carry on my back</div> - <div class='line in6'>So great an army—and all dead?</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>[<em>As <span class='sc'>The Counter</span> speaks <span class='sc'>The Bearer</span> lays the sack over his arm and helps count.</em>]</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line c004'><em>The Counter</em></div> - <div class='line in4'>Put a hundred in each tray—</div> - <div class='line in4'>We can tally them best that way.</div> - <div class='line in4'>Careful—do you understand</div> - <div class='line in4'>You have ten men in your hand?</div> - <div class='line in4'>There’s another fallen—there—</div> - <div class='line in4'>Under that chair.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>[<em><span class='sc'>The Bearer</span> finds it and restores it.</em>]</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in4'>That was a man a month ago;</div> - <div class='line in4'>He could see and feel and know.</div> - <div class='line in4'><span class='pageno' id='Page_82'>82</span>Then, into his throat there sped</div> - <div class='line in4'>A bit of lead.</div> - <div class='line in4'>Blood was salt in his mouth; he fell</div> - <div class='line in4'>And lay amid the battle wreck.</div> - <div class='line in4'>Nothing was left but this metal check—</div> - <div class='line in4'>And a wife and child, perhaps.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>[<em><span class='sc'>The Bearer</span> finds the bag on his arm troublesome. He holds it up, inspecting it.</em>]</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line c004'><em>The Bearer</em></div> - <div class='line in4'>What can one do with a thing like this?</div> - <div class='line in4'>Neither of life nor death it is!</div> - <div class='line in4'>For the dead serve not, though it served the dead.</div> - <div class='line in4'>The wounds it carried were wide and red,</div> - <div class='line in4'>Yet they stained it not. Can a man put food,</div> - <div class='line in4'>Potatoes or wheat, or even wood</div> - <div class='line in4'>That is kind and burns with a flame to warm</div> - <div class='line in4'>Living men who are comforted—</div> - <div class='line in4'>In a thing that has served so many dead?</div> - <div class='line in4'>There is no thrift in a graveyard dress,</div> - <div class='line in4'>It’s been shroud for too many men.</div> - <div class='line in4'>I’ll burn it and let the dead bless.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line c004'>[<em>He crosses himself and throws it into the fire. He watches it burn. <span class='sc'>The Counter</span> continues to pile up the metal checks, and drop them by hundreds into the trays which he piles one upon another. <span class='sc'>The Bearer</span> turns from the fire and speaks more slowly than before. He indicates the metal checks.</em>]</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in4'>Would not the blood of these make a great sea</div> - <div class='line in4'>For men to sail their ships on? It may be</div> - <div class='line in4'>No fish would swim in it, and the foul smell</div> - <div class='line in4'>Would make the sailors sick. Perhaps in Hell</div> - <div class='line in4'>There’s some such lake for men who rush to war</div> - <div class='line in4'>Prating of glory, and upon the shore</div> - <div class='line in4'>Will stand the wives and children and old men</div> - <div class='line in4'>Bereft, to drive them back again</div> - <div class='line in4'><span class='pageno' id='Page_83'>83</span>When they seek haven. Some such thing</div> - <div class='line in4'>I thought the while I bore it on my back</div> - <div class='line in4'>And heard the metal pieces clattering.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line c004'><em>The Counter</em></div> - <div class='line in4'>Four score—five score—</div> - <div class='line in4'>These and as many more.</div> - <div class='line in4'>Forward—march!—into the tray!</div> - <div class='line in4'>No bugles blow today,</div> - <div class='line in4'>No captains lead the way;</div> - <div class='line in4'>But mothers and wives,</div> - <div class='line in4'>Fathers, sisters, little sons,</div> - <div class='line in4'>Count the cost</div> - <div class='line in4'>Of the lost;</div> - <div class='line in4'>And we count the unlived lives,</div> - <div class='line in4'>The forever unborn ones</div> - <div class='line in4'>Who might have been your sons.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line c004'><em>The Bearer</em></div> - <div class='line in4'>Could not the hands of these rebuild</div> - <div class='line in4'>That which has been destroyed?</div> - <div class='line in4'>Oh, the poor hands! that once were strong and filled</div> - <div class='line in4'>With implements of labor whereby they</div> - <div class='line in4'>Served home and country through the peaceful day.</div> - <div class='line in4'>When those who made the war stand face to face</div> - <div class='line in4'>With these slain soldiers in that unknown place</div> - <div class='line in4'>Whither the dead go, what will be the word</div> - <div class='line in4'>By dead lips spoken and by dead ears heard?</div> - <div class='line in4'>Will souls say King or Kaiser? Will souls prate</div> - <div class='line in4'>Of earthly glory in that new estate?</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line c004'><em>The Counter</em></div> - <div class='line in4'>One hundred thousand—</div> - <div class='line in4'>One hundred and fifty thousand—</div> - <div class='line in4'>Two hundred—</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line c004'><span class='pageno' id='Page_84'>84</span><em>The Bearer</em></div> - <div class='line in4'>Can this check plough?</div> - <div class='line in6'>Can it sow? can it reap?</div> - <div class='line in4'>Can we arouse it?</div> - <div class='line in6'>Is it asleep?</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in4'>Can it hear when a child cries?—</div> - <div class='line in6'>Comfort a wife?</div> - <div class='line in4'>This little metal disk</div> - <div class='line in6'>Stands for a life.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in4'>Can this check build,</div> - <div class='line in6'>Laying stone upon stone?</div> - <div class='line in4'>Once it was warm flesh</div> - <div class='line in6'>Folded on bone.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in4'>Sinew and muscle firm,</div> - <div class='line in6'>Look at it—can</div> - <div class='line in4'>This little metal check</div> - <div class='line in6'>Stand for a man?</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line c004'><em>The Counter</em></div> - <div class='line in4'>One—two—three—four—</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='chapter'> - <h2 class='c005'>Dorothy Dudley</h2> -</div> - -<h3 class='c013'>LA RUE DE LA MONTAGNE SAINTE-GÈNEVIÈVE</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>I have seen an old street weeping—</div> - <div class='line'>Narrow, dark, ascending;</div> - <div class='line'>Water o’er the spires</div> - <div class='line'>Of a church descending;</div> - <div class='line'>The church thrice veiled—in rain,</div> - <div class='line'>In the shadow of the years,</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_85'>85</span>In the grace of old design;</div> - <div class='line'>Dim dwellings, blind with tears,</div> - <div class='line'>Rotting either side</div> - <div class='line'>The winding passage way,</div> - <div class='line'>To where the river crosses</div> - <div class='line'>Weeping, under gray</div> - <div class='line'>And limpid heavens weeping.</div> - <div class='line'>Gardens I have seen</div> - <div class='line'>Through archèd doors, whose gratings</div> - <div class='line'>Ever cry the keen</div> - <div class='line'>Dim melodies of lace</div> - <div class='line'>Long used and rare, gardens</div> - <div class='line'>With an old-time grace</div> - <div class='line'>Vibrating, dimly trembling</div> - <div class='line'>In the music of the rain.</div> - <div class='line'>Roses I have seen drip a faint</div> - <div class='line'>Perfume, and lilacs train</div> - <div class='line'>A quivering loveliness</div> - <div class='line'>From door to archèd door,</div> - <div class='line'>Passing by in flower carts;</div> - <div class='line'>While waters ever pour</div> - <div class='line'>O’er the white stones of the fountain,</div> - <div class='line'>Melting icily away</div> - <div class='line'>Half way up the mountain;</div> - <div class='line'>Where to mingle tears with tears,</div> - <div class='line'>Their clothes misshapen, sobbing,</div> - <div class='line'>Two or three old women,</div> - <div class='line'>In wooden sabots hobbling,</div> - <div class='line'>Meet to fill their pitchers,</div> - <div class='line'>From the stream of water leaping</div> - <div class='line'>Through the lips, a long time parted,</div> - <div class='line'>Of a face grotesquely weeping—</div> - <div class='line'>A carven face forever weeping.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='chapter'> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_86'>86</span> - <h2 class='c005'>Helen Dudley</h2> -</div> - -<h3 class='c013'>TO ONE UNKNOWN</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>I have seen the proudest stars</div> - <div class='line in2'>That wander on through space,</div> - <div class='line'>Even the sun and moon,</div> - <div class='line in2'>But not your face.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>I have heard the violin,</div> - <div class='line in2'>The winds and waves rejoice</div> - <div class='line'>In endless minstrelsy,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Yet not your voice.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>I have touched the trillium,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Pale flower of the land,</div> - <div class='line'>Coral, anemone,</div> - <div class='line in2'>And not your hand.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>I have kissed the shining feet</div> - <div class='line in2'>Of Twilight lover-wise,</div> - <div class='line'>Opened the gates of Dawn—</div> - <div class='line in2'>Oh, not your eyes!</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>I have dreamed unwonted things,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Visions that witches brew,</div> - <div class='line'>Spoken with images,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Never with you.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>SONG</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>A few more windy days</div> - <div class='line'>Must come and go their ways,</div> - <div class='line'>And we will walk</div> - <div class='line'>My love and I</div> - <div class='line'>Beneath the amber-dripping boughs.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_87'>87</span>Then on the stars we’ll tread,</div> - <div class='line'>On purple stars and red,</div> - <div class='line'>And wonder why</div> - <div class='line'>The while we talk</div> - <div class='line'>Men sing so much of broken vows.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='chapter'> - <h2 class='c005'>Max Eastman</h2> -</div> - -<h3 class='c013'>DIOGENES</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'>A hut, and a tree,</div> - <div class='line in2'>And a hill for me,</div> - <div class='line'>And a piece of a weedy meadow.</div> - <div class='line in2'>I’ll ask no thing,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Of God or king,</div> - <div class='line'>But to clear away his shadow.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>IN MARCH</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>On a soaked fence-post a little blue-backed bird,</div> - <div class='line'>Opening her sweet throat, has stirred</div> - <div class='line'>A million music-ripples in the air</div> - <div class='line'>That curl and circle everywhere.</div> - <div class='line'>They break not shallow at my ear,</div> - <div class='line'>But quiver far within. Warm days are near!</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>AT THE AQUARIUM</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Serene the silver fishes glide,</div> - <div class='line'>Stern-lipped, and pale, and wonder-eyed!</div> - <div class='line'>As through the aged deeps of ocean,</div> - <div class='line'>They glide with wan and wavy motion!</div> - <div class='line'>They have no pathway where they go,</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_88'>88</span>They flow like water to and fro.</div> - <div class='line'>They watch with never winking eyes,</div> - <div class='line'>They watch with staring, cold surprise,</div> - <div class='line'>The level people in the air,</div> - <div class='line'>The people peering, peering there:</div> - <div class='line'>Who wander also to and fro,</div> - <div class='line'>And know not why or where they go,</div> - <div class='line'>Yet have a wonder in their eyes,</div> - <div class='line'>Sometimes a pale and cold surprise.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='chapter'> - <h2 class='c005'>T. S. Eliot</h2> -</div> - -<h3 class='c013'>PORTRAIT OF A LADY</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in28'>I</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Among the smoke and fog of a December afternoon</div> - <div class='line'>You have the scene arrange itself—as it will seem to do—</div> - <div class='line'>With “I have saved this afternoon for you”;</div> - <div class='line'>And four wax candles in the darkened room,</div> - <div class='line'>Four rings of light upon the ceiling overhead:</div> - <div class='line'>An atmosphere of Juliet’s tomb</div> - <div class='line'>Prepared for all the things to be said, or left unsaid.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>We have been, let us say, to hear the latest Pole</div> - <div class='line'>Transmit the Preludes, through his hair and finger-tips.</div> - <div class='line'>“So intimate, this Chopin, that I think his soul</div> - <div class='line'>Should be resurrected only among friends—</div> - <div class='line'>Some two or three, who will not touch the bloom</div> - <div class='line'>That is rubbed and questioned in the concert room.”</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>And so the conversation slips</div> - <div class='line'>Among velleities and carefully caught regrets,</div> - <div class='line'>Through attenuated tones of violins</div> - <div class='line'>Mingled with remote cornets,</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_89'>89</span>And begins:</div> - <div class='line'>“You do not know how much they mean to me, my friends;</div> - <div class='line'>And how, how rare and strange it is, to find,</div> - <div class='line'>In a life composed so much, so much of odds and ends—</div> - <div class='line'>(For indeed I do not love it ... you knew? you are not blind!</div> - <div class='line'>How keen you are!)</div> - <div class='line'>To find a friend who has these qualities,</div> - <div class='line'>Who has, and gives</div> - <div class='line'>Those qualities upon which friendship lives:</div> - <div class='line'>How much it means that I say this to you—</div> - <div class='line'>Without these friendships—life, what <em>cauchemar</em>!”</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Among the windings of the violins,</div> - <div class='line'>And the ariettes</div> - <div class='line'>Of cracked cornets,</div> - <div class='line'>Inside my brain a dull tom-tom begins</div> - <div class='line'>Absurdly hammering a prelude of its own—</div> - <div class='line'>Capricious monotone</div> - <div class='line'>That is at least one definite “false note.”</div> - <div class='line'>Let us take the air, in a tobacco trance,</div> - <div class='line'>Admire the monuments,</div> - <div class='line'>Discuss the late events,</div> - <div class='line'>Correct our watches by the public clocks;</div> - <div class='line'>Then sit for half an hour and drink our bocks.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in28'>II</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Now that lilacs are in bloom</div> - <div class='line'>She has a bowl of lilacs in her room</div> - <div class='line'>And twists one in her fingers while she talks.</div> - <div class='line'>“Ah my friend, you do not know, you do not know</div> - <div class='line'>What life is, you who hold it in your hands—”</div> - <div class='line'>(Slowly twisting the lilac stalks);</div> - <div class='line'>“You let it flow from you, you let it flow,</div> - <div class='line'>And youth is cruel, and has no remorse,</div> - <div class='line'>And smiles at situations which it cannot see.”</div> - <div class='line'>I smile, of course,</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_90'>90</span>And go on drinking tea.</div> - <div class='line'>“Yet with these April sunsets, that somehow recall</div> - <div class='line'>My buried life, and Paris in the spring,</div> - <div class='line'>I feel immeasurably at peace, and find the world</div> - <div class='line'>To be wonderful and youthful, after all.”</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>The voice returns like the insistent out-of-tune</div> - <div class='line'>Of a broken violin on an August afternoon:</div> - <div class='line'>“I am always sure that you understand</div> - <div class='line'>My feelings, always sure that you feel,</div> - <div class='line'>Sure that across the gulf you reach your hand.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>“You are invulnerable, you have no Achilles’ heel.</div> - <div class='line'>You will go on, and when you have prevailed</div> - <div class='line'>You can say: ‘At this point many a one has failed.’</div> - <div class='line'>But what have I, but what have I, my friend,</div> - <div class='line'>To give you, what can you receive from me?</div> - <div class='line'>Only the friendship and the sympathy</div> - <div class='line'>Of one about to reach her journey’s end.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>“I shall sit here, serving tea to friends....”</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>I take my hat: how can I make a cowardly amends</div> - <div class='line'>For what she has said to me?</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>You will see me any morning in the park</div> - <div class='line'>Reading the comics and the sporting page.</div> - <div class='line'>Particularly I remark</div> - <div class='line'>An English countess goes upon the stage,</div> - <div class='line'>A Greek was murdered at a Polish dance,</div> - <div class='line'>Another bank defaulter has confessed.</div> - <div class='line'>I keep my countenance,</div> - <div class='line'>I remain self-possessed</div> - <div class='line'>Except when a street piano, mechanical and tired,</div> - <div class='line'>Reiterates some worn-out common song,</div> - <div class='line'>With the smell of hyacinths across the garden</div> - <div class='line'>Recalling things that other people have desired.</div> - <div class='line'>Are these ideas right or wrong?</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in28'><span class='pageno' id='Page_91'>91</span>III</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>The October night comes down. Returning as before,</div> - <div class='line'>Except for a slight sensation of being ill at ease,</div> - <div class='line'>I mount the stairs and turn the handle of the door</div> - <div class='line'>And feel as if I had mounted on my hands and knees.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>“And so you are going abroad; and when do you return?</div> - <div class='line'>But that’s a useless question.</div> - <div class='line'>You hardly know when you are coming back,</div> - <div class='line'>You will find so much to learn.”</div> - <div class='line'>My smile falls heavily among the bric-a-brac.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>“Perhaps you can write to me.”</div> - <div class='line'>My self-possession flares up for a second;</div> - <div class='line'><em>This</em> is as I had reckoned.</div> - <div class='line'>“I have been wondering frequently of late</div> - <div class='line'>(But our beginnings never know our ends!)</div> - <div class='line'>Why we have not developed into friends.”</div> - <div class='line'>I feel like one who smiles, and turning shall remark</div> - <div class='line'>Suddenly, his expression in a glass.</div> - <div class='line'>My self-possession gutters; we are really in the dark.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>“For everybody said so, all our friends,</div> - <div class='line'>They all were sure our feelings would relate</div> - <div class='line'>So closely! I myself can hardly understand.</div> - <div class='line'>We must leave it now to fate.</div> - <div class='line'>You will write, at any rate.</div> - <div class='line'>Perhaps it is not too late.</div> - <div class='line'>I shall sit here, serving tea to friends.”</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>And I must borrow every changing shape</div> - <div class='line'>To find expression ... dance, dance</div> - <div class='line'>Like a dancing bear,</div> - <div class='line'>Cry like a parrot, chatter like an ape.</div> - <div class='line'>Let us take the air, in a tobacco trance ...</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_92'>92</span>Well! and what if she should die some afternoon,</div> - <div class='line'>Afternoon gray and smoky, evening yellow and rose;</div> - <div class='line'>Should die and leave me sitting pen in hand</div> - <div class='line'>With the smoke coming down above the house tops;</div> - <div class='line'>Doubtful, for quite a while</div> - <div class='line'>Not knowing what to feel or if I understand</div> - <div class='line'>Or whether wise or foolish, tardy or too soon...</div> - <div class='line'>Would she not have the advantage, after all?</div> - <div class='line'>This music is successful with a “dying fall”</div> - <div class='line'>Now that we talk of dying—</div> - <div class='line'>And should I have the right to smile?</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='chapter'> - <h2 class='c005'>Arthur Davison Ficke</h2> -</div> - -<h3 class='c013'>MEETING</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Gray-robed Wanderer in sleep ... Wanderer ...</div> - <div class='line'>You also move among</div> - <div class='line'>Those silent halls</div> - <div class='line'>Dim on the shore of the unsailed deep?</div> - <div class='line'>And your footfalls, yours also, Wanderer,</div> - <div class='line'>Faint through those twilight corridors have rung?</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Of late my eyes have seen ... Wanderer ...</div> - <div class='line'>Amid the shadows’ gloom</div> - <div class='line'>Of that sleep-girdled place</div> - <div class='line'>I should have known such joy could not have been—</div> - <div class='line'>To see your face: and yet, Wanderer,</div> - <div class='line'>What hopes seem vain beneath the night in bloom?</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Wearily I awake ... Wanderer ...</div> - <div class='line'>Your look of old despair,</div> - <div class='line'>Like a dying star,</div> - <div class='line'>In morning vanishes. But for all memories’ sake,</div> - <div class='line'>Though you are far, tonight, O Wanderer,</div> - <div class='line'>Tonight come, though in silence, to the shadows there ...</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_93'>93</span> - <h3 class='c014'>AMONG SHADOWS</h3> -</div> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>In halls of sleep you wandered by,</div> - <div class='line'>This time so indistinguishably</div> - <div class='line'>I cannot remember aught of it,</div> - <div class='line'>Save that I know last night we met.</div> - <div class='line'>I know it by the cloudy thrill</div> - <div class='line'>That in my heart is quivering still;</div> - <div class='line'>And sense of loveliness forgot</div> - <div class='line'>Teases my fancy out of thought.</div> - <div class='line'>Though with the night the vision wanes,</div> - <div class='line'>Its haunting presence still may last—</div> - <div class='line'>As odor of flowers faint remains</div> - <div class='line'>In halls where late a queen has passed.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>THE THREE SISTERS</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Gone are the three, those sisters rare</div> - <div class='line in2'>With wonder-lips and eyes ashine.</div> - <div class='line'>One was wise and one was fair,</div> - <div class='line in2'>And one was mine.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Ye mourners, weave for the sleeping hair</div> - <div class='line in2'>Of only two, your ivy vine.</div> - <div class='line'>For one was wise and one was fair,</div> - <div class='line in2'>But one was mine.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>PORTRAIT OF AN OLD WOMAN</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>She limps with halting painful pace,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Stops, wavers, and creeps on again;</div> - <div class='line'>Peers up with dim and questioning face</div> - <div class='line in2'>Void of desire or doubt or pain.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_94'>94</span>Her cheeks hang gray in waxen folds</div> - <div class='line in2'>Wherein there stirs no blood at all.</div> - <div class='line'>A hand like bundled cornstalks holds</div> - <div class='line in2'>The tatters of a faded shawl.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Where was a breast, sunk bones she clasps;</div> - <div class='line in2'>A knot jerks where were woman-hips;</div> - <div class='line'>A ropy throat sends writhing gasps</div> - <div class='line in2'>Up to the tight line of her lips.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Here strong the city’s pomp is poured ...</div> - <div class='line in2'>She stands, unhuman, bleak, aghast:</div> - <div class='line'>An empty temple of the Lord</div> - <div class='line in2'>From which the jocund Lord has passed.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>He has builded him another house,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Whenceforth his flame, renewed and bright,</div> - <div class='line'>Shines stark upon these weathered brows</div> - <div class='line in2'>Abandoned to the final night.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>I AM WEARY OF BEING BITTER</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>I am weary of being bitter and weary of being wise,</div> - <div class='line in2'>And the armor and the mask of these fall from me, after long.</div> - <div class='line'>I would go where the islands sleep, or where the sea-dawns rise,</div> - <div class='line in2'>And lose my bitter wisdom in the wisdom of a song.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>There are magics in melodies, unknown of the sages;</div> - <div class='line in2'>The powers of purest wonder on secret wings go by.</div> - <div class='line'>Doubtless out of the silence of dumb preceding ages</div> - <div class='line in2'>Song woke the chaos-world—and light swept the sky.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>All that we know is idle; idle is all we cherish;</div> - <div class='line in2'>Idle the will that takes loads that proclaim it strong.</div> - <div class='line'>For the knowledge, the strength, the burden—all shall perish:</div> - <div class='line in2'>One thing only endures, one thing only—song.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_95'>95</span> - <h3 class='c014'>FROM “SONNETS OF A PORTRAIT PAINTER”</h3> -</div> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>I am in love with high far-seeing places</div> - <div class='line'>That look on plains half-sunlight and half-storm,</div> - <div class='line'>In love with hours when from the circling faces</div> - <div class='line'>Veils pass, and laughing fellowship glows warm.</div> - <div class='line'>You who look on me with grave eyes where rapture</div> - <div class='line'>And April love of living burn confessed—</div> - <div class='line'>The Gods are good! the world lies free to capture!</div> - <div class='line'>Life has no walls. Oh, take me to your breast!</div> - <div class='line'>Take me—be with me for a moment’s span!</div> - <div class='line'>I am in love with all unveilèd faces.</div> - <div class='line'>I seek the wonder at the heart of man;</div> - <div class='line'>I would go up to the far-seeing places.</div> - <div class='line'>While youth is ours, turn toward me for a space</div> - <div class='line'>The marvel of your rapture-lighted face!</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>There are strange shadows fostered of the moon,</div> - <div class='line'>More numerous than the clear-cut shade of day....</div> - <div class='line'>Go forth, when all the leaves whisper of June,</div> - <div class='line'>Into the dusk of swooping bats at play;</div> - <div class='line'>Or go into that late November dusk</div> - <div class='line'>When hills take on the noble lines of death,</div> - <div class='line'>And on the air the faint astringent musk</div> - <div class='line'>Of rotting leaves pours vaguely troubling breath.</div> - <div class='line'>Then shall you see shadows whereof the sun</div> - <div class='line'>Knows nothing—aye, a thousand shadows there</div> - <div class='line'>Shall leap and flicker and stir and stay and run,</div> - <div class='line'>Like petrels of the changing foul or fair;</div> - <div class='line'>Like ghosts of twilight, of the moon, of him</div> - <div class='line'>Whose homeland lies past each horizon’s rim....</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_96'>96</span> - <h3 class='c014'>LIKE HIM WHOSE SPIRIT</h3> -</div> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Like him whose spirit in the blaze of noon</div> - <div class='line'>Still keeps the memory of one secret star</div> - <div class='line'>That in the dusk of a remembered June</div> - <div class='line'>Thrilled the strange hour with beauty from afar—</div> - <div class='line'>And perilous spells of twilight snare his heart,</div> - <div class='line'>And wistful moods his common thoughts subdue,</div> - <div class='line'>And life seethes by him utterly apart—</div> - <div class='line'>Last night I dreamed, today I dream, of you.</div> - <div class='line'>Gleams downward strike; bright bubbles upward hover</div> - <div class='line'>Through the charmed air; far sea-winds cool my brow.</div> - <div class='line'>Invisible lips tell me I shall discover</div> - <div class='line'>Today a temple, a mystery, a vow ...</div> - <div class='line'>The cycle rounds: only the false seems true.</div> - <div class='line'>Last night I dreamed, today I dream, of you.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='chapter'> - <h2 class='c005'>John Gould Fletcher</h2> -</div> - -<h3 class='c013'>IRRADIATIONS</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in32'>I</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Over the roof-tops race the shadows of clouds:</div> - <div class='line'>Like horses the shadows of clouds charge down the street.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Whirlpools of purple and gold,</div> - <div class='line'>Winds from the mountains of cinnabar,</div> - <div class='line'>Lacquered mandarin moments, palanquins swaying and balancing</div> - <div class='line'>Amid the vermilion pavilions, against the jade balustrades;</div> - <div class='line'>Glint of the glittering wings of dragon-flies in the light;</div> - <div class='line'>Silver filaments, golden flakes settling downwards;</div> - <div class='line'>Rippling, quivering flutters; repulse and surrender,</div> - <div class='line'>The sun broidered upon the rain,</div> - <div class='line'>The rain rustling with the sun.</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_97'>97</span>Over the roof-tops race the shadows of clouds:</div> - <div class='line'>Like horses the shadows of clouds charge down the street.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in32'>II</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>O seeded grass, you army of little men</div> - <div class='line'>Crawling up the low slopes with quivering quick blades of steel:</div> - <div class='line'>You who storm millions of graves, tiny green tentacles of earth,</div> - <div class='line'>Interlace your tangled webs tightly over my heart</div> - <div class='line'>And do not let me go:</div> - <div class='line'>For I would lie here for ever and watch with one eye</div> - <div class='line'>The pilgrimaging ants in your dull savage jungles,</div> - <div class='line'>While with the other I see the long lines of the slope</div> - <div class='line'>Break in mid air, a wave surprisingly arrested;</div> - <div class='line'>And above it, wavering, bodiless, colorless, unreal,</div> - <div class='line'>The long thin lazy fingers of the heat.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in32'>III</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Not noisily, but solemnly and pale,</div> - <div class='line'>In a meditative ecstasy, you entered life,</div> - <div class='line'>As for some strange rite, to which you alone held the clue.</div> - <div class='line'>Child, life did not give rude strength to you;</div> - <div class='line'>From the beginning you would seem to have thrown away,</div> - <div class='line'>As something cold and cumbersome, that armor men use against death.</div> - <div class='line'>You would perchance look on death face to face and from him wrest the secret</div> - <div class='line'>Whether his face wears oftenest a smile or no?</div> - <div class='line'>Strange, old and silent being, there is something</div> - <div class='line'>Infinitely vast in your intense tininess:</div> - <div class='line'>I think you could point out with a smile some curious star</div> - <div class='line'>Far off in the heavens which no man has seen before.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in32'>IV</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>The morning is clean and blue, and the wind blows up the clouds:</div> - <div class='line'>Now my thoughts, gathered from afar,</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_98'>98</span>Once again in their patched armor, with rusty plumes and blunted swords,</div> - <div class='line'>Move out to war.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Smoking our morning pipes we shall ride two and two</div> - <div class='line'>Through the woods.</div> - <div class='line'>For our old cause keeps us together,</div> - <div class='line'>And our hatred is so precious not death or defeat can break it.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>God willing, we shall this day meet that old enemy</div> - <div class='line'>Who has given us so many a good beating.</div> - <div class='line'>Thank God, we have a cause worth fighting for,</div> - <div class='line'>And a cause worth losing, and a good song to sing!</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>ARIZONA POEMS</h3> - -<h4 class='c013'>MEXICAN QUARTER</h4> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>By an alley lined with tumble-down shacks,</div> - <div class='line'>And street-lamps askew, half-sputtering,</div> - <div class='line'>Feebly glimmering on gutters choked with filth, and dogs</div> - <div class='line'>Scratching their mangy backs:</div> - <div class='line'>Half-naked children are running about,</div> - <div class='line'>Women puff cigarettes in black doorways,</div> - <div class='line'>Crickets are crying.</div> - <div class='line'>Men slouch sullenly</div> - <div class='line'>Into the shadows.</div> - <div class='line'>Behind a hedge of cactus,</div> - <div class='line'>The smell of a dead horse</div> - <div class='line'>Mingles with the smell of tamales frying.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>And a girl in a black lace shawl</div> - <div class='line'>Sits in a rickety chair by the square of unglazed window,</div> - <div class='line'>And sees the explosion of the stars</div> - <div class='line'>Fiercely poised on the velvet sky.</div> - <div class='line'>And she seems humming to herself:</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_99'>99</span>“Stars, if I could reach you</div> - <div class='line'>(You are so very near that it seems as if I could reach you),</div> - <div class='line'>I would give you all to the Madonna’s image</div> - <div class='line'>On the gray plastered altar behind the paper flowers,</div> - <div class='line'>So that Juan would come back to me,</div> - <div class='line'>And we could live again those lazy burning hours,</div> - <div class='line'>Forgetting the tap of my fan and my sharp words,</div> - <div class='line'>And I would only keep four of you—</div> - <div class='line'>Those two blue-white ones overhead,</div> - <div class='line'>To put in my ears,</div> - <div class='line'>And those two orange ones yonder</div> - <div class='line'>To fasten on my shoe-buckles.”</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>A little further along the street</div> - <div class='line'>A man squats stringing a brown guitar.</div> - <div class='line'>The smoke of his cigarette curls round his hair,</div> - <div class='line'>And he too is humming, but other words:</div> - <div class='line'>“Think not that at your window I wait.</div> - <div class='line'>New love is better, the old is turned to hate.</div> - <div class='line'>Fate! Fate! All things pass away;</div> - <div class='line'>Life is forever, youth is but for a day.</div> - <div class='line'>Love again if you may</div> - <div class='line'>Before the golden moons are blown out of the sky</div> - <div class='line'>And the crickets die.</div> - <div class='line'>Babylon and Samarkand</div> - <div class='line'>Are mud walls in a waste of sand.”</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h4 class='c013'>RAIN IN THE DESERT</h4> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>The huge red-buttressed mesa over yonder</div> - <div class='line'>Is merely a far-off temple where the sleepy sun is burning</div> - <div class='line'>Its altar fires of pinyon and toyon for the day.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>The old priests sleep, white-shrouded;</div> - <div class='line'>Their pottery whistles lie beside them, the prayer-sticks closely feathered.</div> - <div class='line'>On every mummied face there glows a smile.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_100'>100</span>The sun is rolling slowly</div> - <div class='line'>Beneath the sluggish folds of the sky-serpents,</div> - <div class='line'>Coiling, uncoiling, blue black, sparked with fires.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>The old dead priests</div> - <div class='line'>Feel in the thin dried earth that is heaped about them,</div> - <div class='line'>Above the smell of scorching, oozing pinyon,</div> - <div class='line'>The acrid smell of rain.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>And now the showers</div> - <div class='line'>Surround the mesa like a troop of silver dancers:</div> - <div class='line'>Shaking their rattles, stamping, chanting, roaring,</div> - <div class='line'>Whirling, extinguishing the last red wisp of light.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>THE BLUE SYMPHONY</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in32'>I</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>The darkness rolls upward.</div> - <div class='line'>The thick darkness carries with it</div> - <div class='line'>Rain and a ravel of cloud.</div> - <div class='line'>The sun comes forth upon earth.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Palely the dawn</div> - <div class='line'>Leaves me facing timidly</div> - <div class='line'>Old gardens sunken:</div> - <div class='line'>And in the gardens is water.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Sombre wreck-autumnal leaves;</div> - <div class='line'>Shadowy roofs</div> - <div class='line'>In the blue mist,</div> - <div class='line'>And a willow-branch that is broken.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>O old pagodas of my soul, how you glittered across green trees!</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_101'>101</span>Blue and cool:</div> - <div class='line'>Blue, tremulously,</div> - <div class='line'>Blow faint puffs of smoke</div> - <div class='line'>Across sombre pools.</div> - <div class='line'>The damp green smell of rotted wood;</div> - <div class='line'>And a heron that cries from out the water.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in32'>II</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Through the upland meadows</div> - <div class='line'>I go alone.</div> - <div class='line'>For I dreamed of someone last night</div> - <div class='line'>Who is waiting for me.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Flower and blossom, tell me do you know of her?</div> - <div class='line'>Have the rocks hidden her voice?</div> - <div class='line'>They are very blue and still.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Long upward road that is leading me,</div> - <div class='line'>Light hearted I quit you,</div> - <div class='line'>For the long loose ripples of the meadow-grass</div> - <div class='line'>Invite me to dance upon them.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Quivering grass,</div> - <div class='line'>Daintily poised</div> - <div class='line'>For her foot’s tripping.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>O blown clouds, could I only race up like you!</div> - <div class='line'>Oh, the last slopes that are sun-drenched and steep!</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Look, the sky!</div> - <div class='line'>Across black valleys</div> - <div class='line'>Rise blue-white aloft</div> - <div class='line'>Jagged unwrinkled mountains, ranges of death.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Solitude. Silence.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in32'><span class='pageno' id='Page_102'>102</span>III</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>One chuckles by the brook for me:</div> - <div class='line'>One rages under the stone.</div> - <div class='line'>One makes a spout of his mouth,</div> - <div class='line'>One whispers—one is gone.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>One over there on the water</div> - <div class='line'>Spreads cold ripples</div> - <div class='line'>For me</div> - <div class='line'>Enticingly.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>The vast dark trees</div> - <div class='line'>Flow like blue veils</div> - <div class='line'>Of tears</div> - <div class='line'>Into the water.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Sour sprites,</div> - <div class='line'>Moaning and chuckling,</div> - <div class='line'>What have you hidden from me?</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>“In the palace of the blue stone she lies forever</div> - <div class='line'>Bound hand and foot.”</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Was it the wind</div> - <div class='line'>That rattled the reeds together?</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Dry reeds,</div> - <div class='line'>A faint shiver in the grasses.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in32'>IV</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>On the left hand there is a temple:</div> - <div class='line'>And a palace on the right-hand side.</div> - <div class='line'>Foot-passengers in scarlet</div> - <div class='line'>Pass over the glittering tide.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_103'>103</span>Under the bridge</div> - <div class='line'>The old river flows</div> - <div class='line'>Low and monotonous</div> - <div class='line'>Day after day.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>I have heard and have seen</div> - <div class='line'>All the news that has been:</div> - <div class='line'>Autumn’s gold and Spring’s green!</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Now in my palace</div> - <div class='line'>I see foot-passengers</div> - <div class='line'>Crossing the river,</div> - <div class='line'>Pilgrims of autumn</div> - <div class='line'>In the afternoons.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Lotus pools;</div> - <div class='line'>Petals in the water:</div> - <div class='line'>Such are my dreams.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>For me silks are outspread.</div> - <div class='line'>I take my ease, unthinking.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in32'>V</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>And now the lowest pine-branch</div> - <div class='line'>Is drawn across the disk of the sun.</div> - <div class='line'>Old friends who will forget me soon,</div> - <div class='line'>I must go on</div> - <div class='line'>Towards those blue death mountains</div> - <div class='line'>I have forgot so long.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>In the marsh grasses</div> - <div class='line'>There lies forever</div> - <div class='line'>My last treasure,</div> - <div class='line'>With the hope of my heart.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>The ice is glazing over;</div> - <div class='line'>Torn lanterns flutter,</div> - <div class='line'>On the leaves is snow.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_104'>104</span>In the frosty evening</div> - <div class='line'>Toll the old bell for me</div> - <div class='line'>Once, in the sleepy temple.</div> - <div class='line'>Perhaps my soul will hear.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Afterglow:</div> - <div class='line'>Before the stars peep</div> - <div class='line'>I shall creep into the darkness.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='chapter'> - <h2 class='c005'>F. S. Flint</h2> -</div> - -<h3 class='c013'>POEMS IN UNRHYMED CADENCE</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in20'>I</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>London, my beautiful,</div> - <div class='line'>It is not the sunset</div> - <div class='line'>Nor the pale green sky</div> - <div class='line'>Shimmering through the curtain</div> - <div class='line'>Of the silver birch,</div> - <div class='line'>Nor the quietness;</div> - <div class='line'>It is not the hopping</div> - <div class='line'>Of the little birds</div> - <div class='line'>Upon the lawn,</div> - <div class='line'>Nor the darkness</div> - <div class='line'>Stealing over all things</div> - <div class='line'>That moves me.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>But as the moon creeps slowly</div> - <div class='line'>Over the tree-tops</div> - <div class='line'>Among the stars,</div> - <div class='line'>I think of her</div> - <div class='line'>And the glow her passing</div> - <div class='line'>Sheds on men.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_105'>105</span>London, my beautiful,</div> - <div class='line'>I will climb</div> - <div class='line'>Into the branches</div> - <div class='line'>To the moonlit tree-tops,</div> - <div class='line'>That my blood may be cooled</div> - <div class='line'>By the wind.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in20'>II</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Under the lily shadow</div> - <div class='line'>And the gold</div> - <div class='line'>And the blue and mauve</div> - <div class='line'>That the whin and the lilac</div> - <div class='line'>Pour down on the water,</div> - <div class='line'>The fishes quiver.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Over the green cold leaves</div> - <div class='line'>And the rippled silver</div> - <div class='line'>And the tarnished copper</div> - <div class='line'>Of its neck and beak,</div> - <div class='line'>Toward the deep black water</div> - <div class='line'>Beneath the arches,</div> - <div class='line'>The swan floats slowly.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Into the dark of the arch the swan floats</div> - <div class='line'>And the black depth of my sorrow</div> - <div class='line'>Bears a white rose of flame.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>III—IN THE GARDEN</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>The grass is beneath my head;</div> - <div class='line'>And I gaze</div> - <div class='line'>At the thronging stars</div> - <div class='line'>In the aisles of night.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>They fall ... they fall....</div> - <div class='line'>I am overwhelmed,</div> - <div class='line'>And afraid.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_106'>106</span>Each little leaf of the aspen</div> - <div class='line'>Is caressed by the wind,</div> - <div class='line'>And each is crying.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>And the perfume</div> - <div class='line'>Of invisible roses</div> - <div class='line'>Deepens the anguish.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Let a strong mesh of roots</div> - <div class='line'>Feed the crimson of roses</div> - <div class='line'>Upon my heart;</div> - <div class='line'>And then fold over the hollow</div> - <div class='line'>Where all the pain was.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='chapter'> - <h2 class='c005'>Moireen Fox</h2> -</div> - -<h3 class='c013'>LIADAIN TO CURITHIR</h3> - -<p class='c017'><em>Liadain and Curithir were two poets who lived in Ireland in the seventh -century. They fell in love, but while Curithir was absent making preparations -for their marriage, Liadain, for some unexplained reason, took the -vows of a nun. Curithir in despair became a monk. At first they continued -to see each other, but when this led to the breaking of their vows, Curithir -left Liadain to spend his life in penance and thus save his soul.</em></p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in28'>I</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>If I had known how narrow a prison is love,</div> - <div class='line'>Never would I have given the width of the skies</div> - <div class='line'>In return for thy kiss, O Curithir, thou my grief!</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>If I had known love’s poverty, I would have given</div> - <div class='line'>Dúns and forests and ploughlands and begged my bread:</div> - <div class='line'>For now I have lost the earth and the stars and my soul.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_107'>107</span>If I had known the strength of love, I would have laid</div> - <div class='line'>The ridge of the world in ashes to stay his feet:</div> - <div class='line'>I would have cried on a stronger lord—on Death.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in28'>II</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>I, that was wont to pass by all unmoved</div> - <div class='line'>As the long ridge of the tide sweeps to the shore,</div> - <div class='line'>Am broken at last on the crags of a pitiless love.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>I, who was wont to see men pale at my glance,</div> - <div class='line'>Like the quivering grass am shaken beneath thine eyes;</div> - <div class='line'>At thy touch my spirit is captive, my will is lost.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>I would darken the sun and moon to break from thy love,</div> - <div class='line'>I would shatter the world to win thee again to my side.</div> - <div class='line'>O aching madness of love! Have the dead repose?</div> - <div class='line'>Or wilt thou tear my heart in the close-shut grave?</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in28'>III</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>I have done with blame, I have risen from the cold earth</div> - <div class='line'>Where night and day my forehead has known the clay.</div> - <div class='line'>With faltering steps I have passed out to the sun.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Now in the sight of all I stand, that all may know</div> - <div class='line'>(For I myself will praise thee and prove their words)</div> - <div class='line'>How great was thy wisdom in turning away from me.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Who that has drunken wine will keep the lees?</div> - <div class='line'>Who that has slain a man will wait for revenge?</div> - <div class='line'>Who that has had his desire of a woman will stay?</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Farewell, O Curithir, let thy soul be saved!</div> - <div class='line'>I have not found a thing that is dearer to thee.</div> - <div class='line'>In the eyes of God is it priceless? Who can say!</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_108'>108</span>My soul is a thing of little worth unto God:</div> - <div class='line'>Of less worth unto thee, O Curithir, than my love.</div> - <div class='line'>And unto me so small I flung it beneath thy feet.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in28'>IV</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>If the dark earth hold a Power that is not God</div> - <div class='line'>I pray It to bind up memory lest I die.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>There was a day when Curithir loved me, now it is gone.</div> - <div class='line'>It was I that sundered his love from me, I myself;</div> - <div class='line'>Or it was God who struck me with madness and mocked.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>If the dark earth hold a Power that is not God</div> - <div class='line'>I pray It to hide me for ever away from His face.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in28'>V</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>All things are outworn now—grief is dead,</div> - <div class='line'>And passion has fallen from me like a withered leaf.</div> - <div class='line'>Little it were to me now though Curithir were beside me:</div> - <div class='line'>Though he should pass I would not turn my head.</div> - <div class='line'>My heart is like a stone in my body.</div> - <div class='line'>All I have grasped I loose again from my hands.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='chapter'> - <h2 class='c005'>Florence Kiper Frank</h2> -</div> - -<h3 class='c013'>THE JEWISH CONSCRIPT</h3> - -<div class='nf-center-c0'> -<div class='nf-center c002'> - <div><em>There are nearly a quarter of a million Jews in the Czar’s army alone.—Newspaper clipping.</em></div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>They have dressed me up in a soldier’s dress,</div> - <div class='line in2'>With a rifle in my hand,</div> - <div class='line'>And have sent me bravely forth to shoot</div> - <div class='line in2'>My own in a foreign land.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_109'>109</span>Oh, many shall die for the fields of their homes,</div> - <div class='line in2'>And many in conquest wild;</div> - <div class='line'>But I shall die for the fatherland</div> - <div class='line in2'>That murdered my little child.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>How many hundreds of years ago—</div> - <div class='line in2'>The nations wax and cease!—</div> - <div class='line'>Did the God of our fathers doom us to bear</div> - <div class='line in2'>The flaming message of peace!</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>We are the mock and the sport of time!</div> - <div class='line in2'>Yet why should I complain!—</div> - <div class='line'>For a Jew that they hung on the bloody cross,</div> - <div class='line in2'>He also died in vain.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>THE MOVIES</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>She knows a cheap release</div> - <div class='line in2'>From worry and from pain—</div> - <div class='line'>The cowboys spur their horses</div> - <div class='line in2'>Over the unending plain.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>The tenement rooms are small;</div> - <div class='line in2'>Their walls press on the brain.</div> - <div class='line'>Oh, the dip of the galloping horses</div> - <div class='line in2'>On the limitless, wind-swept plain!</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>YOU</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>I go my way complacently,</div> - <div class='line in2'>As self-respecting persons should.</div> - <div class='line'>You are to me the rebel thought,</div> - <div class='line in2'>You are the wayward rebel mood.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>What shall we share who are separate?</div> - <div class='line in2'>We part—as alien persons should.</div> - <div class='line'>But oh, I have need of the rebel thought,</div> - <div class='line in2'>And a wicked urge to the rebel mood!</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='chapter'> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_110'>110</span> - <h2 class='c005'>Robert Frost</h2> -</div> - -<h3 class='c013'>MENDING WALL</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,</div> - <div class='line'>That sends the frozen ground-swell under it,</div> - <div class='line'>And spills the upper boulders in the sun;</div> - <div class='line'>And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.</div> - <div class='line'>The work of hunters is another thing:</div> - <div class='line'>I have come after them and made repair</div> - <div class='line'>Where they have left not one stone on stone,</div> - <div class='line'>But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,</div> - <div class='line'>To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,</div> - <div class='line'>No one has seen them made or heard them made,</div> - <div class='line'>But at spring mending-time we find them there.</div> - <div class='line'>I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;</div> - <div class='line'>And on a day we meet to walk the line</div> - <div class='line'>And set the wall between us once again.</div> - <div class='line'>We keep the wall between us as we go.</div> - <div class='line'>To each the boulders that have fallen to each.</div> - <div class='line'>And some are loaves and some so nearly balls</div> - <div class='line'>We have to use a spell to make them balance:</div> - <div class='line'>“Stay where you are until our backs are turned!”</div> - <div class='line'>We wear our fingers rough with handling them.</div> - <div class='line'>Oh, just another kind of out-door game,</div> - <div class='line'>One on a side. It comes to little more:</div> - <div class='line'>There where it is we do not need the wall:</div> - <div class='line'>He is all pine and I am apple orchard.</div> - <div class='line'>My apple trees will never get across</div> - <div class='line'>And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.</div> - <div class='line'>He only says, “Good fences make good neighbors.”</div> - <div class='line'>Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder</div> - <div class='line'>If I could put a notion in his head:</div> - <div class='line'>“Why do they make good neighbors? Isn’t it</div> - <div class='line'>Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_111'>111</span>Before I built a wall I’d ask to know</div> - <div class='line'>What I was walling in or walling out,</div> - <div class='line'>And to whom I was like to give offence.</div> - <div class='line'>Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,</div> - <div class='line'>That wants it down.” I could say “Elves” to him,</div> - <div class='line'>But it’s not elves exactly, and I’d rather</div> - <div class='line'>He said it for himself. I see him there</div> - <div class='line'>Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top</div> - <div class='line'>In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.</div> - <div class='line'>He moves in darkness as it seems to me,</div> - <div class='line'>Not of woods only and the shade of trees.</div> - <div class='line'>He will not go behind his father’s saying,</div> - <div class='line'>And he likes having thought of it so well</div> - <div class='line'>He says again, “Good fences make good neighbors.”</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>AFTER APPLE-PICKING</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>My long two-pointed ladder’s sticking through a tree</div> - <div class='line'>Toward heaven still,</div> - <div class='line'>And there’s a barrel that I didn’t fill</div> - <div class='line'>Beside it, and there may be two or three</div> - <div class='line'>Apples I didn’t pick upon some bough.</div> - <div class='line'>But I am done with apple-picking now.</div> - <div class='line'>Essence of winter sleep is on the night,</div> - <div class='line'>The scent of apples: I am drowsing off.</div> - <div class='line'>I cannot rub the strangeness from my sight</div> - <div class='line'>I got from looking through a pane of glass</div> - <div class='line'>I skimmed this morning from the drinking trough</div> - <div class='line'>And held against the world of hoary grass.</div> - <div class='line'>It melted, and I let it fall and break.</div> - <div class='line'>But I was well</div> - <div class='line'>Upon my way to sleep before it fell,</div> - <div class='line'>And I could tell</div> - <div class='line'>What form my dreaming was about to take.</div> - <div class='line'>Magnified apples appear and disappear,</div> - <div class='line'>Stem end and blossom end,</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_112'>112</span>And every fleck of russet showing clear.</div> - <div class='line'>My instep arch not only keeps the ache,</div> - <div class='line'>It keeps the pressure of a ladder-round.</div> - <div class='line'>I feel the ladder sway as the boughs bend.</div> - <div class='line'>And I keep hearing from the cellar bin</div> - <div class='line'>The rumbling sound</div> - <div class='line'>Of load on load of apples coming in.</div> - <div class='line'>For I have had too much</div> - <div class='line'>Of apple-picking: I am overtired</div> - <div class='line'>Of the great harvest I myself desired.</div> - <div class='line'>There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch,</div> - <div class='line'>Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall.</div> - <div class='line'>For all</div> - <div class='line'>That struck the earth,</div> - <div class='line'>No matter if not bruised or spiked with stubble,</div> - <div class='line'>Went surely to the cider-apple heap</div> - <div class='line'>As of no worth.</div> - <div class='line'>One can see what will trouble</div> - <div class='line'>This sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is.</div> - <div class='line'>Were he not gone,</div> - <div class='line'>The woodchuck could say whether it’s like his</div> - <div class='line'>Long sleep, as I describe its coming on,</div> - <div class='line'>Or just some human sleep.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>MY NOVEMBER GUEST</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>My Sorrow, when she’s here with me,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Thinks these dark days of autumn rain</div> - <div class='line'>Are beautiful as days can be;</div> - <div class='line'>She loves the bare, the withered tree;</div> - <div class='line in2'>She walks the sodden pasture lane.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Her pleasure will not let me stay.</div> - <div class='line in2'>She talks and I am fain to list:</div> - <div class='line'>She’s glad the birds are gone away,</div> - <div class='line'>She’s glad her simple worsted grey</div> - <div class='line in2'>Is silver now with clinging mist.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_113'>113</span>The desolate, deserted trees,</div> - <div class='line in2'>The faded earth, the heavy sky,</div> - <div class='line'>The beauties she so truly sees,</div> - <div class='line'>She thinks I have no eye for these,</div> - <div class='line in2'>And vexes me for reason why.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Not yesterday I learned to know</div> - <div class='line in2'>The love of bare November days</div> - <div class='line'>Before the coming of the snow;</div> - <div class='line'>But it were vain to tell her so,</div> - <div class='line in2'>And they are better for her praise.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>MOWING</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>There was never a sound beside the wood but one,</div> - <div class='line'>And that was my long scythe whispering to the ground.</div> - <div class='line'>What was it it whispered? I knew not well myself;</div> - <div class='line'>Perhaps it was something about the heat of the sun,</div> - <div class='line'>Something, perhaps, about the lack of sound—</div> - <div class='line'>And that was why it whispered and did not speak.</div> - <div class='line'>It was no dream of the gift of idle hours,</div> - <div class='line'>Or easy cold at the hand of fay or elf:</div> - <div class='line'>Anything more than the truth would have seemed too weak</div> - <div class='line'>To the earnest love that laid the swale in rows—</div> - <div class='line'>Not without feeble-pointed spikes of flowers</div> - <div class='line'>(Pale orchises)—and scared a bright green snake.</div> - <div class='line'>The fact is the sweetest dream that labor knows.</div> - <div class='line'>My long scythe whispered and left the hay to make.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>STORM FEAR</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>When the wind works against us in the dark,</div> - <div class='line'>And pelts with snow</div> - <div class='line'>The lower chamber window on the east,</div> - <div class='line'>And whispers with a sort of stifled bark,</div> - <div class='line'>The beast,</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_114'>114</span>“Come out! Come out!”—</div> - <div class='line'>It costs no inward struggle not to go,</div> - <div class='line'>Ah, no!</div> - <div class='line'>I count our strength,</div> - <div class='line'>Two and a child,</div> - <div class='line'>Those of us not asleep subdued to mark</div> - <div class='line'>How the cold creeps as the fire dies at length—</div> - <div class='line'>How drifts are piled,</div> - <div class='line'>Dooryard and road ungraded,</div> - <div class='line'>Till even the comforting barn grows far away,</div> - <div class='line'>And my heart owns a doubt</div> - <div class='line'>Whether ’tis in us to arise with day</div> - <div class='line'>And save ourselves unaided.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>GOING FOR WATER</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>The well was dry beside the door,</div> - <div class='line in2'>And so we went with pail and can</div> - <div class='line'>Across the fields behind the house</div> - <div class='line in2'>To seek the brook if still it ran;</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Not loth to have excuse to go,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Because the autumn eve was fair</div> - <div class='line'>(Though chill) because the fields were ours,</div> - <div class='line in2'>And by the brook our woods were there.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>We ran as if to meet the moon</div> - <div class='line in2'>That slowly dawned behind the trees,</div> - <div class='line'>The barren boughs without the leaves,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Without the birds, without the breeze.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>But once within the wood, we paused</div> - <div class='line in2'>Like gnomes that hid us from the moon,</div> - <div class='line'>Ready to run to hiding new</div> - <div class='line in2'>With laughter when she found us soon.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_115'>115</span>Each laid on other a staying hand</div> - <div class='line in2'>To listen ere we dared to look,</div> - <div class='line'>And in the hush we joined to make</div> - <div class='line in2'>We heard—we knew we heard—the brook.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>A note as from a single place,</div> - <div class='line in2'>A slender tinkling fall that made</div> - <div class='line'>Now drops that floated on the pool</div> - <div class='line in2'>Like pearls, and now a silver blade.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>THE CODE—HEROICS</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>There were three in the meadow by the brook,</div> - <div class='line'>Gathering up windrows, piling haycocks up,</div> - <div class='line'>With an eye always lifted toward the west,</div> - <div class='line'>Where an irregular, sun-bordered cloud</div> - <div class='line'>Darkly advanced with a perpetual dagger</div> - <div class='line'>Flickering across its bosom. Suddenly</div> - <div class='line'>One helper, thrusting pitchfork in the ground,</div> - <div class='line'>Marched himself off the field and home. One stayed.</div> - <div class='line'>The town-bred farmer failed to understand.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>What was there wrong?</div> - <div class='line in22'>Something you said just now.</div> - <div class='line'>What did I say?</div> - <div class='line in16'>About our taking pains.</div> - <div class='line'>To cock the hay?—because it’s going to shower?</div> - <div class='line'>I said that nearly half an hour ago.</div> - <div class='line'>I said it to myself as much as you.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>You didn’t know. But James is one big fool.</div> - <div class='line'>He thought you meant to find fault with his work.</div> - <div class='line'>That’s what the average farmer would have meant.</div> - <div class='line'>James had to take his time to chew it over</div> - <div class='line'>Before he acted; he’s just got round to act.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>He <em>is</em> a fool if that’s the way he takes me.</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_116'>116</span>Don’t let it bother you. You’ve found out something.</div> - <div class='line'>The hand that knows his business won’t be told</div> - <div class='line'>To do work faster or better—those two things.</div> - <div class='line'>I’m as particular as anyone:</div> - <div class='line'>Most likely I’d have served you just the same:</div> - <div class='line'>But I know you don’t understand our ways.</div> - <div class='line'>You were just talking what was in your mind,</div> - <div class='line'>What was in all our minds, and you weren’t hinting.</div> - <div class='line'>Tell you a story of what happened once.</div> - <div class='line'>I was up here in Salem, at a man’s</div> - <div class='line'>Named Sanders, with a gang of four or five,</div> - <div class='line'>Doing the haying. No one liked the boss.</div> - <div class='line'>He was one of the kind sports call a spider,</div> - <div class='line'>All wiry arms and legs that spread out wavy</div> - <div class='line'>From a humped body nigh as big as a biscuit.</div> - <div class='line'>But work!—that man could work, especially</div> - <div class='line'>If by so doing he could get more work</div> - <div class='line'>Out of his hired help. I’m not denying</div> - <div class='line'>He was hard on himself: I couldn’t find</div> - <div class='line'>That he kept any hours—not for himself.</div> - <div class='line'>Day-light and lantern-light were one to him:</div> - <div class='line'>I’ve heard him pounding in the barn all night.</div> - <div class='line'>But what he liked was someone to encourage.</div> - <div class='line'>Them that he couldn’t lead he’d get behind</div> - <div class='line'>And drive, the way you can, you know, in mowing—</div> - <div class='line'>Keep at their heels and threaten to mow their legs off.</div> - <div class='line'>I’d seen about enough of his bulling tricks—</div> - <div class='line'>We call that bulling. I’d been watching him.</div> - <div class='line'>So when he paired off with me in the hayfield</div> - <div class='line'>To load the load, thinks I, look out for trouble!</div> - <div class='line'>I built the load and topped it off; old Sanders</div> - <div class='line'>Combed it down with the rake and said, “O. K.”</div> - <div class='line'>Everything went right till we reached the barn</div> - <div class='line'>With a big take to empty in a bay.</div> - <div class='line'>You understand that meant the easy job</div> - <div class='line'>For the man up on top of throwing down</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_117'>117</span>The hay and rolling it off wholesale,</div> - <div class='line'>Where, on a mow, it would have been slow lifting.</div> - <div class='line'>You wouldn’t think a fellow’d need much urging</div> - <div class='line'>Under those circumstances, would you now?</div> - <div class='line'>But the old fool seizes his fork in both hands,</div> - <div class='line'>And looking up bewhiskered out of the pit,</div> - <div class='line'>Shouts like an army captain, “Let her come!”</div> - <div class='line'>Thinks I, d’ye mean it? “What was that you said?”</div> - <div class='line'>I asked out loud so’s there’d be no mistake.</div> - <div class='line'>“Did you say, let her come?” “Yes, let her come.”</div> - <div class='line'>He said it over, but he said it softer.</div> - <div class='line'>Never you say a thing like that to a man,</div> - <div class='line'>Not if he values what he is. God, I’d as soon</div> - <div class='line'>Murdered him as left out his middle name.</div> - <div class='line'>I’d built the load and knew just where to find it.</div> - <div class='line'>Two or three forkfuls I picked lightly round for</div> - <div class='line'>Like meditating, and then I just dug in</div> - <div class='line'>And dumped the rackful on him in ten lots.</div> - <div class='line'>I looked over the side once in the dust</div> - <div class='line'>And caught sight of him treading-water-like,</div> - <div class='line'>Keeping his head above. “Damn ye,” I says,</div> - <div class='line'>“That gets ye!” He squeaked like a squeezed rat.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>That was the last I saw or heard of him.</div> - <div class='line'>I cleaned the rack and drove out to cool off.</div> - <div class='line'>As I sat mopping the hayseed from my neck,</div> - <div class='line'>And sort of waiting to be asked about it,</div> - <div class='line'>One of the boys sings out, “Where’s the old man?”</div> - <div class='line'>“I left him in the barn, under the hay.</div> - <div class='line'>If you want him you can go and dig him out.”</div> - <div class='line'>They realized from the way I swobbed my neck</div> - <div class='line'>More than was needed, something must be up.</div> - <div class='line'>They headed for the barn—I stayed where I was.</div> - <div class='line'>They told me afterward: First they forked hay,</div> - <div class='line'>A lot of it, out into the barn floor.</div> - <div class='line'>Nothing! They listened for him. Not a rustle!</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_118'>118</span>I guess they thought I’d spiked him in the temple</div> - <div class='line'>Before I buried him, else I couldn’t have managed.</div> - <div class='line'>They excavated more. “Go keep his wife</div> - <div class='line'>Out of the barn.”</div> - <div class='line in18'>Some one looked in a window;</div> - <div class='line'>And curse me, if he wasn’t in the kitchen,</div> - <div class='line'>Slumped way down in a chair, with both his feet</div> - <div class='line'>Stuck in the oven, the hottest day that summer.</div> - <div class='line'>He looked so mad in back, and so disgusted</div> - <div class='line'>There was no one that dared to stir him up</div> - <div class='line'>Or let him know that he was being looked at.</div> - <div class='line'>Apparently I hadn’t buried him</div> - <div class='line'>(I may have knocked him down), but just my trying</div> - <div class='line'>To bury him had hurt his dignity.</div> - <div class='line'>He had gone to the house so’s not to face me.</div> - <div class='line'>He kept away from us all afternoon.</div> - <div class='line'>We tended to his hay. We saw him out</div> - <div class='line'>After a while picking peas in the garden:</div> - <div class='line'>He couldn’t keep away from doing something.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Weren’t you relieved to find he wasn’t dead?</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>No!—and yet I can’t say: it’s hard to tell.</div> - <div class='line'>I went about to kill him fair enough.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>You took an awkward way. Did he discharge you?</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Discharge me? No! He knew I did just right.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='chapter'> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_119'>119</span> - <h2 class='c005'>Hamlin Garland</h2> -</div> - -<h3 class='c013'>TO A CAPTIVE CRANE</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Ho, brother! Art thou prisoned too?</div> - <div class='line in2'>Is thy heart hot with restless pain?</div> - <div class='line'>I heard the call thy bugle blew</div> - <div class='line in2'>Here by the bleak and chilling main</div> - <div class='line'>(Whilst round me shaven parks are spread</div> - <div class='line in2'>And cindered drives wind on and on);</div> - <div class='line'>And at thy cry, thy lifted head,</div> - <div class='line in2'>My gladdened heart was westward drawn.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>O splendid bird! your trumpet brings</div> - <div class='line'>To my lone heart the prairie springs.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>THE MOUNTAINS ARE A LONELY FOLK</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>The mountains they are silent folk</div> - <div class='line in2'>They stand afar—alone,</div> - <div class='line'>And the clouds that kiss their brows at night</div> - <div class='line in2'>Hear neither sigh nor groan.</div> - <div class='line'>Each bears him in his ordered place</div> - <div class='line in2'>As soldiers do, and bold and high</div> - <div class='line'>They fold their forests round their feet</div> - <div class='line in2'>And bolster up the sky.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>MAGIC</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Within my hand I hold</div> - <div class='line'>A piece of lichen-spotted stone—</div> - <div class='line'>Each fleck red-gold—</div> - <div class='line'>And with closed eyes I hear the moan</div> - <div class='line'>Of solemn winds round naked crags</div> - <div class='line'>Of Colorado’s mountains. The snow</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_120'>120</span>Lies deep about me. Gray and old</div> - <div class='line'>Hags of cedars, gaunt and bare,</div> - <div class='line'>With streaming, tangled hair,</div> - <div class='line'>Snarl endlessly. White-winged and proud,</div> - <div class='line'>With stately step and queenly air,</div> - <div class='line'>A glittering, cool and silent cloud</div> - <div class='line in6'>Upon me sails.</div> - <div class='line in6'>The wind wails,</div> - <div class='line'>And from the cañon stern and steep</div> - <div class='line'>I hear the furious waters leap.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='chapter'> - <h2 class='c005'>Wilfrid Wilson Gibson</h2> -</div> - -<h3 class='c013'>COLOR</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>A blue-black Nubian plucking oranges</div> - <div class='line'>At Jaffa by a sea of malachite,</div> - <div class='line'>In red tarboosh, green sash, and flowing white</div> - <div class='line'>Burnous—among the shadowy memories</div> - <div class='line'>That haunt me yet by these bleak northern seas</div> - <div class='line'>He lives for ever in my eyes’ delight,</div> - <div class='line'>Bizarre, superb in young immortal might—</div> - <div class='line'>A god of old barbaric mysteries.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Maybe he lived a life of lies and lust,</div> - <div class='line'>Maybe his bones are now but scattered dust;</div> - <div class='line'>Yet, for a moment he was life supreme</div> - <div class='line'>Exultant and unchallenged: and my rhyme</div> - <div class='line'>Would set him safely out of reach of time</div> - <div class='line'>In that old heaven where things are what they seem.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_121'>121</span> - <h3 class='c014'>OBLIVION</h3> -</div> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Near the great pyramid, unshadowed, white,</div> - <div class='line'>With apex piercing the white noon-day blaze.</div> - <div class='line'>Swathed in white robes beneath the blinding rays</div> - <div class='line'>Lie sleeping Bedouins drenched in white-hot light.</div> - <div class='line'>About them, searing to the tingling sight,</div> - <div class='line'>Swims the white dazzle of the desert ways</div> - <div class='line'>Where the sense shudders, witless and adaze,</div> - <div class='line'>In a white void with neither depth nor height.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Within the black core of the pyramid,</div> - <div class='line'>Beneath the weight of sunless centuries,</div> - <div class='line'>Lapt in dead night King Cheops lies asleep:</div> - <div class='line'>Yet in the darkness of his chamber hid</div> - <div class='line'>He knows no black oblivion more deep</div> - <div class='line'>Than that blind white oblivion of noon skies.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>TENANTS</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Suddenly, out of dark and leafy ways,</div> - <div class='line'>We came upon the little house asleep</div> - <div class='line'>In cold blind stillness, shadowless and deep,</div> - <div class='line'>In the white magic of the full moon-blaze:</div> - <div class='line'>Strangers without the gate, we stood agaze,</div> - <div class='line'>Fearful to break that quiet, and to creep</div> - <div class='line'>Into the home that had been ours to keep</div> - <div class='line'>Through a long year of happy nights and days.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>So unfamiliar in the white moon-gleam,</div> - <div class='line'>So old and ghostly like a house of dream</div> - <div class='line'>It stood, that over us there stole the dread</div> - <div class='line'>That even as we watched it, side by side,</div> - <div class='line'>The ghosts of lovers, who had lived and died</div> - <div class='line'>Within its walls, were sleeping in our bed.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_122'>122</span> - <h3 class='c014'>GOLD</h3> -</div> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>All day the mallet thudded far below</div> - <div class='line'>My garret, in an old ramshackle shed</div> - <div class='line'>Where ceaselessly, with stiffly nodding head</div> - <div class='line'>And rigid motions ever to and fro</div> - <div class='line'>A figure like a puppet in a show</div> - <div class='line'>Before the window moved till day was dead,</div> - <div class='line'>Beating out gold to earn his daily bread,</div> - <div class='line'>Beating out thin fine gold-leaf blow on blow.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>And I within my garret all day long</div> - <div class='line'>Unto that ceaseless thudding tuned my song,</div> - <div class='line'>Beating out golden words in tune and time</div> - <div class='line'>To that dull thudding, rhyme on golden rhyme.</div> - <div class='line'>But in my dreams all night, in that dark shed,</div> - <div class='line'>With aching arms I beat fine gold for bread.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>ON HAMPSTEAD HEATH</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Against the green flame of the hawthorn-tree,</div> - <div class='line'>His scarlet tunic burns;</div> - <div class='line'>And livelier than the green sap’s mantling glee</div> - <div class='line'>The spring fire tingles through him headily</div> - <div class='line'>As quivering he turns</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>And stammers out the old amazing tale</div> - <div class='line'>Of youth and April weather;</div> - <div class='line'>While she, with half-breathed jests that, sobbing, fail,</div> - <div class='line'>Sits, tight-lipped, quaking, eager-eyed and pale</div> - <div class='line'>Beneath her purple feather.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_123'>123</span> - <h3 class='c014'>BATTLE</h3> -</div> - -<h4 class='c013'>THE GOING</h4> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>He’s gone.</div> - <div class='line'>I do not understand.</div> - <div class='line'>I only know</div> - <div class='line'>That as he turned to go</div> - <div class='line'>And waved his hand,</div> - <div class='line'>In his young eyes a sudden glory shone:</div> - <div class='line'>And I was dazzled by a sunset glow,</div> - <div class='line'>And he was gone.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h4 class='c013'>THE JOKE</h4> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>He’d even have his joke</div> - <div class='line'>While we were sitting tight,</div> - <div class='line'>And so he needs must poke</div> - <div class='line'>His silly head in sight</div> - <div class='line'>To whisper some new jest</div> - <div class='line'>Chortling. But as he spoke</div> - <div class='line'>A rifle cracked ...</div> - <div class='line'>And now God knows when I shall hear the rest!</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h4 class='c013'>IN THE AMBULANCE</h4> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>“Two rows of cabbages,</div> - <div class='line'>Two of curly-greens,</div> - <div class='line'>Two rows of early peas,</div> - <div class='line'>Two of kidney-beans.”</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>That’s what he is muttering,</div> - <div class='line'>Making such a song,</div> - <div class='line'>Keeping other chaps awake,</div> - <div class='line'>The whole night long.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_124'>124</span>Both his legs are shot away,</div> - <div class='line'>And his head is light;</div> - <div class='line'>So he keeps on muttering</div> - <div class='line'>All the blessed night:</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>“Two rows of cabbages,</div> - <div class='line'>Two of curly-greens,</div> - <div class='line'>Two rows of early peas,</div> - <div class='line'>Two of kidney-beans.”</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h4 class='c013'>HIT</h4> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Out of the sparkling sea</div> - <div class='line'>I drew my tingling body clear, and lay</div> - <div class='line'>On a low ledge the livelong summer day,</div> - <div class='line'>Basking, and watching lazily</div> - <div class='line'>White sails in Falmouth Bay.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>My body seemed to burn</div> - <div class='line'>Salt in the sun that drenched it through and through,</div> - <div class='line'>Till every particle glowed clean and new</div> - <div class='line'>And slowly seemed to turn</div> - <div class='line'>To lucent amber in a world of blue....</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>I felt a sudden wrench—</div> - <div class='line'>A trickle of warm blood—</div> - <div class='line'>And found that I was sprawling in the mud</div> - <div class='line'>Among the dead men in the trench.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h4 class='c013'>THE HOUSEWIFE</h4> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>She must go back, she said,</div> - <div class='line'>Because she’d not had time to make the bed.</div> - <div class='line'>We’d hurried her away</div> - <div class='line'>So roughly ... and for all that we could say,</div> - <div class='line'>She broke from us, and passed</div> - <div class='line'>Into the night, shells falling thick and fast.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_125'>125</span> - <h4 class='c013'>HILL-BORN</h4> -</div> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>I sometimes wonder if it’s really true</div> - <div class='line'>I ever knew</div> - <div class='line'>Another life</div> - <div class='line'>Than this unending strife</div> - <div class='line'>With unseen enemies in lowland mud;</div> - <div class='line'>And wonder if my blood</div> - <div class='line'>Thrilled ever to the tune</div> - <div class='line'>Of clean winds blowing through an April noon</div> - <div class='line'>Mile after sunny mile</div> - <div class='line'>On the green ridges of the Windy Gile.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h4 class='c013'>THE FEAR</h4> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>I do not fear to die</div> - <div class='line'>’Neath the open sky,</div> - <div class='line'>To meet death in the fight</div> - <div class='line'>Face to face, upright.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>But when at last we creep</div> - <div class='line'>Into a hole to sleep,</div> - <div class='line'>I tremble, cold with dread,</div> - <div class='line'>Lest I wake up dead.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h4 class='c013'>BACK</h4> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>They ask me where I’ve been,</div> - <div class='line'>And what I’ve done and seen.</div> - <div class='line'>But what can I reply</div> - <div class='line'>Who know it wasn’t I,</div> - <div class='line'>But someone, just like me,</div> - <div class='line'>Who went across the sea</div> - <div class='line'>And with my head and hands</div> - <div class='line'>Slew men in foreign lands ...</div> - <div class='line'>Though I must bear the blame</div> - <div class='line'>Because he bore my name.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='chapter'> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_126'>126</span> - <h2 class='c005'>Richard Butler Glaenzer</h2> -</div> - -<h3 class='c013'>STAR-MAGIC</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Though your beauty be a flower</div> - <div class='line'>Of unimagined loveliness,</div> - <div class='line'>It cannot lure me tonight;</div> - <div class='line'>For I am all spirit.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>As in the billowy oleander,</div> - <div class='line'>Full-bloomed,</div> - <div class='line'>Each blossom is all but lost</div> - <div class='line'>In the next—</div> - <div class='line'>One flame in a glow</div> - <div class='line'>Of green-veined rhodonite;</div> - <div class='line'>So is heaven a crystal magnificence</div> - <div class='line'>Of stars</div> - <div class='line'>Powdered lightly with blue.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>For this one night</div> - <div class='line'>My spirit has turned honey-moth</div> - <div class='line'>And has made of the stars</div> - <div class='line'>Its flowers.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>So all uncountable are the stars</div> - <div class='line'>That heaven shimmers as a web,</div> - <div class='line'>Bursting with light</div> - <div class='line'>From beyond,</div> - <div class='line'>A light exquisite,</div> - <div class='line'>Immeasurable!</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>For this one night</div> - <div class='line'>My spirit has dared, and been caught</div> - <div class='line'>In the web of the stars.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_127'>127</span>Though your beauty were a net</div> - <div class='line'>Of unimagined power,</div> - <div class='line'>It could not hold me tonight;</div> - <div class='line'>For I am all spirit.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='chapter'> - <h2 class='c005'>Douglas Goldring</h2> -</div> - -<h3 class='c013'>VOYAGES</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in24'>I</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>To come so soon to this imagined dark—</div> - <div class='line'>More velvet-deep than any midnight park!</div> - <div class='line'>Palaces hem me in, with blind black walls;</div> - <div class='line'>The water is hushed for a voice that never calls.</div> - <div class='line'>My gondolier sways silently over his oar.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in24'>II</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>At St. Blaise, à la Zuecca! Oh, my dear,</em></div> - <div class='line'><em>Laugh your gentle laughter! This old land,</em></div> - <div class='line'><em>From Provence to Paris—never fear—</em></div> - <div class='line'><em>All the heart can feel will understand.</em></div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'>A small town, a white town,</div> - <div class='line in2'>A town for you and me—</div> - <div class='line in2'>With a <em>Café Glacier</em> in the square,</div> - <div class='line in2'>And schooners at the quay;</div> - <div class='line in2'>And the <em>terrasse</em> of a small hotel</div> - <div class='line in2'>That looks upon the sea!</div> - <div class='line in2'>There gay sounds and sweet sounds</div> - <div class='line in2'>And sounds of peace come through:</div> - <div class='line in2'>The cook sings in the kitchen,</div> - <div class='line in2'>The pink-foot ring-doves coo,</div> - <div class='line in2'>And Julien brings the Pernods</div> - <div class='line in2'>That are bad for me and you.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_128'>128</span><em>At St. Blaise, à la Zuecca! Oh, my dear,</em></div> - <div class='line'><em>Laugh your gentle laughter! This old land,</em></div> - <div class='line'><em>From Provence to Paris—never fear—</em></div> - <div class='line'><em>All the heart can feel will understand.</em></div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in24'>III</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Waves lap the beach, pines stretch to meet the sea;</div> - <div class='line'>A pale light on the horizon lingers and shines,</div> - <div class='line'>That might shine round the Graal: and we</div> - <div class='line'>Stand very silent, underneath the pines.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>O swift expresses for the spirit’s flight!</div> - <div class='line'>Sometimes the moon is like a maid I know,</div> - <div class='line'>Looking roguishly back, and flying forward—so</div> - <div class='line'>I follow, flashing after. Blessed night!</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in24'>IV</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Do you remember, have you been these ways,</div> - <div class='line'>Dreaming or waking, after sunny days;</div> - <div class='line'>Sailed, in a moment, to imagined lands—</div> - <div class='line'>With one to love you, holding both your hands—</div> - <div class='line'>To old hot countries where the warm grape clings,</div> - <div class='line'>And an old, musical language strikes the ear</div> - <div class='line'>Like a caress, most exquisite to hear—</div> - <div class='line'>Your soul the voyager and your heart her wings?</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='chapter'> - <h2 class='c005'>Hermann Hagedorn</h2> -</div> - -<h3 class='c013'>EARLY MORNING AT BARGIS</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Clear air and grassy lea,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Stream-song and cattle-bell—</div> - <div class='line'>Dear man, what fools are we</div> - <div class='line in2'>In prison-walls to dwell!</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_129'>129</span>To live our days apart</div> - <div class='line in2'>From green things and wide skies,</div> - <div class='line'>And let the wistful heart</div> - <div class='line in2'>Be cut and crushed with lies!</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Bright peaks!—And suddenly</div> - <div class='line in2'>Light floods the placid dell,</div> - <div class='line'>The grass-tops brush my knee:</div> - <div class='line'>A good crop it will be,</div> - <div class='line in2'>So all is well!</div> - <div class='line'>O man, what fools are we</div> - <div class='line in2'>In prison-walls to dwell!</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>DOORS</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Like a young child who to his mother’s door</div> - <div class='line in2'>Runs eager for the welcoming embrace,</div> - <div class='line in2'>And finds the door shut, and with troubled face</div> - <div class='line'>Calls and through sobbing calls, and o’er and o’er</div> - <div class='line'>Calling, storms at the panel—so before</div> - <div class='line in2'>A door that will not open, sick and numb,</div> - <div class='line in2'>I listen for a word that will not come,</div> - <div class='line'>And know, at last, I may not enter more.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Silence! And through the silence and the dark</div> - <div class='line in2'>By that closed door, the distant sob of tears</div> - <div class='line in4'>Beats on my spirit, as on fairy shores</div> - <div class='line'>The spectral sea; and through the sobbing—hark!—</div> - <div class='line in2'>Down the fair-chambered corridor of years,</div> - <div class='line in4'>The quiet shutting, one by one, of doors.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>DEPARTURE</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>My true love from her pillow rose</div> - <div class='line in2'>And wandered down the summer lane.</div> - <div class='line'>She left her house to the wind’s carouse,</div> - <div class='line in2'>And her chamber wide to the rain.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_130'>130</span>She did not stop to don her coat,</div> - <div class='line in2'>She did not stop to smooth her bed—</div> - <div class='line'>But out she went in glad content</div> - <div class='line in2'>There where the bright path led.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>She did not feel the beating storm,</div> - <div class='line in2'>But fled like a sunbeam, white and frail,</div> - <div class='line'>To the sea, to the air, somewhere, somewhere—</div> - <div class='line in2'>I have not found her trail.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>BROADWAY</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>How like the stars are these white, nameless faces—</div> - <div class='line in2'>These far innumerable burning coals!</div> - <div class='line'>This pale procession out of stellar spaces,</div> - <div class='line in2'>This Milky Way of souls!</div> - <div class='line'>Each in its own bright nebulæ enfurled,</div> - <div class='line'>Each face, dear God, a world!</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>I fling my gaze out through the silent night:</div> - <div class='line in2'>In those far stars, what gardens, what high halls,</div> - <div class='line'>Has mortal yearning built for its delight,</div> - <div class='line in2'>What chasms and what walls?</div> - <div class='line'>What quiet mansions where a soul may dwell?</div> - <div class='line'>What heaven and what hell?</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='chapter'> - <h2 class='c005'>Thomas Hardy</h2> -</div> - -<h3 class='c013'>SHE HEARS THE STORM</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>There was a time in former years—</div> - <div class='line in2'>While my roof-tree was his—</div> - <div class='line'>When I should have been distressed by fears</div> - <div class='line in2'>At such a night as this.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_131'>131</span>I should have murmured anxiously,</div> - <div class='line in2'>“The pricking rain strikes cold;</div> - <div class='line'>His road is bare of hedge or tree,</div> - <div class='line in2'>And he is getting old.”</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>But now the fitful chimney-roar,</div> - <div class='line in2'>The drone of Thorncombe trees,</div> - <div class='line'>The Froom in flood upon the moor,</div> - <div class='line in2'>The mud of Mellstock Leaze,</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>The candle slanting sooty wick’d,</div> - <div class='line in2'>The thuds upon the thatch,</div> - <div class='line'>The eaves-drops on the window flicked,</div> - <div class='line in2'>The clacking garden-hatch,</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>And what they mean to wayfarers,</div> - <div class='line in2'>I scarcely heed or mind;</div> - <div class='line'>He has won that storm-tight roof of hers</div> - <div class='line in2'>Which Earth grants all her kind.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>THE VOICE</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Woman much missed, how you call to me, call to me,</div> - <div class='line'>Saying that now you are not as you were</div> - <div class='line'>When you had changed from the one who was all to me,</div> - <div class='line'>But as at first, when our day was fair.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Can it be you that I hear? Let me view you, then,</div> - <div class='line'>Standing as when I drew near to the town</div> - <div class='line'>Where you would wait for me: yes, as I knew you then,</div> - <div class='line'>Even to the original air-blue gown!</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Or is it only the breeze, in its listlessness</div> - <div class='line'>Travelling across the wet mead to me here,</div> - <div class='line'>You being ever consigned to existlessness,</div> - <div class='line'>Heard no more again far or near?</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_132'>132</span>Thus I; faltering forward,</div> - <div class='line'>Leaves around me falling,</div> - <div class='line'>Wind oozing thin through the thorn from norward</div> - <div class='line'>And the woman calling.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>IN THE MOONLIGHT</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>“O lonely workman, standing there</div> - <div class='line'>In a dream, why do you stare and stare</div> - <div class='line'>At her grave, as no other grave there were?</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>“If your great gaunt eyes so importune</div> - <div class='line'>Her soul by the shine of this corpse-cold moon,</div> - <div class='line'>Maybe you’ll raise her phantom soon!”</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>“Why, fool, it is what I would rather see</div> - <div class='line'>Than all the living folk there be;</div> - <div class='line'>But alas, there is no such joy for me!”</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>“Ah—she was one you loved, no doubt,</div> - <div class='line'>Through good and evil, through rain and drought,</div> - <div class='line'>And when she passed, all your sun went out?”</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>“Nay: she was the woman I did not love,</div> - <div class='line'>Whom all the others were ranked above,</div> - <div class='line'>Whom during her life I thought nothing of.”</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>THE MAN HE KILLED</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in4'>“Had he and I but met</div> - <div class='line in4'>By some old ancient inn,</div> - <div class='line'>We should have sat us down to wet</div> - <div class='line in4'>Right many a nipperkin!</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in4'>“But ranged as infantry,</div> - <div class='line in4'>And staring face to face,</div> - <div class='line'>I shot at him as he at me,</div> - <div class='line in4'>And killed him in his place.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in4'><span class='pageno' id='Page_133'>133</span>“I shot him dead because—</div> - <div class='line in4'>Because he was my foe,</div> - <div class='line'>Just so: my foe of course he was;</div> - <div class='line in4'>That’s clear enough; although</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in4'>“He thought he’d ’list, perhaps,</div> - <div class='line in4'>Off-hand like—just as I—</div> - <div class='line'>Was out of work—had sold his traps—</div> - <div class='line in4'>No other reason why.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in4'>“Yes; quaint and curious war is!</div> - <div class='line in4'>You shoot a fellow down</div> - <div class='line'>You’d treat if met where any bar is,</div> - <div class='line in4'>Or help to half-a-crown.”</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='chapter'> - <h2 class='c005'>Ralph Hodgson</h2> -</div> - -<h3 class='c013'>THE MYSTERY</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>He came and took me by the hand</div> - <div class='line in2'>Up to a red rose tree,</div> - <div class='line'>He kept His meaning to Himself</div> - <div class='line in2'>But gave a rose to me.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>I did not pray Him to lay bare</div> - <div class='line in2'>The mystery to me;</div> - <div class='line'>Enough the rose was Heaven to smell,</div> - <div class='line in2'>And His own face to see.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>THREE POEMS</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in16'>I</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Babylon—where I go dreaming</div> - <div class='line'>When I weary of to-day,</div> - <div class='line'>Weary of a world grown gray.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in16'><span class='pageno' id='Page_134'>134</span>II</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>God loves an idle rainbow,</div> - <div class='line'>No less than laboring seas.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in16'>III</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Reason has moons, but moons not hers</div> - <div class='line in2'>Lie mirrored on her sea,</div> - <div class='line'>Confounding her astronomers,</div> - <div class='line in2'>But, oh, delighting me!</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>STUPIDITY STREET</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>I saw with open eyes</div> - <div class='line in2'>Singing birds sweet</div> - <div class='line'>Sold in the shops</div> - <div class='line in2'>For the people to eat,</div> - <div class='line'>Sold in the shops of</div> - <div class='line in2'>Stupidity Street.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>I saw in vision</div> - <div class='line in2'>The worm in the wheat,</div> - <div class='line'>And in the shops nothing</div> - <div class='line in2'>For people to eat;</div> - <div class='line'>Nothing for sale in</div> - <div class='line in2'>Stupidity Street.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='chapter'> - <h2 class='c005'>Horace Holley</h2> -</div> - -<h3 class='c013'>CREATIVE</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Renew the vision of delight</div> - <div class='line in2'>By vigil, praise and prayer,</div> - <div class='line'>Till every sinew leaps in might</div> - <div class='line in2'>And every sense is fair.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_135'>135</span> - <h3 class='c014'>TWILIGHT AT VERSAILLES</h3> -</div> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Unfold for men, O God, love’s true, creative day,</div> - <div class='line in2'>To flower our barren souls by mellow sun and noon:</div> - <div class='line'>The glory of old thought is still, and cold, and gray,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Like gardens unrenewed beneath the sterile moon.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>LOVERS</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Whate’er our joy compelled, men’s praise and blame fall hollow,</div> - <div class='line in2'>A voice upon the winds that drown it as they blow:</div> - <div class='line'>So fair a vision led, our thought was all to follow;</div> - <div class='line in2'>So strong a passion urged, our will was all to go.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='chapter'> - <h2 class='c005'>Helen Hoyt</h2> -</div> - -<h3 class='c013'>ELLIS PARK</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Little park that I pass through,</div> - <div class='line'>I carry off a piece of you</div> - <div class='line'>Every morning hurrying down</div> - <div class='line'>To my work-day in the town;</div> - <div class='line'>Carry you for country there</div> - <div class='line'>To make the city ways more fair.</div> - <div class='line'>I take your trees,</div> - <div class='line'>And your breeze,</div> - <div class='line'>Your greenness,</div> - <div class='line'>Your cleanness,</div> - <div class='line'>Some of your shade, some of your sky,</div> - <div class='line'>Some of your calm as I go by;</div> - <div class='line'>Your flowers to trim</div> - <div class='line'>The pavements grim;</div> - <div class='line'>Your space for room in the jostled street</div> - <div class='line'>And grass for carpet to my feet.</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_136'>136</span>Your fountains take and sweet bird calls</div> - <div class='line'>To sing me from my office walls.</div> - <div class='line'>All that I can see</div> - <div class='line'>I carry off with me.</div> - <div class='line'>But you never miss my theft,</div> - <div class='line'>So much treasure you have left.</div> - <div class='line'>As I find you, fresh at morning,</div> - <div class='line'>So I find you, home returning—</div> - <div class='line'>Nothing lacking from your grace.</div> - <div class='line'>All your riches wait in place</div> - <div class='line'>For me to borrow</div> - <div class='line'>On the morrow.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Do you hear this praise of you,</div> - <div class='line'>Little park that I pass through?</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>THE NEW-BORN</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>I have heard them in the night—</div> - <div class='line'>The cry of their fear,</div> - <div class='line'>Because there is no light,</div> - <div class='line'>Because they do not hear</div> - <div class='line'>Familiar sounds and feel the familiar arm,</div> - <div class='line'>And they awake alone.</div> - <div class='line'>Yet they have never known</div> - <div class='line'>Danger or harm.</div> - <div class='line'>What is their dread?—</div> - <div class='line'>This dark about their bed?</div> - <div class='line'>But they are so lately come</div> - <div class='line'>Out of the dark womb</div> - <div class='line'>Where they were safely kept.</div> - <div class='line'>That blackness was good;</div> - <div class='line'>And the silence of that solitude</div> - <div class='line'>Wherein they slept</div> - <div class='line'>Was kind.</div> - <div class='line'>Where did they find</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_137'>137</span>Knowledge of death?</div> - <div class='line'>Caution of darkness and cold?</div> - <div class='line'>These—of the little, new breath—</div> - <div class='line'>Have they a prudence so old?</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>RAIN AT NIGHT</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Are you awake? Do you hear the rain?</div> - <div class='line'>How rushingly it strikes upon the ground,</div> - <div class='line'>And on the roof, and the wet window-pane!</div> - <div class='line'>Sometimes I think it is a comfortable sound,</div> - <div class='line'>Making us feel how safe and snug we are:</div> - <div class='line'>Closing us off in this dark, away from the dark outside.</div> - <div class='line'>The rest of the world seems dim tonight, mysterious and far.</div> - <div class='line'>Oh, there is no world left! Only darkness, darkness stretching wide</div> - <div class='line'>And full of the blind rain’s immeasurable fall!</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>How nothing must we seem unto this ancient thing!</div> - <div class='line'>How nothing unto the earth—and we so small!</div> - <div class='line'>Oh, wake, wake!—do you not feel my hands cling?</div> - <div class='line'>One day it will be raining as it rains tonight; the same wind blow—</div> - <div class='line'>Raining and blowing on this house wherein we lie: but you and I—</div> - <div class='line'>We shall not hear, we shall not ever know.</div> - <div class='line'>O love, I had forgot that we must die.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>THE LOVER SINGS OF A GARDEN</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Oh, beautiful are the flowers of your garden,</div> - <div class='line in2'>The flowers of your garden are fair:</div> - <div class='line'>Blue flowers of your eyes</div> - <div class='line in2'>And dusk flower of your hair;</div> - <div class='line'>Dew flower of your mouth</div> - <div class='line in2'>And peony-budded breasts,</div> - <div class='line'>And the flower of the curve of your hand</div> - <div class='line in2'>Where my hand rests.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_138'>138</span> - <h3 class='c014'>SINCE I HAVE FELT THE SENSE OF DEATH</h3> -</div> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Since I have felt the sense of death,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Since I have borne its dread, its fear—</div> - <div class='line in2'>Oh, how my life has grown more dear</div> - <div class='line'>Since I have felt the sense of death!</div> - <div class='line'>Sorrows are good, and cares are small,</div> - <div class='line'>Since I have known the loss of all.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Since I have felt the sense of death,</div> - <div class='line in2'>And death forever at my side—</div> - <div class='line in2'>Oh, how the world has opened wide</div> - <div class='line'>Since I have felt the sense of death!</div> - <div class='line'>My hours are jewels that I spend,</div> - <div class='line'>For I have seen the hours end.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Since I have felt the sense of death,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Since I have looked on that black night—</div> - <div class='line in2'>My inmost brain is fierce with light</div> - <div class='line'>Since I have felt the sense of death.</div> - <div class='line'>O dark, that made my eyes to see!</div> - <div class='line'>O death, that gave my life to me!</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='chapter'> - <h2 class='c005'>Ford Madox Hueffer</h2> -</div> - -<h3 class='c013'>ANTWERP</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in32'>I</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Gloom!</div> - <div class='line'>An October like November;</div> - <div class='line'>August a hundred thousand hours,</div> - <div class='line'>And all September,</div> - <div class='line'>A hundred thousand, dragging sunlit days,</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_139'>139</span>And half October like a thousand years ...</div> - <div class='line'>And doom!</div> - <div class='line'>That then was Antwerp ...</div> - <div class='line in30'>In the name of God,</div> - <div class='line'>How could they do it?</div> - <div class='line'>Those souls that usually dived</div> - <div class='line'>Into the dirty caverns of mines;</div> - <div class='line'>Who usually hived</div> - <div class='line'>In whitened hovels; under ragged poplars;</div> - <div class='line'>Who dragged muddy shovels, over the grassy mud,</div> - <div class='line'>Lumbering to work over the greasy sods ...</div> - <div class='line'>Those men there, with the appearance of clods</div> - <div class='line'>Were the bravest men that a usually listless priest of God</div> - <div class='line'>Ever shrived ...</div> - <div class='line'>And it is not for us to make them an anthem.</div> - <div class='line'>If we found words there would come no wind that would fan them</div> - <div class='line'>To a tune that the trumpets might blow it,</div> - <div class='line'>Shrill through the heaven that’s ours or yet Allah’s,</div> - <div class='line'>Or the wide halls of any Valhallas.</div> - <div class='line'>We can make no such anthem. So that all that is ours</div> - <div class='line'>For inditing in sonnets, pantoums, elegiacs, or lays</div> - <div class='line'>Is this:</div> - <div class='line'>“In the name of God, how could they do it?”</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in32'>II</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>For there is no new thing under the sun,</div> - <div class='line'>Only this uncomely man with a smoking gun</div> - <div class='line'>In the gloom....</div> - <div class='line'>What the devil will he gain by it?</div> - <div class='line'>Digging a hole in the mud and standing all day in the rain by it</div> - <div class='line'>Waiting his doom;</div> - <div class='line'>The sharp blow, the swift outpouring of the blood</div> - <div class='line'>Till the trench of gray mud</div> - <div class='line'>Is turned to a brown purple drain by it.</div> - <div class='line'>Well, there have been scars</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_140'>140</span>Won in many wars,</div> - <div class='line'>Punic,</div> - <div class='line'>Lacedæmonian, wars of Napoleon, wars for faith, wars for honor, for love, for possession,</div> - <div class='line'>But this Belgian man in his ugly tunic,</div> - <div class='line'>His ugly round cap, shooting on, in a sort of obsession,</div> - <div class='line'>Overspreading his miserable land,</div> - <div class='line'>Standing with his wet gun in his hand....</div> - <div class='line'>Doom!</div> - <div class='line'>He finds that in a sudden scrimmage,</div> - <div class='line'>And lies, an unsightly lump on the sodden grass ...</div> - <div class='line'>An image that shall take long to pass!</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in32'>III</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>For the white-limbed heroes of Hellas ride by upon their horses</div> - <div class='line'>Forever through our brains.</div> - <div class='line'>The heroes of Cressy ride by upon their stallions;</div> - <div class='line'>And battalions and battalions and battalions—</div> - <div class='line'>The Old Guard, the Young Guard, the men of Minden and of Waterloo,</div> - <div class='line'>Pass, for ever staunch,</div> - <div class='line'>Stand, for ever true;</div> - <div class='line'>And the small man with the large paunch,</div> - <div class='line'>And the gray coat, and the large hat, and the hands behind the back,</div> - <div class='line'>Watches them pass</div> - <div class='line'>In our minds for ever....</div> - <div class='line'>But that clutter of sodden corses</div> - <div class='line'>On the sodden Belgian grass—</div> - <div class='line'>That is a strange new beauty.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in32'>IV</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>With no especial legends of marchings or triumphs or duty,</div> - <div class='line'>Assuredly that is the way of it,</div> - <div class='line'>The way of beauty....</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_141'>141</span>And that is the highest word you can find to say of it.</div> - <div class='line'>For you cannot praise it with words</div> - <div class='line'>Compounded of lyres and swords,</div> - <div class='line'>But the thought of the gloom and the rain</div> - <div class='line'>And the ugly coated figure, standing beside a drain,</div> - <div class='line'>Shall eat itself into your brain:</div> - <div class='line'>And you will say of all heroes, “They fought like the Belgians!”</div> - <div class='line'>And you will say, “He wrought like a Belgian his fate out of gloom.”</div> - <div class='line'>And you will say, “He bought like a Belgian</div> - <div class='line'>His doom.”</div> - <div class='line'>And that shall be an honorable name;</div> - <div class='line'>“Belgian” shall be an honorable word;</div> - <div class='line'>As honorable as the fame of the sword,</div> - <div class='line'>As honorable as the mention of the many-chorded lyre,</div> - <div class='line'>And his old coat shall seem as beautiful as the fabrics woven in Tyre.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in32'>V</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>And what in the world did they bear it for?</div> - <div class='line'>I don’t know.</div> - <div class='line'>And what in the world did they dare it for?</div> - <div class='line'>Perhaps that is not for the likes of me to understand.</div> - <div class='line'>They could very well have watched a hundred legions go</div> - <div class='line'>Over their fields and between their cities</div> - <div class='line'>Down into more southerly regions.</div> - <div class='line'>They could very well have let the legions pass through their woods,</div> - <div class='line'>And have kept their lives and their wives and their children and cattle and goods.</div> - <div class='line'>I don’t understand.</div> - <div class='line'>Was it just love of their land?</div> - <div class='line'>Oh, poor dears!</div> - <div class='line'>Can any man so love his land?</div> - <div class='line'>Give them a thousand thousand pities</div> - <div class='line'>And rivers and rivers of tears</div> - <div class='line'>To wash off the blood from the cities of Flanders.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in32'><span class='pageno' id='Page_142'>142</span>VI</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>This is Charing Cross;</div> - <div class='line'>It is midnight;</div> - <div class='line'>There is a great crowd</div> - <div class='line'>And no light—</div> - <div class='line'>A great crowd, all black, that hardly whispers aloud.</div> - <div class='line'>Surely, that is a dead woman—a dead mother!</div> - <div class='line'>She has a dead face;</div> - <div class='line'>She is dressed all in black;</div> - <div class='line'>She wanders to the book-stall and back,</div> - <div class='line'>At the back of the crowd;</div> - <div class='line'>And back again and again back,</div> - <div class='line'>She sways and wanders.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>This is Charing Cross;</div> - <div class='line'>It is one o’clock.</div> - <div class='line'>There is still a great cloud, and very little light;</div> - <div class='line'>Immense shafts of shadows over the black crowd</div> - <div class='line'>That hardly whispers aloud....</div> - <div class='line'>And now!... That is another dead mother,</div> - <div class='line'>And there is another and another and another....</div> - <div class='line'>And little children, all in black,</div> - <div class='line'>All with dead faces, waiting in all the waiting-places,</div> - <div class='line'>Wandering from the doors of the waiting-room</div> - <div class='line'>In the dim gloom.</div> - <div class='line'>These are the women of Flanders:</div> - <div class='line'>They await the lost.</div> - <div class='line'>They await the lost that shall never leave the dock;</div> - <div class='line'>They await the lost that shall never again come by the train</div> - <div class='line'>To the embraces of all these women with dead faces;</div> - <div class='line'>They await the lost who lie dead in trench and barrier and fosse,</div> - <div class='line'>In the dark of the night.</div> - <div class='line'>This is Charing Cross; it is past one of the clock;</div> - <div class='line'>There is very little light.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>There is so much pain.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'><span class='pageno' id='Page_143'>143</span><i><span lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">L’Envoi</span></i>:</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>And it was for this that they endured this gloom;</div> - <div class='line'>This October like November,</div> - <div class='line'>That August like a hundred thousand hours,</div> - <div class='line'>And that September,</div> - <div class='line'>A hundred thousand dragging sunlit days</div> - <div class='line'>And half October like a thousand years....</div> - <div class='line'>Oh, poor dears!</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='chapter'> - <h2 class='c005'>Scharmel Iris</h2> -</div> - -<h3 class='c013'>AFTER THE MARTYRDOM</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>They threw a stone, you threw a stone,</div> - <div class='line in2'>I threw a stone that day.</div> - <div class='line'>Although their sharpness bruised his flesh</div> - <div class='line in2'>He had no word to say.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>But for the moan he did not make</div> - <div class='line in2'>To-day I make my moan;</div> - <div class='line'>And for the stone I threw at him</div> - <div class='line in2'>My heart must bear a stone.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>LAMENT</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Lady, your heart has turned to dust,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Your wail is taken by the sea.</div> - <div class='line'>The wind is knocking at my heart,</div> - <div class='line in2'>And will not let me be.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Your moaning smites me in my dreams,</div> - <div class='line in2'>And I must sorrow till I die.</div> - <div class='line'>And I shall rove, and I shall weep,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Till in the grave I lie.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_144'>144</span> - <h3 class='c014'>ITERATION</h3> -</div> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>My son is dead and I am going blind,</div> - <div class='line'>And in the Ishmael-wind of grief</div> - <div class='line'>I tremble like a leaf;</div> - <div class='line'>I have no mind for any word you say:</div> - <div class='line'>My son is dead and I am going blind.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>EARLY NIGHTFALL</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>The pale day drowses on the western steep;</div> - <div class='line'>The toiler faints along the marge of sleep</div> - <div class='line'>Within the sunset-press, incarnadine,</div> - <div class='line'>The sun, a peasant, tramples out his wine.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Ah, scattered gold rests on the twilight streams;</div> - <div class='line'>The poppy opes her scarlet purse of dreams.</div> - <div class='line'>Night with the sickle-moon engarners wheat,</div> - <div class='line'>And binds the sheaves of stars beneath her feet.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Rest, weary heart, and every flight-worn bird!</div> - <div class='line'>The brooklet of the meadow lies unstirred.</div> - <div class='line'>Sleep, every soul, against a comrade breast!</div> - <div class='line'>God grant you peace, and guard you in your rest!</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='chapter'> - <h2 class='c005'>Orrick Johns</h2> -</div> - -<h3 class='c013'>SONGS OF DELIVERANCE</h3> - -<h4 class='c013'>I—THE SONG OF YOUTH</h4> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>This is the song of youth,</div> - <div class='line'>This is the cause of myself;</div> - <div class='line'>I knew my father well and he was a fool,</div> - <div class='line'>Therefore will I have my own foot in the path before I take a step;</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_145'>145</span>I will go only into new lands,</div> - <div class='line'>And I will walk on no plank-walks.</div> - <div class='line'>The horses of my family are wind-broken,</div> - <div class='line'>And the dogs are old,</div> - <div class='line'>And the guns rusty;</div> - <div class='line'>I will make me a new bow from an ash-tree,</div> - <div class='line'>And cut up the homestead into arrows.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Behold how people stand around!</div> - <div class='line'>(There are always crowds of people standing around,</div> - <div class='line'>Whose legs have no knees)—</div> - <div class='line'>While the engineers put up steel work ...</div> - <div class='line'>Is it something to catch the sunlight,</div> - <div class='line'>Jewelry and gew-gaw?</div> - <div class='line'>I have no time to wait for them to build bridges for me;</div> - <div class='line'>Where awful the gap seems stretching there is no gap,</div> - <div class='line'>Leaping I take it at once from a thought to a thought.</div> - <div class='line'>I can no more walk in the stride of other men</div> - <div class='line'>Than be father of their children.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>My treasure lured like a bright star,</div> - <div class='line'>And I went to it young and desirous.</div> - <div class='line'>Lo, as it stood there in its great chests,</div> - <div class='line'>The wise men came up with the keys,</div> - <div class='line'>Crying, “Blasphemy, blasphemy!”</div> - <div class='line'>For I had broken the locks....</div> - <div class='line'>And when the procession went waving to a funeral,</div> - <div class='line'>They cried it again;</div> - <div class='line'>For I stayed in my home and spoke truth about the dead.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Much did I learn waiting in my youth;</div> - <div class='line'>At the door of a great man I waited on one foot and then on the other.</div> - <div class='line'>The files passed in and out before me to the antechamber, for at that door I was not favored:</div> - <div class='line'>(O costly preferment!)</div> - <div class='line'>Yet I watched them coming and going,</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_146'>146</span>And I learned the great man by heart from the stories on their faces.</div> - <div class='line'>When presently the retainers arrived, one above the other in a row, saying:</div> - <div class='line'>“The great man is ready,”</div> - <div class='line'>I had long been a greater than he.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>This is the reason for myself:</div> - <div class='line'>When I used to go in the races, I had but one prayer,</div> - <div class='line'>And I went first before the judges, saying;</div> - <div class='line'>“Give everyone a distance, such as you consider best;</div> - <div class='line'>I will run scratch.”</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h4 class='c013'>II—VIRGINS</h4> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>I have had one fear in my life—</div> - <div class='line'>When I was young I feared virgins;</div> - <div class='line'>But I do not any more....</div> - <div class='line'>By contact with them I learn that each is a center,</div> - <div class='line'>And has a period of brightness,</div> - <div class='line'>And stands epitome in that brief space</div> - <div class='line'>Of the Universe!</div> - <div class='line'>Ah, the ephemeral eternal!</div> - <div class='line'>In virgins’ eyes I would live reflected as in a globe,</div> - <div class='line'>And know myself purer than crystal.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h4 class='c013'>III—NO PREY AM I</h4> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>No prey am I of poor thoughts.</div> - <div class='line'>I leave all of my followers; I tire quickly of them;</div> - <div class='line'>I send them away from me when they ask too much; for though I live alone</div> - <div class='line'>Still will I live, night and day ...</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>There is not anything in me save mutation and laughter;</div> - <div class='line'>My laughter is like a sword,</div> - <div class='line'>Like the piston-rod that defies oceans and grades.</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_147'>147</span>When I labor it is a song of battle in the broad noon;</div> - <div class='line'>For behold the muscles of a man—</div> - <div class='line'>They are piston-rods; they are cranes, hydraulic presses, powder-magazines:</div> - <div class='line'>But though my body be as beautiful as a hill crowned with flowers</div> - <div class='line'>I will despise it and make it obey me ...</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Is the old love dead?</div> - <div class='line'>Then I shall await the new,</div> - <div class='line'>To embrace it more sturdily and passionately than ever the old;</div> - <div class='line'>And break it under the white force of my laughter</div> - <div class='line'>Until it lies passive in my arms.</div> - <div class='line'>There is nothing in me but renewal;</div> - <div class='line'>If my friend bow his head over me I soon surprise him with shouts of joy:</div> - <div class='line'>For in an instant I am again what I was,</div> - <div class='line'>Only with a few moments more of the infusion of earth;</div> - <div class='line'>I tell him, the griever, to follow me and he is a griever no more;</div> - <div class='line'>He raises his head and must follow.</div> - <div class='line'>Yet it is my battle, not his battle,</div> - <div class='line'>For in me I absorb others ...</div> - <div class='line'>I hail parties and partisans from afar;</div> - <div class='line'>Not men but parties are my comrades,</div> - <div class='line'>Not persons but nations are my associates.</div> - <div class='line'>I shake the hand of nations;</div> - <div class='line'>For I am a nation and a party, and majorities do not elect me—</div> - <div class='line'>I elect myself.</div> - <div class='line'>I swam in the sea, and lo!</div> - <div class='line'>The continents assembled like islands off my coast.</div> - <div class='line'>My talk is with Homer and Bonaparte, with David and Garibaldi, with China and Pharaoh and Texas;</div> - <div class='line'>When I laugh it is with Lucifer and Rabelais.</div> - <div class='line'>A pathfinder is my mistress, one hard to keep and unbridled—</div> - <div class='line'>I have no respect for tame women.</div> - <div class='line'>My friends and I do not meet every day,</div> - <div class='line'>For we are centuries apart, our salutations girdle the globe.</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_148'>148</span>I have eaten locusts with Jeremiah;</div> - <div class='line'>I invite all hatreds and the stings of little creatures—</div> - <div class='line'>They enrich me, I glory in my parasites.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>No man shall ever read me,</div> - <div class='line'>For I bring about in a gesture what they cannot fathom in a life;</div> - <div class='line'>Yet I tell Bob and Harry and Bill—</div> - <div class='line'>It costs me nothing to be kind;</div> - <div class='line'>If I am a generous adversary, be not deceived, neither be devoted—</div> - <div class='line'>It is because I despise you.</div> - <div class='line'>Yet if any man claim to be my peer I shall meet him,</div> - <div class='line'>For that man has an insolence that I like;</div> - <div class='line'>I am beholden to him.</div> - <div class='line'>I know the lightning when I see it,</div> - <div class='line'>And the toad when I see it...</div> - <div class='line'>I warn all pretenders.</div> - <div class='line'>Yet before I came it was known of me to the chosen, all that I should do.</div> - <div class='line'>Every tree knew it;</div> - <div class='line'>Every lion and every leech knew it—</div> - <div class='line'>And called out to meet the new enemy,</div> - <div class='line'>The new friend...</div> - <div class='line'>What power can deny me?</div> - <div class='line'>It was known that I should do not one thing but hundreds,</div> - <div class='line'>For I despise my works and make them obey me.</div> - <div class='line'>I have my time and I bide it...</div> - <div class='line'>It was known that I should turn no whit from my end, until I had attained it.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Nothing has scathed me,</div> - <div class='line'>Nothing ever, nor ever will.</div> - <div class='line'>I have touched pitch, I have revelled in it and rolled in it;</div> - <div class='line'>Buried in mire and filth, I laughed long,</div> - <div class='line'>And sprang up.</div> - <div class='line'>I have loved lust and vain deviltries.</div> - <div class='line'>And taken them into my heart—</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_149'>149</span>Their dirt and their lies—and my heart was aflame</div> - <div class='line'>With a new fancy...</div> - <div class='line'>Not me can pitch defile!</div> - <div class='line'>For the Spring, my sister, rose under my feet</div> - <div class='line'>And I was again naked and white,</div> - <div class='line'>Ready to dive into the deep pool, green and bottomless,</div> - <div class='line'>The medium for heroes, since it is dangerous and beautiful—</div> - <div class='line'>The pool of Tomorrow!</div> - <div class='line'>It is because I breathe like fishes and live in the waters of Tomorrow that Death fears me...</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>How often I have intercepted thee, O Death!</div> - <div class='line'>O windy liar!</div> - <div class='line'>Thou canst do nothing against me;</div> - <div class='line'>If I command thee to stand back thou art afraid and cowerest,</div> - <div class='line'>For I have caught thee often and punished thee...</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>I am the greatest laugher of all,</div> - <div class='line'>Greater than the sun and the oak-tree,</div> - <div class='line'>Than the frog and Apollo;</div> - <div class='line'>I laugh all day long!</div> - <div class='line'>I laugh at Death, I hail Death, I kiss her on the cheek as a lover his bride,</div> - <div class='line'>But the lover goes not to his bride unless he desire her;</div> - <div class='line'>I go not to Death until I am ready.</div> - <div class='line'>The strong lover goes not to his bride save when he would people his land with sons;</div> - <div class='line'>Then I, too, I go not to Death, save it be for the labor greater than all others.</div> - <div class='line'>I shall break her with my laughter;</div> - <div class='line'>I shall complete her...</div> - <div class='line'>Only then shall Death be when I die!</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='chapter'> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_150'>150</span> - <h2 class='c005'>Joyce Kilmer</h2> -</div> - -<h3 class='c013'>TREES</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>I think that I shall never see</div> - <div class='line'>A poem lovely as a tree.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>A tree whose hungry mouth is prest</div> - <div class='line'>Against the earth’s sweet flowing breast;</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>A tree that looks at God all day,</div> - <div class='line'>And lifts her leafy arms to pray;</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>A tree that may in summer wear</div> - <div class='line'>A nest of robins in her hair;</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Upon whose bosom snow has lain;</div> - <div class='line'>Who intimately lives with rain.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Poems are made by fools like me,</div> - <div class='line'>But only God can make a tree.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>EASTER</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>The air is like a butterfly</div> - <div class='line in2'>With frail blue wings.</div> - <div class='line'>The happy earth looks at the sky</div> - <div class='line in2'>And sings.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='chapter'> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_151'>151</span> - <h2 class='c005'>Alfred Kreymborg</h2> -</div> - -<h3 class='c013'>AMERICA</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Up and down he goes</div> - <div class='line'>With terrible, reckless strides,</div> - <div class='line'>Flaunting great lamps</div> - <div class='line'>With joyous swings—</div> - <div class='line'>One to the East</div> - <div class='line'>And one to the West—</div> - <div class='line'>And flaunting two words</div> - <div class='line'>In a thunderous call</div> - <div class='line'>That thrills the hearts of all enemies:</div> - <div class='line'>All, One; All, One; All, One; All, One!</div> - <div class='line'>Beware that queer, wild, wonderful boy</div> - <div class='line'>And his playground—don’t go near!</div> - <div class='line'>All, One; All, One; All, One; All, One;</div> - <div class='line'>Up and down he goes.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>OLD MANUSCRIPT</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>The sky</div> - <div class='line'>Is that beautiful old parchment</div> - <div class='line'>In which the sun</div> - <div class='line'>And the moon</div> - <div class='line'>Keep their diary.</div> - <div class='line'>To read it all,</div> - <div class='line'>One must be a linguist</div> - <div class='line'>More learned than Father Wisdom;</div> - <div class='line'>And a visionary</div> - <div class='line'>More clairvoyant than Mother Dream.</div> - <div class='line'>But to feel it,</div> - <div class='line'>One must be an apostle:</div> - <div class='line'>One who is more than intimate</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_152'>152</span>In having been, always,</div> - <div class='line'>The only confidant—</div> - <div class='line'>Like the earth</div> - <div class='line'>Or the sea.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>CÉZANNE</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Our door was shut to the noon-day heat.</div> - <div class='line'>We could not see him.</div> - <div class='line'>We might not have heard him either—</div> - <div class='line'>Resting, dozing, dreaming pleasantly.</div> - <div class='line'>But his step was tremendous—</div> - <div class='line'>Are mountains on the march?</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>He was no man who passed;</div> - <div class='line'>But a great faithful horse</div> - <div class='line'>Dragging a load</div> - <div class='line'>Up the hill.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>PARASITE</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Good woman:</div> - <div class='line'>Don’t love the man.</div> - <div class='line'>Love yourself,</div> - <div class='line'>As you have done so exquisitely before.</div> - <div class='line'>Like that tortoise-shell cat of yours</div> - <div class='line'>Washing away the flies; or are they fleas?</div> - <div class='line'>You’ve hurt him again?</div> - <div class='line'>Good!</div> - <div class='line'>Do it often.</div> - <div class='line'>No—</div> - <div class='line'>He’ll love you the more—</div> - <div class='line'>Always.</div> - <div class='line'>Remember how he forgave you the last time,</div> - <div class='line'>And how he loved you in the forgiving.</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_153'>153</span>Give him an adventure in godhood</div> - <div class='line'>And the higher moralities.</div> - <div class='line'>Hurt him again.</div> - <div class='line'>Fine!</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='chapter'> - <h2 class='c005'>William Laird</h2> -</div> - -<h3 class='c013'>TRAÜMEREI AT OSTENDORFF’S</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>I ate at Ostendorff’s, and saw a dame</div> - <div class='line in2'>With eager golden eyes, paired with a red,</div> - <div class='line'>Bald, chilled, old man. Piercing the clatter came</div> - <div class='line in2'>Keen <em>Traümerei</em>. On the sound he bowed his head,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Covered his eyes, and looked on things long sped.</div> - <div class='line'>Her white fierce fingers strained, but could not stir</div> - <div class='line'>His close-locked hands, nor bring him back to her.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Let him alone, bright lady; for he clips</div> - <div class='line in2'>A fairer lass than you, with all your fire:</div> - <div class='line'>Let him alone; he touches sweeter lips</div> - <div class='line in2'>Than yours he hired, as others yet shall hire:</div> - <div class='line in2'>Leave him the quickening pang of clean desire,</div> - <div class='line'>Even though vain: nor taint those spring winds blown</div> - <div class='line'>From banks of perished bloom: let him alone.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Bitter-sweet melody, that call’st to tryst</div> - <div class='line in2'>Love from the hostile dark, would God thy breath</div> - <div class='line'>Might break upon him now through thickening mist,</div> - <div class='line in2'>The trumpet-summons of imperial Death;</div> - <div class='line in2'>That now, with fire-clean lips where quivereth</div> - <div class='line'>Atoning sorrow, he shall seek the eyes</div> - <div class='line'>Long turned towards earth from fields of paradise.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_154'>154</span>In vain: by virtue of a far-off smile,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Men may be deaf a space to gross behests</div> - <div class='line'>Of nearer voices; for some little while</div> - <div class='line in2'>Sharp pains of youth may burn in old men’s breasts.</div> - <div class='line in2'>But—men must eat, though angels be their guests:</div> - <div class='line'>The waiter brought spaghetti; he looked up,</div> - <div class='line'>Hemmed, blinked, and fiddled with his coffee-cup.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>A VERY OLD SONG</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>“Daughter, thou art come to die:</div> - <div class='line in2'>Sound be thy sleeping, lass.”</div> - <div class='line'>“Well: without lament or cry,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Mother, let me pass.”</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>“What things on mould were best of all?</div> - <div class='line in2'>(Soft be thy sleeping, lass.)”</div> - <div class='line'>“The apples reddening till they fall</div> - <div class='line'>In the sun beside the convent wall.</div> - <div class='line in2'>Let me pass.”</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>“Whom on earth hast thou loved best?</div> - <div class='line in2'>(Sound be thy sleeping, lass.)”</div> - <div class='line'>“Him that shared with me thy breast;</div> - <div class='line'>Thee; and a knight last year our guest.</div> - <div class='line'>He hath an heron to his crest.</div> - <div class='line in2'>Let me pass.”</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>“What leavest thou of fame or hoard?</div> - <div class='line in2'>(Soft be thy sleeping, lass.)”</div> - <div class='line'>“My far-blown shame for thy reward;</div> - <div class='line'>To my brother, gold to get him a sword.</div> - <div class='line in2'>Let me pass.”</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>“But what wilt leave thy lover, Grim?</div> - <div class='line in2'>(Sound be thy sleeping, lass.)”</div> - <div class='line'>“The hair he kissed to strangle him.</div> - <div class='line in2'>Mother, let me pass.”</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='chapter'> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_155'>155</span> - <h2 class='c005'>D. H. Lawrence</h2> -</div> - -<h3 class='c013'>A WOMAN AND HER DEAD HUSBAND</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Ah stern cold man,</div> - <div class='line'>How can you lie so relentless hard</div> - <div class='line'>While I wash you with weeping water!</div> - <div class='line'>Ah face, carved hard and cold,</div> - <div class='line'>You have been like this, on your guard</div> - <div class='line'>Against me, since death began.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>You masquerader!</div> - <div class='line'>How can you shame to act this part</div> - <div class='line'>Of unswerving indifference to me?</div> - <div class='line'>It is not you; why disguise yourself</div> - <div class='line'>Against me, to break my heart,</div> - <div class='line'>You evader?</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>You’ve a warm mouth,</div> - <div class='line'>A good warm mouth always sooner to soften</div> - <div class='line'>Even than your sudden eyes.</div> - <div class='line'>Ah cruel, to keep your mouth</div> - <div class='line'>Relentless, however often</div> - <div class='line'>I kiss it in drouth.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>You are not he.</div> - <div class='line'>Who are you, lying in his place on the bed</div> - <div class='line'>And rigid and indifferent to me?</div> - <div class='line'>His mouth, though he laughed or sulked,</div> - <div class='line'>Was always warm and red</div> - <div class='line'>And good to me.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>And his eyes could see</div> - <div class='line'>The white moon hang like a breast revealed</div> - <div class='line'>By the slipping shawl of stars,</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_156'>156</span>Could see the small stars tremble</div> - <div class='line'>As the heart beneath did wield</div> - <div class='line'>Systole, diastole.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>And he showed it me</div> - <div class='line'>So, when he made his love to me;</div> - <div class='line'>And his brows like rocks on the sea jut out,</div> - <div class='line'>And his eyes were deep like the sea</div> - <div class='line'>With shadow, and he looked at me,</div> - <div class='line'>Till I sank in him like the sea,</div> - <div class='line'>Awfully.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Oh, he was multiform—</div> - <div class='line'>Which then was he among the manifold?</div> - <div class='line'>The gay, the sorrowful, the seer?</div> - <div class='line'>I have loved a rich race of men in one—</div> - <div class='line'>But not this, this never-warm</div> - <div class='line'>Metal-cold—!</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Ah masquerader!</div> - <div class='line'>With your steel face white-enamelled,</div> - <div class='line'>Were you he, after all, and I never</div> - <div class='line'>Saw you or felt you in kissing?</div> - <div class='line'>—Yet sometimes my heart was trammelled</div> - <div class='line'>With fear, evader!</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Then was it you</div> - <div class='line'>After all, this cold, hard man?</div> - <div class='line'>—Ah no, look up at me,</div> - <div class='line'>Tell me it isn’t true,</div> - <div class='line'>That you’re only frightening me!</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>You will not stir,</div> - <div class='line'>Nor hear me, not a sound.</div> - <div class='line'>—Then it was you—</div> - <div class='line'>And all this time you were</div> - <div class='line'>Like this when I lived with you.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_157'>157</span>It is not true,</div> - <div class='line'>I am frightened, I am frightened of you</div> - <div class='line'>And of everything.</div> - <div class='line'>O God!—God too</div> - <div class='line'>Has deceived me in everything,</div> - <div class='line'>In everything.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>FIREFLIES IN THE CORN</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>A woman taunts her lover</em>:</div> - <div class='line in2'>Look at the little darlings in the corn!</div> - <div class='line in2'>The rye is taller than you, who think yourself</div> - <div class='line in2'>So high and mighty: look how its heads are borne</div> - <div class='line in2'>Dark and proud on the sky, like a number of knights</div> - <div class='line in2'>Passing with spears and pennants and manly scorn.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'>And always likely!—Oh, if I could ride</div> - <div class='line in2'>With my head held high-serene against the sky</div> - <div class='line in2'>Do you think I’d have a creature like you at my side</div> - <div class='line in2'>With your gloom and your doubt that you love me?</div> - <div class='line in4'>O darling rye,</div> - <div class='line in2'>How I adore you for your simple pride!</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'>And those bright fireflies wafting in between</div> - <div class='line in2'>And over the swaying cornstalks, just above</div> - <div class='line in2'>All their dark-feathered helmets, like little green</div> - <div class='line in2'>Stars come low and wandering here for love</div> - <div class='line in2'>Of this dark earth, and wandering all serene—!</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'>How I adore you, you happy things, you dears,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Riding the air and carrying all the time</div> - <div class='line in2'>Your little lanterns behind you: it cheers</div> - <div class='line in2'>My heart to see you settling and trying to climb</div> - <div class='line in2'>The corn-stalks, tipping with fire their spears.</div> - <div class='line in2'><span class='pageno' id='Page_158'>158</span>All over the corn’s dim motion, against the blue</div> - <div class='line in2'>Dark sky of night, the wandering glitter, the swarm</div> - <div class='line in2'>Of questing brilliant things:—you joy, you true</div> - <div class='line in2'>Spirit of careless joy: ah, how I warm</div> - <div class='line in2'>My poor and perished soul at the joy of you!</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>The man answers and she mocks</em>:</div> - <div class='line in2'>You’re a fool, woman. I love you, and you know I do!</div> - <div class='line in4'>—Lord, take his love away, it makes him whine.</div> - <div class='line in2'>And I give you everything that you want me to.</div> - <div class='line in4'>—Lord, dear Lord, do you think he ever <em>can</em> shine?</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>GREEN</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>The dawn was apple-green,</div> - <div class='line'>The sky was green wine held up in the sun,</div> - <div class='line'>The moon was a golden petal between.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>She opened her eyes, and green</div> - <div class='line'>They shone, clear like flowers undone</div> - <div class='line'>For the first time, now for the first time seen.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>GRIEF</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>The darkness steals the forms of all the queens.</div> - <div class='line'>But oh, the palms of her two black hands are red!</div> - <div class='line'>It is Death I fear so much, it is not the dead—</div> - <div class='line'>Not this gray book, but the red and bloody scenes.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>The lamps are white like snowdrops in the grass;</div> - <div class='line'>The town is like a churchyard, all so still</div> - <div class='line'>And gray, now night is here: nor will</div> - <div class='line'>Another torn red sunset come to pass.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>And so I sit and turn the book of gray,</div> - <div class='line'>Feeling the shadows like a blind man reading,</div> - <div class='line'>All fearful lest I find some next word bleeding.</div> - <div class='line'>Nay, take my painted missal book away.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_159'>159</span> - <h3 class='c014'>SERVICE OF ALL THE DEAD</h3> -</div> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Between the avenue of cypresses</div> - <div class='line'>All in their scarlet capes and surplices</div> - <div class='line'>Of linen, go the chaunting choristers,</div> - <div class='line'>The priests in gold and black, the villagers.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>And all along the path to the cemetery</div> - <div class='line'>The round dark heads of men crowd silently;</div> - <div class='line'>And black-scarfed faces of women-folk wistfully</div> - <div class='line'>Watch at the banner of death, and the mystery.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>And at the foot of a grave a father stands</div> - <div class='line'>With sunken head and forgotten, folded hands;</div> - <div class='line'>And at the foot of a grave a mother kneels</div> - <div class='line'>With pale shut face, nor neither hears nor feels</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>The coming of the chaunting choristers</div> - <div class='line'>Between the avenue of cypresses,</div> - <div class='line'>The silence of the many villagers,</div> - <div class='line'>The candle-flames beside the surplices.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='chapter'> - <h2 class='c005'>Agnes Lee</h2> -</div> - -<h3 class='c013'>MOTHERHOOD</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Mary, the Christ long slain, passed silently,</div> - <div class='line'>Following the children joyously astir</div> - <div class='line'>Under the cedrus and the olive-tree,</div> - <div class='line'>Pausing to let their laughter float to her.</div> - <div class='line'>Each voice an echo of a voice more dear,</div> - <div class='line'>She saw a little Christ in every face;</div> - <div class='line'>When lo, another woman, gliding near,</div> - <div class='line'>Yearned o’er the tender life that filled the place.</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_160'>160</span>And Mary sought the woman’s hand, and spoke:</div> - <div class='line'>“I know thee not, yet know thy memory tossed</div> - <div class='line'>With all a thousand dreams their eyes evoke</div> - <div class='line'>Who bring to thee a child beloved and lost.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'>“I, too, have rocked my little one.</div> - <div class='line in2'>Oh, He was fair!</div> - <div class='line in2'>Yea, fairer than the fairest sun,</div> - <div class='line in2'>And like its rays through amber spun</div> - <div class='line in2'>His sun-bright hair.</div> - <div class='line in2'>Still I can see it shine and shine.”</div> - <div class='line in2'>“Even so,” the woman said, “was mine.”</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'>“His ways were ever darling ways”—</div> - <div class='line in2'>And Mary smiled—</div> - <div class='line in2'>“So soft, so clinging! Glad relays</div> - <div class='line in2'>Of love were all His precious days.</div> - <div class='line in2'>My little child!</div> - <div class='line in2'>My infinite star! My music fled!”</div> - <div class='line in2'>“Even so was mine,” the woman said.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in1'>Then whispered Mary: “Tell me, thou,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Of thine.” And she:</div> - <div class='line in2'>“Oh, mine was rosy as a bough</div> - <div class='line in2'>Blooming with roses, sent, somehow,</div> - <div class='line in2'>To bloom for me!</div> - <div class='line in2'>His balmy fingers left a thrill</div> - <div class='line in2'>Within my breast that warms me still.”</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Then gazed she down some wilder, darker hour,</div> - <div class='line'>And said—when Mary questioned, knowing not:</div> - <div class='line'>“Who art thou, mother of so sweet a flower?”—</div> - <div class='line'>“I am the mother of Iscariot.”</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_161'>161</span> - <h3 class='c014'>A STATUE IN A GARDEN</h3> -</div> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>I was a goddess ere the marble found me.</div> - <div class='line in2'>Wind, wind, delay not!</div> - <div class='line'>Waft my spirit where the laurel crowned me!</div> - <div class='line in2'>Will the wind stay not?</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Then tarry, tarry, listen, little swallow!</div> - <div class='line in2'>An old glory feeds me—</div> - <div class='line'>I lay upon the bosom of Apollo!</div> - <div class='line in2'>Not a bird heeds me.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>For here the days are alien. Oh, to waken</div> - <div class='line in2'>Mine, mine, with calling!</div> - <div class='line'>But on my shoulders bare, like hopes forsaken,</div> - <div class='line in2'>The dead leaves are falling.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>The sky is gray and full of unshed weeping</div> - <div class='line in2'>As dim down the garden</div> - <div class='line'>I wait and watch the early autumn sweeping.</div> - <div class='line in2'>The stalks fade and harden.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>The souls of all the flowers afar have rallied.</div> - <div class='line in2'>The trees, gaunt, appalling,</div> - <div class='line'>Attest the gloom, and on my shoulders pallid</div> - <div class='line in2'>The dead leaves are falling.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>ON THE JAIL STEPS</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>I’ve won the race.</div> - <div class='line in2'>Young man, I’m new!</div> - <div class='line'><em>Old Sallow-face</em></div> - <div class='line in2'><em>Good luck to you!</em></div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_162'>162</span>I’ve turned about,</div> - <div class='line in2'>And paid for sin.</div> - <div class='line'><em>And you come out,</em></div> - <div class='line in2'><em>As I go in.</em></div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Ten years! but mark,</div> - <div class='line in2'>I am free, free!</div> - <div class='line'><em>Ten years of dark</em></div> - <div class='line in2'><em>Shall gather me.</em></div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>My wife—long-while</div> - <div class='line in2'>She wept her pain.</div> - <div class='line'><em>She cannot smile;</em></div> - <div class='line in2'><em>She weeps again.</em></div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>My little one</div> - <div class='line in2'>Shall know my call.</div> - <div class='line'><em>Child is there none</em></div> - <div class='line in2'><em>For sin grows tall.</em></div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Now who are you,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Spar of hell’s flood?</div> - <div class='line'><em>And who, and who,</em></div> - <div class='line in2'><em>But your own blood?</em></div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>HER GOING</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>The Wife</em></div> - <div class='line in4'>Child, why do you linger beside her portal?</div> - <div class='line in4'>None shall hear you now if you knock or clamor.</div> - <div class='line in4'>All is dark, hidden in heaviest leafage.</div> - <div class='line in4'>None shall behold you.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Truth</em></div> - <div class='line in4'>Gone, gone, the dear, the beautiful lady!</div> - <div class='line in4'>I, her comrade, tarry but to lament her.</div> - <div class='line in4'><span class='pageno' id='Page_163'>163</span>Ah, the day of her vanishing all things lovely</div> - <div class='line in4'>Shared in her fleetness!</div> - <div class='line in4'>Tell me her going.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>The Wife</em></div> - <div class='line in4'>You are a child. How tell you?</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Truth</em></div> - <div class='line in4'>I am a child, yet old as the earliest sorrow.</div> - <div class='line in4'>Talk to me as you would to an old, old woman.</div> - <div class='line in4'>I own the ages.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>The Wife</em></div> - <div class='line in4'>Voices, they say, gossipped around her dwelling.</div> - <div class='line in4'>She awoke, departing, they say, in silence.</div> - <div class='line in4'>I am glad she is gone. The old hurt fastens.</div> - <div class='line in4'>Hate is upon me.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in4'>It was hard to live down the day, and wonder,</div> - <div class='line in4'>Wonder why the tears were forever welling,</div> - <div class='line in4'>Wonder if on his lips her kiss I tasted</div> - <div class='line in4'>Turning to claim him.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Truth</em></div> - <div class='line in4'>Jealousy, mad, brooding blind and unfettered,</div> - <div class='line in4'>Takes its terrible leap over lie and malice.</div> - <div class='line in4'>Who shall question her now in the land of shadow?</div> - <div class='line in4'>Who shall uphold her?</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>The Wife</em></div> - <div class='line in4'>It was hard to know that peace had forsaken</div> - <div class='line in4'>All my house, to greet with a dull endeavor</div> - <div class='line in4'>Babe or book, so to forget a moment</div> - <div class='line in4'>I was forgotten.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_164'>164</span><em>Truth</em></div> - <div class='line in4'>Who shall question her now in the land of shadow,</div> - <div class='line in4'>Question the mute pale lips, and the marble fingers,</div> - <div class='line in4'>Eyelids fallen on eyes grown dim as the autumn?</div> - <div class='line in4'>Ah, the beloved!</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>The Wife</em></div> - <div class='line in4'>Go, go, bringer of ache and discord!</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Truth</em></div> - <div class='line in4'>Go I may not. Some, they think to inter me.</div> - <div class='line in4'>Out of the mold and clay my visible raiment</div> - <div class='line in4'>Rises forever.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>The Wife</em></div> - <div class='line in4'>Hers the sin that lured the light from our threshold,</div> - <div class='line in4'>Hers the sin that I lost his love and grew bitter.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Truth</em></div> - <div class='line in4'>Lost his love? You never possessed it, woman.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>The Wife</em></div> - <div class='line in4'>Sharp tongue, have pity!...</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in4'>Yes, I knew. But I loved him, hoping for all.</div> - <div class='line in4'>I said in my heart: “Time shall bring buds to blossom.”</div> - <div class='line in4'>I almost saw the flower of the flame descending.</div> - <div class='line in4'>Then—she came toying.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in4'>He is mine, mine, by the laws of the ages!</div> - <div class='line in4'>Mine, mine, mine—yes, body and spirit!</div> - <div class='line in4'>I am glad she has gone her way to the shadow.</div> - <div class='line in4'>Hate is upon me.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in4'>Oh, the bar over which my soul would see</div> - <div class='line in4'>All that eludes my soul, while he remembers!</div> - <div class='line in4'>You, dispel if you can my avenging passion—</div> - <div class='line in4'>Clouds are before me!</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='chapter'> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_165'>165</span> - <h2 class='c005'>William Ellery Leonard</h2> -</div> - -<h3 class='c013'>INDIAN SUMMER</h3> - -<div class='nf-center-c0'> -<div class='nf-center c002'> - <div><em>After completing a book for one now dead.</em></div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'>(<em>O Earth-and-Autumn of the Setting Sun,</em></div> - <div class='line in2'><em>She is not by, to know my task is done!</em>)</div> - <div class='line'>In the brown grasses slanting with the wind,</div> - <div class='line'>Lone as a lad whose dog’s no longer near,</div> - <div class='line'>Lone as a mother whose only child has sinned,</div> - <div class='line'>Lone on the loved hill.... And below me here</div> - <div class='line'>The thistle-down in tremulous atmosphere</div> - <div class='line'>Along red clusters of the sumach streams;</div> - <div class='line'>The shrivelled stalks of goldenrod are sere,</div> - <div class='line'>And crisp and white their flashing old racemes.</div> - <div class='line'>(... forever ... forever ... forever ...)</div> - <div class='line'>This is the lonely season of the year,</div> - <div class='line'>This is the season of our lonely dreams.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'>(<em>O Earth-and-Autumn of the Setting Sun</em></div> - <div class='line in2'><em>She is not by, to know my task is done!</em>)</div> - <div class='line'>The corn-shocks westward on the stubble plain</div> - <div class='line'>Show like an Indian village of dead days;</div> - <div class='line'>The long smoke trails behind the crawling train,</div> - <div class='line'>And floats atop the distant woods ablaze</div> - <div class='line'>With orange, crimson, purple. The low haze</div> - <div class='line'>Dims the scarped bluffs above the inland sea,</div> - <div class='line'>Whose wide and slaty waters in cold glaze</div> - <div class='line'>Await yon full-moon of the night-to-be.</div> - <div class='line'>(.... far ... and far ... and far ...)</div> - <div class='line'>These are the solemn horizons of man’s ways,</div> - <div class='line'>These the horizons of solemn thought to me.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'>(<em>O Earth-and-Autumn of the Setting Sun,</em></div> - <div class='line in2'><em>She is not by, to know my task is done!</em>)</div> - <div class='line'>And this the hill she visited, as friend;</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_166'>166</span>And this the hill she lingered on, as bride—</div> - <div class='line'>Down in the yellow valley is the end:</div> - <div class='line'>They laid her ... in no evening autumn tide ...</div> - <div class='line'>Under fresh flowers of that May morn, beside</div> - <div class='line'>The queens and cave-women of ancient earth.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>This is the hill ... and over my city’s towers</div> - <div class='line'>Across the world from sunset, yonder in air,</div> - <div class='line'>Shines, through its scaffoldings, a civic dome</div> - <div class='line'>Of piled masonry, which shall be ours</div> - <div class='line'>To give, completed, to our children there ...</div> - <div class='line'>And yonder far roof of my abandoned home</div> - <div class='line'>Shall house new laughter.... Yet I tried ... I tried ...</div> - <div class='line'>And, ever wistful of the doom to come,</div> - <div class='line'>I built her many a fire for love ... for mirth ...</div> - <div class='line'>(When snows were falling on our oaks outside,</div> - <div class='line'>Dear, many a winter fire upon the hearth) ...</div> - <div class='line'>(... farewell ... farewell ... farewell ...)</div> - <div class='line'>We dare not think too long on those who died,</div> - <div class='line'>While still so many yet must come to birth.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='chapter'> - <h2 class='c005'>Vachel Lindsay</h2> -</div> - -<h3 class='c013'>GENERAL WILLIAM BOOTH ENTERS INTO HEAVEN</h3> - -<div class='nf-center-c0'> -<div class='nf-center c002'> - <div><em>To be sung to the tune of</em> <span class='fss'>THE BLOOD OF THE LAMB</span> <em>with indicated instruments</em>.</div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Booth led boldly with his big bass drum.</div> - <div class='line in4'><em>Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?</em></div> - <div class='line'>The saints smiled gravely, and they said, “He’s come.”</div> - <div class='line in4'><em>Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?</em> <span class='sni'><span class='hidev'>|</span><em>Bass drums</em><span class='hidev'>|</span></span></div> - <div class='line'>Walking lepers followed, rank on rank,</div> - <div class='line'>Lurching bravos from the ditches dank,</div> - <div class='line'>Drabs from the alleyways and drug-fiends pale—</div> - <div class='line'>Minds still passion-ridden, soul-powers frail!</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_167'>167</span>Vermin-eaten saints with mouldy breath</div> - <div class='line'>Unwashed legions with the ways of death—</div> - <div class='line in4'><em>Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?</em></div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Every slum had sent its half-a-score</div> - <div class='line'>The round world over—Booth had groaned for more.</div> - <div class='line'>Every banner that the wide world flies</div> - <div class='line'>Bloomed with glory and transcendent dyes.</div> - <div class='line'>Big-voiced lasses made their banjos bang! <span class='sni'><span class='hidev'>|</span><em>Banjos</em><span class='hidev'>|</span></span></div> - <div class='line'>Tranced, fanatical, they shrieked and sang,</div> - <div class='line in4'><em>Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?</em></div> - <div class='line'>Hallelujah! It was queer to see</div> - <div class='line'>Bull-necked convicts with that land make free!</div> - <div class='line'>Loons with bazoos blowing blare, blare, blare—</div> - <div class='line'>On, on, upward through the golden air.</div> - <div class='line in4'><em>Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?</em></div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Booth died blind, and still by faith he trod,</div> - <div class='line'>Eyes still dazzled by the ways of God.</div> - <div class='line'>Booth led boldly and he looked the chief: <span class='sni'><span class='hidev'>|</span><em>Bass drums slower and softer</em><span class='hidev'>|</span></span></div> - <div class='line'>Eagle countenance in sharp relief,</div> - <div class='line'>Beard a-flying, air of high command</div> - <div class='line'>Unabated in that holy land.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Jesus came from out the Court-House door,</div> - <div class='line'>Stretched his hands above the passing poor.</div> - <div class='line'>Booth saw not, but led his queer ones there <span class='sni'><span class='hidev'>|</span><em>Flutes</em><span class='hidev'>|</span></span></div> - <div class='line'>Round and round the mighty Court-House square.</div> - <div class='line'>Yet in an instant all that blear review</div> - <div class='line'>Marched on spotless, clad in raiment new.</div> - <div class='line'>The lame were straightened, withered limbs uncurled</div> - <div class='line'>And blind eyes opened on a new sweet world.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Drabs and vixens in a flash made whole! <span class='sni'><span class='hidev'>|</span><em>Bass drums louder and faster</em><span class='hidev'>|</span></span></div> - <div class='line'>Gone was the weasel-head, the snout, the jowl;</div> - <div class='line'>Sages and sibyls now, and athletes clean,</div> - <div class='line'>Rulers of empires, and of forests green!</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_168'>168</span>The hosts were sandalled and their wings were fire—</div> - <div class='line in4'><em>Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?</em></div> - <div class='line'>But their noise played havoc with the angel-choir. <span class='sni'><span class='hidev'>|</span><em>Grand chorus tambourines—all instruments in full blast</em><span class='hidev'>|</span></span></div> - <div class='line in4'><em>Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?</em></div> - <div class='line'>Oh, shout Salvation! it was good to see</div> - <div class='line'>Kings and princes by the Lamb set free.</div> - <div class='line'>The banjos rattled and the tambourines blast</div> - <div class='line'>Jing-jing-jingled in the hands of queens!</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>And when Booth halted by the curb for prayer</div> - <div class='line'>He saw his Master through the flag-filled air. <span class='sni'><span class='hidev'>|</span><em>Reverently sung—no instruments</em><span class='hidev'>|</span></span></div> - <div class='line'>Christ came gently with a robe and crown</div> - <div class='line'>For Booth the soldier while the throng knelt down.</div> - <div class='line'>He saw King Jesus—they were face to face,</div> - <div class='line'>And he knelt a-weeping in that holy place.</div> - <div class='line in4'><em>Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?</em></div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>THE EAGLE THAT IS FORGOTTEN</h3> - -<div class='nf-center-c0'> -<div class='nf-center c002'> - <div><em>John P. Altgeld: Dec. 30, 1847–March 12, 1902.</em></div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Sleep softly ... eagle forgotten ... under the stone.</div> - <div class='line'>Time has its way with you there, and the clay has its own.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>“We have buried him now,” thought your foes, and in secret rejoiced.</div> - <div class='line'>They made a brave show of their mourning, their hatred unvoiced.</div> - <div class='line'>They had snarled at you, barked at you, foamed at you day after day;</div> - <div class='line'>Now you were ended. They praised you ... and laid you away.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>The others that mourned you in silence and terror and truth,</div> - <div class='line'>The widow bereft of her crust, and the boy without youth,</div> - <div class='line'>The mocked and the scorned and the wounded, the lame and the poor,</div> - <div class='line'>That should have remembered forever ... remember no more.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_169'>169</span>Where are those lovers of yours, on what name do they call—</div> - <div class='line'>The lost, that in armies wept over your funeral pall?</div> - <div class='line'>They call on the names of a hundred high-valiant ones;</div> - <div class='line'>A hundred white eagles have risen, the sons of your sons.</div> - <div class='line'>The zeal in their wings is a zeal that your dreaming began,</div> - <div class='line'>The valor that wore out your soul in the service of man.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Sleep softly ... eagle forgotten ... under the stone.</div> - <div class='line'>Time has its way with you there and the clay has its own.</div> - <div class='line'>Sleep on, O brave-hearted, O wise man, that kindled the flame—</div> - <div class='line'>To live in mankind is far more than to live in a name;</div> - <div class='line'>To live in mankind, far, far more ... than to live in a name.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>THE CONGO<br /> <span class='small'><em>A Study of the Negro Race</em></span></h3> - -<h4 class='c013'>I—THEIR BASIC SAVAGERY</h4> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Fat black bucks in a wine-barrel room,</div> - <div class='line'>Barrel-house kings, with feet unstable,</div> - <div class='line'>Sagged and reeled and pounded on the table, <span class='sni'><span class='hidev'>|</span><em>A deep rolling bass</em><span class='hidev'>|</span></span></div> - <div class='line'>Pounded on the table,</div> - <div class='line'>Beat an empty barrel with the handle of a broom,</div> - <div class='line'>Hard as they were able,</div> - <div class='line'>Boom, boom, <span class='sc'>Boom</span>,</div> - <div class='line'>With a silk umbrella and the handle of a broom,</div> - <div class='line'>Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, <span class='sc'>Boom</span>.</div> - <div class='line'><span class='sc'>Then</span> I had religion, <span class='sc'>Then</span> I had a vision.</div> - <div class='line'>I could not turn from their revel in derision.</div> - <div class='line'><span class='sc'>Then I saw the Congo, creeping through the black,</span> <span class='sni'><span class='hidev'>|</span><em>More deliberate. Solemnly chanted</em><span class='hidev'>|</span></span></div> - <div class='line'><span class='sc'>Cutting through the jungle with a golden track.</span></div> - <div class='line'>Then along that riverbank</div> - <div class='line'>A thousand miles</div> - <div class='line'>Tattooed cannibals danced in files;</div> - <div class='line'>Then I heard the boom of the blood-lust song</div> - <div class='line'>And a thigh-bone beating on a tin-pan gong.</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_170'>170</span>And “<span class='sc'>Blood!</span>” screamed the whistles and the fifes of the warriors, <span class='sni'><span class='hidev'>|</span><em>A rapidly piling climax of speed and racket</em><span class='hidev'>|</span></span></div> - <div class='line'>“<span class='sc'>Blood!</span>” screamed the skull-faced, lean witch-doctors;</div> - <div class='line'>“Whirl ye the deadly voo-doo rattle,</div> - <div class='line'>Harry the uplands,</div> - <div class='line'>Steal all the cattle,</div> - <div class='line'>Rattle-rattle, rattle-rattle,</div> - <div class='line'>Bing!</div> - <div class='line'>Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, <span class='sc'>Boom</span>!”</div> - <div class='line'>A roaring, epic, rag-time tune <span class='sni'><span class='hidev'>|</span><em>With a philosophic pause</em><span class='hidev'>|</span></span></div> - <div class='line'>From the mouth of the Congo</div> - <div class='line'>To the Mountains of the Moon.</div> - <div class='line'>Death is an Elephant,</div> - <div class='line'>Torch-eyed and horrible, <span class='sni'><span class='hidev'>|</span><em>Shrilly and with a heavily accented metre.</em><span class='hidev'>|</span></span></div> - <div class='line'>Foam-flanked and terrible.</div> - <div class='line'><span class='sc'>Boom</span>, steal the pygmies,</div> - <div class='line'><span class='sc'>Boom</span>, kill the Arabs,</div> - <div class='line'><span class='sc'>Boom</span>, kill the white men,</div> - <div class='line'><span class='sc'>Hoo, Hoo, Hoo</span>.</div> - <div class='line'>Listen to the yell of Leopold’s ghost <span class='sni'><span class='hidev'>|</span><em>Like the wind in the chimney</em><span class='hidev'>|</span></span></div> - <div class='line'>Burning in Hell for his hand-maimed host.</div> - <div class='line'>Hear how the demons chuckle and yell</div> - <div class='line'>Cutting his hands off, down in Hell.</div> - <div class='line'>Listen to the creepy proclamation,</div> - <div class='line'>Blown through the lairs of the forest-nation,</div> - <div class='line'>Blown past the white-ants’ hill of clay,</div> - <div class='line'>Blown past the marsh where the butterflies play:—</div> - <div class='line'>“Be careful what you do, <span class='sni'><span class='hidev'>|</span><em>All the O sounds very golden. Heavy accents very heavy. Light accents very light. Last line whispered.</em><span class='hidev'>|</span></span></div> - <div class='line'>Or Mumbo-Jumbo, God of the Congo,</div> - <div class='line'>And all of the other</div> - <div class='line'>Gods of the Congo,</div> - <div class='line'>Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you,</div> - <div class='line'>Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you,</div> - <div class='line'>Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you.”</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_171'>171</span> - <h4 class='c013'>II—THEIR IRREPRESSIBLE HIGH SPIRITS</h4> -</div> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Wild crap-shooters with a whoop and a call <span class='sni'><span class='hidev'>|</span><em>Rather shrill and high</em><span class='hidev'>|</span></span></div> - <div class='line'>Danced the juba in their gambling-hall</div> - <div class='line'>And laughed fit to kill, and shook the town,</div> - <div class='line'>And guyed the policemen and laughed them down</div> - <div class='line'>With a boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, <span class='sc'>Boom</span>.</div> - <div class='line'><span class='sc'>Then I saw the Congo, creeping through the black,</span> <span class='sni'><span class='hidev'>|</span><em>Read exactly as in first section</em><span class='hidev'>|</span></span></div> - <div class='line'><span class='sc'>Cutting through the jungle with a golden track.</span></div> - <div class='line'>A negro fairyland swung into view, <span class='sni'><span class='hidev'>|</span><em>Lay emphasis on the delicate ideas.</em><span class='hidev'>|</span></span></div> - <div class='line'>A minstrel river</div> - <div class='line'>Where dreams come true.</div> - <div class='line'>The ebony palace soared on high <span class='sni'><span class='hidev'>|</span><em>Keep as light-footed as possible</em><span class='hidev'>|</span></span></div> - <div class='line'>Through the blossoming trees to the evening sky.</div> - <div class='line'>The inlaid porches and casements shone</div> - <div class='line'>With gold and ivory and elephant-bone.</div> - <div class='line'>And the black crowd laughed till their sides were sore</div> - <div class='line'>At the baboon butler in the agate door,</div> - <div class='line'>And the well-known tunes of the parrot band</div> - <div class='line'>That trilled on the bushes of that magic land.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>A troupe of skull-faced witch-men came <span class='sni'><span class='hidev'>|</span><em>With pomposity</em><span class='hidev'>|</span></span></div> - <div class='line'>Through the agate doorway in suits of flame,</div> - <div class='line'>Yea, long-tailed coats with a gold-leaf crust</div> - <div class='line'>And hats that were covered with diamond-dust.</div> - <div class='line'>And the crowd in the court gave a whoop and a call</div> - <div class='line'>And danced the juba from wall to wall.</div> - <div class='line'>But the witch-men suddenly stilled the throng <span class='sni'><span class='hidev'>|</span><em>With a great deliberation and ghostliness</em><span class='hidev'>|</span></span></div> - <div class='line'>With a stern cold glare, and a stern old song:</div> - <div class='line'>“Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you.”...</div> - <div class='line'>Just then from the doorway, as fat as shotes <span class='sni'><span class='hidev'>|</span><em>With overwhelming assurance, good cheer, and pomp</em><span class='hidev'>|</span></span></div> - <div class='line'>Came the cake-walk princes in their long red coats,</div> - <div class='line'>Canes with a brilliant lacquer shine,</div> - <div class='line'>And tall silk hats that were red as wine.</div> - <div class='line'>And they pranced with their butterfly partners there, <span class='sni'><span class='hidev'>|</span><em>With growing speed and sharply marked dance-rhythm</em><span class='hidev'>|</span></span></div> - <div class='line'>Coal-black maidens with pearls in their hair,</div> - <div class='line'>Knee-skirts trimmed with the jassamine sweet,</div> - <div class='line'>And bells on their ankles and little black feet.</div> - <div class='line'>And the couples railed at the chant and the frown</div> - <div class='line'>Of the witch-men lean, and laughed them down.</div> - <div class='line'>(Oh, rare was the revel, and well worth while</div> - <div class='line'>That made those glowering witch-men smile.)</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_172'>172</span>The cake-walk royalty then began</div> - <div class='line'>To walk for a cake that was tall as a man</div> - <div class='line'>To the tune of “Boomlay, boomlay, <span class='sc'>Boom</span>,”</div> - <div class='line'>While the witch-men laughed, with a sinister air, <span class='sni'><span class='hidev'>|</span><em>With a touch of negro dialect, and as rapidly as possible toward the end</em><span class='hidev'>|</span></span></div> - <div class='line'>And sang with the scalawags prancing there:</div> - <div class='line'>“Walk with care, walk with care,</div> - <div class='line'>Or Mumbo-Jumbo, God of the Congo,</div> - <div class='line'>And all of the other</div> - <div class='line'>Gods of the Congo,</div> - <div class='line'>Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you.</div> - <div class='line'>Beware, beware, walk with care,</div> - <div class='line'>Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, boom.</div> - <div class='line'>Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, boom,</div> - <div class='line'>Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, boom,</div> - <div class='line'>Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay,</div> - <div class='line'><span class='sc'>Boom</span>.”</div> - <div class='line'>Oh, rare was the revel, and well worth while <span class='sni'><span class='hidev'>|</span><em>Slow philosophic calm</em><span class='hidev'>|</span></span></div> - <div class='line'>That made those glowering witch-men smile.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h4 class='c013'>III—THE HOPE OF THEIR RELIGION</h4> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>A good old negro in the slums of the town <span class='sni'><span class='hidev'>|</span><em>Heavy bass. With a literal imitation of camp-meeting racket, and trance</em><span class='hidev'>|</span></span></div> - <div class='line'>Preached at a sister for her velvet gown.</div> - <div class='line'>Howled at a brother for his low-down ways,</div> - <div class='line'>His prowling, guzzling, sneak-thief days.</div> - <div class='line'>Beat on the Bible till he wore it out</div> - <div class='line'>Starting the jubilee revival shout.</div> - <div class='line'>And some had visions, as they stood on chairs,</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_173'>173</span>And sang of Jacob, and the golden stairs.</div> - <div class='line'>And they all repented, a thousand strong,</div> - <div class='line'>From their stupor and savagery and sin and wrong,</div> - <div class='line'>And slammed with their hymn-books till they shook the room</div> - <div class='line'>With “Glory, glory, glory,”</div> - <div class='line'>And “Boom, boom, <span class='sc'>Boom</span>.”</div> - <div class='line'><span class='sc'>Then I saw the Congo, creeping through the black,</span></div> - <div class='line'><span class='sc'>Cutting through the jungle with a golden track.</span></div> - <div class='line'>And the gray sky opened like a new-rent veil <span class='sni'><span class='hidev'>|</span><em>Exactly as in the first section. Begin with terror and power, end with joy</em><span class='hidev'>|</span></span></div> - <div class='line'>And showed the apostles with their coats of mail.</div> - <div class='line'>In bright white steel they were seated round,</div> - <div class='line'>And their fire-eyes watched where the Congo wound.</div> - <div class='line'>And the twelve Apostles, from their thrones on high,</div> - <div class='line'>Thrilled all the forest with their heavenly cry: <span class='sni'><span class='hidev'>|</span><em>Sung to the tune of “Hark, ten thousand harps and voices”</em><span class='hidev'>|</span></span></div> - <div class='line'>“Mumbo-Jumbo will die in the jungle;</div> - <div class='line'>Never again will he hoo-doo you,</div> - <div class='line'>Never again will he hoo-doo you.”</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Then along that river, a thousand miles <span class='sni'><span class='hidev'>|</span><em>With growing deliberation and joy</em><span class='hidev'>|</span></span></div> - <div class='line'>The vine-snared trees tell down in files.</div> - <div class='line'>Pioneer angels cleared the way</div> - <div class='line'>For a Congo paradise, for babes at play,</div> - <div class='line'>For sacred capitals, for temples clean.</div> - <div class='line'>Gone were the skull-faced witch-men lean.</div> - <div class='line'>There, where the wild ghost-gods had wailed, <span class='sni'><span class='hidev'>|</span><em>In a rather high key—as delicately as possible</em><span class='hidev'>|</span></span></div> - <div class='line'>A million boats of the angels sailed</div> - <div class='line'>With oars of silver, and prows of blue</div> - <div class='line'>And silken pennants that the sun shone through.</div> - <div class='line'>’Twas a land transfigured, ’twas a new creation.</div> - <div class='line'>Oh, a singing wind swept the negro nation,</div> - <div class='line'>And on through the backwoods clearing flew:— <span class='sni'><span class='hidev'>|</span><em>To the tune of “Hark, ten thousand harps and voices”</em><span class='hidev'>|</span></span></div> - <div class='line'>“Mumbo-Jumbo is dead in the jungle.</div> - <div class='line'>Never again will he hoo-doo you.</div> - <div class='line'>Never again will he hoo-doo you.”</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_174'>174</span>Redeemed were the forests, the beasts and the men,</div> - <div class='line'>And only the vulture dared again</div> - <div class='line'>By the far, lone mountains of the moon</div> - <div class='line'>To cry, in the silence, the Congo tune: <span class='sni'><span class='hidev'>|</span><em>Dying down into a penetrating, terrified whisper</em><span class='hidev'>|</span></span></div> - <div class='line'>“Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you,</div> - <div class='line'>Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you.</div> - <div class='line'>Mumbo ... Jumbo ... will ... hoo-doo ... you.”</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>ALADDIN AND THE JINN</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>“Bring me soft song,” said Aladdin;</div> - <div class='line in2'>“This tailor-shop sings not at all.</div> - <div class='line'>Chant me a word of the twilight,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Of roses that mourn in the fall.</div> - <div class='line'>Bring me a song like hashish</div> - <div class='line in2'>That will comfort the stale and the sad,</div> - <div class='line'>For I would be mending my spirit,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Forgetting these days that are bad:</div> - <div class='line'>Forgetting companions too shallow,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Their quarrels and arguments thin;</div> - <div class='line'>Forgetting the shouting muezzin.”</div> - <div class='line in2'>“<em>I am your slave</em>,” said the Jinn.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>“Bring me old wines,” said Aladdin,</div> - <div class='line in2'>“I have been a starved pauper too long.</div> - <div class='line'>Serve them in vessels of jade and of shell,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Serve them with fruit and with song:</div> - <div class='line'>Wines of pre-Adamite Sultans</div> - <div class='line in2'>Digged from beneath the black seas,</div> - <div class='line'>New-gathered dew from the heavens</div> - <div class='line in2'>Dripped down from heaven’s sweet trees,</div> - <div class='line'>Cups from the angels’ pale tables</div> - <div class='line in2'>That will make me both handsome and wise;</div> - <div class='line'>For I have beheld her, the Princess—</div> - <div class='line in2'>Firelight and starlight her eyes!</div> - <div class='line'>Pauper I am—I would woo her.</div> - <div class='line in2'><span class='pageno' id='Page_175'>175</span>And ... let me drink wine to begin,</div> - <div class='line'>Though the Koran expressly forbids it.”</div> - <div class='line in2'>“<em>I am your slave</em>,” said the Jinn.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>“Plan me a dome,” said Aladdin,</div> - <div class='line in2'>“That is drawn like the dawn of the moon,</div> - <div class='line'>When the sphere seems to rest on the mountains</div> - <div class='line in2'>Half-hidden, yet full-risen soon.</div> - <div class='line'>Build me a dome,” said Aladdin,</div> - <div class='line in2'>“That shall cause all young lovers to sigh—</div> - <div class='line'>The fulness of life and of beauty,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Peace beyond peace to the eye;</div> - <div class='line'>A palace of foam and of opal,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Pure moonlight without and within,</div> - <div class='line'>Where I may enthrone my sweet lady.”</div> - <div class='line in2'>“<em>I am your slave</em>,” said the Jinn.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>THE CHINESE NIGHTINGALE</h3> - -<p class='c017'><em>A Song in Chinese Tapestries</em></p> - -<p class='c007'><em>Dedicated to S. T. F.</em></p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>“How, how,” he said. “Friend Chang,” I said,</div> - <div class='line'>“San Francisco sleeps as the dead—</div> - <div class='line'>Ended license, lust and play:</div> - <div class='line'>Why do you iron the night away?</div> - <div class='line'>Your big clock speaks with a deadly sound,</div> - <div class='line'>With a tick and a wail till dawn comes round.</div> - <div class='line'>While the monster shadows glower and creep,</div> - <div class='line'>What can be better for man than sleep?”</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>“I will tell you a secret,” Chang replied;</div> - <div class='line'>“My breast with vision is satisfied,</div> - <div class='line'>And I see green trees and fluttering wings,</div> - <div class='line'>And my deathless bird from Shanghai sings.”</div> - <div class='line'>Then he lit five fire-crackers in a pan.</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_176'>176</span>“Pop, pop!” said the fire-crackers, “cra-cra-crack!”</div> - <div class='line'>He lit a joss-stick long and black.</div> - <div class='line'>Then the proud gray joss in the corner stirred;</div> - <div class='line'>On his wrist appeared a gray small bird,</div> - <div class='line'>And this was the song of the gray small bird:</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'>“Where is the princess, loved forever,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Who made Chang first of the kings of men?”</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>And the joss in the corner stirred again;</div> - <div class='line'>And the carved dog, curled in his arms, awoke,</div> - <div class='line'>Barked forth a smoke-cloud that whirled and broke.</div> - <div class='line'>It piled in a maze round the ironing-place,</div> - <div class='line'>And there on the snowy table wide</div> - <div class='line'>Stood a Chinese lady of high degree,</div> - <div class='line'>With a scornful, witching, tea-rose face ...</div> - <div class='line'>Yet she put away all form and pride,</div> - <div class='line'>And laid her glimmering veil aside</div> - <div class='line'>With a childlike smile for Chang and for me.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>The walls fell back, night was aflower,</div> - <div class='line'>The table gleamed in a moonlit bower,</div> - <div class='line'>While Chang, with a countenance carved of stone,</div> - <div class='line'>Ironed and ironed, all alone.</div> - <div class='line'>And thus she sang to the busy man Chang:</div> - <div class='line'>“Have you forgotten ...</div> - <div class='line'>Deep in the ages, long, long ago,</div> - <div class='line'>I was your sweetheart, there on the sand—</div> - <div class='line'>Storm-worn beach of the Chinese land?</div> - <div class='line'>We sold our grain in the peacock town</div> - <div class='line'>Built on the edge of the sea-sands brown—</div> - <div class='line'>Built on the edge of the sea-sands brown ...</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>“When all the world was drinking blood</div> - <div class='line'>From the skulls of men and bulls,</div> - <div class='line'>And all the world had swords and clubs of stone,</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_177'>177</span>We drank our tea in China beneath the sacred spice-trees,</div> - <div class='line'>And heard the curled waves of the harbor moan.</div> - <div class='line'>And this gray bird, in Love’s first spring,</div> - <div class='line'>With a bright-bronze breast and a bronze-brown wing,</div> - <div class='line'>Captured the world with his carolling.</div> - <div class='line'>Do you remember, ages after,</div> - <div class='line'>At last the world we were born to own?</div> - <div class='line'>You were the heir of the yellow throne—</div> - <div class='line'>The world was the field of the Chinese man</div> - <div class='line'>And we were the pride of the sons of Han.</div> - <div class='line'>We copied deep books, and we carved in jade,</div> - <div class='line'>And wove white silks in the mulberry shade.”...</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'>“I remember, I remember</div> - <div class='line in2'>That Spring came on forever,</div> - <div class='line in2'>That Spring came on forever,”</div> - <div class='line in2'>Said the Chinese nightingale.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>My heart was filled with marvel and dream,</div> - <div class='line'>Though I saw the western street-lamps gleam,</div> - <div class='line'>Though dawn was bringing the western day,</div> - <div class='line'>Though Chang was a laundryman ironing away ...</div> - <div class='line'>Mingled there with the streets and alleys,</div> - <div class='line'>The railroad-yard, and the clock-tower bright,</div> - <div class='line'>Demon-clouds crossed ancient valleys;</div> - <div class='line'>Across wide lotus-ponds of light</div> - <div class='line'>I marked a giant firefly’s flight.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>And the lady, rosy-red,</div> - <div class='line'>Opened her fan, closed her fan,</div> - <div class='line'>Stretched her hand toward Chang, and said:</div> - <div class='line'>“Do you remember,</div> - <div class='line'>Ages after,</div> - <div class='line'>Our palace of heart-red stone?</div> - <div class='line'>Do you remember</div> - <div class='line'>The little doll-faced children</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_178'>178</span>With their lanterns full of moon-fire,</div> - <div class='line'>That came from all the empire</div> - <div class='line'>Honoring the throne?—</div> - <div class='line'>The loveliest fête and carnival</div> - <div class='line'>Our world had ever known?</div> - <div class='line'>The sages sat about us</div> - <div class='line'>With their heads bowed in their beards,</div> - <div class='line'>With proper meditation on the sight.</div> - <div class='line'>Confucius was not born;</div> - <div class='line'>We lived in those great days</div> - <div class='line'>Confucius later said were lived aright ...</div> - <div class='line'>And this gray bird, on that day of spring,</div> - <div class='line'>With a bright-bronze breast and a bronze-brown wing,</div> - <div class='line'>Captured the world with his carolling.</div> - <div class='line'>Late at night his tune was spent.</div> - <div class='line'>Peasants,</div> - <div class='line'>Sages,</div> - <div class='line'>Children,</div> - <div class='line'>Homeward went,</div> - <div class='line'>And then the bronze bird sang for you and me.</div> - <div class='line'>We walked alone, our hearts were high and free.</div> - <div class='line'>I had a silvery name, I had a silvery name,</div> - <div class='line'>I had a silvery name—do you remember</div> - <div class='line'>The name you cried beside the tumbling sea?”</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Chang turned not to the lady slim—</div> - <div class='line'>He bent to his work, ironing away;</div> - <div class='line'>But she was arch and knowing and glowing.</div> - <div class='line'>And the bird on his shoulder spoke for him.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'>“Darling ... darling ... darling ... darling ...”</div> - <div class='line in2'>Said the Chinese nightingale.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'> · · · · ·</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>The great gray joss on a rustic shelf,</div> - <div class='line'>Rakish and shrewd, with his collar awry,</div> - <div class='line'>Sang impolitely, as though by himself,</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_179'>179</span>Drowning with his bellowing the nightingale’s cry:</div> - <div class='line'>“Back through a hundred, hundred years</div> - <div class='line'>Hear the waves as they climb the piers,</div> - <div class='line'>Hear the howl of the silver seas,</div> - <div class='line'>Hear the thunder!</div> - <div class='line'>Hear the gongs of holy China</div> - <div class='line'>How the waves and tunes combine</div> - <div class='line'>In a rhythmic clashing wonder,</div> - <div class='line'>Incantation old and fine:</div> - <div class='line in2'>‘Dragons, dragons, Chinese dragons;</div> - <div class='line in2'>Red fire-crackers, and green fire-crackers,</div> - <div class='line in2'>And dragons, dragons, Chinese dragons.’”</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Then the lady, rosy-red,</div> - <div class='line'>Turned to her lover Chang and said:</div> - <div class='line'>“Dare you forget that turquoise dawn</div> - <div class='line'>When we stood in our mist-hung velvet lawn,</div> - <div class='line'>And worked a spell this great joss taught</div> - <div class='line'>Till a God of the Dragons was charmed and caught?</div> - <div class='line'>From the flag high over our palace-home</div> - <div class='line'>He flew to our feet in rainbow-foam—</div> - <div class='line'>A king of beauty and tempest and thunder</div> - <div class='line'>Panting to tear our sorrows asunder,</div> - <div class='line'>A dragon of fair adventure and wonder.</div> - <div class='line'>We mounted the back of that royal slave</div> - <div class='line'>With thoughts of desire that were noble and grave.</div> - <div class='line'>We swam down the shore to the dragon-mountains,</div> - <div class='line'>We whirled to the peaks and the fiery fountains.</div> - <div class='line'>To our secret ivory house we were borne.</div> - <div class='line'>We looked down the wonderful wing-filled regions</div> - <div class='line'>Where the dragons darted in glimmering legions.</div> - <div class='line'>Right by my breast the nightingale sang;</div> - <div class='line'>The old rhymes rang in the sunlit mist</div> - <div class='line'>That we this hour regain—</div> - <div class='line'>Song-fire for the brain.</div> - <div class='line'>When my hands and my hair and my feet you kissed,</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_180'>180</span>When you cried for your heart’s new pain,</div> - <div class='line'>What was my name in the dragon-mist,</div> - <div class='line'>In the rings of rainbowed rain?”</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'>“Sorrow and love, glory and love,”</div> - <div class='line in2'>Said the Chinese nightingale.</div> - <div class='line in2'>“Sorrow and love, glory and love,”</div> - <div class='line in2'>Said the Chinese nightingale.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>And now the joss broke in with his song:</div> - <div class='line'>“Dying ember, bird of Chang,</div> - <div class='line'>Soul of Chang, do you remember?—</div> - <div class='line'>Ere you returned to the shining harbor</div> - <div class='line'>There were pirates by ten thousand</div> - <div class='line'>Descended on the town</div> - <div class='line'>In vessels mountain-high and red and brown,</div> - <div class='line'>Moon-ships that climbed the storms and cut the skies.</div> - <div class='line'>On their prows were painted terrible bright eyes.</div> - <div class='line'>But I was then a wizard and a scholar and a priest;</div> - <div class='line'>I stood upon the sand;</div> - <div class='line'>With lifted hand I looked upon them</div> - <div class='line'>And sunk their vessels with my wizard eyes,</div> - <div class='line'>And the stately lacquer-gate made safe again.</div> - <div class='line'>Deep, deep below the bay, the sea-weed and the spray,</div> - <div class='line'>Embalmed in amber every pirate lies,</div> - <div class='line'>Embalmed in amber every pirate lies.”</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Then this did the noble lady say:</div> - <div class='line'>“Bird, do you dream of our home-coming day</div> - <div class='line'>When you flew like a courier on before</div> - <div class='line'>From the dragon-peak to our palace-door,</div> - <div class='line'>And we drove the steed in your singing path—</div> - <div class='line'>The ramping dragon of laughter and wrath;</div> - <div class='line'>And found our city all aglow,</div> - <div class='line'>And knighted this joss that decked it so?</div> - <div class='line'>There were golden fishes in the purple river</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_181'>181</span>And silver fishes and rainbow fishes.</div> - <div class='line'>There were golden junks in the laughing river,</div> - <div class='line'>And silver junks and rainbow junks:</div> - <div class='line'>There were golden lilies by the bay and river,</div> - <div class='line'>And silver lilies and tiger-lilies,</div> - <div class='line'>And tinkling wind-bells in the gardens of the town</div> - <div class='line'>By the black-lacquer gate</div> - <div class='line'>Where walked in state</div> - <div class='line'>The kind king Chang</div> - <div class='line'>And his sweetheart mate ...</div> - <div class='line'>With his flag-born dragon</div> - <div class='line'>And his crown of pearl ... and ... jade;</div> - <div class='line'>And his nightingale reigning in the mulberry shade,</div> - <div class='line'>And sailors and soldiers on the sea-sands brown,</div> - <div class='line'>And priests who bowed them down to your song—</div> - <div class='line'>By the city called Han, the peacock town,</div> - <div class='line'>By the city called Han, the nightingale town,</div> - <div class='line'>The nightingale town.”</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Then sang the bird, so strangely gay,</div> - <div class='line'>Fluttering, fluttering, ghostly and gray,</div> - <div class='line'>A vague, unravelling, answering tune,</div> - <div class='line'>Like a long unwinding silk cocoon;</div> - <div class='line'>Sang as though for the soul of him</div> - <div class='line'>Who ironed away in that bower dim:</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'>“I have forgotten</div> - <div class='line in2'>Your dragons great,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Merry and mad and friendly and bold.</div> - <div class='line in2'>Dim is your proud lost palace-gate.</div> - <div class='line in2'>I vaguely know</div> - <div class='line in2'>There were heroes of old,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Troubles more than the heart could hold,</div> - <div class='line in2'>There were wolves in the woods</div> - <div class='line in2'>Yet lambs in the fold,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Nests in the top of the almond tree ...</div> - <div class='line in2'><span class='pageno' id='Page_182'>182</span>The evergreen tree ... and the mulberry tree ...</div> - <div class='line in2'>Life and hurry and joy forgotten,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Years on years I but half-remember ...</div> - <div class='line in2'>Man is a torch, then ashes soon,</div> - <div class='line in2'>May and June, then dead December,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Dead December, then again June.</div> - <div class='line in2'>Who shall end my dream’s confusion?</div> - <div class='line in2'>Life is a loom, weaving illusion ...</div> - <div class='line in2'>I remember, I remember</div> - <div class='line in2'>There were ghostly veils and laces ...</div> - <div class='line in2'>In the shadowy, bowery places ...</div> - <div class='line in2'>With lovers’ ardent faces</div> - <div class='line in2'>Bending to one another,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Speaking each his part.</div> - <div class='line in2'>They infinitely echo</div> - <div class='line in2'>In the red cave of my heart.</div> - <div class='line in2'>‘Sweetheart, sweetheart, sweetheart!’</div> - <div class='line in2'>They said to one another.</div> - <div class='line in2'>They spoke, I think, of perils past.</div> - <div class='line in2'>They spoke, I think, of peace at last.</div> - <div class='line in2'>One thing I remember:</div> - <div class='line in2'>Spring came on forever,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Spring came on forever,”</div> - <div class='line in2'>Said the Chinese nightingale.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='chapter'> - <h2 class='c005'>Amy Lowell</h2> -</div> - -<h3 class='c013'>PATTERNS</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>I walk down the garden paths,</div> - <div class='line'>And all the daffodils</div> - <div class='line'>Are blowing, and the bright blue squills.</div> - <div class='line'>I walk down the patterned garden paths</div> - <div class='line'>In my stiff, brocaded gown.</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_183'>183</span>With my powdered hair and jewelled fan,</div> - <div class='line'>I too am a rare</div> - <div class='line'>Pattern. As I wander down</div> - <div class='line'>The garden paths.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>My dress is richly figured,</div> - <div class='line'>And the train</div> - <div class='line'>Makes a pink and silver stain</div> - <div class='line'>On the gravel, and the thrift</div> - <div class='line'>Of the borders.</div> - <div class='line'>Just a plate of current fashion,</div> - <div class='line'>Tripping by in high-heeled, ribboned shoes.</div> - <div class='line'>Not a softness anywhere about me,</div> - <div class='line'>Only whale-bone and brocade.</div> - <div class='line'>And I sink on a seat in the shade</div> - <div class='line'>Of a lime tree. For my passion</div> - <div class='line'>Wars against the stiff brocade.</div> - <div class='line'>The daffodils and squills</div> - <div class='line'>Flutter in the breeze</div> - <div class='line'>As they please.</div> - <div class='line'>And I weep;</div> - <div class='line'>For the lime tree is in blossom</div> - <div class='line'>And one small flower has dropped upon my bosom.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>And the plashing of waterdrops</div> - <div class='line'>In the marble fountain</div> - <div class='line'>Comes down the garden paths.</div> - <div class='line'>The dripping never stops.</div> - <div class='line'>Underneath my stiffened gown</div> - <div class='line'>Is the softness of a woman bathing in a marble basin,</div> - <div class='line'>A basin in the midst of hedges grown</div> - <div class='line'>So thick, she cannot see her lover hiding,</div> - <div class='line'>But she guesses he is near,</div> - <div class='line'>And the sliding of the water</div> - <div class='line'>Seems the stroking of a dear</div> - <div class='line'>Hand upon her.</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_184'>184</span>What is Summer in a fine brocaded gown!</div> - <div class='line'>I should like to see it lying in a heap upon the ground.</div> - <div class='line'>All the pink and silver crumpled up on the ground.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>I would be the pink and silver as I ran along the paths,</div> - <div class='line'>And he would stumble after,</div> - <div class='line'>Bewildered by my laughter.</div> - <div class='line'>I should see the sun flashing from his sword hilt and the buckles on his shoes.</div> - <div class='line'>I would choose</div> - <div class='line'>To lead him in a maze along the patterned paths,</div> - <div class='line'>A bright and laughing maze for my heavy-booted lover,</div> - <div class='line'>Till he caught me in the shade,</div> - <div class='line'>And the buttons of his waistcoat bruised my body as he clasped me,</div> - <div class='line'>Aching, melting, unafraid.</div> - <div class='line'>With the shadows of the leaves and the sundrops,</div> - <div class='line'>And the plopping of the waterdrops,</div> - <div class='line'>All about us in the open afternoon—</div> - <div class='line'>I am very like to swoon</div> - <div class='line'>With the weight of this brocade,</div> - <div class='line'>For the sun shifts through the shade.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Underneath the fallen blossom</div> - <div class='line'>In my bosom,</div> - <div class='line'>Is a letter I have hid.</div> - <div class='line'>It was brought to me this morning by a rider from the Duke.</div> - <div class='line'>“Madam, we regret to inform you that Lord Hartwell</div> - <div class='line'>Died in action Thursday se’nnight.”</div> - <div class='line'>As I read it in the white, morning sunlight,</div> - <div class='line'>The letters squirmed like snakes.</div> - <div class='line'>“Any answer, Madam?” said my footman.</div> - <div class='line'>“No,” I told him.</div> - <div class='line'>“See that the messenger takes some refreshment.</div> - <div class='line'>No, no answer.”</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_185'>185</span>And I walked into the garden,</div> - <div class='line'>Up and down the patterned pat</div> - <div class='line'>In my stiff, correct brocade.</div> - <div class='line'>The blue and yellow flowers stood up proudly in the sun,</div> - <div class='line'>Each one.</div> - <div class='line'>I stood upright too,</div> - <div class='line'>Held rigid to the pattern</div> - <div class='line'>By the stiffness of my gown.</div> - <div class='line'>Up and down I walked,</div> - <div class='line'>Up and down.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>In a month he would have been my husband.</div> - <div class='line'>In a month, here, underneath this lime,</div> - <div class='line'>We would have broke the pattern;</div> - <div class='line'>He for me, and I for him,</div> - <div class='line'>He as Colonel, I as Lady,</div> - <div class='line'>On this shady seat.</div> - <div class='line'>He had a whim</div> - <div class='line'>That sunlight carried blessing.</div> - <div class='line'>And I answered, “It shall be as you have said.”</div> - <div class='line'>Now he is dead.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>In Summer and in Winter I shall walk</div> - <div class='line'>Up and down</div> - <div class='line'>The patterned garden paths</div> - <div class='line'>In my stiff, brocaded gown.</div> - <div class='line'>The squills and daffodils</div> - <div class='line'>Will give place to pillared roses, and to asters, and to snow.</div> - <div class='line'>I shall go</div> - <div class='line'>Up and down,</div> - <div class='line'>In my gown.</div> - <div class='line'>Gorgeously arrayed,</div> - <div class='line'>Boned and stayed.</div> - <div class='line'>And the softness of my body will be guarded from embrace</div> - <div class='line'>By each button, hook, and lace.</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_186'>186</span>For the man who should loose me is dead,</div> - <div class='line'>Fighting with the Duke in Flanders,</div> - <div class='line'>In a pattern called a war.</div> - <div class='line'>Christ! What are patterns for?</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>1777</h3> - -<h4 class='c013'>I—THE TRUMPET-VINE ARBOR</h4> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>The throats of the little red trumpet-flowers are wide open,</div> - <div class='line'>And the clangor of brass beats against the hot sunlight.</div> - <div class='line'>They bray and blare at the burning sky.</div> - <div class='line'>Red! Red! Coarse notes of red,</div> - <div class='line'>Trumpeted at the blue sky.</div> - <div class='line'>In long streaks of sound, molten metal,</div> - <div class='line'>The vine declares itself.</div> - <div class='line'>Clang!—from its red and yellow trumpets.</div> - <div class='line'>Clang!—from its long, nasal trumpets,</div> - <div class='line'>Splitting the sunlight into ribbons, tattered and shot with noise.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>I sit in the cool arbor, in a green and gold twilight.</div> - <div class='line'>It is very still, for I cannot hear the trumpets;</div> - <div class='line'>I only know that they are red and open,</div> - <div class='line'>And that the sun above the arbor shakes with heat.</div> - <div class='line'>My quill is newly mended,</div> - <div class='line'>And makes fine-drawn lines with its point.</div> - <div class='line'>Down the long white paper it makes little lines,</div> - <div class='line'>Just lines,—up—down—criss-cross.</div> - <div class='line'>My heart is strained out at the pin-point of my quill;</div> - <div class='line'>It is thin and writhing like the marks of the pen.</div> - <div class='line'>My hand marches to a squeaky tune,</div> - <div class='line'>It marches down the paper to a squealing of fifes.</div> - <div class='line'>My pen and the trumpet-flowers,</div> - <div class='line'>And Washington’s armies away over the smoke-tree to the southwest.</div> - <div class='line'>“Yankee Doodle,” my darling! It is you against the British,</div> - <div class='line'>Marching in your ragged shoes to batter down King George.</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_187'>187</span>What have you got in your hat? Not a feather, I wager.</div> - <div class='line'>Just a hay-straw, for it is the harvest you are fighting for.</div> - <div class='line'>Hay in your hat, and the whites of their eyes for a target!</div> - <div class='line'>Like Bunker Hill, two years ago, when I watched all day from the housetop,</div> - <div class='line'>Through father’s spy-glass,</div> - <div class='line'>The red city, and the blue, bright water,</div> - <div class='line'>And puffs of smoke which you made.</div> - <div class='line'>Twenty miles away,</div> - <div class='line'>Round by Cambridge, or over the Neck,</div> - <div class='line'>But the smoke was white—white!</div> - <div class='line'>To-day the trumpet-flowers are red—red—</div> - <div class='line'>And I cannot see you fighting;</div> - <div class='line'>But old Mr. Dimond has fled to Canada,</div> - <div class='line'>And Myra sings “Yankee Doodle” at her milking.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>The red throats of the trumpets bray and clang in the sunshine,</div> - <div class='line'>And the smoke-tree puffs dun blossoms into the blue air.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h4 class='c013'>II—THE CITY OF FALLING LEAVES</h4> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Leaves fall,</div> - <div class='line'>Brown leaves,</div> - <div class='line'>Yellow leaves streaked with brown.</div> - <div class='line'>They fall,</div> - <div class='line'>Flutter,</div> - <div class='line'>Fall again.</div> - <div class='line'>The brown leaves,</div> - <div class='line'>And the streaked yellow leaves,</div> - <div class='line'>Loosen on their branches</div> - <div class='line'>And drift slowly downwards.</div> - <div class='line'>One,</div> - <div class='line'>One, two, three,</div> - <div class='line'>One, two, five.</div> - <div class='line'>All Venice is a falling of autumn leaves,</div> - <div class='line'>Brown,</div> - <div class='line'>And yellow streaked with brown.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_188'>188</span>“That sonnet, Abate,</div> - <div class='line'>Beautiful,</div> - <div class='line'>I am quite exhausted by it.</div> - <div class='line'>Your phrases turn about my heart,</div> - <div class='line'>And stifle me to swooning.</div> - <div class='line'>Open the window, I beg.</div> - <div class='line'>Lord! What a strumming of fiddles and mandolins!</div> - <div class='line'>’Tis really a shame to stop indoors.</div> - <div class='line'>Call my maid, or I will make you lace me yourself.</div> - <div class='line'>Fie, how hot it is, not a breath of air!</div> - <div class='line'>See how straight the leaves are falling.</div> - <div class='line'>Marianna, I will have the yellow satin caught up with silver fringe,</div> - <div class='line'>It peeps out delightfully from under a mantle.</div> - <div class='line'>Am I well painted to-day, <i><span lang="it" xml:lang="it">caro Abate mio</span></i>?</div> - <div class='line'>You will be proud of me at the Ridotto, hey?</div> - <div class='line'>Proud of being <i><span lang="it" xml:lang="it">cavalier servente</span></i> to such a lady?”</div> - <div class='line'>“Can you doubt it, <i><span lang="it" xml:lang="it">bellissima Contessa</span></i>?</div> - <div class='line'>A pinch more rouge on the right cheek,</div> - <div class='line'>And Venus herself shines less ...”</div> - <div class='line'>“You bore me, Abate;</div> - <div class='line'>I vow I must change you!</div> - <div class='line'>A letter, Achmet?</div> - <div class='line'>Run and look out of the window, Abate.</div> - <div class='line'>I will read my letter in peace.”</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>The little black slave with the yellow satin turban</div> - <div class='line'>Gazes at his mistress with strained eyes.</div> - <div class='line'>His yellow turban and black skin</div> - <div class='line'>Are gorgeous—barbaric.</div> - <div class='line'>The yellow satin dress with its silver flashings</div> - <div class='line'>Lies on a chair,</div> - <div class='line'>Beside a black mantle and a black mask.</div> - <div class='line'>Yellow and black,</div> - <div class='line'>Gorgeous—barbaric.</div> - <div class='line'>The lady reads her letter,</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_189'>189</span>And the leaves drift slowly</div> - <div class='line'>Past the long windows.</div> - <div class='line'>“How silly you look, my dear Abate,</div> - <div class='line'>With that great brown leaf in your wig.</div> - <div class='line'>Pluck it off, I beg you,</div> - <div class='line'>Or I shall die of laughing.”</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>A yellow wall,</div> - <div class='line'>Aflare in the sunlight,</div> - <div class='line'>Chequered with shadows,</div> - <div class='line'>Shadows of vine-leaves,</div> - <div class='line'>Shadows of masks.</div> - <div class='line'>Masks coming, printing themselves for an instant,</div> - <div class='line'>Then passing on,</div> - <div class='line'>More masks always replacing them.</div> - <div class='line'>Masks with tricorns and rapiers sticking out behind,</div> - <div class='line'>Pursuing masks with veils and high heels,</div> - <div class='line'>The sunlight shining under their insteps.</div> - <div class='line'>One,</div> - <div class='line'>One, two,</div> - <div class='line'>One, two, three—</div> - <div class='line'>There is a thronging of shadows on the hot wall,</div> - <div class='line'>Filigreed at the top with moving leaves.</div> - <div class='line'>Yellow sunlight and black shadows,</div> - <div class='line'>Yellow and black,</div> - <div class='line'>Gorgeous—barbaric.</div> - <div class='line'>Two masks stand together,</div> - <div class='line'>And the shadow of a leaf falls through them,</div> - <div class='line'>Marking the wall where they are not.</div> - <div class='line'>From hat-tip to shoulder-tip,</div> - <div class='line'>From elbow to sword-hilt,</div> - <div class='line'>The leaf falls.</div> - <div class='line'>The shadows mingle,</div> - <div class='line'>Blur together,</div> - <div class='line'>Slide along the wall and disappear.</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_190'>190</span>Gold of mosaics and candles,</div> - <div class='line'>And night-blackness lurking in the ceiling beams.</div> - <div class='line'>Saint Mark’s glitters with flames and reflections.</div> - <div class='line'>A cloak brushes aside,</div> - <div class='line'>And the yellow of satin</div> - <div class='line'>Licks out over the colored inlays of the pavement.</div> - <div class='line'>Under the gold crucifixes</div> - <div class='line'>There is a meeting of hands</div> - <div class='line'>Reaching from black mantles.</div> - <div class='line'>Sighing embraces, bold investigations,</div> - <div class='line'>Hide in confessionals,</div> - <div class='line'>Sheltered by the shuffling of feet.</div> - <div class='line'>Gorgeous—barbaric</div> - <div class='line'>In its mail of jewels and gold,</div> - <div class='line'>Saint Mark’s looks down at the swarm of black masks;</div> - <div class='line'>And outside in the palace gardens brown leaves fall,</div> - <div class='line'>Flutter,</div> - <div class='line'>Fall.</div> - <div class='line'>Brown,</div> - <div class='line'>And yellow streaked with brown.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Blue-black the sky over Venice,</div> - <div class='line'>With a pricking of yellow stars.</div> - <div class='line'>There is no moon,</div> - <div class='line'>And the waves push darkly against the prow</div> - <div class='line'>Of the gondola,</div> - <div class='line'>Coming from Malamocco</div> - <div class='line'>And streaming toward Venice.</div> - <div class='line'>It is black under the gondola hood,</div> - <div class='line'>But the yellow of a satin dress</div> - <div class='line'>Glares out like the eye of a watching tiger.</div> - <div class='line'>Yellow compassed about with darkness,</div> - <div class='line'>Yellow and black,</div> - <div class='line'>Gorgeous—barbaric.</div> - <div class='line'>The boatman sings,</div> - <div class='line'>It is Tasso that he sings;</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_191'>191</span>The lovers seek each other beneath their mantles,</div> - <div class='line'>And the gondola drifts over the lagoon, aslant to the coming dawn.</div> - <div class='line'>But at Malamocco in front,</div> - <div class='line'>In Venice behind,</div> - <div class='line'>Fall the leaves,</div> - <div class='line'>Brown,</div> - <div class='line'>And yellow streaked with brown.</div> - <div class='line'>They fall,</div> - <div class='line'>Flutter,</div> - <div class='line'>Fall.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>VENUS TRANSIENS</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Tell me,</div> - <div class='line'>Was Venus more beautiful</div> - <div class='line'>Than you are,</div> - <div class='line'>When she stopped</div> - <div class='line'>The crinkled waves,</div> - <div class='line'>Drifting shoreward</div> - <div class='line'>On her plaited shell?</div> - <div class='line'>Was Botticelli’s vision</div> - <div class='line'>Fairer than mine;</div> - <div class='line'>And were the painted rosebuds</div> - <div class='line'>He tossed his lady</div> - <div class='line'>Of better worth</div> - <div class='line'>Than the words I blow about you</div> - <div class='line'>To cover your too great loveliness</div> - <div class='line'>As with a gauze</div> - <div class='line'>Of misted silver?</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>For me,</div> - <div class='line'>You stand poised</div> - <div class='line'>In the blue and buoyant air,</div> - <div class='line'>Cinctured by bright winds,</div> - <div class='line'>Treading the sunlight.</div> - <div class='line'>And the waves which precede you</div> - <div class='line'>Ripple and stir</div> - <div class='line'>The sands at my feet.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_192'>192</span> - <h3 class='c014'>A LADY</h3> -</div> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>You are beautiful and faded,</div> - <div class='line'>Like an old opera tune</div> - <div class='line'>Played upon a harpsichord;</div> - <div class='line'>Or like the sun-flooded silks</div> - <div class='line'>Of an eighteenth century boudoir.</div> - <div class='line'>In your eyes</div> - <div class='line'>Smoulder the fallen roses of outlived minutes,</div> - <div class='line'>And the perfume of your soul</div> - <div class='line'>Is vague and suffusing,</div> - <div class='line'>With the pungence of sealed spice jars.</div> - <div class='line'>Your half-tones delight me,</div> - <div class='line'>And I grow mad with gazing</div> - <div class='line'>At your blent colors.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>My vigor is a new-minted penny,</div> - <div class='line'>Which I cast at your feet.</div> - <div class='line'>Gather it up from the dust,</div> - <div class='line'>That its sparkle may amuse you.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>CHINOISERIES</h3> - -<h4 class='c013'>REFLECTIONS</h4> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>When I looked into your eyes,</div> - <div class='line'>I saw a garden</div> - <div class='line'>With peonies, and tinkling pagodas,</div> - <div class='line'>And round-arched bridges</div> - <div class='line'>Over still lakes.</div> - <div class='line'>A woman sat beside the water</div> - <div class='line'>In a rain-blue, silken garment.</div> - <div class='line'>She reached through the water</div> - <div class='line'>To pluck the crimson peonies</div> - <div class='line'>Beneath the surface,</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_193'>193</span>But as she grasped the stems,</div> - <div class='line'>They jarred and broke into white-green ripples,</div> - <div class='line'>And as she drew out her hand,</div> - <div class='line'>The water-drops dripping from it</div> - <div class='line'>Stained her rain-blue dress like tears.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h4 class='c013'>FALLING SNOW</h4> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>The snow whispers about me,</div> - <div class='line'>And my wooden clogs</div> - <div class='line'>Leave holes behind me in the snow.</div> - <div class='line'>But no one will pass this way</div> - <div class='line'>Seeking my footsteps,</div> - <div class='line'>And when the temple bell rings again</div> - <div class='line'>They will be covered and gone.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h4 class='c013'>HOAR-FROST</h4> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>In the cloud-gray mornings</div> - <div class='line'>I heard the herons flying;</div> - <div class='line'>And when I came into my garden,</div> - <div class='line'>My silken outer-garment</div> - <div class='line'>Trailed over withered leaves.</div> - <div class='line'>A dried leaf crumbles at a touch,</div> - <div class='line'>But I have seen many Autumns</div> - <div class='line'>With herons blowing like smoke</div> - <div class='line'>Across the sky.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>SOLITAIRE</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>When night drifts along the streets of the city,</div> - <div class='line'>And sifts down between the uneven roofs,</div> - <div class='line'>My mind begins to peek and peer.</div> - <div class='line'>It plays at ball in old, blue Chinese gardens,</div> - <div class='line'>And shakes wrought dice-cups in Pagan temples,</div> - <div class='line'>Amid the broken flutings of white pillars.</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_194'>194</span>It dances with purple and yellow crocuses in its hair,</div> - <div class='line'>And its feet shine as they flutter over drenched grasses.</div> - <div class='line'>How light and laughing my mind is,</div> - <div class='line'>When all the good folk have put out their bed-room candles,</div> - <div class='line'>And the city is still!</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>A GIFT</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>See! I give myself to you, Beloved!</div> - <div class='line'>My words are little jars</div> - <div class='line'>For you to take and put upon a shelf.</div> - <div class='line'>Their shapes are quaint and beautiful,</div> - <div class='line'>And they have many pleasant colors and lustres</div> - <div class='line'>To recommend them.</div> - <div class='line'>Also the scent from them fills the room</div> - <div class='line'>With sweetness of flowers and crushed grasses.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>When I shall have given you the last one</div> - <div class='line'>You will have the whole of me,</div> - <div class='line'>But I shall be dead.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>RED SLIPPERS</h3> - -<p class='c017'>Red slippers in a shop-window; and outside in the street, -flaws of gray, windy sleet!</p> - -<p class='c006'>Behind the polished glass the slippers hang in long threads of -red, festooning from the ceiling like stalactites of blood, flooding -the eyes of passers-by with dripping color, jamming their crimson -reflections against the windows of cabs and tram-cars, screaming -their claret and salmon into the teeth of the sleet, plopping their -little round maroon lights upon the tops of umbrellas.</p> - -<p class='c006'>The row of white, sparkling shop-fronts is gashed and bleeding, -it bleeds red slippers. They spout under the electric light, fluid -and fluctuating, a hot rain—and freeze again to red slippers, -myriadly multiplied in the mirror side of the window.</p> - -<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_195'>195</span>They balance upon arched insteps like springing bridges of -crimson lacquer; they swing up over curved heels like whirling -tanagers sucked in a wind-pocket; they flatten out, heelless, like -July ponds, flared and burnished by red rockets.</p> - -<p class='c007'>Snap, snap, they are cracker sparks of scarlet in the white, -monotonous block of shops.</p> - -<p class='c007'>They plunge the clangor of billions of vermilion trumpets into -the crowd outside, and echo in faint rose over the pavement.</p> - -<p class='c006'>People hurry by, for these are only shoes, and in a window farther -down is a big lotus bud of cardboard, whose petals open every -few minutes and reveal a wax doll, with staring bead eyes and -flaxen hair, lolling awkwardly in its flower chair.</p> - -<p class='c007'>One has often seen shoes, but whoever saw a cardboard lotus -bud before?</p> - -<p class='c006'>The flaws of gray, windy sleet beat on the shop-window where -there are only red slippers.</p> - -<h3 class='c014'>APOLOGY</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Be not angry with me that I bear</div> - <div class='line in2'>Your colors everywhere,</div> - <div class='line in2'>All through each crowded street,</div> - <div class='line in4'>And meet</div> - <div class='line in2'>The wonder-light in every eye,</div> - <div class='line in4'>As I go by.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Each plodding wayfarer looks up to gaze,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Blinded by rainbow-haze,</div> - <div class='line in2'>The stuff of happiness,</div> - <div class='line in4'>No less,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Which wraps me in its glad-hued folds</div> - <div class='line in4'>Of peacock golds.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_196'>196</span>Before my feet the dusty, rough-paved way</div> - <div class='line in2'>Flushes beneath its gray.</div> - <div class='line in2'>My steps fall ringed with light,</div> - <div class='line in4'>So bright</div> - <div class='line in2'>It seems a myriad suns are strown</div> - <div class='line in4'>About the town.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Around me is the sound of steepled bells,</div> - <div class='line in2'>And rich perfumèd smells</div> - <div class='line in2'>Hang like a wind-forgotten cloud,</div> - <div class='line in4'>And shroud</div> - <div class='line in2'>Me from close contact with the world.</div> - <div class='line in4'>I dwell, impearled.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>You blazon me with jewelled insignia.</div> - <div class='line in2'>A flaming nebula</div> - <div class='line in2'>Rims in my life. And yet</div> - <div class='line in4'>You set</div> - <div class='line in2'>The word upon me, unconfessed,</div> - <div class='line in4'>To go unguessed.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='chapter'> - <h2 class='c005'>Percy Mackaye</h2> -</div> - -<h3 class='c013'>OLD AGE</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Old Age, the irrigator,</div> - <div class='line'>Digs our bosoms straighter,</div> - <div class='line'>More workable and deeper still</div> - <div class='line'>To turn the ever-running mill</div> - <div class='line'>Of nights and days. He makes a trough</div> - <div class='line'>To drain our passions off,</div> - <div class='line'>That used so beautiful to lie</div> - <div class='line'>Variegated to the sky,</div> - <div class='line'>On waste moorlands of the heart—</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_197'>197</span>Haunts of idleness, and art</div> - <div class='line'>Still half-dreaming. All their piedness,</div> - <div class='line'>Rank and wild and shallow wideness,</div> - <div class='line'>Desultory splendors, he</div> - <div class='line'>Straightens conscientiously</div> - <div class='line'>To a practicable sluice</div> - <div class='line'>Meant for workaday, plain use.</div> - <div class='line'>All the mists of early dawn,</div> - <div class='line'>Twilit marshes, being gone</div> - <div class='line'>With their glamor, and their stench,</div> - <div class='line'>There is left—a narrow trench.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>SONG FROM “MATER”</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Long ago, in the young moonlight,</div> - <div class='line in2'>I lost my heart to a hero;</div> - <div class='line'>Strong and tender and stern and right,</div> - <div class='line in4'>Darker than night,</div> - <div class='line in2'>And terribler than Nero.</div> - <div class='line in2'>Heigh, but he was dear, O!</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>And there, to bind our fellowship,</div> - <div class='line in2'>I laughed at him; and a moment after,</div> - <div class='line'>I laughed again till he bit his lip,</div> - <div class='line in2'>For the test of love is laughter.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>“Lord and master, look up!” I cried;</div> - <div class='line in2'>“I wreathe your brow with a laurel!</div> - <div class='line'>Gloom and wisdom and right and pride</div> - <div class='line in4'>Cast them aside,</div> - <div class='line in2'>And kiss, and cure our quarrel.</div> - <div class='line in2'>Never mind the moral!”</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Alas! with strange and saddened eyes</div> - <div class='line in2'>He looked on me; and my mirth grew dafter,</div> - <div class='line'>To feel the flush of his dark surprise;</div> - <div class='line in2'>For the zest of love is laughter.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_198'>198</span>Long ago, in the old moonlight,</div> - <div class='line in2'>I lost my hero and lover;</div> - <div class='line'>Strong and tender and stern and right,</div> - <div class='line in4'>Never shall night</div> - <div class='line in2'>Nor day his brow uncover.</div> - <div class='line in2'>Ah, my heart, that is over!</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Yet still, for joy of the fellowship</div> - <div class='line in2'>That bound us both through the years long after,</div> - <div class='line'>I laugh to think how he bit his lip;</div> - <div class='line in4'>For the test of love—</div> - <div class='line in2'>And the best of love—is laughter.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='chapter'> - <h2 class='c005'>Frederic Manning</h2> -</div> - -<h3 class='c013'>SACRIFICE</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Love suffereth all things,</div> - <div class='line'>And we,</div> - <div class='line'>Out of the travail and pain of our striving,</div> - <div class='line'>Bring unto Thee the perfect prayer:</div> - <div class='line'>For the lips of no man utter love,</div> - <div class='line'>Suffering even for love’s sake.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>For us no splendid apparel of pageantry—</div> - <div class='line'>Burnished breast-plates, scarlet banners, and trumpets</div> - <div class='line'>Sounding exultantly.</div> - <div class='line'>But the mean things of the earth Thou hast chosen,</div> - <div class='line'>Decked them with suffering;</div> - <div class='line'>Made them beautiful with the passion for rightness,</div> - <div class='line'>Strong with the pride of love.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Yea, though our praise of Thee slayeth us,</div> - <div class='line'>Yet love shall exalt us beside Thee triumphant,</div> - <div class='line'>Dying that these live;</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_199'>199</span>And the earth again be beautiful with orchards,</div> - <div class='line'>Yellow with wheatfields;</div> - <div class='line'>And the lips of others praise Thee, though our lips</div> - <div class='line'>Be stopped with earth, and songless.</div> - <div class='line'>Yet we shall have brought Thee their praises</div> - <div class='line'>Brought unto Thee the perfect prayer:</div> - <div class='line'>For the lips of no man utter love,</div> - <div class='line'>Suffering even for love’s sake.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>O God of sorrows,</div> - <div class='line'>Whose feet come softly through the dews,</div> - <div class='line'>Stoop Thou unto us,</div> - <div class='line'>For we die so Thou livest,</div> - <div class='line'>Our hearts the cups of Thy vintage:</div> - <div class='line'>And the lips of no man utter love,</div> - <div class='line'>Suffering even for love’s sake.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>AT EVEN</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Hush ye! Hush ye! My babe is sleeping.</div> - <div class='line in2'>Hush, ye winds, that are full of sorrow!</div> - <div class='line'>Hush, ye rains, from your weary weeping!</div> - <div class='line in2'>Give him slumber until to-morrow.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Hush ye, yet! In the years hereafter,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Surely sorrow is all his reaping;</div> - <div class='line'>Tears shall be in the place of laughter,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Give him peace for a while in sleeping.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Hush ye, hush! he is weak and ailing:</div> - <div class='line in2'>Send his mother his share of weeping.</div> - <div class='line'>Hush ye, winds, from your endless wailing;</div> - <div class='line in2'>Hush ye, hush ye, my babe is sleeping!</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='chapter'> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_200'>200</span> - <h2 class='c005'>John Masefield</h2> -</div> - -<h3 class='c013'>SHIPS</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>I cannot tell their wonder nor make known</div> - <div class='line'>Magic that once thrilled through me to the bone;</div> - <div class='line'>But all men praise some beauty, tell some tale,</div> - <div class='line'>Vent a high mood which makes the rest seem pale,</div> - <div class='line'>Pour their heart’s blood to flourish one green leaf,</div> - <div class='line'>Follow some Helen for her gift of grief,</div> - <div class='line'>And fail in what they mean, whate’er they do:</div> - <div class='line'>You should have seen, man cannot tell to you</div> - <div class='line'>The beauty of the ships of that my city.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>That beauty now is spoiled by the sea’s pity;</div> - <div class='line'>For one may haunt the pier a score of times,</div> - <div class='line'>Hearing St. Nicholas bells ring out the chimes,</div> - <div class='line'>Yet never see those proud ones swaying home</div> - <div class='line'>With mainyards backed and bows a cream of foam,</div> - <div class='line'>Those bows so lovely-curving, cut so fine,</div> - <div class='line'>Those coulters of the many-bubbled brine,</div> - <div class='line'>As once, long since, when all the docks were filled</div> - <div class='line'>With that sea-beauty man has ceased to build.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Yet, though their splendor may have ceased to be</div> - <div class='line'>Each played her sovereign part in making me;</div> - <div class='line'>Now I return my thanks with heart and lips</div> - <div class='line'>For the great queenliness of all those ships.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>And first the first bright memory, still so clear,</div> - <div class='line'>An autumn evening in a golden year,</div> - <div class='line'>When in the last lit moments before dark</div> - <div class='line'>The <em>Chepica</em>, a steel-gray lovely barque,</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_201'>201</span>Came to an anchor near us on the flood,</div> - <div class='line'>Her trucks aloft in sun-glow red as blood.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Then come so many ships that I could fill</div> - <div class='line'>Three docks with their fair hulls remembered still,</div> - <div class='line'>Each with her special memory’s special grace,</div> - <div class='line'>Riding the sea, making the waves give place</div> - <div class='line'>To delicate high beauty; man’s best strength,</div> - <div class='line'>Noble in every line in all their length.</div> - <div class='line'><em>Ailsa</em>, <em>Genista</em>, ships, with long jibbooms,</div> - <div class='line'>The <em>Wanderer</em> with great beauty and strange dooms,</div> - <div class='line'><em>Liverpool</em> (mightiest then) superb, sublime,</div> - <div class='line'>The <em>California</em> huge, as slow as time.</div> - <div class='line'>The <em>Copley</em> swift, the perfect <em>J. T. North</em>,</div> - <div class='line'>The loveliest barque my city has sent forth,</div> - <div class='line'>Dainty <em>John Lockett</em> well remembered yet,</div> - <div class='line'>The splendid <em>Argus</em> with her skysail set,</div> - <div class='line'>Stalwart <em>Drumcliff</em>, white-blocked, majestic <em>Sierras</em>,</div> - <div class='line'>Divine bright ships, the water’s standard-bearers;</div> - <div class='line'><em>Melpomene</em>, <em>Euphrosyne</em>, and their sweet</div> - <div class='line'>Sea-troubling sisters of the Fernie fleet;</div> - <div class='line'><em>Corunna</em> (in whom my friend died) and the old</div> - <div class='line'>Long since loved <em>Esmeralda</em> long since sold.</div> - <div class='line'><em>Centurion</em> passed in Rio, <em>Glaucus</em> spoken,</div> - <div class='line'><em>Aladdin</em> burnt, the <em>Bidston</em> water-broken,</div> - <div class='line'><em>Yola</em>, in whom my friend sailed, <em>Dawpool</em> trim,</div> - <div class='line'>Fierce-bowed <em>Egeria</em> plunging to the swim,</div> - <div class='line'><em>Stanmore</em> wide-sterned, sweet <em>Cupica</em>, tall <em>Bard</em>,</div> - <div class='line'>Queen in all harbors with her moon-sail yard.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Though I tell many, there must still be others,</div> - <div class='line'>McVickar Marshall’s ships and Fernie Brothers’,</div> - <div class='line'><em>Lochs</em>, <em>Counties</em>, <em>Shires</em>, <em>Drums</em>, the countless lines</div> - <div class='line'>Whose house-flags all were once familiar signs</div> - <div class='line'>At high main-trucks on Mersey’s windy ways</div> - <div class='line'>When sunlight made the wind-white water blaze.</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_202'>202</span>Their names bring back old mornings, when the docks</div> - <div class='line'>Shone with their house-flags and their painted blocks,</div> - <div class='line'>Their raking masts below the Custom House</div> - <div class='line'>And all the marvellous beauty of their bows.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Familiar steamers, too, majestic steamers,</div> - <div class='line'>Shearing Atlantic roller-tops to streamers,</div> - <div class='line'><em>Umbria</em>, <em>Etruria</em>, noble, still at sea,</div> - <div class='line'>The grandest, then, that man had brought to be.</div> - <div class='line'><em>Majestic</em>, <em>City of Paris</em>, <em>City of Rome</em>,</div> - <div class='line'>Forever jealous racers, out and home.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>The <em>Alfred Holt’s</em> blue smoke-stacks down the stream,</div> - <div class='line'>The fair <em>Loanda</em> with her bows a-cream.</div> - <div class='line'>Booth liners, Anchor liners, Red Star liners,</div> - <div class='line'>The marks and styles of countless ship-designers,</div> - <div class='line'>The <em>Magdalena</em>, <em>Puno</em>, <em>Potosi</em>,</div> - <div class='line'>Lost <em>Cotopaxi</em>, all well known to me.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>These splendid ships, each with her grace, her glory,</div> - <div class='line'>Her memory of old song or comrade’s story,</div> - <div class='line'>Still in my mind the image of life’s need,</div> - <div class='line'>Beauty in hardest action, beauty indeed.</div> - <div class='line'>“They built great ships and sailed them,” sounds most brave,</div> - <div class='line'>Whatever arts we have or fail to have.</div> - <div class='line'>I touch my country’s mind, I come to grips</div> - <div class='line'>With half her purpose, thinking of these ships:</div> - <div class='line'>That art untouched by softness, all that line</div> - <div class='line'>Drawn ringing hard to stand the test of brine;</div> - <div class='line'>That nobleness and grandeur, all that beauty</div> - <div class='line'>Born of a manly life and bitter duty;</div> - <div class='line'>That splendor of fine bows which yet could stand</div> - <div class='line'>The shock of rollers never checked by land;</div> - <div class='line'>That art of masts, sail-crowded, fit to break,</div> - <div class='line'>Yet stayed to strength and backstayed into rake;</div> - <div class='line'>The life demanded by that art, the keen</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_203'>203</span>Eye-puckered, hard-case seamen, silent, lean.</div> - <div class='line'>They are grander things than all the art of towns;</div> - <div class='line'>Their tests are tempests and the sea that drowns.</div> - <div class='line'>They are my country’s line, her great art done</div> - <div class='line'>By strong brains laboring on the thought unwon.</div> - <div class='line'>They mark our passage as a race of men—</div> - <div class='line'>Earth will not see such ships as those again.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>CARGOES</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Quinquireme of Nineveh from distant Ophir,</div> - <div class='line'>Rowing home to haven in sunny Palestine,</div> - <div class='line'>With a cargo of ivory,</div> - <div class='line'>And apes and peacocks,</div> - <div class='line'>Sandalwood, cedarwood, and sweet white wine.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Stately Spanish galleon coming from the Isthmus,</div> - <div class='line'>Dipping through the Tropics by the palm-green shores,</div> - <div class='line'>With a cargo of diamonds,</div> - <div class='line'>Emeralds, amethysts,</div> - <div class='line'>Topazes, and cinnamon, and gold moidores.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Dirty British coaster with a salt-caked smoke-stack,</div> - <div class='line'>Butting through the Channel in the mad March days,</div> - <div class='line'>With a cargo of Tyne coal,</div> - <div class='line'>Road-rails, pig-lead,</div> - <div class='line'>Firewood, iron-ware, and cheap tin trays.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>WATCHING BY A SICK-BED</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>I heard the wind all day,</div> - <div class='line'>And what it was trying to say.</div> - <div class='line'>I heard the wind all night</div> - <div class='line'>Rave as it ran to fight;</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_204'>204</span>After the wind the rain,</div> - <div class='line'>And then the wind again</div> - <div class='line'>Running across the hill</div> - <div class='line'>As it runs still.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>And all day long the sea</div> - <div class='line'>Would not let the land be,</div> - <div class='line'>But all night heaped her sand</div> - <div class='line'>On to the land;</div> - <div class='line'>I saw her glimmer white</div> - <div class='line'>All through the night,</div> - <div class='line'>Tossing the horrid hair</div> - <div class='line'>Still tossing there.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>And all day long the stone</div> - <div class='line'>Felt how the wind was blown;</div> - <div class='line'>And all night long the rock</div> - <div class='line'>Stood the sea’s shock;</div> - <div class='line'>While, from the window, I</div> - <div class='line'>Looked out, and wondered why,</div> - <div class='line'>Why at such length</div> - <div class='line'>Such force should fight such strength.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>WHAT AM I, LIFE?</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>What am I, Life? A thing of watery salt</div> - <div class='line'>Held in cohesion by unresting cells,</div> - <div class='line'>Which work they know not why, which never halt,</div> - <div class='line'>Myself unwitting where their Master dwells.</div> - <div class='line'>I do not bid them, yet they toil, they spin</div> - <div class='line'>A world which uses me as I use them;</div> - <div class='line'>Nor do I know which end or which begin</div> - <div class='line'>Nor which to praise, which pamper, which condemn.</div> - <div class='line'>So, like a marvel in a marvel set,</div> - <div class='line'>I answer to the vast, as wave by wave</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_205'>205</span>The sea of air goes over, dry or wet,</div> - <div class='line'>Or the full moon comes swimming from her cave,</div> - <div class='line'>Or the great sun comes forth: this myriad I</div> - <div class='line'>Tingles, not knowing how, yet wondering why.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='chapter'> - <h2 class='c005'>Edgar Lee Masters</h2> -</div> - -<h3 class='c013'>SPOON RIVER ANTHOLOGY</h3> - -<h4 class='c013'>THE HILL</h4> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Where are Elmer, Herman, Bert, Tom and Charley,</em></div> - <div class='line'><em>The weak of will, the strong of arm, the clown, the boozer, the fighter?</em></div> - <div class='line'><em>All, all, are sleeping on the hill.</em></div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>One passed in a fever,</em></div> - <div class='line'><em>One was burned in a mine,</em></div> - <div class='line'><em>One was killed in a brawl,</em></div> - <div class='line'><em>One died in a jail,</em></div> - <div class='line'><em>One fell from a bridge toiling for children and wife—</em></div> - <div class='line'><em>All, all are sleeping, sleeping, sleeping on the hill.</em></div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Where are Ella, Kate, Mag, Lizzie and Edith,</em></div> - <div class='line'><em>The tender heart, the simple soul, the loud, the proud, the happy one?—</em></div> - <div class='line'><em>All, all, are sleeping on the hill.</em></div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>One died in shameful child-birth,</em></div> - <div class='line'><em>One of a thwarted love,</em></div> - <div class='line'><em>One at the hands of a brute in a brothel,</em></div> - <div class='line'><em>One of a broken pride, in the search for heart’s desire,</em></div> - <div class='line'><em>One after life in far-away London and Paris</em></div> - <div class='line'><em>Was brought to her little space by Ella and Kate and Mag—</em></div> - <div class='line'><em>All, all are sleeping, sleeping, sleeping on the hill.</em></div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_206'>206</span><em>Where are Uncle Isaac and Aunt Emily,</em></div> - <div class='line'><em>And old Towny Kincaid and Sevigne Houghton,</em></div> - <div class='line'><em>And Major Walker who had talked</em></div> - <div class='line'><em>With venerable men of the revolution?—</em></div> - <div class='line'><em>All, all, are sleeping on the hill.</em></div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>They brought them dead sons from the war,</em></div> - <div class='line'><em>And daughters whom life had crushed,</em></div> - <div class='line'><em>And their children fatherless, crying—</em></div> - <div class='line'><em>All, all are sleeping, sleeping, sleeping on the hill.</em></div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Where is Old Fiddler Jones</em></div> - <div class='line'><em>Who played with life all his ninety years,</em></div> - <div class='line'><em>Braving the sleet with bared breast,</em></div> - <div class='line'><em>Drinking, rioting, thinking neither of wife nor kin,</em></div> - <div class='line'><em>Nor gold, nor love, nor heaven?</em></div> - <div class='line'><em>Lo! he babbles of the fish-frys of long ago,</em></div> - <div class='line'><em>Of the horse-races of long ago at Clary’s Grove,</em></div> - <div class='line'><em>Of what Abe Lincoln said</em></div> - <div class='line'><em>One time at Springfield.</em></div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h4 class='c013'>OLLIE M<sup>c</sup>GEE</h4> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Have you seen walking through the village</div> - <div class='line'>A man with downcast eyes and haggard face?</div> - <div class='line'>That is my husband who, by secret cruelty</div> - <div class='line'>Never to be told, robbed me of my youth and my beauty;</div> - <div class='line'>Till at last, wrinkled and with yellow teeth,</div> - <div class='line'>And with broken pride and shameful humility,</div> - <div class='line'>I sank into the grave.</div> - <div class='line'>But what think you gnaws at my husband’s heart?</div> - <div class='line'>The face of what I was, the face of what he made me!</div> - <div class='line'>These are driving him to the place where I lie.</div> - <div class='line'>In death, therefore, I am avenged.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_207'>207</span> - <h4 class='c013'>DAISY FRASER</h4> -</div> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Did you ever hear of Editor Whedon</div> - <div class='line'>Giving to the public treasury any of the money he received</div> - <div class='line'>For supporting candidates for office?</div> - <div class='line'>Or for writing up the canning factory</div> - <div class='line'>To get people to invest?</div> - <div class='line'>Or for suppressing the facts about the bank,</div> - <div class='line'>When it was rotten and ready to break?</div> - <div class='line'>Did you ever hear of the Circuit Judge</div> - <div class='line'>Helping anyone except the “Q” railroad,</div> - <div class='line'>Or the bankers? Or did Rev. Peet or Rev. Sibley</div> - <div class='line'>Give any part of their salary, earned by keeping still,</div> - <div class='line'>Or speaking out as the leaders wished them to do,</div> - <div class='line'>To the building of the water works?</div> - <div class='line'>But I—Daisy Fraser, who always passed</div> - <div class='line'>Along the streets through rows of nods and smiles,</div> - <div class='line'>And coughs and words such as “there she goes,”</div> - <div class='line'>Never was taken before Justice Arnett</div> - <div class='line'>Without contributing ten dollars and costs</div> - <div class='line'>To the school fund of Spoon River!</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h4 class='c013'>HARE DRUMMER</h4> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Do the boys and girls still go to Siever’s</div> - <div class='line'>For cider, after school, in late September?</div> - <div class='line'>Or gather hazel nuts among the thickets</div> - <div class='line'>On Aaron Hatfield’s farm when the frosts begin?</div> - <div class='line'>For many times with the laughing girls and boys</div> - <div class='line'>Played I along the road and over the hills</div> - <div class='line'>When the sun was low and the air was cool,</div> - <div class='line'>Stopping to club the walnut tree</div> - <div class='line'>Standing leafless against a flaming west.</div> - <div class='line'>Now, the smell of the autumn smoke,</div> - <div class='line'>And the dropping acorns,</div> - <div class='line'>And the echoes about the vales</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_208'>208</span>Bring dreams of life. They hover over me.</div> - <div class='line'>They question me:</div> - <div class='line'>Where are those laughing comrades?</div> - <div class='line'>How many are with me, how many</div> - <div class='line'>In the old orchards along the way to Siever’s,</div> - <div class='line'>And in the woods that overlook</div> - <div class='line'>The quiet water?</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h4 class='c013'>DOC HILL</h4> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>I went up and down the streets</div> - <div class='line'>Here and there by day and night,</div> - <div class='line'>Through all hours of the night caring for the poor who were sick.</div> - <div class='line'>Do you know why?</div> - <div class='line'>My wife hated me, my son went to the dogs.</div> - <div class='line'>And I turned to the people and poured out my love to them.</div> - <div class='line'>Sweet it was to see the crowds about the lawns on the day of my funeral,</div> - <div class='line'>And hear them murmur their love and sorrow.</div> - <div class='line'>But oh, dear God, my soul trembled, scarcely able</div> - <div class='line'>To hold to the railing of the new life</div> - <div class='line'>When I saw Em Stanton behind the oak tree</div> - <div class='line'>At the grave,</div> - <div class='line'>Hiding herself, and her grief!</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h4 class='c013'>FIDDLER JONES</h4> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>The earth keeps some vibration going</div> - <div class='line'>There in your heart, and that is you.</div> - <div class='line'>And if the people find you can fiddle,</div> - <div class='line'>Why, fiddle you must, for all your life.</div> - <div class='line'>What do you see, a harvest of clover?</div> - <div class='line'>Or a meadow to walk through to the river?</div> - <div class='line'>The wind’s in the corn; you rub your hands</div> - <div class='line'>For beeves hereafter ready for market;</div> - <div class='line'>Or else you hear the rustle of skirts</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_209'>209</span>Like the girls when dancing at Little Grove.</div> - <div class='line'>To Cooney Potter a pillar of dust</div> - <div class='line'>Or whirling leaves meant ruinous drouth;</div> - <div class='line'>They looked to me like Red-Head Sammy</div> - <div class='line'>Stepping it off, to “Toor-a-Loor.”</div> - <div class='line'>How could I till my forty acres</div> - <div class='line'>Not to speak of getting more,</div> - <div class='line'>With a medley of horns, bassoons and piccolos</div> - <div class='line'>Stirred in my brain by crows and robins</div> - <div class='line'>And the creak of a wind-mill—only these?</div> - <div class='line'>And I never started to plow in my life</div> - <div class='line'>That some one did not stop in the road</div> - <div class='line'>And take me away to a dance or picnic.</div> - <div class='line'>I ended up with forty acres;</div> - <div class='line'>I ended up with a broken fiddle—</div> - <div class='line'>And a broken laugh, and a thousand memories,</div> - <div class='line'>And not a single regret.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h4 class='c013'>THOMAS RHODES</h4> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Very well, you liberals,</div> - <div class='line'>And navigators into realms intellectual,</div> - <div class='line'>You sailors through heights imaginative,</div> - <div class='line'>Blown about by erratic currents, tumbling into air pockets,</div> - <div class='line'>You Margaret Fuller Slacks, Petits,</div> - <div class='line'>And Tennessee Claflin Shopes—</div> - <div class='line'>You found with all your boasted wisdom</div> - <div class='line'>How hard at the last it is</div> - <div class='line'>To keep the soul from splitting into cellular atoms.</div> - <div class='line'>While we, seekers of earth’s treasures,</div> - <div class='line'>Getters and hoarders of gold,</div> - <div class='line'>Are self-contained, compact, harmonized,</div> - <div class='line'>Even to the end.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_210'>210</span> - <h4 class='c013'>EDITOR WHEDON</h4> -</div> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>To be able to see every side of every question;</div> - <div class='line'>To be on every side, to be everything, to be nothing long;</div> - <div class='line'>To pervert truth, to ride it for a purpose,</div> - <div class='line'>To use great feelings and passions of the human family</div> - <div class='line'>For base designs, for cunning ends,</div> - <div class='line'>To wear a mask like the Greek actors—</div> - <div class='line'>Your eight-page paper—behind which you huddle,</div> - <div class='line'>Bawling through the megaphone of big type:</div> - <div class='line'>“This is I, the giant.”</div> - <div class='line'>Thereby also living the life of a sneak-thief,</div> - <div class='line'>Poisoned with the anonymous words</div> - <div class='line'>Of your clandestine soul.</div> - <div class='line'>To scratch dirt over scandal for money,</div> - <div class='line'>And exhume it to the winds for revenge,</div> - <div class='line'>Or to sell papers</div> - <div class='line'>Crushing reputations, or bodies, if need be,</div> - <div class='line'>To win at any cost, save your own life.</div> - <div class='line'>To glory in demoniac power, ditching civilization,</div> - <div class='line'>As a paranoiac boy puts a log on the track</div> - <div class='line'>And derails the express train.</div> - <div class='line'>To be an editor, as I was—</div> - <div class='line'>Then to lie here close by the river over the place</div> - <div class='line'>Where the sewage flows from the village,</div> - <div class='line'>And the empty cans and garbage are dumped,</div> - <div class='line'>And abortions are hidden.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h4 class='c013'>SETH COMPTON</h4> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>When I died, the circulating library</div> - <div class='line'>Which I built up for Spoon River,</div> - <div class='line'>And managed for the good of inquiring minds,</div> - <div class='line'>Was sold at auction on the public square,</div> - <div class='line'>As if to destroy the last vestige</div> - <div class='line'>Of my memory and influence.</div> - <div class='line'>For those of you who could not see the virtue</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_211'>211</span>Of knowing Volney’s <cite>Ruins</cite> as well as Butler’s <cite>Analogy</cite></div> - <div class='line'>And <cite>Faust</cite> as well as <cite>Evangeline</cite>,</div> - <div class='line'>Were really the power in the village,</div> - <div class='line'>And often you asked me,</div> - <div class='line'>“What is the use of knowing the evil in the world?”</div> - <div class='line'>I am out of your way now, Spoon River—</div> - <div class='line'>Choose your own good and call it good.</div> - <div class='line'>For I could never make you see</div> - <div class='line'>That no one knows what is good</div> - <div class='line'>Who knows not what is evil;</div> - <div class='line'>And no one knows what is true</div> - <div class='line'>Who knows not what is false.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h4 class='c013'>HENRY C. CALHOUN</h4> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>I reached the highest place in Spoon River,</div> - <div class='line'>But through what bitterness of spirit!</div> - <div class='line'>The face of my father, sitting speechless,</div> - <div class='line'>Child-like, watching his canaries,</div> - <div class='line'>And looking at the court-house window</div> - <div class='line'>Of the county judge’s room,</div> - <div class='line'>And his admonitions to me to seek</div> - <div class='line'>My own in life, and punish Spoon River</div> - <div class='line'>To avenge the wrong the people did him,</div> - <div class='line'>Filled me with furious energy</div> - <div class='line'>To seek for wealth and seek for power.</div> - <div class='line'>But what did he do but send me along</div> - <div class='line'>The path that leads to the grove of the Furies?</div> - <div class='line'>I followed the path and I tell you this:</div> - <div class='line'>On the way to the grove you’ll pass the Fates,</div> - <div class='line'>Shadow-eyed, bent over their weaving.</div> - <div class='line'>Stop for a moment, and if you see</div> - <div class='line'>The thread of revenge leap out of the shuttle</div> - <div class='line'>Then quickly snatch from Atropos</div> - <div class='line'>The shears and cut it, lest your sons,</div> - <div class='line'>And the children of them and their children</div> - <div class='line'>Wear the envenomed robe.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_212'>212</span> - <h4 class='c013'>PERRY ZOLL</h4> -</div> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>My thanks, friends of the County Scientific Association,</div> - <div class='line'>For this modest boulder,</div> - <div class='line'>And its little tablet of bronze.</div> - <div class='line'>Twice I tried to join your honored body,</div> - <div class='line'>And was rejected,</div> - <div class='line'>And when my little brochure</div> - <div class='line'>On the intelligence of plants</div> - <div class='line'>Began to attract attention</div> - <div class='line'>You almost voted me in.</div> - <div class='line'>After that I grew beyond the need of you</div> - <div class='line'>And your recognition.</div> - <div class='line'>Yet I do not reject your memorial stone,</div> - <div class='line'>Seeing that I should, in so doing,</div> - <div class='line'>Deprive you of honor to yourselves.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h4 class='c013'>ARCHIBALD HIGBIE</h4> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>I loathed you, Spoon River. I tried to rise above you,</div> - <div class='line'>I was ashamed of you. I despised you</div> - <div class='line'>As the place of my nativity.</div> - <div class='line'>And there in Rome, among the artists,</div> - <div class='line'>Speaking Italian, speaking French,</div> - <div class='line'>I seemed to myself at times to be free</div> - <div class='line'>Of every trace of my origin.</div> - <div class='line'>I seemed to be reaching the heights of art</div> - <div class='line'>And to breathe the air that the masters breathed,</div> - <div class='line'>And to see the world with their eyes.</div> - <div class='line'>But still they’d pass my work and say:</div> - <div class='line'>“What are you driving at, my friend?</div> - <div class='line'>Sometimes the face looks like Apollo’s,</div> - <div class='line'>At others it has a trace of Lincoln’s.”</div> - <div class='line'>There was no culture, you know, in Spoon River,</div> - <div class='line'>And I burned with shame and held my peace.</div> - <div class='line'>And what could I do, all covered over</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_213'>213</span>And weighted down with western soil,</div> - <div class='line'>Except aspire, and pray for another</div> - <div class='line'>Birth in the world, with all of Spoon River</div> - <div class='line'>Rooted out of my soul?</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h4 class='c013'>FATHER MALLOY</h4> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>You are over there, Father Malloy,</div> - <div class='line'>Where holy ground is, and the cross marks every grave,</div> - <div class='line'>Not here with us on the hill—</div> - <div class='line'>Us of wavering faith, and clouded vision</div> - <div class='line'>And drifting hope, and unforgiven sins.</div> - <div class='line'>You were so human, Father Malloy,</div> - <div class='line'>Taking a friendly glass sometimes with us,</div> - <div class='line'>Siding with us who would rescue Spoon River</div> - <div class='line'>From the coldness and the dreariness of village morality.</div> - <div class='line'>You were like a traveler who brings a little box of sand</div> - <div class='line'>From the wastes about the pyramids</div> - <div class='line'>And makes them real and Egypt real.</div> - <div class='line'>You were a part of and related to a great past,</div> - <div class='line'>And yet you were so close to many of us.</div> - <div class='line'>You believed in the joy of life.</div> - <div class='line'>You did not seem to be ashamed of the flesh.</div> - <div class='line'>You faced life as it is,</div> - <div class='line'>And as it changes.</div> - <div class='line'>Some of us almost came to you, Father Malloy,</div> - <div class='line'>Seeing how your church had divined the heart,</div> - <div class='line'>And provided for it,</div> - <div class='line'>Through Peter the Flame,</div> - <div class='line'>Peter the Rock.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h4 class='c013'>LUCINDA MATLOCK</h4> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>I went to the dances at Chandlerville,</div> - <div class='line'>And played snap-out at Winchester.</div> - <div class='line'>One time we changed partners,</div> - <div class='line'>Driving home in the moonlight of middle June,</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_214'>214</span>And then I found Davis.</div> - <div class='line'>We were married and lived together for seventy years,</div> - <div class='line'>Enjoying, working, raising the twelve children,</div> - <div class='line'>Eight of whom we lost</div> - <div class='line'>Ere I had reached the age of sixty.</div> - <div class='line'>I spun, I wove, I kept the house, I nursed the sick,</div> - <div class='line'>I made the garden, and for holiday</div> - <div class='line'>Rambled over the fields where sang the larks,</div> - <div class='line'>And by Spoon River gathering many a shell,</div> - <div class='line'>And many a flower and medicinal weed—</div> - <div class='line'>Shouting to the wooded hills, singing to the green valleys.</div> - <div class='line'>At ninety-six I had lived enough, that is all,</div> - <div class='line'>And passed to a sweet repose.</div> - <div class='line'>What is this I hear of sorrow and weariness,</div> - <div class='line'>Anger, discontent and drooping hopes?</div> - <div class='line'>Degenerate sons and daughters,</div> - <div class='line'>Life is too strong for you—</div> - <div class='line'>It takes life to love Life.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h4 class='c013'>ANNE RUTLEDGE</h4> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Out of me unworthy and unknown</div> - <div class='line'>The vibrations of deathless music;</div> - <div class='line'>“With malice toward none, with charity for all.”</div> - <div class='line'>Out of me the forgiveness of millions toward millions,</div> - <div class='line'>And the beneficent face of a nation</div> - <div class='line'>Shining with justice and truth.</div> - <div class='line'>I am Anne Rutledge who sleep beneath these weeds,</div> - <div class='line'>Beloved in life of Abraham Lincoln,</div> - <div class='line'>Wedded to him, not through union,</div> - <div class='line'>But through separation.</div> - <div class='line'>Bloom forever, O Republic,</div> - <div class='line'>From the dust of my bosom!</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_215'>215</span> - <h4 class='c013'>WILLIAM H. HERNDON</h4> -</div> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>There by the window in the old house</div> - <div class='line'>Perched on the bluff, overlooking miles of valley,</div> - <div class='line'>My days of labor closed, sitting out life’s decline,</div> - <div class='line'>Day by day did I look in my memory,</div> - <div class='line'>As one who gazes in an enchantress’ crystal globe,</div> - <div class='line'>And I saw the figures of the past,</div> - <div class='line'>As if in a pageant glassed by a shining dream,</div> - <div class='line'>Move through the incredible sphere of time.</div> - <div class='line'>And I saw a man arise from the soil like a fabled giant</div> - <div class='line'>And throw himself over a deathless destiny,</div> - <div class='line'>Master of great armies, head of the republic,</div> - <div class='line'>Bringing together into a dithyramb of recreative song</div> - <div class='line'>The epic hopes of a people;</div> - <div class='line'>At the same time Vulcan of sovereign fires,</div> - <div class='line'>Where imperishable shields and swords were beaten out</div> - <div class='line'>From spirits tempered in heaven.</div> - <div class='line'>Look in the crystal! See how he hastens on</div> - <div class='line'>To the place where his path comes up to the path</div> - <div class='line'>Of a child of Plutarch and Shakespeare.</div> - <div class='line'>O Lincoln, actor indeed, playing well your part,</div> - <div class='line'>And Booth, who strode in a mimic play within the play,</div> - <div class='line'>Often and often I saw you,</div> - <div class='line'>As the cawing crows winged their way to the wood</div> - <div class='line'>Over my house-top at solemn sunsets,</div> - <div class='line'>There by my window,</div> - <div class='line'>Alone.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h4 class='c013'>RUTHERFORD M<sup>c</sup>DOWELL</h4> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>They brought me ambrotypes</div> - <div class='line'>Of the old pioneers to enlarge.</div> - <div class='line'>And sometimes one sat for me—</div> - <div class='line'>Some one who was in being</div> - <div class='line'>When giant hands from the womb of the world</div> - <div class='line'>Tore the republic.</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_216'>216</span>What was it in their eyes?—</div> - <div class='line'>For I could never fathom</div> - <div class='line'>That mystical pathos of drooped eyelids,</div> - <div class='line'>And the serene sorrow of their eyes.</div> - <div class='line'>It was like a pool of water,</div> - <div class='line'>Amid oak trees at the edge of a forest,</div> - <div class='line'>Where the leaves fall,</div> - <div class='line'>As you hear the crow of a cock</div> - <div class='line'>From a far-off farm house, seen near the hills</div> - <div class='line'>Where the third generation lives, and the strong men</div> - <div class='line'>And the strong women are gone and forgotten.</div> - <div class='line'>And these grand-children and great grand-children</div> - <div class='line'>Of the pioneers!—</div> - <div class='line'>Truly did my camera record their faces, too,</div> - <div class='line'>With so much of the old strength gone,</div> - <div class='line'>And the old faith gone,</div> - <div class='line'>And the old mastery of life gone,</div> - <div class='line'>And the old courage gone,</div> - <div class='line'>Which labors and loves and suffers and sings</div> - <div class='line'>Under the sun!</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h4 class='c013'>ARLO WILL</h4> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Did you ever see an alligator</div> - <div class='line'>Come up to the air from the mud,</div> - <div class='line'>Staring blindly under the full glare of noon?</div> - <div class='line'>Have you seen the stabled horses at night</div> - <div class='line'>Tremble and start back at the sight of a lantern?</div> - <div class='line'>Have you ever walked in darkness</div> - <div class='line'>When an unknown door was open before you</div> - <div class='line'>And you stood, it seemed, in the light of a thousand candles</div> - <div class='line'>Of delicate wax?</div> - <div class='line'>Have you walked with the wind in your ears</div> - <div class='line'>And the sunlight about you</div> - <div class='line'>And found it suddenly shine with an inner splendor?</div> - <div class='line'>Out of the mud many times,</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_217'>217</span>Before many doors of light,</div> - <div class='line'>Through many fields of splendor,</div> - <div class='line'>Where around your steps a soundless glory scatters</div> - <div class='line'>Like new-fallen snow,</div> - <div class='line'>Will you go through earth, O strong of soul,</div> - <div class='line'>And through unnumbered heavens</div> - <div class='line'>To the final flame!</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h4 class='c013'>AARON HATFIELD</h4> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Better than granite, Spoon River,</div> - <div class='line'>Is the memory-picture you keep of me</div> - <div class='line'>Standing before the pioneer men and women</div> - <div class='line'>There at Concord Church on Communion day.</div> - <div class='line'>Speaking in broken voice of the peasant youth</div> - <div class='line'>Of Galilee who went to the city</div> - <div class='line'>And was killed by bankers and lawyers;</div> - <div class='line'>My voice mingling with the June wind</div> - <div class='line'>That blew over wheat fields from Atterbury;</div> - <div class='line'>While the white stones in the burying ground</div> - <div class='line'>Around the Church shimmered in the summer sun.</div> - <div class='line'>And there, though my own memories</div> - <div class='line'>Were too great to bear, were you, O pioneers,</div> - <div class='line'>With bowed heads breathing forth your sorrow</div> - <div class='line'>For the sons killed in battle and the daughters</div> - <div class='line'>And little children who vanished in life’s morning,</div> - <div class='line'>Or at the intolerable hour of noon.</div> - <div class='line'>But in those moments of tragic silence,</div> - <div class='line'>When the wine and bread were passed,</div> - <div class='line'>Came the reconciliation for us—</div> - <div class='line'>Us the ploughmen and the hewers of wood,</div> - <div class='line'>Us the peasants, brothers of the peasant of Galilee—</div> - <div class='line'>To us came the Comforter</div> - <div class='line'>And the consolation of tongues of flame!</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_218'>218</span> - <h4 class='c013'>WEBSTER FORD</h4> -</div> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Do you remember, O Delphic Apollo,</div> - <div class='line'>The sunset hour by the river, when Mickey M’Grew</div> - <div class='line'>Cried, “There’s a ghost,” and I, “It’s Delphic Apollo”;</div> - <div class='line'>And the son of the banker derided us, saying, “It’s light</div> - <div class='line'>By the flags at the water’s edge, you half-witted fools.”</div> - <div class='line'>And from thence, as the wearisome years rolled on, long after</div> - <div class='line'>Poor Mickey fell down in the water tower to his death,</div> - <div class='line'>Down, down, through bellowing darkness, I carried</div> - <div class='line'>The vision which perished with him like a rocket which falls</div> - <div class='line'>And quenches its light in earth, and hid it for fear</div> - <div class='line'>Of the son of the banker, calling on Plutus to save me?</div> - <div class='line'>Avenged were you for the shame of a fearful heart,</div> - <div class='line'>Who left me alone till I saw you again in an hour</div> - <div class='line'>When I seemed to be turned to a tree with trunk and branches</div> - <div class='line'>Growing indurate, turning to stone, yet burgeoning</div> - <div class='line'>In laurel leaves, in hosts of lambent laurel,</div> - <div class='line'>Quivering, fluttering, shrinking, fighting the numbness</div> - <div class='line'>Creeping into their veins from the dying trunk and branches!</div> - <div class='line'>’Tis vain, O youth, to fly the call of Apollo.</div> - <div class='line'>Fling yourselves in the fire, die with a song of spring,</div> - <div class='line'>If die you must in the spring. For none shall look</div> - <div class='line'>On the face of Apollo and live, and choose you must</div> - <div class='line'>’Twixt death in the flame and death after years of sorrow,</div> - <div class='line'>Rooted fast in the earth, feeling the grisly hand,</div> - <div class='line'>Not so much in the trunk as in the terrible numbness</div> - <div class='line'>Creeping up to the laurel leaves that never cease</div> - <div class='line'>To flourish until you fall. O leaves of me</div> - <div class='line'>Too sere for coronal wreaths, and fit alone</div> - <div class='line'>For urns of memory, treasured, perhaps, as themes</div> - <div class='line'>For hearts heroic, fearless singers and livers—</div> - <div class='line'>Delphic Apollo!</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_219'>219</span> - <h3 class='c014'>SILENCE</h3> -</div> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>I have known the silence of the stars and of the sea,</div> - <div class='line'>And the silence of the city when it pauses,</div> - <div class='line'>And the silence of a man and a maid,</div> - <div class='line'>And the silence of the sick</div> - <div class='line'>When their eyes roam about the room.</div> - <div class='line'>And I ask: For the depths</div> - <div class='line'>Of what use is language?</div> - <div class='line'>A beast of the field moans a few times</div> - <div class='line'>When death takes its young.</div> - <div class='line'>And we are voiceless in the presence of realities—</div> - <div class='line'>We cannot speak.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>A curious boy asks an old soldier</div> - <div class='line'>Sitting in front of the grocery store,</div> - <div class='line'>“How did you lose your leg?”</div> - <div class='line'>And the old soldier is struck with silence,</div> - <div class='line'>Or his mind flies away</div> - <div class='line'>Because he cannot concentrate it on Gettysburg.</div> - <div class='line'>It comes back jocosely</div> - <div class='line'>And he says, “A bear bit it off.”</div> - <div class='line'>And the boy wonders, while the old soldier</div> - <div class='line'>Dumbly, feebly lives over</div> - <div class='line'>The flashes of guns, the thunder of cannon,</div> - <div class='line'>The shrieks of the slain,</div> - <div class='line'>And himself lying on the ground,</div> - <div class='line'>And the hospital surgeons, the knives,</div> - <div class='line'>And the long days in bed.</div> - <div class='line'>But if he could describe it all</div> - <div class='line'>He would be an artist.</div> - <div class='line'>But if he were an artist there would be deeper wounds</div> - <div class='line'>Which he could not describe.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>There is the silence of a great hatred,</div> - <div class='line'>And the silence of a great love,</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_220'>220</span>And the silence of an embittered friendship.</div> - <div class='line'>There is the silence of a spiritual crisis,</div> - <div class='line'>Through which your soul, exquisitely tortured,</div> - <div class='line'>Comes with visions not to be uttered</div> - <div class='line'>Into a realm of higher life.</div> - <div class='line'>There is the silence of defeat.</div> - <div class='line'>There is the silence of those unjustly punished;</div> - <div class='line'>And the silence of the dying whose hand</div> - <div class='line'>Suddenly grips yours.</div> - <div class='line'>There is the silence between father and son,</div> - <div class='line'>When the father cannot explain his life,</div> - <div class='line'>Even though he be misunderstood for it.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>There is the silence that comes between husband and wife.</div> - <div class='line'>There is the silence of those who have failed;</div> - <div class='line'>And the vast silence that covers</div> - <div class='line'>Broken nations and vanquished leaders.</div> - <div class='line'>There is the silence of Lincoln,</div> - <div class='line'>Thinking of the poverty of his youth.</div> - <div class='line'>And the silence of Napoleon</div> - <div class='line'>After Waterloo.</div> - <div class='line'>And the silence of Jeanne d’Arc</div> - <div class='line'>Saying amid the flames, “Blessed Jesus”—</div> - <div class='line'>Revealing in two words all sorrows, all hope.</div> - <div class='line'>And there is the silence of age,</div> - <div class='line'>Too full of wisdom for the tongue to utter it</div> - <div class='line'>In words intelligible to those who have not lived</div> - <div class='line'>The great range of life.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>And there is the silence of the dead.</div> - <div class='line'>If we who are in life cannot speak</div> - <div class='line'>Of profound experiences,</div> - <div class='line'>Why do you marvel that the dead</div> - <div class='line'>Do not tell you of death?</div> - <div class='line'>Their silence shall be interpreted</div> - <div class='line'>As we approach them.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='chapter'> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_221'>221</span> - <h2 class='c005'>Alice Meynell</h2> -</div> - -<h3 class='c013'>MATERNITY</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>One wept whose only child was dead</div> - <div class='line in2'>New-born, ten years ago.</div> - <div class='line'>“Weep not; he is in bliss,” they said.</div> - <div class='line in2'>She answered, “Even so.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>“Ten years ago was born in pain</div> - <div class='line in2'>A child not now forlorn.</div> - <div class='line'>But oh, ten years ago, in vain</div> - <div class='line in2'>A mother, a mother was born.”</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>CHIMES</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Brief on a flying night,</div> - <div class='line in2'>From the shaken tower,</div> - <div class='line'>A flock of bells take flight,</div> - <div class='line in2'>And go with the hour.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Like birds from the cote to the gales,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Abrupt—oh, hark!—</div> - <div class='line'>A fleet of bells set sails,</div> - <div class='line in2'>And go to the dark.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Sudden the cold airs swing:</div> - <div class='line in2'>Alone, aloud,</div> - <div class='line'>A verse of bells takes wing</div> - <div class='line in2'>And flies with the cloud.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='chapter'> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_222'>222</span> - <h2 class='c005'>Max Michelson</h2> -</div> - -<h3 class='c013'>O BROTHER TREE</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>O brother tree! O brother tree! Tell to me, thy brother,</div> - <div class='line'>The secret of thy life,</div> - <div class='line'>The wonder of thy being.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>My brother tree, my brother tree,</div> - <div class='line'>My heart is open to thee—</div> - <div class='line'>Reveal me all thy secrets.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Beloved tree, beloved tree,</div> - <div class='line'>I have shattered all my pride.</div> - <div class='line'>I love thee, brother, as myself.</div> - <div class='line'>Oh, explain to me thy wonders.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Beloved one, adored one,</div> - <div class='line'>I will not babble of it among fools—</div> - <div class='line'>I will tell it only to the unspoiled:</div> - <div class='line'>Reveal to me thy being.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>I have watched thy leaves in sunshine,</div> - <div class='line'>I have heard them in the storm.</div> - <div class='line'>My heart drank a droplet of thy holy joy and wonder,</div> - <div class='line'>One drop from the ocean of thy wonder.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>I am thy humble brother—I am thine own.</div> - <div class='line'>Reveal thy life to me,</div> - <div class='line'>Reveal thy calm joy to me,</div> - <div class='line'>Reveal to me thy serene knowledge.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_223'>223</span> - <h3 class='c014'>THE BIRD</h3> -</div> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>From a branch</em></div> - <div class='line'><em>The bird called</em>:</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in4'>I hold your heart</div> - <div class='line in4'>I wash it</div> - <div class='line in4'>And scour it</div> - <div class='line in4'>With bits of song</div> - <div class='line in4'>Like pebbles;</div> - <div class='line in4'>And your doubts</div> - <div class='line in4'>And your sorrows</div> - <div class='line in4'>Fall—drip, drip, drip—</div> - <div class='line in4'>Like dirty water.</div> - <div class='line in4'>I pipe to it</div> - <div class='line in4'>In little notes</div> - <div class='line in4'>Of life clear as a pool,</div> - <div class='line in4'>And of death</div> - <div class='line in4'>Clearer still;</div> - <div class='line in4'>And I swoop with it</div> - <div class='line in4'>In the blue</div> - <div class='line in4'>And in the nest</div> - <div class='line in4'>Of a cloud.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>STORM</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Storm,</div> - <div class='line'>Wild one,</div> - <div class='line'>Take me in your whirl,</div> - <div class='line'>In your giddy reel,</div> - <div class='line'>In your shot-like leaps and flights.</div> - <div class='line'>Hear me call—stop and hear.</div> - <div class='line'>I know you, blusterer; I know you, wild one—</div> - <div class='line'>I know your mysterious call.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_224'>224</span> - <h3 class='c014'>A HYMN TO NIGHT</h3> -</div> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Come, mysterious night;</div> - <div class='line'>Descend and nestle to us.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Descend softly on the houses</div> - <div class='line'>We built with pride,</div> - <div class='line'>Without worship.</div> - <div class='line'>Fold them in your veil,</div> - <div class='line'>Spill your shadows.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Come over our stores and factories,</div> - <div class='line'>Hide our pride—our shame—</div> - <div class='line'>With your nebulous wings.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Come down on our cobbled streets:</div> - <div class='line'>Unleash your airy hounds.</div> - <div class='line'>Come to the sleepers, night;</div> - <div class='line'>Light in them your fires.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>LOVE LYRIC</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Stir—</div> - <div class='line'>Shake off sleep.</div> - <div class='line'>Your eyes are the soul of clear waters—</div> - <div class='line'>Pigeons</div> - <div class='line'>In a city street.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Suns now dead</div> - <div class='line'>Have tucked away of their gold for your hair:</div> - <div class='line'>My buried mouth still tastes their fires.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>A tender god built your breasts—</div> - <div class='line'>Apples of desire;</div> - <div class='line'>Their whiteness slakes the throat;</div> - <div class='line'>Their form soothes like honey.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_225'>225</span>Wake up!</div> - <div class='line'>Or the song-bird in my heart</div> - <div class='line'>Will peck open the shell of your dreams.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'> · · · · ·</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Sleep, my own,</div> - <div class='line'>Soaring over rivers of fire.</div> - <div class='line'>Sleep, my own,</div> - <div class='line'>Wading waters of gold.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Joy is in my heart—</div> - <div class='line'>It flutters around in my soul.</div> - <div class='line'>... Softly—</div> - <div class='line'>I hear the rosy dreams ...</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='chapter'> - <h2 class='c005'>Edna St. Vincent Millay</h2> -</div> - -<h3 class='c013'>GOD’S WORLD</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>O world, I cannot hold thee close enough!</div> - <div class='line'>Thy winds, thy wide gray skies!</div> - <div class='line'>Thy mists, that roll and rise!</div> - <div class='line'>Thy woods, this autumn day, that ache and sag</div> - <div class='line'>And all but cry with color! That gaunt crag</div> - <div class='line'>To crush! To lift the lean of that black bluff!</div> - <div class='line'>World, world, I cannot get thee close enough!</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Long have I known a glory in it all</div> - <div class='line'>But never knew I this.</div> - <div class='line'>Here such a passion is</div> - <div class='line'>As stretcheth me apart. Lord, I do fear</div> - <div class='line'>Thou’st made the world too beautiful this year.</div> - <div class='line'>My soul is all but out of me—let fall</div> - <div class='line'>No burning leaf; prithee, let no bird call.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_226'>226</span> - <h3 class='c014'>ASHES OF LIFE</h3> -</div> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Love has gone and left me, and the days are all alike.</div> - <div class='line in2'>Eat I must, and sleep I will—and would that night were here!</div> - <div class='line'>But ah, to lie awake and hear the slow hours strike!</div> - <div class='line in2'>Would that it were day again, with twilight near!</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Love has gone and left me, and I don’t know what to do;</div> - <div class='line in2'>This or that or what you will is all the same to me;</div> - <div class='line'>But all the things that I begin I leave before I’m through—</div> - <div class='line in2'>There’s little use in anything as far as I can see.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Love has gone and left me, and the neighbors knock and borrow,</div> - <div class='line in2'>And life goes on forever like the gnawing of a mouse.</div> - <div class='line'>And to-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow</div> - <div class='line in2'>There’s this little street and this little house.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>THE SHROUD</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Death, I say, my heart is bowed</div> - <div class='line in2'>Unto thine, O mother!</div> - <div class='line'>This red gown will make a shroud</div> - <div class='line in2'>Good as any other.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>(I, that would not wait to wear</div> - <div class='line in2'>My own bridal things,</div> - <div class='line'>In a dress dark as my hair</div> - <div class='line in2'>Made my answerings.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>I, to-night, that till he came</div> - <div class='line in2'>Could not, could not wait,</div> - <div class='line'>In a gown as bright as flame</div> - <div class='line in2'>Held for them the gate.)</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_227'>227</span>Death, I say, my heart is bowed</div> - <div class='line in2'>Unto thine, O mother!</div> - <div class='line'>This red gown will make a shroud</div> - <div class='line in2'>Good as any other.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='chapter'> - <h2 class='c005'>Harold Monro</h2> -</div> - -<h3 class='c013'>GREAT CITY</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>When I returned at sunset,</div> - <div class='line'>The serving-maid was singing softly</div> - <div class='line'>Under the dark stairs, and in the house</div> - <div class='line'>Twilight had entered like a moon-ray.</div> - <div class='line'>Time was so dead I could not understand</div> - <div class='line'>The meaning of midday or of midnight,</div> - <div class='line'>But like falling waters, falling, hissing, falling,</div> - <div class='line'>Silence seemed an everlasting sound.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>I sat in my room,</div> - <div class='line'>And watched sunset,</div> - <div class='line'>And saw starlight.</div> - <div class='line'>I heard the tramp of homing men,</div> - <div class='line'>And the last call of the last child;</div> - <div class='line'>Then a lone bird twittered,</div> - <div class='line'>And suddenly, beyond the housetops,</div> - <div class='line'>I imagined dew in the country,</div> - <div class='line'>In the hay, on the buttercups;</div> - <div class='line'>The rising moon,</div> - <div class='line'>The scent of early night,</div> - <div class='line'>The songs, the echoes,</div> - <div class='line'>Dogs barking,</div> - <div class='line'>Day closing,</div> - <div class='line'>Gradual slumber,</div> - <div class='line'>Sweet rest.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_228'>228</span>When all the lamps were lighted in the town</div> - <div class='line'>I passed into the street ways and I watched,</div> - <div class='line'>Wakeful, almost happy,</div> - <div class='line'>And half the night I wandered in the street.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>YOUTH IN ARMS</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Happy boy, happy boy,</div> - <div class='line'>David the immortal-willed,</div> - <div class='line'>Youth a thousand thousand times</div> - <div class='line'>Slain, but not once killed,</div> - <div class='line'>Swaggering again today</div> - <div class='line'>In the old contemptuous way;</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Leaning backward from your thigh</div> - <div class='line'>Up against the tinselled bar—</div> - <div class='line'>Dust and ashes! is it you?</div> - <div class='line'>Laughing, boasting, there you are!</div> - <div class='line'>First we hardly recognized you</div> - <div class='line'>In your modern avatar.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Soldier, rifle, brown khaki—</div> - <div class='line'>Is your blood as happy so?</div> - <div class='line'>Where’s your sling or painted shield,</div> - <div class='line'>Helmet, pike or bow?</div> - <div class='line'>Well, you’re going to the wars—</div> - <div class='line'>That is all you need to know.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Graybeards plotted. They were sad.</div> - <div class='line'>Death was in their wrinkled eyes.</div> - <div class='line'>At their tables—with their maps,</div> - <div class='line'>Plans and calculations—wise</div> - <div class='line'>They all seemed; for well they knew</div> - <div class='line'>How ungrudgingly Youth dies.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_229'>229</span>At their green official baize</div> - <div class='line'>They debated all the night</div> - <div class='line'>Plans for your adventurous days</div> - <div class='line'>Which you followed with delight,</div> - <div class='line'>Youth in all your wanderings,</div> - <div class='line'>David of a thousand slings.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>THE STRANGE COMPANION</h3> - -<div class='nf-center-c0'> -<div class='nf-center c002'> - <div><em>A Fragment</em></div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>That strange companion came on shuffling feet,</div> - <div class='line'>Passed me, then turned, and touched my arm.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>He said (and he was melancholy,</div> - <div class='line'>And both of us looked fretfully,</div> - <div class='line'>And slowly we advanced together),</div> - <div class='line'>He said: “I bring you your inheritance.”</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>I watched his eyes; they were dim.</div> - <div class='line'>I doubted him, watched him, doubted him ...</div> - <div class='line'>But, in a ceremonious way,</div> - <div class='line'>He said: “You are too grey:</div> - <div class='line'>Come, you must be merry for a day.”</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>And I, because my heart was dumb,</div> - <div class='line'>Because the life in me was numb,</div> - <div class='line'>Cried: “I will come. I <em>will</em> come.”</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>So, without another word,</div> - <div class='line'>We two jaunted on the street.</div> - <div class='line'>I had heard, often heard,</div> - <div class='line'>The shuffling of those feet of his,</div> - <div class='line'>The shuffle of his feet.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_230'>230</span>And he muttered in my ear</div> - <div class='line'>Such a wheezy jest</div> - <div class='line'>As a man may often hear—</div> - <div class='line'>Not the worst, not the best</div> - <div class='line'>That a man may hear.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Then he murmured in my face</div> - <div class='line'>Something that was true.</div> - <div class='line'>He said: “I have known this long, long while,</div> - <div class='line'>All there is to know of you.”</div> - <div class='line'>And the light of the lamp cut a strange smile</div> - <div class='line'>On his face, and we muttered along the street,</div> - <div class='line'>Good enough friends, on the usual beat.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>We lived together long, long.</div> - <div class='line'>We were always alone, he and I.</div> - <div class='line'>We never smiled with each other;</div> - <div class='line'>We were like brother and brother,</div> - <div class='line'>Dimly accustomed.</div> - <div class='line in20'>Can a man know</div> - <div class='line'>Why he must live, or where he should go?</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>He brought me that joke or two,</div> - <div class='line'>And we roared with laughter, for want of a smile,</div> - <div class='line'>As every man in the world might do.</div> - <div class='line'>He who lies all night in bed</div> - <div class='line'>Is a fool, and midnight will crush his head.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>When he threw a glass of wine in my face</div> - <div class='line'>One night, I hit him, and we parted;</div> - <div class='line'>But in a short space</div> - <div class='line'>We came back to each other melancholy-hearted,</div> - <div class='line'>Told our pain,</div> - <div class='line'>Swore we would not part again.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_231'>231</span>One night we turned a table over</div> - <div class='line'>The body of some slain fool to cover,</div> - <div class='line'>And all the company clapped their hands;</div> - <div class='line'>So we spat in their faces,</div> - <div class='line'>And travelled away to other lands.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>I wish for every man he find</div> - <div class='line'>A strange companion so</div> - <div class='line'>Completely to his mind</div> - <div class='line'>With whom he everywhere may go.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='chapter'> - <h2 class='c005'>Harriet Monroe</h2> -</div> - -<h3 class='c013'>THE HOTEL</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>The long resounding marble corridors, the shining parlors with shining women in them.</div> - <div class='line'>The French room, with its gilt and garlands under plump little tumbling painted Loves.</div> - <div class='line'>The Turkish room, with its jumble of many carpets and its stiffly squared un-Turkish chairs.</div> - <div class='line'>The English room, all heavy crimson and gold, with spreading palms lifted high in round green tubs.</div> - <div class='line'>The electric lights in twos and threes and hundreds, made into festoons and spirals and arabesques, a maze and magic of bright persistent radiance.</div> - <div class='line'>The people sitting in corners by twos and threes, and cooing together under the glare.</div> - <div class='line'>The long rows of silent people in chairs, watching with eyes that see not while the patient band tangles the air with music.</div> - <div class='line'>The bell-boys marching in with cards, and shouting names over and over into ears that do not heed.</div> - <div class='line'>The stout and gorgeous dowagers in lacy white and lilac, bedizened with many jewels, with smart little scarlet or azure hats on their gray-streaked hair.</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_232'>232</span>The business men in trim and spotless suits, who walk in and out with eager steps, or sit at the desks and tables, or watch the shining women.</div> - <div class='line'>The telephone girls forever listening to far voices, with the silver band over their hair and the little black caps obliterating their ears.</div> - <div class='line'>The telegraph tickers sounding their perpetual chit—chit-chit from the uttermost ends of the earth.</div> - <div class='line'>The waiters, in black swallow-tails and white aprons, passing here and there with trays of bottles and glasses.</div> - <div class='line'>The quiet and sumptuous bar-room, with purplish men softly drinking in little alcoves, while the barkeeper, mixing bright liquors, is rapidly plying his bottles.</div> - <div class='line'>The great bedecked and gilded café, with its glitter of a thousand mirrors, with its little white tables bearing gluttonous dishes whereto bright forks, held by pampered hands, flicker daintily back and forth.</div> - <div class='line'>The white-tiled, immaculate kitchen, with many little round blue fires, where white-clad cooks are making spiced and flavored dishes.</div> - <div class='line'>The cool cellars filled with meats and fruits, or layered with sealed and bottled wines mellowing softly in the darkness.</div> - <div class='line'>The invisible stories of furnaces and machines, burrowing deep into the earth, where grimy workmen are heavily laboring.</div> - <div class='line'>The many-windowed stories of little homes and shelters and sleeping-places, reaching up into the night like some miraculous, high-piled honey-comb of wax-white cells.</div> - <div class='line'>The clothes inside of the cells—the stuffs, the silks, the laces; the elaborate delicate disguises that wait in trunks and drawers and closets, or bedrape and conceal human flesh.</div> - <div class='line'>The people inside of the clothes, the bodies white and young, bodies fat and bulging, bodies wrinkled and wan, all alike veiled by fine fabrics, sheltered by walls and roofs, shut in from the sun and stars.</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_233'>233</span>The soul inside of the bodies—the naked souls; souls weazen and weak, or proud and brave; all imprisoned in flesh, wrapped in woven stuffs, enclosed in thick and painted masonry, shut away with many shadows from the shining truth.</div> - <div class='line'>God inside of the souls, God veiled and wrapped and imprisoned and shadowed in fold on fold of flesh and fabrics and mockeries; but ever alive, struggling and rising again, seeking the light, freeing the world.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>THE TURBINE</h3> - -<div class='nf-center-c0'> -<div class='nf-center c002'> - <div><em>To W. S. M.</em></div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Look at her—there she sits upon her throne</div> - <div class='line'>As ladylike and quiet as a nun!</div> - <div class='line'>But if you cross her—whew! her thunderbolts</div> - <div class='line'>Will shake the earth! She’s proud as any queen,</div> - <div class='line'>The beauty—knows her royal business too,</div> - <div class='line'>To light the world, and does it night by night</div> - <div class='line'>When her gay lord, the sun, gives up his job.</div> - <div class='line'>I am her slave; I wake and watch and run</div> - <div class='line'>From dark till dawn beside her. All the while</div> - <div class='line'>She hums there softly, purring with delight</div> - <div class='line'>Because men bring the riches of the earth</div> - <div class='line'>To feed her hungry fires. I do her will</div> - <div class='line'>And dare not disobey, for her right hand</div> - <div class='line'>Is power, her left is terror, and her anger</div> - <div class='line'>Is havoc. Look—if I but lay a wire</div> - <div class='line'>Across the terminals of yonder switch</div> - <div class='line'>She’ll burst her windings, rip her casings off,</div> - <div class='line'>And shriek till envious Hell shoots up its flames,</div> - <div class='line'>Shattering her very throne. And all her people,</div> - <div class='line'>The laboring, trampling, dreaming crowds out there—</div> - <div class='line'>Fools and the wise who look to her for light—</div> - <div class='line'>Will walk in darkness through the liquid night</div> - <div class='line'>Submerged.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in12'><span class='pageno' id='Page_234'>234</span>Sometimes I wonder why she stoops</div> - <div class='line'>To be my friend—oh yes, who talks to me</div> - <div class='line'>And sings away my loneliness; my friend</div> - <div class='line'>Though I am trivial and she sublime.</div> - <div class='line'>Hard-hearted?—No, tender and pitiful,</div> - <div class='line'>As all the great are. Every arrogant grief</div> - <div class='line'>She comforts quietly, and all my joys</div> - <div class='line'>Dance to her measures through the tolerant night.</div> - <div class='line'>She talks to me, tells me her troubles too,</div> - <div class='line'>Just as I tell her mine. Perhaps she feels</div> - <div class='line'>An ache deep down—that agonizing stab</div> - <div class='line'>Of grit grating her bearings; then her voice</div> - <div class='line'>Changes its tune, it wails and calls to me</div> - <div class='line'>To soothe her anguish, and I run, her slave,</div> - <div class='line'>Probe like a surgeon and relieve the pain.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>We have our jokes too, little mockeries</div> - <div class='line'>That no one else in all the swarming world</div> - <div class='line'>Would see the point of. She will laugh at me</div> - <div class='line'>To show her power: maybe her carbon packings</div> - <div class='line'>Leak steam, and I run madly back and forth</div> - <div class='line'>To keep the infernal fiends from breaking loose:</div> - <div class='line'>Suddenly she will throttle them herself</div> - <div class='line'>And chuckle softly, far above me there,</div> - <div class='line'>At my alarms.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in12'>But there are moments—hush!—</div> - <div class='line'>When my turn comes; her slave can be her master,</div> - <div class='line'>Conquering her he serves. For she’s a woman,</div> - <div class='line'>Gets bored there on her throne, tired of herself,</div> - <div class='line'>Tingles with power that turns to wantonness.</div> - <div class='line'>Suddenly something’s wrong—she laughs at me,</div> - <div class='line'>Bedevils the frail wires with some mad caress</div> - <div class='line'>That thrills blind space, calls down ten thousand lightnings</div> - <div class='line'>To ruin her pomp and set her spirit free.</div> - <div class='line'>Then with this puny hand, swift as her threat,</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_235'>235</span>Must I beat back the chaos, hold in leash</div> - <div class='line'>Destructive furies, rescue her—even her—</div> - <div class='line'>From the fierce rashness of her truant mood,</div> - <div class='line'>And make me lord of far and near a moment,</div> - <div class='line'>Startling the mystery. Last night I did it—</div> - <div class='line'>Alone here with my hand upon her heart</div> - <div class='line'>I faced the mounting fiends and whipped them down;</div> - <div class='line'>And never a wink from the long file of lamps</div> - <div class='line'>Betrayed her to the world.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in26'>So there she sits,</div> - <div class='line'>Mounted on all the ages, at the peak</div> - <div class='line'>Of time. The first man dreamed of light, and dug</div> - <div class='line'>The sodden ignorance away, and cursed</div> - <div class='line'>The darkness; young primeval races dragged</div> - <div class='line'>Foundation stones, and piled into the void</div> - <div class='line'>Rage and desire; the Greek mounted and sang</div> - <div class='line'>Promethean songs and lit a signal fire:</div> - <div class='line'>The Roman bent his iron will to forge</div> - <div class='line'>Deep furnaces; slow epochs riveted</div> - <div class='line'>With hope the secret chambers: till at last</div> - <div class='line'>We, you and I, this living age of ours,</div> - <div class='line'>A new-winged Mercury, out of the skies</div> - <div class='line'>Filch the wild spirit of light, and chain him there</div> - <div class='line'>To do her will forever.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in22'>Look, my friend,</div> - <div class='line'>Here is a sign! What is this crystal sphere—</div> - <div class='line'>This little bulb of glass I lightly lift,</div> - <div class='line'>This iridescent bubble a child might blow</div> - <div class='line'>Out of its brazen pipe to hold the sun—</div> - <div class='line'>What strange toy is it? In my hand it lies</div> - <div class='line'>Cold and inert, its puny artery—</div> - <div class='line'>That curling cobweb film—ashen and dead.</div> - <div class='line'>But now—a twist or two—let it but touch</div> - <div class='line'>The hem, far trailing, of my lady’s robe,</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_236'>236</span>And look, the burning life-blood of the stars</div> - <div class='line'>Leaps to its heart, and glows against the dark,</div> - <div class='line'>Kindling the world.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in22'>Even so I touch her garment,</div> - <div class='line'>Her servant through the quiet night; and thus</div> - <div class='line'>I lay my hand upon the Pleiades</div> - <div class='line'>And feel their throb of fire. Grandly she gives</div> - <div class='line'>To me unworthy; woman inscrutable,</div> - <div class='line'>Scatters her splendors through my darkness, leads me</div> - <div class='line'>Far out into the workshop of the worlds.</div> - <div class='line'>There I can feel those infinite energies</div> - <div class='line'>Our little earth just gnaws at through the ether,</div> - <div class='line'>And see the light our sunshine hides. Out there,</div> - <div class='line'>Close to the heart of life, I am at peace.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>ON THE PORCH</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>As I lie roofed in, screened in,</div> - <div class='line'>From the pattering rain,</div> - <div class='line'>The summer rain—</div> - <div class='line'>As I lie</div> - <div class='line'>Snug and dry,</div> - <div class='line'>And hear the birds complain:</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Oh, billow on billow,</div> - <div class='line'>Oh, roar on roar,</div> - <div class='line'>Over me wash</div> - <div class='line'>The seas of war.</div> - <div class='line'>Over me—down—down—</div> - <div class='line'>Lunges and plunges</div> - <div class='line'>The huge gun with its one blind eye,</div> - <div class='line'>The armored train,</div> - <div class='line'>And, swooping out of the sky,</div> - <div class='line'>The aeroplane.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_237'>237</span>Down—down—</div> - <div class='line'>The army proudly swinging</div> - <div class='line'>Under gay flags,</div> - <div class='line'>The glorious dead heaped up like rags,</div> - <div class='line'>A church with bronze bells ringing,</div> - <div class='line'>A city all towers,</div> - <div class='line'>Gardens of lovers and flowers,</div> - <div class='line'>The round world swinging</div> - <div class='line'>In the light of the sun:</div> - <div class='line'>All broken, undone,</div> - <div class='line'>All down—under</div> - <div class='line'>Black surges of thunder ...</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Oh, billow on billow</div> - <div class='line'>Oh, roar on roar,</div> - <div class='line'>Over me wash</div> - <div class='line'>The seas of war ...</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>As I lie roofed in, screened in,</div> - <div class='line'>From the pattering rain,</div> - <div class='line'>The summer rain—</div> - <div class='line'>As I lie</div> - <div class='line'>Snug and dry,</div> - <div class='line'>And hear the birds complain.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>THE WONDER OF IT</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>How wild, how witch-like weird that life should be!</div> - <div class='line'>That the insensate rock dared dream of me,</div> - <div class='line'>And take to bursting out and burgeoning—</div> - <div class='line in6'>Oh, long ago—yo ho!—</div> - <div class='line'>And wearing green! How stark and strange a thing</div> - <div class='line'>That life should be!</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Oh, mystic mad, a rigadoon of glee,</div> - <div class='line'>That dust should rise, and leap alive, and flee</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_238'>238</span>A-foot, a-wing, and shake the deeps with cries—</div> - <div class='line in6'>Oh, far away—yo-hay!</div> - <div class='line'>What moony masque, what arrogant disguise</div> - <div class='line'>That life should be!</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>THE INNER SILENCE</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Noises that strive to tear</div> - <div class='line'>Earth’s mantle soft of air</div> - <div class='line'>And break upon the stillness where it dwells:</div> - <div class='line'>The noise of battle and the noise of prayer,</div> - <div class='line'>The cooing noise of love that softly tells</div> - <div class='line'>Joy’s brevity, the brazen noise of laughter—</div> - <div class='line'>All these affront me not, nor echo after</div> - <div class='line'>Through the long memories.</div> - <div class='line'>They may not enter the deep chamber where</div> - <div class='line'>Forever silence is.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Silence more soft than spring hides in the ground</div> - <div class='line'>Beneath her budding flowers;</div> - <div class='line'>Silence more rich than ever was the sound</div> - <div class='line'>Of harps through long warm hours.</div> - <div class='line'>It’s like a hidden vastness, even as though</div> - <div class='line'>Great suns might there beat out their measures slow,</div> - <div class='line'>Nor break the hush mightier than they.</div> - <div class='line'>There do I dwell eternally,</div> - <div class='line'>There where no thought may follow me,</div> - <div class='line'>Nor stillest dreams whose pinions plume the way.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>LOVE SONG</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>I love my life, but not too well</div> - <div class='line in2'>To give it to thee like a flower,</div> - <div class='line'>So it may pleasure thee to dwell</div> - <div class='line in2'>Deep in its perfume but an hour.</div> - <div class='line'>I love my life, but not too well.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_239'>239</span>I love my life, but not too well</div> - <div class='line in2'>To sing it note by note away,</div> - <div class='line'>So to thy soul the song may tell</div> - <div class='line in2'>The beauty of the desolate day.</div> - <div class='line'>I love my life, but not too well.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>I love my life, but not too well</div> - <div class='line in2'>To cast it like a cloak on thine,</div> - <div class='line'>Against the storms that sound and swell</div> - <div class='line in2'>Between thy lonely heart and mine.</div> - <div class='line'>I love my life, but not too well.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>A FAREWELL</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Good-by!—no, do not grieve that it is over,</div> - <div class='line in2'>The perfect hour;</div> - <div class='line'>That the winged joy, sweet honey-loving rover,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Flits from the flower.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Grieve not—it is the law. Love will be flying—</div> - <div class='line in2'>Oh, love and all.</div> - <div class='line'>Glad was the living—blessed be the dying!</div> - <div class='line in2'>Let the leaves fall.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>LULLABY</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>My little one, sleep softly</div> - <div class='line in2'>Among the toys and flowers.</div> - <div class='line'>Sleep softly, O my first-born son,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Through all the long dark hours.</div> - <div class='line'>And if you waken far away</div> - <div class='line in2'>I shall be wandering too.</div> - <div class='line'>If far away you run and play</div> - <div class='line in2'>My heart must follow you.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_240'>240</span>Sleep softly, O my baby,</div> - <div class='line in2'>And smile down in your sleep.</div> - <div class='line'>Here are red rose-buds for your bed—</div> - <div class='line in2'>Smile, and I will not weep.</div> - <div class='line'>We made our pledge—you did not fear</div> - <div class='line in2'>To go—why then should I?</div> - <div class='line'>Though long you sleep, I shall be near;</div> - <div class='line in2'>So hush—we must not cry.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Sleep softly, dear one, softly—</div> - <div class='line in2'>They can not part us now;</div> - <div class='line'>Forever rest here on my breast,</div> - <div class='line in2'>My kiss upon your brow.</div> - <div class='line'>What though they hide a little grave</div> - <div class='line in2'>With dream-flowers false or true?</div> - <div class='line'>What difference? We will just be brave</div> - <div class='line in2'>Together—I and you.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>PAIN</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>She heard the children playing in the sun,</div> - <div class='line'>And through her window saw the white-stemmed trees</div> - <div class='line'>Sway like a film of silver in the breeze</div> - <div class='line'>Under the purple hills; and one by one</div> - <div class='line'>She noted chairs and cabinets, and spun</div> - <div class='line'>The pattern of her bed’s pale draperies:</div> - <div class='line'>Yet all the while she knew that each of these</div> - <div class='line'>Was a dull lie, in irony begun.</div> - <div class='line'>For down in hell she lay, whose livid fires</div> - <div class='line'>Love may not quench, whose pangs death may not quell.</div> - <div class='line'>The round immensity of earth and sky</div> - <div class='line'>Shrank to a point that speared her. Loves, desires,</div> - <div class='line'>Darkened to torturing ministers of hell,</div> - <div class='line'>Whose mockery of joy deepened the lie.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_241'>241</span>Little eternities the black hours were,</div> - <div class='line'>That no beginning knew, that knew no end.</div> - <div class='line'>Day waned, and night came like a faithless friend,</div> - <div class='line'>Bringing no joy; till slowly over her</div> - <div class='line'>A numbness grew, and life became a blur,</div> - <div class='line'>A silence, an oblivion, a dark blend</div> - <div class='line'>Of dim lost agonies, whose downward trend</div> - <div class='line'>Led into time’s eternal sepulchre.</div> - <div class='line'>And yet, when, after aeons infinite</div> - <div class='line'>Of dark eclipse she woke—lo, it was day!</div> - <div class='line'>The pictures hung upon the walls, each one;</div> - <div class='line'>Under the same rose-patterned coverlet</div> - <div class='line'>She lay; spring was still young, and still the play</div> - <div class='line'>Of happy children sounded in the sun.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>THE WATER OUZEL</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Little brown surf-bather of the mountains!</div> - <div class='line'>Spirit of foam, lover of cataracts, shaking your wings in falling waters!</div> - <div class='line'>Have you no fear of the roar and rush when Nevada plunges—</div> - <div class='line'>Nevada, the shapely dancer, feeling her way with slim white fingers?</div> - <div class='line'>How dare you dash at Yosemite the mighty—</div> - <div class='line'>Tall, white-limbed Yosemite, leaping down, down, over the cliff?</div> - <div class='line'>Is it not enough to lean on the blue air of mountains?</div> - <div class='line'>Is it not enough to rest with your mate at timber-line, in bushes that hug the rocks?</div> - <div class='line'>Must you fly through mad waters where the heaped-up granite breaks them?</div> - <div class='line'>Must you batter your wings in the torrent?</div> - <div class='line'>Must you plunge for life or death through the foam?</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_242'>242</span> - <h3 class='c014'>THE PINE AT TIMBER-LINE</h3> -</div> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>What has bent you,</div> - <div class='line'>Warped and twisted you,</div> - <div class='line'>Torn and crippled you?—</div> - <div class='line'>What has embittered you,</div> - <div class='line'>O lonely tree?</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>You search the rocks for a footing,</div> - <div class='line in6'>dragging scrawny roots;</div> - <div class='line'>You bare your thin breast to the storms,</div> - <div class='line in6'>and fling out wild arms behind you;</div> - <div class='line'>You throw back your witch-like head,</div> - <div class='line in6'>with wisps of hair stringing the wind.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>You fight with the snows,</div> - <div class='line'>You rail and shriek at the tempests.</div> - <div class='line'>Old before your time, you challenge the cold stars.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Be still, be satisfied!</div> - <div class='line'>Stand straight like your brothers in the valley,</div> - <div class='line'>The soft green valley of summer down below.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Why front the endless winter of the peak?</div> - <div class='line'>Why seize the lightning in your riven hands?</div> - <div class='line'>Why cut the driven wind and shriek aloud?</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Why tarry here?</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>MOUNTAIN SONG</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>I have not where to lay my head;</div> - <div class='line in2'>Upon my breast no child shall lie;</div> - <div class='line'>For me no marriage feast is spread:</div> - <div class='line in2'>I walk alone under the sky.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_243'>243</span>My staff and scrip I cast away—</div> - <div class='line in2'>Light-burdened to the mountain height!</div> - <div class='line'>Climbing the rocky steep by day,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Kindling my fire against the night.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>The bitter hail shall flower the peak,</div> - <div class='line in2'>The icy wind shall dry my tears.</div> - <div class='line'>Strong shall I be, who am but weak,</div> - <div class='line in2'>When bright Orion spears my fears.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Under the horned moon I shall rise</div> - <div class='line in2'>Up-swinging on the scarf of dawn.</div> - <div class='line'>The sun, searching with level eyes,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Shall take my hand and lead me on.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Wide flaming pinions veil the West—</div> - <div class='line in2'>Ah, shall I find? and shall I know?</div> - <div class='line'>My feet are bound upon the Quest—</div> - <div class='line in2'>Over the Great Divide I go.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='chapter'> - <h2 class='c005'>John G. Neihardt</h2> -</div> - -<h3 class='c013'>PRAYER FOR PAIN</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>I do not pray for peace nor ease,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Nor truce from sorrow:</div> - <div class='line'>No suppliant on servile knees</div> - <div class='line in2'>Begs here against to-morrow!</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Lean flame against lean flame we flash,</div> - <div class='line in2'>O Fates that meet me fair;</div> - <div class='line'>Blue steel against blue steel we clash—</div> - <div class='line in2'>Lay on, and I shall dare!</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_244'>244</span>But Thou of deeps the awful Deep,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Thou Breather in the clay,</div> - <div class='line'>Grant this my only prayer—Oh, keep</div> - <div class='line in2'>My soul from turning gray!</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>For until now, whatever wrought</div> - <div class='line in2'>Against my sweet desires,</div> - <div class='line'>My days were smitten harps strung taut,</div> - <div class='line in2'>My nights were slumberous lyres.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>And howsoe’er the hard blow rang</div> - <div class='line in2'>Upon my battered shield,</div> - <div class='line'>Some lark-like, soaring spirit sang</div> - <div class='line in2'>Above my battle-field.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>And through my soul of stormy night</div> - <div class='line in2'>The zigzag blue flame ran.</div> - <div class='line'>I asked no odds—I fought my fight—</div> - <div class='line in2'>Events against a man.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>But now—at last—the gray mist chokes</div> - <div class='line in2'>And numbs me. Leave me pain!</div> - <div class='line'>Oh, let me feel the biting strokes,</div> - <div class='line in2'>That I may fight again!</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>ENVOI</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Oh, seek me not within a tomb—</div> - <div class='line in2'>Thou shalt not find me in the clay!</div> - <div class='line'>I pierce a little wall of gloom</div> - <div class='line in2'>To mingle with the day!</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>I brothered with the things that pass,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Poor giddy joy and puckered grief;</div> - <div class='line'>I go to brother with the grass</div> - <div class='line in2'>And with the sunning leaf.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_245'>245</span>Not death can sheathe me in a shroud;</div> - <div class='line in2'>A joy-sword whetted keen with pain,</div> - <div class='line'>I join the armies of the cloud,</div> - <div class='line in2'>The lightning and the rain.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Oh, subtle in the sap athrill,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Athletic in the glad uplift,</div> - <div class='line'>A portion of the cosmic will,</div> - <div class='line in2'>I pierce the planet-drift.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>My God and I shall interknit</div> - <div class='line in2'>As rain and ocean, breath and air;</div> - <div class='line'>And oh, the luring thought of it</div> - <div class='line in2'>Is prayer!</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='chapter'> - <h2 class='c005'>Yone Noguchi</h2> -</div> - -<h3 class='c013'>THE POET</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Out of the deep and the dark,</div> - <div class='line'>A sparkling mystery, a shape,</div> - <div class='line'>Something perfect,</div> - <div class='line'>Comes like the stir of the day:</div> - <div class='line'>One whose breath is an odor,</div> - <div class='line'>Whose eyes show the road to stars,</div> - <div class='line'>The breeze in his face,</div> - <div class='line'>The glory of heaven on his back.</div> - <div class='line'>He steps like a vision hung in air,</div> - <div class='line'>Diffusing the passion of eternity;</div> - <div class='line'>His abode is the sunlight of morn,</div> - <div class='line'>The music of eve his speech:</div> - <div class='line'>In his sight,</div> - <div class='line'>One shall turn from the dust of the grave,</div> - <div class='line'>And move upward to the woodland.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_246'>246</span> - <h3 class='c014'>I HAVE CAST THE WORLD</h3> -</div> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>I have cast the world,</div> - <div class='line in6'>and think me as nothing.</div> - <div class='line'>Yet I feel cold on snow-falling day,</div> - <div class='line'>And happy on flower day.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='chapter'> - <h2 class='c005'>Grace Fallow Norton</h2> -</div> - -<h3 class='c013'>ALLEGRA AGONISTES</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>A gleam of gold in gloom and gray,</div> - <div class='line'>A call from out a fairer day.</div> - <div class='line'>O pang at heart and ebbing blood!</div> - <div class='line'>(Hush, bread and salt should be thy mood,</div> - <div class='line'>Stern woman of the Brotherhood.)</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Clamor of golden tones and tunes,</div> - <div class='line'>Hunt of faint horns, breath of bassoons;</div> - <div class='line'>They wound my soul again; I lie</div> - <div class='line'>Face earthward in fresh agony.</div> - <div class='line'>Oh, give me joy before I die!</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>World, world, I could have danced for thee,</div> - <div class='line'>And I had tales and minstrelsy;</div> - <div class='line'>Kept fairer, I had been more good.</div> - <div class='line'>(Hush, bread and salt should be thy mood,</div> - <div class='line'>Soul of the breadless Brotherhood.)</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Some thou hast formed to play thy part,</div> - <div class='line'>The bold, the cold, the hard of heart.</div> - <div class='line'>Thy rue upon my lips I toss.</div> - <div class='line'>Rose was my right. O world, the loss,</div> - <div class='line'>When Greek limbs writhe upon the cross!</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_247'>247</span> - <h3 class='c014'>MAKE NO VOWS</h3> -</div> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>I made a vow once, one only.</div> - <div class='line'>I was young and I was lonely.</div> - <div class='line'>When I grew strong I said: “This vow</div> - <div class='line'>Is too narrow for me now.</div> - <div class='line'>Who am I to be bound by old oaths?</div> - <div class='line'>I will change them as I change my clothes!”</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>But that ancient outworn vow</div> - <div class='line'>Was like fetters upon me now.</div> - <div class='line'>It was hard to break, hard to break;</div> - <div class='line'>Hard to shake from me, hard to shake.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>I broke it by day, but it closed upon me at night.</div> - <div class='line'>He is not free who is free only in the sun-light.</div> - <div class='line'>He is not free who bears fetters in his dreams,</div> - <div class='line'>Nor he who laughs only by dark dream-fed streams.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Oh, it costs much bright coin of strength to live!</div> - <div class='line'>Watch, then, where all your strength you give!</div> - <div class='line'>For I, who would be so wild and wondrous now,</div> - <div class='line'>Must give, give, to break a burdening bitter vow.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>I GIVE THANKS</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>There’s one that I once loved so much</div> - <div class='line in2'>I am no more the same.</div> - <div class='line'>I give thanks for that transforming touch.</div> - <div class='line in2'>I tell you not his name.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>He has become a sign to me</div> - <div class='line in2'>For flowers and for fire.</div> - <div class='line'>For song he is a sign to me</div> - <div class='line in2'>And for the broken lyre.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_248'>248</span>And I have known him in a book</div> - <div class='line in2'>And never touched his hand.</div> - <div class='line'>And he is dead—I need not look</div> - <div class='line in2'>For him through his green land.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Heaven may not be. I have no faith,</div> - <div class='line in2'>But this desire I have—</div> - <div class='line'>To take my soul on my last breath,</div> - <div class='line in2'>To lift it like a wave,</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>And surge unto his star and say,</div> - <div class='line in2'>His friendship had been heaven;</div> - <div class='line'>And pray, for clouds that closed his day</div> - <div class='line in2'>May light at last be given!</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>And say, he shone at noon so bright</div> - <div class='line in2'>I learned to run and rejoice!</div> - <div class='line'>And beg him for one last delight—</div> - <div class='line in2'>The true sound of his voice.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>There’s one that once moved me so much</div> - <div class='line in2'>I am no more the same;</div> - <div class='line'>And I pray I too, I too, may touch</div> - <div class='line in2'>Some heart with singing flame.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='chapter'> - <h2 class='c005'>James Oppenheim</h2> -</div> - -<h3 class='c013'>THE SLAVE</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>They set the slave free, striking off his chains....</div> - <div class='line'>Then he was as much of a slave as ever.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>He was still chained to servility,</div> - <div class='line'>He was still manacled to indolence and sloth,</div> - <div class='line'>He was still bound by fear and superstition,</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_249'>249</span>By ignorance, suspicion, and savagery ...</div> - <div class='line'>His slavery was not in the chains,</div> - <div class='line'>But in himself ...</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>They can only set free men free ...</div> - <div class='line'>And there is no need of that:</div> - <div class='line'>Free men set themselves free.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>THE LONELY CHILD</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Do you think, my boy, when I put my arms around you</div> - <div class='line'>To still your fears,</div> - <div class='line'>That it is I who conquer the dark and the lonely night?</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>My arms seem to wrap love about you,</div> - <div class='line'>As your little heart fluttering at my breast</div> - <div class='line'>Throbs love through me ...</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>But, dear one, it is not your father:</div> - <div class='line'>Other arms are about you, drawing you near,</div> - <div class='line'>And drawing the Earth near, and the Night near,</div> - <div class='line'>And your father near....</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Some day you shall lie alone at nights,</div> - <div class='line'>As now your father lies;</div> - <div class='line'>And in those arms, as a leaf fallen on a tranquil stream,</div> - <div class='line'>Drift into dreams and healing sleep.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>NOT OVERLOOKED</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Though I am little as all little things,</div> - <div class='line'>Though the stars that pass over my tininess are as the sands of the sea,</div> - <div class='line'>Though the garment of the night was made for a sky-giant and does not fit me,</div> - <div class='line'>Though even in a city of men I am as nothing,</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_250'>250</span>Yet at times the gift of life is almost more than I can bear....</div> - <div class='line'>I laugh with joyousness, the morning is a blithe holiday;</div> - <div class='line'>And in the overrunning of my hardy bliss praise rises for the very breath I breathe.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>How soaked the universe is with life—</div> - <div class='line'>Not a cranny but is drenched!</div> - <div class='line'>Ah, not even I was overlooked!</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>THE RUNNER IN THE SKIES</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Who is the runner in the skies,</div> - <div class='line'>With her blowing scarf of stars,</div> - <div class='line'>And our earth and sun hovering like bees about her blossoming heart!</div> - <div class='line'>Her feet are on the winds where space is deep;</div> - <div class='line'>Her eyes are nebulous and veiled;</div> - <div class='line'>She hurries through the night to a far lover.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='chapter'> - <h2 class='c005'>Patrick Orr</h2> -</div> - -<h3 class='c013'>ANNIE SHORE AND JOHNNIE DOON</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in4'>Annie Shore, ’twas, sang last night</div> - <div class='line in6'>Down in South End saloon;</div> - <div class='line in4'>A tawdry creature in the light,</div> - <div class='line in4'>Painted cheeks, eyes over bright,</div> - <div class='line in6'>Singing a dance-hall tune.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>I’d be forgetting Annie’s singing—</div> - <div class='line in2'>I’d not have thought again—</div> - <div class='line'>But for the thing that cried and fluttered</div> - <div class='line in2'>Through all the shrill refrain:</div> - <div class='line'>Youth crying above foul words, cheap music,</div> - <div class='line in2'>And innocence in pain.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in4'><span class='pageno' id='Page_251'>251</span>They sentenced Johnnie Doon today</div> - <div class='line in6'>For murder, stark and grim;</div> - <div class='line in4'>Death’s none too dear a price, they say,</div> - <div class='line in4'>For such-like men as him to pay;</div> - <div class='line in6'>No need to pity him!</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>And Johnnie Doon I’d not be pitying—</div> - <div class='line in2'>I could forget him now—</div> - <div class='line'>But for the childish look of trouble</div> - <div class='line in2'>That fell across his brow,</div> - <div class='line'>For the twisting hands he looked at dumbly</div> - <div class='line in2'>As if they’d sinned, he knew not how.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>IN THE MOHAVE</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>As I rode down the arroyo through yuccas belled with bloom</div> - <div class='line in2'>I saw a last year’s stalk lift dried hands to the light,</div> - <div class='line'>Like age at prayer for death within a careless room,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Like one by day o’ertaken, whose sick desire is night.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>And as I rode I saw a lean coyote lying</div> - <div class='line in2'>All perfect as in life upon a silver dune,</div> - <div class='line'>Save that his feet no more could flee the harsh light’s spying,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Save that no more his shadow would cleave the sinking moon.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>O cruel land, where form endures, the spirit fled!</div> - <div class='line in2'>You chill the sun for me with your gray sphinx’s smile,</div> - <div class='line'>Brooding in the bright silence above your captive dead,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Where beat the heart of life so brief, so brief a while!</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='chapter'> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_252'>252</span> - <h2 class='c005'>Seumas O’Sullivan</h2> -</div> - -<h3 class='c013'>MY SORROW</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>My sorrow that I am not by the little dun,</div> - <div class='line'>By the lake of the starlings at Rosses under the hill—</div> - <div class='line'>And the larks there, singing over the fields of dew,</div> - <div class='line'>Or evening there, and the sedges still!</div> - <div class='line'>For plain I see now the length of the yellow sand,</div> - <div class='line'>And Lissadell far off and its leafy ways,</div> - <div class='line'>And the holy mountain whose mighty heart</div> - <div class='line'>Gathers into it all the colored days.</div> - <div class='line'>My sorrow that I am not by the little dun,</div> - <div class='line'>By the lake of the starlings at evening when all is still—</div> - <div class='line'>And still in whispering sedges the herons stand.</div> - <div class='line'>’Tis there I would nestle at rest till the quivering moon</div> - <div class='line'>Uprose in the golden quiet over the hill.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>SPLENDID AND TERRIBLE</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Splendid and terrible your love.</div> - <div class='line'>The searing pinions of its flight</div> - <div class='line'>Flamed but a moment’s space above</div> - <div class='line'>The place where ancient memories keep</div> - <div class='line'>Their quiet; and the dreaming deep</div> - <div class='line'>Moved inly with a troubled light,</div> - <div class='line'>And that old passion woke and stirred</div> - <div class='line'>Out of its sleep.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Splendid and terrible your love.</div> - <div class='line'>I hold it to me like a flame;</div> - <div class='line'>I hold it like a flame above</div> - <div class='line'>The empty anguish of my breast.</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_253'>253</span>There let it stay, there let it rest—</div> - <div class='line'>Deep in the heart whereto it came</div> - <div class='line'>Of old as some wind-wearied bird</div> - <div class='line'>Drops to its nest.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>THE OTHERS</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>From our hidden places,</div> - <div class='line in2'>By a secret path,</div> - <div class='line'>We come in the moonlight</div> - <div class='line in2'>To the side of the green rath.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>There the night through</div> - <div class='line in2'>We take our pleasure,</div> - <div class='line'>Dancing to such a measure</div> - <div class='line in2'>As earth never knew.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>To dance and lilt</div> - <div class='line in2'>And song without a name,</div> - <div class='line'>So sweetly chanted</div> - <div class='line in2'>’Twould put a bird to shame.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>And many a maiden</div> - <div class='line in2'>Is there, of mortal birth,</div> - <div class='line'>Her young eyes laden</div> - <div class='line in2'>With dreams of earth.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Music so piercing wild</div> - <div class='line in2'>And forest-sweet would bring</div> - <div class='line'>Silence on blackbirds singing</div> - <div class='line in2'>Their best in the ear of spring.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>And many a youth entrancèd</div> - <div class='line in2'>Moves slow in the dreamy round,</div> - <div class='line'>His brave lost feet enchanted</div> - <div class='line in2'>With the rhythm of faery sound.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_254'>254</span>Oh, many a thrush and blackbird</div> - <div class='line in2'>Would fall to the dewy ground,</div> - <div class='line'>And pine away in silence</div> - <div class='line in2'>For envy of such a sound.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>So the night through,</div> - <div class='line in2'>In our sad pleasure,</div> - <div class='line'>We dance to many a measure</div> - <div class='line in2'>That earth never knew.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='chapter'> - <h2 class='c005'>Josephine Preston Peabody</h2> -</div> - -<h3 class='c013'>CRADLE SONG</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in16'>I</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Lord Gabriel, wilt thou not rejoice</div> - <div class='line'>When at last a little boy’s</div> - <div class='line in2'>Cheek lies heavy as a rose,</div> - <div class='line in2'>And his eyelids close?</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Gabriel, when that hush may be,</div> - <div class='line'>This sweet hand all heedfully</div> - <div class='line in2'>I’ll undo, for thee alone,</div> - <div class='line in2'>From his mother’s own.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Then the far blue highways paven</div> - <div class='line'>With the burning stars of heaven</div> - <div class='line in2'>He shall gladden with the sweet</div> - <div class='line in2'>Hasting of his feet—</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Feet so brightly bare and cool,</div> - <div class='line'>Leaping, as from pool to pool;</div> - <div class='line in2'>From a little laughing boy</div> - <div class='line in2'>Splashing rainbow joy!</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_255'>255</span>Gabriel, wilt thou understand</div> - <div class='line'>How to keep his hovering hand—</div> - <div class='line in2'>Never shut, as in a bond,</div> - <div class='line in2'>From the bright beyond?</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Nay, but though it cling and close</div> - <div class='line'>Tightly as a clinging rose,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Clasp it only so—aright,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Lest his heart take fright.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>(<em><span lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Dormi, dormi, tu;</span></em></div> - <div class='line'><em>The dusk is hung with blue.</em>)</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in16'>II</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Lord Michael, wilt not thou rejoice</div> - <div class='line'>When at last a little boy’s</div> - <div class='line in2'>Heart, a shut-in murmuring bee,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Turns him into thee?</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Wilt thou heed thine armor well—</div> - <div class='line'>To take his hand from Gabriel,</div> - <div class='line in2'>So his radiant cup of dream</div> - <div class='line in2'>May not spill a gleam?</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>He will take thy heart in thrall,</div> - <div class='line'>Telling o’er thy breastplate all</div> - <div class='line in2'>Colors, in his bubbling speech,</div> - <div class='line in2'>With his hand to each.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>(<em><span lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Dormi, dormi, tu,</span></em></div> - <div class='line'><em>Sapphire is the blue;</em></div> - <div class='line'><em>Pearl and beryl, they are called,</em></div> - <div class='line'><em>Chrysoprase and emerald,</em></div> - <div class='line'><em>Sard and amethyst.</em></div> - <div class='line'><em>Numbered so, and kissed.</em>)</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_256'>256</span>Ah, but find some angel word</div> - <div class='line'>For thy sharp, subduing sword!</div> - <div class='line in2'>Yea, Lord Michael, make no doubt</div> - <div class='line in2'>He will find it out:</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>(<i><span lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Dormi, dormi, tu!</span></i>)</div> - <div class='line'><em>His eyes will look at you.</em></div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in16'>III</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Last, a little morning space,</div> - <div class='line'>Lead him to that leafy place</div> - <div class='line in2'>Where Our Lady sits awake,</div> - <div class='line in2'>For all mothers’ sake.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Bosomed with the Blessèd One,</div> - <div class='line'>He shall mind her of her Son,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Once so folded from all harms,</div> - <div class='line in2'>In her shrining arms.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>(<em>In her veil of blue,</em></div> - <div class='line'><em>Dormi, dormi, tu.</em>)</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'>So—and fare thee well.</div> - <div class='line in2'>Softly—Gabriel ...</div> - <div class='line'>When the first faint red shall come,</div> - <div class='line'>Bid the Day-star lead him home—</div> - <div class='line in2'>For the bright world’s sake—</div> - <div class='line in2'>To my heart, awake.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>THE CEDARS</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>All down the years the fragrance came,</div> - <div class='line'>The mingled fragrance, with a flame,</div> - <div class='line'>Of cedars breathing in the sun,</div> - <div class='line'>The cedar-trees of Lebanon.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_257'>257</span>O thirst of song in bitter air,</div> - <div class='line'>And hope, wing-hurt from iron care,</div> - <div class='line'>What balm of myrrh and honey, won</div> - <div class='line'>From far-off trees of Lebanon!</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Not from these eyelids yet have I</div> - <div class='line'>Ever beheld that early sky.</div> - <div class='line'>Why do they call me through the sun?—</div> - <div class='line'>Even the trees of Lebanon?</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>A SONG OF SOLOMON</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>King Solomon was the wisest man</div> - <div class='line in2'>Of all that have been kings.</div> - <div class='line'>He built an House unto the Lord;</div> - <div class='line in2'>And he sang of creeping things.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Of creeping things, of things that fly,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Or swim within the seas;</div> - <div class='line'>Of the little weed along the wall,</div> - <div class='line in2'>And of the cedar-trees.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>And happier he, without mistake,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Than all men since alive.</div> - <div class='line'>God’s House he built; and he did make</div> - <div class='line in2'>A thousand songs and five.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='chapter'> - <h2 class='c005'>Ezra Pound</h2> -</div> - -<h3 class='c013'><span lang="grc" xml:lang="grc">Δώρια</span></h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Be in me as the eternal moods</div> - <div class='line in10'>of the bleak wind, and not</div> - <div class='line'>As transient things are—</div> - <div class='line in10'>gaiety of flowers.</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_258'>258</span>Have me in the strong loneliness</div> - <div class='line in10'>of sunless cliffs</div> - <div class='line'>And of gray waters.</div> - <div class='line in10'>Let the gods speak softly of us</div> - <div class='line'>In days hereafter,</div> - <div class='line in10'>the shadowy flowers of Orcus</div> - <div class='line'>Remember thee.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>THE RETURN</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>See, they return; ah, see the tentative</div> - <div class='line'>Movements, and the slow feet,</div> - <div class='line'>The trouble in the pace and the uncertain</div> - <div class='line'>Wavering!</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>See, they return, one, and by one,</div> - <div class='line'>With fear, as half-awakened;</div> - <div class='line'>As if the snow should hesitate</div> - <div class='line'>And murmur in the wind,</div> - <div class='line in10'>and half turn back;</div> - <div class='line'>These were the “Wing’d-with-Awe,”</div> - <div class='line in10'>inviolable.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Gods of that wingèd shoe!</div> - <div class='line'>With them the silver hounds,</div> - <div class='line in10'>sniffing the trace of air!</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Haie! Haie!</div> - <div class='line in4'>These were the swift to harry;</div> - <div class='line'>These the keen-scented;</div> - <div class='line'>These were the souls of blood.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Slow on the leash,</div> - <div class='line in10'>pallid the leash-men!</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_259'>259</span> - <h3 class='c014'>PICCADILLY</h3> -</div> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Beautiful, tragical faces—</div> - <div class='line'>Ye that were whole, and are so sunken;</div> - <div class='line'>And, O ye vile, ye that might have been loved,</div> - <div class='line'>That are so sodden and drunken,</div> - <div class='line in22'>Who hath forgotten you?</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>O wistful, fragile faces, few out of many!</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>The crass, the coarse, the brazen,</div> - <div class='line'>God knows I cannot pity them, perhaps, as I should do;</div> - <div class='line'>But oh, ye delicate, wistful faces,</div> - <div class='line in22'>Who hath forgotten you?</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>N. Y.</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>My City, my beloved, my white!</div> - <div class='line in4'>Ah, slender,</div> - <div class='line'>Listen! Listen to me, and I will breathe into thee a soul.</div> - <div class='line'>Delicately upon the reed, attend me!</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Now do I know that I am mad,</em></div> - <div class='line'><em>For here are a million people surly with traffic;</em></div> - <div class='line'><em>This is no maid.</em></div> - <div class='line'><em>Neither could I play upon any reed if I had one.</em></div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>My City, my beloved,</div> - <div class='line'>Thou art a maid with no breasts,</div> - <div class='line'>Thou art slender as a silver reed.</div> - <div class='line'>Listen to me, attend me!</div> - <div class='line'>And I will breathe into thee a soul,</div> - <div class='line'>And thou shalt live for ever.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_260'>260</span> - <h3 class='c014'>THE COMING OF WAR: ACTAEON</h3> -</div> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>An image of Lethe,</div> - <div class='line in18'>and the fields</div> - <div class='line'>Full of faint light</div> - <div class='line in16'>but golden,</div> - <div class='line'>Gray cliffs,</div> - <div class='line in12'>and beneath them</div> - <div class='line'>A sea</div> - <div class='line'>Harsher than granite,</div> - <div class='line in12'>unstill, never ceasing;</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>High forms</div> - <div class='line in12'>with the movement of gods,</div> - <div class='line'>Perilous aspect;</div> - <div class='line in16'>And one said:</div> - <div class='line'>“This is Actaeon.”</div> - <div class='line in18'>Actaeon of golden greaves!</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Over fair meadows,</div> - <div class='line'>Over the cool face of that field,</div> - <div class='line'>Unstill, ever moving,</div> - <div class='line'>Host of an ancient people,</div> - <div class='line'>The silent cortège.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>THE GARDEN</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in32'><i><span lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">En robe de parade. Samain</span></i></div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Like a skein of loose silk blown against a wall</div> - <div class='line'>She walks by the railing of a path in Kensington Gardens,</div> - <div class='line'>And she is dying piece-meal</div> - <div class='line in16'>of a sort of emotional anemia.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>And round about there is a rabble</div> - <div class='line'>Of the filthy, sturdy, unkillable infants of the very poor.</div> - <div class='line'>They shall inherit the earth.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_261'>261</span>In her is the end of breeding.</div> - <div class='line'>Her boredom is exquisite and excessive.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>She would like some one to speak to her,</div> - <div class='line'>And is almost afraid that I</div> - <div class='line in18'>will commit that indiscretion.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>ORTUS</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>How have I labored?</div> - <div class='line'>How have I not labored</div> - <div class='line'>To bring her soul to birth,</div> - <div class='line'>To give these elements a name and a centre!</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>She is beautiful as the sunlight, and as fluid.</div> - <div class='line'>She has no name, and no place.</div> - <div class='line'>How have I labored to bring her soul into separation;</div> - <div class='line'>To give her a name and her being!</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Surely you are bound and entwined,</div> - <div class='line'>You are mingled with the elements unborn;</div> - <div class='line'>I have loved a stream and a shadow.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>I beseech you enter your life.</div> - <div class='line'>I beseech you learn to say “I”</div> - <div class='line'>When I question you:</div> - <div class='line'>For you are no part, but a whole;</div> - <div class='line'>No portion, but a being.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>THE CHOICE</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>It is true that you say the gods are more use to you than fairies,</div> - <div class='line'>But for all that I have seen you on a high, white, noble horse,</div> - <div class='line'>Like some strange queen in a story.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>It is odd that you should be covered with long robes and trailing tendrils and flowers;</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_262'>262</span>It is odd that you should be changing your face and resembling some other woman to plague me;</div> - <div class='line'>It is odd that you should be hiding yourself in the cloud of beautiful women, who do not concern me.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>And I, who follow every seed-leaf upon the wind!</div> - <div class='line in2'>They will say that I deserve this.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>THE GARRET</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Come let us pity those who are better off than we are.</div> - <div class='line'>Come, my friend, and remember</div> - <div class='line in14'>that the rich have butlers and no friends,</div> - <div class='line'>And we have friends and no butlers.</div> - <div class='line'>Come let us pity the married and the unmarried.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Dawn enters with little feet</div> - <div class='line in14'>like a gilded Pavlova,</div> - <div class='line'>And I am near my desire.</div> - <div class='line'>Nor has life in it aught better</div> - <div class='line'>Than this hour of clear coolness,</div> - <div class='line in14'>the hour of waking together.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>DANCE FIGURE</h3> - -<div class='nf-center-c0'> -<div class='nf-center c002'> - <div><em>For the Marriage in Cana of Galilee</em></div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Dark-eyed,</div> - <div class='line'>O woman of my dreams,</div> - <div class='line'>Ivory sandaled,</div> - <div class='line'>There is none like thee among the dancers,</div> - <div class='line'>None with swift feet.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>I have not found thee in the tents,</div> - <div class='line'>In the broken darkness.</div> - <div class='line'>I have not found thee at the well-head</div> - <div class='line'>Among the women with pitchers.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_263'>263</span>Thine arms are as a young sapling under the bark;</div> - <div class='line'>Thy face as a river with lights.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>White as an almond are thy shoulders;</div> - <div class='line'>As new almonds stripped from the husk.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>They guard thee not with eunuchs;</div> - <div class='line'>Not with bars of copper.</div> - <div class='line'>Gilt turquoise and silver are in the place of thy rest.</div> - <div class='line'>A brown robe, with threads of gold woven in patterns, hast thou gathered about thee,</div> - <div class='line'>O Nathat-Ikanaie, “Tree-at-the-river.”</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>As a rillet among the sedge are thy hands upon me;</div> - <div class='line'>Thy fingers a frosted stream.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Thy maidens are white like pebbles;</div> - <div class='line'>Their music about thee!</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>There is none like thee among the dancers;</div> - <div class='line'>None with swift feet.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>FROM “NEAR PÉRIGORD”</h3> - -<div class='nf-center-c0'> -<div class='nf-center c002'> - <div><i><span lang="it" xml:lang="it">Ed eran due in uno, ed uno in due. Inferno, XXVIII, 125.</span></i></div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>I loved a woman. The stars fell from heaven.</div> - <div class='line'>And always our two natures were in strife.</div> - <div class='line'>Bewildering spring, and by the Auvezère</div> - <div class='line'>Poppies and day’s eyes in the green émail</div> - <div class='line'>Rose over us; and we knew all that stream,</div> - <div class='line'>And our two horses had traced out the valleys;</div> - <div class='line'>Knew the low flooded lands squared out with poplars,</div> - <div class='line'>In the young days when the deep sky befriended.</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_264'>264</span>And great wings beat above us in the twilight,</div> - <div class='line'>And the great wheels in heaven</div> - <div class='line'>Bore us together ... surging ... and apart ...</div> - <div class='line'>Believing we should meet with lips and hands.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>High, high and sure ... and then the counterthrust:</div> - <div class='line'>“Why do you love me? Will you always love me?</div> - <div class='line'>But I am like the grass, I can not love you.”</div> - <div class='line'>Or, “Love, and I love and love you,</div> - <div class='line'>And hate your mind, not <em>you</em>, your soul, your hands.”</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>So to this last estrangement, Tairiran!</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>There shut up in his castle, Tairiran’s,</div> - <div class='line'>She who had nor ears nor tongue save in her hands,</div> - <div class='line'>Gone—ah, gone—untouched, unreachable!</div> - <div class='line'>She who could never live save through one person,</div> - <div class='line'>She who could never speak save to one person,</div> - <div class='line'>And all the rest of her a shifting change,</div> - <div class='line'>A broken bundle of mirrors ... !</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>AN IMMORALITY</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Sing we for love and idleness,</div> - <div class='line'>Naught else is worth the having.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Though I have been in many a land,</div> - <div class='line'>There is naught else in living.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>And I would rather have my sweet,</div> - <div class='line'>Though rose-leaves die of grieving,</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Than do high deeds in Hungary</div> - <div class='line'>To pass all men’s believing.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_265'>265</span> - <h3 class='c014'>THE STUDY IN AESTHETICS</h3> -</div> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>The very small children in patched clothing,</div> - <div class='line'>Being smitten with an unusual wisdom,</div> - <div class='line'>Stopped in their play as she passed them</div> - <div class='line'>And cried up from their cobbles:</div> - <div class='line in12'><i><span lang="it" xml:lang="it">Guarda! Ahi, guarda! ch’e b’ea!</span></i></div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>But three years after this</div> - <div class='line'>I heard the young Dante, whose last name I do not know—</div> - <div class='line'>For there are, in Sirmione, twenty-eight young Dantes and thirty-four Catulli;</div> - <div class='line'>And there had been a great catch of sardines,</div> - <div class='line'>And his elders</div> - <div class='line'>Were packing them in the great wooden boxes</div> - <div class='line'>For the market in Brescia, and he</div> - <div class='line'>Leapt about, snatching at the bright fish</div> - <div class='line'>And getting in both of their ways;</div> - <div class='line'>And in vain they commanded him to <i><span lang="it" xml:lang="it">sta fermo</span></i>!</div> - <div class='line'>And when they would not let him arrange</div> - <div class='line'>The fish in the boxes</div> - <div class='line'>He stroked those which were already arranged,</div> - <div class='line'>Murmuring for his own satisfaction</div> - <div class='line'>This identical phrase:</div> - <div class='line in12'><em>Ch’e b’ea</em>.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>And at this I was mildly abashed.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Come, my songs, let us express our baser passions.</div> - <div class='line'>Let us express our envy for the man with a steady job and no worry about the future.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>You are very idle, my songs;</div> - <div class='line'>I fear you will come to a bad end.</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_266'>266</span>You stand about the streets. You loiter at the corners and bus-stops,</div> - <div class='line'>You do next to nothing at all.</div> - <div class='line'>You do not even express our inner nobility;</div> - <div class='line'>You will come to a very bad end.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>And I? I have gone half cracked.</div> - <div class='line'>I have talked to you so much that I almost see you about me,</div> - <div class='line'>Insolent little beasts! Shameless! Devoid of clothing!</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>But you, newest song of the lot,</div> - <div class='line'>You are not old enough to have done much mischief.</div> - <div class='line'>I will get you a green coat out of China</div> - <div class='line'>With dragons worked upon it.</div> - <div class='line'>I will get you the scarlet silk trousers</div> - <div class='line'>From the statue of the infant Christ at Santa Maria Novella;</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Lest they say we are lacking in taste,</div> - <div class='line'>Or that there is no caste in this family.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>VILLANELLE: THE PSYCHOLOGICAL HOUR</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in28'>I</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>I had over-prepared the event—</div> - <div class='line in12'>that much was ominous.</div> - <div class='line'>With middle-aging care</div> - <div class='line in12'>I had laid out just the right books,</div> - <div class='line'>I almost turned down the right pages.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in4'><em>Beauty is so rare a thing ...</em></div> - <div class='line in4'><em>So few drink of my fountain.</em></div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in4'>So much barren regret!</div> - <div class='line in4'>So many hours wasted!</div> - <div class='line'>And now I watch from the window</div> - <div class='line in12'>rain, wandering busses.</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_267'>267</span>Their little cosmos is shaken—</div> - <div class='line in14'>the air is alive with that fact.</div> - <div class='line'>In their parts of the city</div> - <div class='line in14'>they are played on by diverse forces;</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in4'>I had over-prepared the event.</div> - <div class='line in4'><em>Beauty is so rare a thing ...</em></div> - <div class='line in4'><em>So few drink at my fountain.</em></div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Two friends: a breath of the forest ...</div> - <div class='line'>Friends? Are people less friends</div> - <div class='line in14'>because one has just, at last, found them?</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Twice they promised to come.</div> - <div class='line in14'>“<em>Between the night and morning</em>?”</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Beauty would drink of my mind.</em></div> - <div class='line'>Youth would awhile forget</div> - <div class='line in14'>my youth is gone from me.</div> - <div class='line'>Youth would hear speech of beauty.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in28'>II</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>(“Speak up! You have danced so stiffly?</div> - <div class='line'>Someone admired your works,</div> - <div class='line'>And said so frankly.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>“Did you talk like a fool,</div> - <div class='line'>The first night?</div> - <div class='line'>The second evening?”</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>“<em>But</em> they promised again:</div> - <div class='line in14'>‘Tomorrow at tea-time.’”)</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in28'><span class='pageno' id='Page_268'>268</span>III</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Now the third day is here—</div> - <div class='line in14'>no word from either;</div> - <div class='line'>No word from her nor him,</div> - <div class='line'>Only another man’s note:</div> - <div class='line in14'>“Dear Pound, I am leaving England.”</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>BALLAD OF THE GOODLY FERE</h3> - -<div class='nf-center-c0'> -<div class='nf-center c002'> - <div><em>Simon Zelotes speaketh it somewhile after the Crucifixion.</em></div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Ha’ we lost the goodliest fere o’ all</div> - <div class='line'>For the priests and the gallows tree?</div> - <div class='line'>Aye lover he was of brawny men,</div> - <div class='line'>O’ ships and the open sea.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>When they came wi’ a host to take Our Man</div> - <div class='line'>His smile was good to see,</div> - <div class='line'>“First let these go!” quo’ our Goodly Fere,</div> - <div class='line'>“Or I’ll see ye damned,” says he.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Aye he sent us out through the crossed high spears</div> - <div class='line'>And the scorn of his laugh rang free,</div> - <div class='line'>“Why took ye not me when I walked about</div> - <div class='line'>Alone in the town?” says he.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Oh we drank his “Hale” in the good red wine</div> - <div class='line'>When we last made company.</div> - <div class='line'>No capon priest was the Goodly Fere,</div> - <div class='line'>But a man o’ men was he.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>I ha’ seen him drive a hundred men</div> - <div class='line'>Wi’ a bundle o’ cords swung free,</div> - <div class='line'>That they took the high and holy house</div> - <div class='line'>For their pawn and treasury.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_269'>269</span>They’ll no’ get him a’ in a book, I think,</div> - <div class='line'>Though they write it cunningly;</div> - <div class='line'>No mouse of the scrolls was the Goodly Fere</div> - <div class='line'>But aye loved the open sea.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>If they think they ha’ snared our Goodly Fere</div> - <div class='line'>They are fools to the last degree.</div> - <div class='line'>“I’ll go to the feast,” quo’ our Goodly Fere,</div> - <div class='line'>“Though I go to the gallows tree.”</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>“Ye ha’ seen me heal the lame and blind,</div> - <div class='line'>And wake the dead,” says he.</div> - <div class='line'>“Ye shall see one thing to master all:</div> - <div class='line'>’Tis how a brave man dies on the tree.”</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>A son of God was the Goodly Fere</div> - <div class='line'>That bade us his brothers be.</div> - <div class='line'>I ha’ seen him cow a thousand men.</div> - <div class='line'>I have seen him upon the tree.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>He cried no cry when they drave the nails</div> - <div class='line'>And the blood gushed hot and free.</div> - <div class='line'>The hounds of the crimson sky gave tongue,</div> - <div class='line'>But never a cry cried he.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>I ha’ seen him cow a thousand men</div> - <div class='line'>On the hills o’ Galilee.</div> - <div class='line'>They whined as he walked out calm between,</div> - <div class='line'>Wi’ his eyes like the gray o’ the sea.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Like the sea that brooks no voyaging,</div> - <div class='line'>With the winds unleashed and free,</div> - <div class='line'>Like the sea that he cowed at Genseret</div> - <div class='line'>Wi’ twey words spoke suddently.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_270'>270</span>A master of men was the Goodly Fere,</div> - <div class='line'>A mate of the wind and sea.</div> - <div class='line'>If they think they ha’ slain our Goodly Fere</div> - <div class='line'>They are fools eternally.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>I ha’ seen him eat o’ the honey-comb</div> - <div class='line'>Sin’ they nailed him to the tree.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>BALLAD FOR GLOOM</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>For God, our God, is a gallant foe</div> - <div class='line'>That playeth behind the veil.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>I have loved my God as a child at heart</div> - <div class='line'>That seeketh deep bosoms for rest,</div> - <div class='line'>I have loved my God as maid to man—</div> - <div class='line'>But lo, this thing is best:</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>To love your God as a gallant foe</div> - <div class='line in14'>that plays behind the veil,</div> - <div class='line'>To meet your God as the night winds meet</div> - <div class='line in14'>beyond Arcturus’ pale.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>I have played with God for a woman,</div> - <div class='line'>I have staked with my God for truth,</div> - <div class='line'>I have lost to my God as a man, clear-eyed—</div> - <div class='line in2'>His dice be not of ruth.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>For I am made as a naked blade,</div> - <div class='line in2'>But hear ye this thing in sooth:</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Who loseth to God as man to man</div> - <div class='line in2'>Shall win at the turn of the game.</div> - <div class='line'>I have drawn my blade where the lightnings meet</div> - <div class='line in2'>But the ending is the same:</div> - <div class='line'>Who loseth to God as the sword blades lose</div> - <div class='line in2'>Shall win at the end of the game.</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_271'>271</span>For God, our God, is a gallant foe</div> - <div class='line in14'>that playeth behind the veil.</div> - <div class='line'>Whom God deigns not to overthrow</div> - <div class='line in14'>hath need of triple mail.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>LA FRAISNE</h3> - -<div class='nf-center-c0'> -<div class='nf-center c002'> - <div><em>Scene: The Ash Wood of Malvern</em></div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>For I was a gaunt, grave councillor,</div> - <div class='line'>Being in all things wise, and very old;</div> - <div class='line'>But I have put aside this folly and the cold</div> - <div class='line'>That old age weareth for a cloak.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>I was quite strong—at least they said so—</div> - <div class='line'>The young men at the sword-play;</div> - <div class='line'>But I have put aside this folly, being gay</div> - <div class='line'>In another fashion that more suiteth me.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>I have curled mid the boles of the ash wood,</div> - <div class='line'>I have hidden my face where the oak</div> - <div class='line'>Spread his leaves over me, and the yoke</div> - <div class='line'>Of the old ways of men have I cast aside.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>By the still pool of Mar-nan-otha</div> - <div class='line'>Have I found me a bride</div> - <div class='line'>That was a dog-wood tree some syne.</div> - <div class='line'>She hath called me from mine old ways;</div> - <div class='line'>She hath hushed my rancor of council,</div> - <div class='line'>Bidding me praise</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Naught but the wind that flutters in the leaves.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>She hath drawn me from mine old ways,</div> - <div class='line'>Till men say that I am mad;</div> - <div class='line'>But I have seen the sorrow of men, and am glad,</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_272'>272</span>For I know that the wailing and bitterness are a folly.</div> - <div class='line'>And I? I have put aside all folly and all grief.</div> - <div class='line'>I wrapped my tears in an ellum leaf</div> - <div class='line'>And left them under a stone;</div> - <div class='line'>And now men call me mad because I have thrown</div> - <div class='line'>All folly from me, putting it aside</div> - <div class='line'>To leave the old barren ways of men,</div> - <div class='line'>Because my bride</div> - <div class='line'>Is a pool of the wood; and</div> - <div class='line'>Though all men say that I am mad</div> - <div class='line'>It is only that I am glad—</div> - <div class='line'>Very glad, for my bride hath toward me a great love</div> - <div class='line'>That is sweeter than the love of women</div> - <div class='line'>That plague and burn and drive one away.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Aie-e! ’Tis true that I am gay,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Quite gay, for I have her alone here</div> - <div class='line in2'>And no man troubleth us.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Once when I was among the young men ...</div> - <div class='line'>And they said I was quite strong, among the young men ...</div> - <div class='line'>Once there was a woman ...</div> - <div class='line'>... but I forget ... she was ...</div> - <div class='line'>... I hope she will not come again.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>... I do not remember ...</div> - <div class='line'>I think she hurt me once, but ...</div> - <div class='line'>That was very long ago.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>I do not like to remember things any more.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>I like one little band of winds that blow</div> - <div class='line'>In the ash trees here:</div> - <div class='line'>For we are quite alone,</div> - <div class='line'>Here mid the ash trees.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_273'>273</span> - <h3 class='c014'>THE RIVER-MERCHANT’S WIFE: A LETTER</h3> -</div> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>While my hair was still cut straight across my forehead</div> - <div class='line'>I played about the front gate, pulling flowers.</div> - <div class='line'>You came by on bamboo stilts, playing horse;</div> - <div class='line'>You walked about my seat, playing with blue plums.</div> - <div class='line'>And we went on living in the village of Chokan:</div> - <div class='line'>Two small people, without dislike or suspicion.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>At fourteen I married My Lord you.</div> - <div class='line'>I never laughed, being bashful.</div> - <div class='line'>Lowering my head, I looked at the wall.</div> - <div class='line'>Called to, a thousand times, I never looked back.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>At fifteen I stopped scowling,</div> - <div class='line'>I desired my dust to be mingled with yours</div> - <div class='line'>Forever and forever, and forever.</div> - <div class='line'>Why should I climb the look-out?</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>At sixteen you departed,</div> - <div class='line'>You went into far Ku-to-Yen, by the river of swirling eddies,</div> - <div class='line'>And you have been gone five months.</div> - <div class='line'>The monkeys make sorrowful noise overhead.</div> - <div class='line'>You dragged your feet when you went out.</div> - <div class='line'>By the gate now, the moss is grown, the different mosses,</div> - <div class='line'>Too deep to clear them away!</div> - <div class='line'>The leaves fall early this autumn, in wind.</div> - <div class='line'>The paired butterflies are already yellow with August</div> - <div class='line'>Over the grass in the west garden—</div> - <div class='line'>They hurt me.</div> - <div class='line'>I grow older.</div> - <div class='line'>If you are coming down through the narrows of the river,</div> - <div class='line'>Please let me know beforehand,</div> - <div class='line'>And I will come out to meet you,</div> - <div class='line in2'>As far as Cho-fu-Sa.</div> - <div class='line in32'><em>From the Chinese of Li Po.</em></div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_274'>274</span> - <h3 class='c014'>EXILE’S LETTER</h3> -</div> - -<p class='c017'><em>From the Chinese of Li Po, usually considered the greatest poet of China: -written by him while in exile about 760 A. D., to the Hereditary War-Councillor -of Sho, “recollecting former companionship.”</em></p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>So-Kin of Rakuho, ancient friend, I now remember</div> - <div class='line'>That you built me a special tavern,</div> - <div class='line'>By the south side of the bridge at Ten-Shin.</div> - <div class='line'>With yellow gold and white jewels</div> - <div class='line in20'>we paid for the songs and laughter,</div> - <div class='line'>And we were drunk for month after month,</div> - <div class='line in20'>forgetting the kings and princes.</div> - <div class='line'>Intelligent men came drifting in, from the sea</div> - <div class='line in20'>and from the west border,</div> - <div class='line'>And with them, and with you especially,</div> - <div class='line in20'>there was nothing at cross-purpose;</div> - <div class='line'>And they made nothing of sea-crossing</div> - <div class='line in20'>or of mountain-crossing,</div> - <div class='line'>If only they could be of that fellowship.</div> - <div class='line'>And we all spoke out our hearts and minds ...</div> - <div class='line in20'>and without regret.</div> - <div class='line'>And then I was sent off to South Wei,</div> - <div class='line in20'>smothered in laurel groves,</div> - <div class='line'>And you to the north of Raku-hoku,</div> - <div class='line'>Till we had nothing but thoughts and memories between us.</div> - <div class='line'>And when separation had come to its worst</div> - <div class='line'>We met, and travelled together into Sen-Go</div> - <div class='line'>Through all the thirty-six folds of the turning and twisting waters;</div> - <div class='line'>Into a valley of a thousand bright flowers ...</div> - <div class='line in20'>that was the first valley,</div> - <div class='line'>And on into ten thousand valleys</div> - <div class='line in20'>full of voices and pine-winds.</div> - <div class='line'>With silver harness and reins of gold,</div> - <div class='line in20'>prostrating themselves on the ground,</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_275'>275</span>Out came the East-of-Kan foreman and his company;</div> - <div class='line'>And there came also the “True-man” of Shi-yo to meet me,</div> - <div class='line'>Playing on a jewelled mouth-organ.</div> - <div class='line'>In the storied houses of San-Ko they gave us</div> - <div class='line in20'>more Sennin music;</div> - <div class='line'>Many instruments, like the sound of young phœnix broods.</div> - <div class='line'>And the foreman of Kan-Chu, drunk,</div> - <div class='line'>Danced because his long sleeves</div> - <div class='line'>Wouldn’t keep still, with that music playing.</div> - <div class='line'>And I, wrapped in brocade, went to sleep with my head on his lap,</div> - <div class='line'>And my spirit so high that it was all over the heavens.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>And before the end of the day we were scattered like stars or rain.</div> - <div class='line'>I had to be off to So, far away over the waters,</div> - <div class='line'>You back to your river-bridge.</div> - <div class='line'>And your father, who was brave as a leopard,</div> - <div class='line'>Was governor in Hei Shu and put down the barbarian rabble.</div> - <div class='line'>And one May he had you send for me, despite the long distance;</div> - <div class='line'>And what with broken wheels and so on, I won’t say it wasn’t hard going ...</div> - <div class='line'>Over roads twisted like sheep’s guts.</div> - <div class='line'>And I was still going, late in the year,</div> - <div class='line in20'>in the cutting wind from the north,</div> - <div class='line'>And thinking how little you cared for the cost ...</div> - <div class='line in20'>and you caring enough to pay it.</div> - <div class='line'>Then what a reception!</div> - <div class='line'>Red jade cups, food well set, on a blue jewelled table;</div> - <div class='line'>And I was drunk, and had no thought of returning;</div> - <div class='line'>And you would walk out with me to the western corner of the castle,</div> - <div class='line'>To the dynastic temple, with the water about it clear as blue jade,</div> - <div class='line'>With boats floating, and the sound of mouth-organs and drums,</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_276'>276</span>With ripples like dragon-scales going grass-green on the water,</div> - <div class='line'>Pleasure lasting, with courtezans going and coming without hindrance,</div> - <div class='line'>With the willow-flakes falling like snow,</div> - <div class='line'>And the vermilioned girls getting drunk about sunset,</div> - <div class='line'>And the waters a hundred feet deep reflecting green eyebrows—</div> - <div class='line'>Eyebrows painted green are a fine sight in young moonlight,</div> - <div class='line'>Gracefully painted—and the girls singing back at each other,</div> - <div class='line'>Dancing in transparent brocade,</div> - <div class='line'>And the wind lifting the song, and interrupting it,</div> - <div class='line'>Tossing it up under the clouds.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in20'>And all this comes to an end,</div> - <div class='line'>And is not again to be met with.</div> - <div class='line'>I went up to the court for examination,</div> - <div class='line'>Tried Layu’s luck, offered the Choyu song,</div> - <div class='line'>And got no promotion,</div> - <div class='line'>And went back to the East Mountains white-headed.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>And once again we met, later, at the South Bridge head.</div> - <div class='line'>And then the crowd broke up—you went north to San palace.</div> - <div class='line'>And if you ask how I regret that parting?</div> - <div class='line'>It is like the flowers falling at spring’s end,</div> - <div class='line in20'>confused, whirled in a tangle.</div> - <div class='line'>What is the use of talking! And there is no end of talking—</div> - <div class='line'>There is no end of things in the heart.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>I call in the boy,</div> - <div class='line'>Have him sit on his knees to write and seal this,</div> - <div class='line'>And I send it a thousand miles, thinking.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c010'>(<em>Translated by Ezra Pound from the notes of the late Ernest Fenollosa, -and the decipherings of the Professors Mori and Araga.</em>)</p> - -<div class='chapter'> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_277'>277</span> - <h2 class='c005'>John Reed</h2> -</div> - -<h3 class='c013'>SANGAR</h3> - -<div class='nf-center-c0'> -<div class='nf-center c002'> - <div><em>To Lincoln Steffens</em></div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Somewhere I read a strange, old, rusty tale</div> - <div class='line'>Smelling of war; most curiously named</div> - <div class='line'><em>The Mad Recreant Knight of the West</em>.</div> - <div class='line'>Once, you have read, the round world brimmed with hate,</div> - <div class='line'>Stirred and revolted, flashed unceasingly</div> - <div class='line'>Facets of cruel splendor. And the strong</div> - <div class='line'>Harried the weak ...</div> - <div class='line in20'>Long past, long past, praise God,</div> - <div class='line'>In these fair, peaceful, happy days.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in32'><em>The Tale</em>:</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Eastward the Huns break border,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Surf on a rotten dyke;</div> - <div class='line'>They have murdered the Eastern Warder</div> - <div class='line in2'>(His head on a pike).</div> - <div class='line'>“Arm thee, arm thee, my father!</div> - <div class='line in2'>Swift rides the Goddes-bane,</div> - <div class='line'>And the high nobles gather</div> - <div class='line in2'>On the plain!”</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>“O blind world-wrath!” cried Sangar,</div> - <div class='line in2'>“Greatly I killed in youth;</div> - <div class='line'>I dreamed men had done with anger</div> - <div class='line in2'>Through Goddes truth!”</div> - <div class='line'>Smiled the boy then in faint scorn,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Hard with the battle-thrill;</div> - <div class='line'>“Arm thee, loud calls the war-horn</div> - <div class='line in2'>And shrill!”</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_278'>278</span>He has bowed to the voice stentorian,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Sick with thought of the grave—</div> - <div class='line'>He has called for his battered morion</div> - <div class='line in2'>And his scarred glaive.</div> - <div class='line'>On the boy’s helm a glove</div> - <div class='line in2'>Of the Duke’s daughter—</div> - <div class='line'>In his eyes splendor of love</div> - <div class='line in2'>And slaughter.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Hideous the Hun advances</div> - <div class='line in2'>Like a sea-tide on sand;</div> - <div class='line'>Unyielding, the haughty lances</div> - <div class='line in2'>Make dauntless stand.</div> - <div class='line'>And ever amid the clangor,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Butchering Hun and Hun,</div> - <div class='line'>With sorrowful face rides Sangar</div> - <div class='line in2'>And his son....</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Broken is the wild invader</div> - <div class='line in2'>(Sullied, the whole world’s fountains);</div> - <div class='line'>They have penned the murderous raider</div> - <div class='line in2'>With his back to the mountains.</div> - <div class='line'>Yet though what had been mead</div> - <div class='line in2'>Is now a bloody lake,</div> - <div class='line'>Still drink swords where men bleed,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Nor slake.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Now leaps one into the press—</div> - <div class='line in2'>The hell ’twixt front and front—</div> - <div class='line'>Sangar, bloody and torn of dress</div> - <div class='line in2'>(He has borne the brunt).</div> - <div class='line'>“Hold!” cries, “Peace! God’s peace!</div> - <div class='line in2'>Heed ye what Christus says—”</div> - <div class='line'>And the wild battle gave surcease</div> - <div class='line in2'>In amaze.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_279'>279</span>“When will ye cast out hate?</div> - <div class='line in2'>Brothers—my mad, mad brothers—</div> - <div class='line'>Mercy, ere it be too late,</div> - <div class='line in2'>These are sons of your mothers.</div> - <div class='line'>For sake of Him who died on Tree,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Who of all creatures, loved the least—”</div> - <div class='line'>“Blasphemer! God of Battles, He!”</div> - <div class='line in2'>Cried a priest.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>“Peace!” and with his two hands</div> - <div class='line in2'>Has broken in twain his glaive.</div> - <div class='line'>Weaponless, smiling he stands—</div> - <div class='line in2'>(Coward or brave?)</div> - <div class='line'>“Traitor!” howls one rank, “Think ye</div> - <div class='line in2'>The Hun be our brother?”</div> - <div class='line'>And “Fear we to die, craven, think ye?”</div> - <div class='line in2'>The other.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Then sprang his son to his side,</div> - <div class='line in2'>His lips with slaver were wet,</div> - <div class='line'>For he had felt how men died</div> - <div class='line in2'>And was lustful yet;</div> - <div class='line'>(On his bent helm a glove</div> - <div class='line in2'>Of the Duke’s daughter,</div> - <div class='line'>In his eyes splendor of love</div> - <div class='line in2'>And slaughter)—</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Shouting, “Father no more of mine!</div> - <div class='line in2'>Shameful old man—abhorr’d,</div> - <div class='line'>First traitor of all our line!”</div> - <div class='line in2'>Up the two-handed sword.</div> - <div class='line'>He smote—fell Sangar—and then</div> - <div class='line in2'>Screaming, red, the boy ran</div> - <div class='line'>Straight at the foe, and again</div> - <div class='line in2'>Hell began....</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_280'>280</span>Oh, there was joy in Heaven when Sangar came.</div> - <div class='line'>Sweet Mary wept, and bathed and bound his wounds,</div> - <div class='line'>And God the Father healed him of despair,</div> - <div class='line'>And Jesus gripped his hand, and laughed and laughed....</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='chapter'> - <h2 class='c005'>Ernest Rhys</h2> -</div> - -<h3 class='c013'>DAGONET’S CANZONET</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>A queen lived in the South;</div> - <div class='line'>And music was her mouth,</div> - <div class='line'>And sunshine was her hair,</div> - <div class='line'>By day, and all the night</div> - <div class='line'>The drowsy embers there</div> - <div class='line'>Remember’d still the light;</div> - <div class='line in2'><em>My soul, was she not fair!</em></div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>But for her eyes—they made</div> - <div class='line'>An iron man afraid;</div> - <div class='line'>Like sky-blue pools they were,</div> - <div class='line'>Watching the sky that knew</div> - <div class='line'>Itself transmuted there</div> - <div class='line'>Light blue, or deeper blue;</div> - <div class='line in2'><em>My soul, was she not fair!</em></div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>The lifting of her hands</div> - <div class='line'>Made laughter in the lands</div> - <div class='line'>Where the sun is, in the South:</div> - <div class='line'>But my soul learnt sorrow there</div> - <div class='line'>In the secrets of her mouth,</div> - <div class='line'>Her eyes, her hands, her hair:</div> - <div class='line in2'><em>O soul, was she not fair!</em></div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_281'>281</span> - <h3 class='c014'>A SONG OF HAPPINESS</h3> -</div> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Ah, Happiness:</div> - <div class='line'>Who called you “Earandel”?</div> - <div class='line'>(Winter-star, I think, that is);</div> - <div class='line'>And who can tell the lovely curve</div> - <div class='line'>By which you seem to come, then swerve</div> - <div class='line'>Before you reach the middle-earth?</div> - <div class='line'>And who is there can hold your wing,</div> - <div class='line'>Or bind you in your mirth,</div> - <div class='line'>Or win you with a least caress,</div> - <div class='line'>Or tear, or kiss, or anything—</div> - <div class='line'>Insensate Happiness?</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Once I thought to have you</div> - <div class='line'>Fast there in a child:</div> - <div class='line'>All her heart she gave you,</div> - <div class='line'>Yet you would not stay.</div> - <div class='line'>Cruel, and careless,</div> - <div class='line'>Not half reconciled,</div> - <div class='line'>Pain you cannot bear;</div> - <div class='line'>When her yellow hair</div> - <div class='line'>Lay matted, every tress;</div> - <div class='line'>When those looks of hers,</div> - <div class='line'>Were no longer hers,</div> - <div class='line'>You went: in a day</div> - <div class='line'>She wept you all away.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Once I thought to give</div> - <div class='line'>You, plighted, holily—</div> - <div class='line'>No more fugitive,</div> - <div class='line'>Returning like the sea:</div> - <div class='line'>But they that share so well</div> - <div class='line'>Heaven must portion Hell</div> - <div class='line'>In their copartnery:</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_282'>282</span>Care, ill fate, ill health,</div> - <div class='line'>Came we know not how</div> - <div class='line'>And broke our commonwealth.</div> - <div class='line'>Neither has you now.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Some wait you on the road,</div> - <div class='line'>Some in an open door</div> - <div class='line'>Look for the face you showed</div> - <div class='line'>Once there—no more.</div> - <div class='line'>You never wear the dress</div> - <div class='line'>You danced in yesterday;</div> - <div class='line'>Yet, seeming gone, you stay,</div> - <div class='line'>And come at no man’s call:</div> - <div class='line'>Yet, laid for burial,</div> - <div class='line'>You lift up from the dead</div> - <div class='line'>Your laughing, spangled head.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Yes, once I did pursue</div> - <div class='line'>You, unpursuable;</div> - <div class='line'>Loved, longed for, hoped for you—</div> - <div class='line'>Blue-eyed and morning brow’d.</div> - <div class='line'>Ah, lovely Happiness!</div> - <div class='line'>Now that I know you well,</div> - <div class='line'>I dare not speak aloud</div> - <div class='line'>Your fond name in a crowd;</div> - <div class='line'>Nor conjure you by night,</div> - <div class='line'>Nor pray at morning-light,</div> - <div class='line'>Nor count at all on you:</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>But, at a stroke, a breath,</div> - <div class='line'>After the fear of death,</div> - <div class='line'>Or bent beneath a load;</div> - <div class='line'>Yes, ragged in the dress,</div> - <div class='line'>And houseless on the road,</div> - <div class='line'>I might surprise you there.</div> - <div class='line'>Yes: who of us shall say</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_283'>283</span>When you will come, or where?</div> - <div class='line'>Ask children at their play,</div> - <div class='line'>The leaves upon the tree,</div> - <div class='line'>The ships upon the sea,</div> - <div class='line'>Or old men who survived,</div> - <div class='line'>And lived, and loved, and wived.</div> - <div class='line'>Ask sorrow to confess</div> - <div class='line'>Your sweet improvidence,</div> - <div class='line'>And prodigal expense</div> - <div class='line'>And cold economy,</div> - <div class='line'>Ah, lovely Happiness!</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='chapter'> - <h2 class='c005'>Edwin Arlington Robinson</h2> -</div> - -<h3 class='c013'>THE MASTER</h3> - -<div class='nf-center-c0'> -<div class='nf-center c002'> - <div><em>Lincoln as he appeared to one soon after the Civil War</em></div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>A flying word from here and there</div> - <div class='line'>Had sown the name at which we sneered,</div> - <div class='line'>But soon the name was everywhere,</div> - <div class='line'>To be reviled and then revered:</div> - <div class='line'>A presence to be loved and feared,</div> - <div class='line'>We cannot hide it, or deny</div> - <div class='line'>That we, the gentlemen who jeered,</div> - <div class='line'>May be forgotten by and by.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>He came when days were perilous</div> - <div class='line'>And hearts of men were sore beguiled,</div> - <div class='line'>And having made his note of us,</div> - <div class='line'>He pondered and was reconciled.</div> - <div class='line'>Was ever master yet so mild</div> - <div class='line'>As he, and so untamable?</div> - <div class='line'>We doubted, even when he smiled,</div> - <div class='line'>Not knowing what he knew so well.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_284'>284</span>He knew that undeceiving fate</div> - <div class='line'>Would shame us whom he served unsought;</div> - <div class='line'>He knew that he must wince and wait—</div> - <div class='line'>The jest of those for whom he fought;</div> - <div class='line'>He knew devoutly what he thought</div> - <div class='line'>Of us and of our ridicule;</div> - <div class='line'>He knew that we must all be taught</div> - <div class='line'>Like little children in a school.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>We gave a glamour to the task</div> - <div class='line'>That he encountered and saw through;</div> - <div class='line'>But little of us did he ask,</div> - <div class='line'>And little did we ever do.</div> - <div class='line'>And what appears if we review</div> - <div class='line'>The season when we railed and chaffed?—</div> - <div class='line'>It is the face of one who knew</div> - <div class='line'>That we were learning while we laughed.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>The face that in our vision feels</div> - <div class='line'>Again the venom that we flung,</div> - <div class='line'>Transfigured, to the world reveals</div> - <div class='line'>The vigilance to which we clung.</div> - <div class='line'>Shrewd, hallowed, harassed, and among</div> - <div class='line'>The mysteries that are untold—</div> - <div class='line'>The face we see was never young,</div> - <div class='line'>Nor could it ever have been old.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>For he, to whom we had applied</div> - <div class='line'>Our shopman’s test of age and worth,</div> - <div class='line'>Was elemental when he died,</div> - <div class='line'>As he was ancient at his birth:</div> - <div class='line'>The saddest among kings of earth,</div> - <div class='line'>Bowed with a galling crown, this man</div> - <div class='line'>Met rancor with a cryptic mirth,</div> - <div class='line'>Laconic—and Olympian.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_285'>285</span>The love, the grandeur, and the fame</div> - <div class='line'>Are bounded by the world alone;</div> - <div class='line'>The calm, the smouldering, and the flame</div> - <div class='line'>Of awful patience were his own:</div> - <div class='line'>With him they are forever flown</div> - <div class='line'>Past all our fond self-shadowings,</div> - <div class='line'>Wherewith we cumber the Unknown</div> - <div class='line'>As with inept, Icarian wings.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>For we were not as other men:</div> - <div class='line'>’Twas ours to soar and his to see.</div> - <div class='line'>But we are coming down again,</div> - <div class='line'>And we shall come down pleasantly;</div> - <div class='line'>Nor shall we longer disagree</div> - <div class='line'>On what it is to be sublime,</div> - <div class='line'>But flourish in our perigee</div> - <div class='line'>And have one Titan at a time.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>JOHN GORHAM</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>“Tell me what you’re doing over here, John Gorham—</div> - <div class='line'>Sighing hard and seeming to be sorry when you’re not.</div> - <div class='line'>Make me laugh or let me go now, for long faces in the moonlight</div> - <div class='line'>Are a sign for me to say again a word that you forgot.”</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>“I’m over here to tell you what the moon already</div> - <div class='line'>May have said or maybe shouted ever since a year ago;</div> - <div class='line'>I’m over here to tell you what you are, Jane Wayland,</div> - <div class='line'>And to make you rather sorry, I should say, for being so.”</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>“Tell me what you’re saying to me now, John Gorham,</div> - <div class='line'>Or you’ll never see as much of me as ribbons any more;</div> - <div class='line'>I’ll vanish in as many ways as I have toes and fingers,</div> - <div class='line'>And you’ll not follow far for one where flocks have been before.”</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_286'>286</span>“I’m sorry now you never saw the flocks, Jane Wayland;</div> - <div class='line'>But you’re the one to make of them as many as you need.</div> - <div class='line'>And then about the vanishing: it’s I who mean to vanish;</div> - <div class='line'>And when I’m here no longer you’ll be done with me indeed.”</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>“That’s a way to tell me what I am, John Gorham!</div> - <div class='line'>How am I to know myself until I make you smile?</div> - <div class='line'>Try to look as if the moon were making faces at you,</div> - <div class='line'>And a little more as if you meant to stay a little while.”</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>“You are what it is that over rose-blown gardens</div> - <div class='line'>Makes a pretty flutter for a season in the sun.</div> - <div class='line'>You are what it is that with a mouse, Jane Wayland,</div> - <div class='line'>Catches him and let’s him go and eats him up for fun.”</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>“Sure I never took you for a mouse, John Gorham.</div> - <div class='line'>All you say is easy, but so far from being true</div> - <div class='line'>That I wish you wouldn’t ever be again the one to think so;</div> - <div class='line'>For it isn’t cats and butterflies that I would be to you.”</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>“All your little animals are in one picture—</div> - <div class='line'>One I’ve had before me since a year ago to-night;</div> - <div class='line'>And the picture where they live will be of you, Jane Wayland,</div> - <div class='line'>Till you find a way to kill them or to keep them out of sight.”</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>“Won’t you ever see me as I am, John Gorham,</div> - <div class='line'>Leaving out the foolishness and all I never meant?</div> - <div class='line'>Somewhere in me there’s a woman, if you know the way to find her—</div> - <div class='line'>Will you like me any better if I prove it and repent?”</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>“I doubt if I shall ever have the time, Jane Wayland;</div> - <div class='line'>And I dare say all this moonlight lying round us might as well</div> - <div class='line'>Fall for nothing on the shards of broken urns that are forgotten,</div> - <div class='line'>As on two that have no longer much of anything to tell.”</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_287'>287</span> - <h3 class='c014'>RICHARD CORY</h3> -</div> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Whenever Richard Cory went down town,</div> - <div class='line in2'>We people on the pavement looked at him:</div> - <div class='line'>He was a gentleman from sole to crown,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Clean favored, and imperially slim.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>And he was always quietly arrayed,</div> - <div class='line in2'>And he was always human when he talked;</div> - <div class='line'>But still he fluttered pulses when he said,</div> - <div class='line in2'>“Good-morning,” and he glittered when he walked.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>And he was rich—yes, richer than a king,</div> - <div class='line in2'>And admirably schooled in every grace:</div> - <div class='line'>In fine, we thought that he was everything</div> - <div class='line in2'>To make us wish that we were in his place.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>So on we worked, and waited for the light,</div> - <div class='line in2'>And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;</div> - <div class='line'>And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Went home and put a bullet through his head.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>THE GROWTH OF LORRAINE</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in28'>I</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>While I stood listening, discreetly dumb,</div> - <div class='line'>Lorraine was having the last word with me:</div> - <div class='line'>“I know,” she said, “I know it, but you see</div> - <div class='line'>Some creatures are born fortunate, and some</div> - <div class='line'>Are born to be found out and overcome—</div> - <div class='line'>Born to be slaves, to let the rest go free;</div> - <div class='line'>And if I’m one of them (and I must be)</div> - <div class='line'>You may as well forget me and go home.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_288'>288</span>“You tell me not to say these things, I know,</div> - <div class='line'>But I should never try to be content:</div> - <div class='line'>I’ve gone too far; the life would be too slow.</div> - <div class='line'>Some could have done it—some girls have the stuff;</div> - <div class='line'>But I can’t do it—I don’t know enough.</div> - <div class='line'>I’m going to the devil.” And she went.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in28'>II</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>I did not half believe her when she said</div> - <div class='line'>That I should never hear from her again;</div> - <div class='line'>Nor when I found a letter from Lorraine,</div> - <div class='line'>Was I surprised or grieved at what I read:</div> - <div class='line'>“Dear friend, when you find this, I shall be dead.</div> - <div class='line'>You are too far away to make me stop.</div> - <div class='line'>They say that one drop—think of it, one drop!—</div> - <div class='line'>Will be enough; but I’ll take five instead.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>“You do not frown because I call you friend;</div> - <div class='line'>For I would have you glad that I still keep</div> - <div class='line'>Your memory, and even at the end—</div> - <div class='line'>Impenitent, sick, shattered—cannot curse</div> - <div class='line'>The love that flings, for better or for worse,</div> - <div class='line'>This worn-out, cast-out flesh of mine to sleep.”</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>CASSANDRA</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>I heard one who said: “Verily,</div> - <div class='line in2'>What word have I for children here?</div> - <div class='line'>Your Dollar is your only Word,</div> - <div class='line in2'>The wrath of it your only fear.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>“You build it altars tall enough</div> - <div class='line in2'>To make you see, but you are blind;</div> - <div class='line'>You cannot leave it long enough</div> - <div class='line in2'>To look before you or behind.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_289'>289</span>“When Reason beckons you to pause,</div> - <div class='line in2'>You laugh and say that you know best;</div> - <div class='line'>But what it is you know, you keep</div> - <div class='line in2'>As dark as ingots in a chest.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>“You laugh and answer, ‘We are young;</div> - <div class='line in2'>Oh, leave us now, and let us grow:’</div> - <div class='line'>Not asking how much more of this</div> - <div class='line in2'>Will Time endure or Fate bestow.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>“Because a few complacent years</div> - <div class='line in2'>Have made your peril of your pride,</div> - <div class='line'>Think you that you are to go on</div> - <div class='line in2'>Forever pampered and untried?</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>“What lost eclipse of history,</div> - <div class='line in2'>What bivouac of the marching stars,</div> - <div class='line'>Has given the sign for you to see</div> - <div class='line in2'>Millenniums and last great wars?</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>“What unrecorded overthrow</div> - <div class='line in2'>Of all the world has ever known,</div> - <div class='line'>Or ever been, has made itself</div> - <div class='line in2'>So plain to you, and you alone?</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>“Your Dollar, Dove and Eagle make</div> - <div class='line in2'>A Trinity that even you</div> - <div class='line'>Rate higher than you rate yourselves;</div> - <div class='line in2'>It pays, it flatters, and it’s new.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>“And though your very flesh and blood</div> - <div class='line in2'>Be what your Eagle eats and drinks,</div> - <div class='line'>You’ll praise him for the best of birds,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Not knowing what the Eagle thinks.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_290'>290</span>“The power is yours, but not the sight;</div> - <div class='line in2'>You see not upon what you tread;</div> - <div class='line'>You have the ages for your guide,</div> - <div class='line in2'>But not the wisdom to be led.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>“Think you to tread forever down</div> - <div class='line in2'>The merciless old verities?</div> - <div class='line'>And are you never to have eyes</div> - <div class='line in3'>To see the world for what it is?</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>“Are you to pay for what you have</div> - <div class='line in2'>With all you are?”—No other word</div> - <div class='line'>We caught, but with a laughing crowd</div> - <div class='line in2'>Moved on. None heeded, and few heard.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='chapter'> - <h2 class='c005'>Carl Sandburg</h2> -</div> - -<h3 class='c013'>CHICAGO</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Hog-Butcher for the World,</div> - <div class='line'>Tool-maker, Stacker of Wheat,</div> - <div class='line'>Player with Railroads and the Nation’s Freight-handler;</div> - <div class='line'>Stormy, husky, brawling,</div> - <div class='line'>City of the Big Shoulders:</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>They tell me you are wicked and I believe them, for I have seen your painted women under the gas lamps luring the farm boys.</div> - <div class='line'>And they tell me you are crooked, and I answer, Yes, it is true I have seen the gunman kill and go free to kill again.</div> - <div class='line'>And they tell me you are brutal and my reply is, On the faces of women and children I have seen the marks of wanton hunger.</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_291'>291</span>And having answered so I turn once more to those who sneer at this my city, and I give them back the sneer and say to them:</div> - <div class='line'>Come and show me another city with lifted head singing so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning.</div> - <div class='line'>Flinging magnetic curses amid the toil of piling job on job, here is a tall bold slugger set vivid against the little soft cities;</div> - <div class='line'>Fierce as a dog with tongue lapping for action, cunning as a savage pitted against the wilderness,</div> - <div class='line in4'>Bareheaded,</div> - <div class='line in4'>Shoveling,</div> - <div class='line in4'>Wrecking,</div> - <div class='line in4'>Planning,</div> - <div class='line in4'>Building, breaking, rebuilding,</div> - <div class='line'>Under the smoke, dust all over his mouth, laughing with white teeth,</div> - <div class='line'>Under the terrible burden of destiny laughing as a young man laughs,</div> - <div class='line'>Laughing even as an ignorant fighter laughs who has never lost a battle,</div> - <div class='line'>Bragging and laughing that under his wrist is the pulse, and under his ribs the heart of the people,</div> - <div class='line in16'>Laughing!</div> - <div class='line'>Laughing the stormy, husky, brawling laughter of youth; half-naked, sweating, proud to be Hog-butcher, Tool-maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with Railroads, and Freight-handler to the Nation.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>THE HARBOR</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Passing through huddled and ugly walls,</div> - <div class='line'>By doorways where women haggard</div> - <div class='line'>Looked from their hunger-deep eyes,</div> - <div class='line'>Haunted with shadows of hunger-hands,</div> - <div class='line'>Out from the huddled and ugly walls,</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_292'>292</span>I came sudden, at the city’s edge,</div> - <div class='line'>On a blue burst of lake,</div> - <div class='line'>Long lake waves breaking under the sun</div> - <div class='line'>On a spray-flung curve of shore;</div> - <div class='line'>And a fluttering storm of gulls,</div> - <div class='line'>Masses of great gray wings</div> - <div class='line'>And flying white bellies</div> - <div class='line'>Veering and wheeling free in the open.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>SKETCH</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>The shadows of the ships</div> - <div class='line'>Rock on the crest</div> - <div class='line'>In the low blue lustre</div> - <div class='line'>Of the tardy and the soft inrolling tide.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>A long brown bar at the dip of the sky</div> - <div class='line'>Puts an arm of sand in the span of salt.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>The lucid and endless wrinkles</div> - <div class='line'>Draw in, lapse and withdraw.</div> - <div class='line'>Wavelets crumble and white spent bubbles</div> - <div class='line'>Wash on the floor of the beach.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in6'>Rocking on the crest</div> - <div class='line in6'>In the low blue lustre</div> - <div class='line in6'>Are the shadows of the ships.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>LOST</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Desolate and lone</div> - <div class='line'>All night long on the lake</div> - <div class='line'>Where fog trails and mist creeps,</div> - <div class='line'>The whistle of a boat</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_293'>293</span>Calls and cries unendingly,</div> - <div class='line'>Like some lost child</div> - <div class='line'>In tears and trouble</div> - <div class='line'>Hunting the harbor’s breast</div> - <div class='line'>And the harbor’s eyes.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>JAN KUBELIK</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Your bow swept over a string, and a long low note quivered to the air.</div> - <div class='line'>(A mother of Bohemia sobs over a new child, perfect, learning to suck milk.)</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Your bow ran fast over all the high strings fluttering and wild.</div> - <div class='line'>(All the girls in Bohemia are laughing on a Sunday afternoon in the hills with their lovers.)</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>AT A WINDOW</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Give me hunger,</div> - <div class='line'>O you gods that sit and give</div> - <div class='line'>The world its orders.</div> - <div class='line'>Give me hunger, pain and want,</div> - <div class='line'>Shut me out with shame and failure</div> - <div class='line'>From your doors of gold and fame,</div> - <div class='line'>Give me your shabbiest, weariest hunger!</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>But leave me a little love,</div> - <div class='line'>A voice to speak to me in the day end,</div> - <div class='line'>A hand to touch me in the dark room</div> - <div class='line'>Breaking the long loneliness.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>In the dusk of day-shapes</div> - <div class='line'>Blurring the sunset,</div> - <div class='line'>One little wandering, western star</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_294'>294</span>Thrust out from the changing shores of shadow.</div> - <div class='line'>Let me go to the window,</div> - <div class='line'>Watch there the day-shapes of dusk,</div> - <div class='line'>And wait and know the coming</div> - <div class='line'>Of a little love.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>THE POOR</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Among the mountains I wandered and saw blue haze and red crag and was amazed;</div> - <div class='line'>On the beach where the long push under the endless tide maneuvers, I stood silent;</div> - <div class='line'>Under the stars on the prairie watching the Dipper slant over the horizon’s grass, I was full of thoughts.</div> - <div class='line'>Great men, pageants of war and labor, soldiers and workers,</div> - <div class='line'>mothers lifting their children—these all I touched, and felt the solemn thrill of them.</div> - <div class='line'>And then one day I got a true look at the Poor, millions of the Poor, patient and toiling; more patient than crags, tides, and stars; innumerable, patient as the darkness of night—and all broken, humble ruins of nations.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>THE ROAD AND THE END</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>I shall foot it</div> - <div class='line'>Down the roadway in the dusk,</div> - <div class='line'>Where shapes of hunger wander</div> - <div class='line'>And the fugitives of pain go by.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>I shall foot it</div> - <div class='line'>In the silence of the morning,</div> - <div class='line'>See the night slur into dawn,</div> - <div class='line'>Hear the slow great winds arise</div> - <div class='line'>Where tall trees flank the way</div> - <div class='line'>And shoulder toward the sky.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_295'>295</span>The broken boulders by the road</div> - <div class='line'>Shall not commemorate my ruin.</div> - <div class='line'>Regret shall be the gravel under foot.</div> - <div class='line'>I shall watch for</div> - <div class='line'>Slim birds swift of wing</div> - <div class='line'>That go where wind and ranks of thunder</div> - <div class='line'>Dive the wild processionals of rain.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>The dust of the travelled road</div> - <div class='line'>Shall touch my hands and face.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>KILLERS</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>I am singing to you</div> - <div class='line'>Soft as a man with a dead child speaks;</div> - <div class='line'>Hard as a man in handcuffs,</div> - <div class='line'>Held where he can not move:</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Under the sun</div> - <div class='line'>Are sixteen million men,</div> - <div class='line'>Chosen for shining teeth,</div> - <div class='line'>Sharp eyes, hard legs,</div> - <div class='line'>And a running of young warm blood in their wrists.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>And a red juice runs on the green grass;</div> - <div class='line'>And a red juice soaks the dark soil.</div> - <div class='line'>And the sixteen million are killing ... and killing and killing.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>I never forget them day or night:</div> - <div class='line'>They beat on my head for memory of them;</div> - <div class='line'>They pound on my heart and I cry back to them,</div> - <div class='line'>To their homes and women, dreams and games.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_296'>296</span>I wake in the night and smell the trenches,</div> - <div class='line'>And hear the low stir of sleepers in lines—</div> - <div class='line'>Sixteen million sleepers and pickets in the dark:</div> - <div class='line'>Some of them long sleepers for always,</div> - <div class='line'>Some of them tumbling to sleep to-morrow for always,</div> - <div class='line'>Fixed in the drag of the world’s heartbreak,</div> - <div class='line'>Eating and drinking, toiling ... on a long job of killing.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Sixteen million men.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>NOCTURNE IN A DESERTED BRICKYARD</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Stuff of the moon</div> - <div class='line'>Runs on the lapping sand</div> - <div class='line'>Out to the longest shadows.</div> - <div class='line'>Under the curving willows,</div> - <div class='line'>And round the creep of the wave line,</div> - <div class='line'>Fluxions of yellow and dusk on the waters</div> - <div class='line'>Make a wide dreaming pansy of an old pond in the night.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>HANDFULS</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Blossoms of babies</div> - <div class='line'>Blinking their stories</div> - <div class='line'>Come soft</div> - <div class='line'>On the dusk and the babble;</div> - <div class='line'>Little red gamblers,</div> - <div class='line'>Handfuls that slept in the dust.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Summers of rain,</div> - <div class='line'>Winters of drift,</div> - <div class='line'>Tell off the years;</div> - <div class='line'>And they go back</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_297'>297</span>Who came soft—</div> - <div class='line'>Back to the sod,</div> - <div class='line'>To silence and dust;</div> - <div class='line'>Gray gamblers,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Handfuls again.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>UNDER THE HARVEST MOON</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Under the harvest moon,</div> - <div class='line'>When the soft silver</div> - <div class='line'>Drips shimmering</div> - <div class='line'>Over the garden nights,</div> - <div class='line'>Death, the gray mocker,</div> - <div class='line'>Comes and whispers to you</div> - <div class='line'>As a beautiful friend</div> - <div class='line'>Who remembers.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Under the summer roses</div> - <div class='line'>When the flagrant crimson</div> - <div class='line'>Lurks in the dusk</div> - <div class='line'>Of the wild red leaves,</div> - <div class='line'>Love, with little hands,</div> - <div class='line'>Comes and touches you</div> - <div class='line'>With a thousand memories,</div> - <div class='line'>And asks you</div> - <div class='line'>Beautiful, unanswerable questions.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>CHOOSE</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>The single clenched fist lifted and ready,</div> - <div class='line'>Or the open asking hand held out and waiting.</div> - <div class='line in14'>Choose:</div> - <div class='line'>For we meet by one or the other.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_298'>298</span> - <h3 class='c014'>KIN</h3> -</div> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Brother, I am fire</div> - <div class='line'>Surging under the ocean floor.</div> - <div class='line'>I shall never meet you, brother—</div> - <div class='line'>Not for years, anyhow;</div> - <div class='line'>Maybe thousands of years, brother.</div> - <div class='line'>Then I will warm you,</div> - <div class='line'>Hold you close, wrap you in circles,</div> - <div class='line'>Use you and change you—</div> - <div class='line'>Maybe thousands of years, brother.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>PLACES</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Roses and gold</div> - <div class='line'>For you today,</div> - <div class='line'>And the flash of flying flags.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in6'>I will have</div> - <div class='line in6'>Ashes,</div> - <div class='line in6'>Dust in my hair,</div> - <div class='line in6'>Crushes of hoofs.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Your name</div> - <div class='line'>Fills the mouth</div> - <div class='line'>Of rich man and poor.</div> - <div class='line in6'>Women bring</div> - <div class='line'>Armfuls of flowers</div> - <div class='line'>And throw on you.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in6'>I go hungry</div> - <div class='line in6'>Down in dreams</div> - <div class='line in6'>And loneliness,</div> - <div class='line in6'>Across the rain</div> - <div class='line in6'>To slashed hills</div> - <div class='line'>Where men wait and hope for me.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_299'>299</span> - <h3 class='c014'>JOY</h3> -</div> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Let a joy keep you.</div> - <div class='line'>Reach out your hands</div> - <div class='line'>And take it when it runs by,</div> - <div class='line'>As the Apache dancer</div> - <div class='line'>Clutches his woman.</div> - <div class='line'>I have seen them</div> - <div class='line'>Live long and laugh loud,</div> - <div class='line'>Sent on singing, singing,</div> - <div class='line'>Smashed to the heart</div> - <div class='line'>Under the ribs</div> - <div class='line'>With a terrible love.</div> - <div class='line'>Joy always,</div> - <div class='line'>Joy everywhere—</div> - <div class='line'>Let joy kill you!</div> - <div class='line'>Keep away from the little deaths.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>THE GREAT HUNT</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>I can not tell you now;</div> - <div class='line in4'>When the wind’s drive and whirl</div> - <div class='line in4'>Blow me along no longer,</div> - <div class='line in4'>And the wind’s a whisper at last—</div> - <div class='line'>Maybe I’ll tell you then—</div> - <div class='line in26'>some other time.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in4'>When the rose’s flash to the sunset</div> - <div class='line in4'>Reels to the wrack and the twist,</div> - <div class='line in4'>And the rose is a red bygone,</div> - <div class='line in4'>When the face I love is going</div> - <div class='line in4'>And the gate to the end shall clang,</div> - <div class='line in4'>And it’s no use to beckon or say, “So long”—</div> - <div class='line'>Maybe I’ll tell you then—</div> - <div class='line in26'>some other time.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_300'>300</span>I never knew any more beautiful than you:</div> - <div class='line in4'>I have hunted you under my thoughts,</div> - <div class='line in4'>I have broken down under the wind</div> - <div class='line in4'>And into the roses looking for you.</div> - <div class='line in6'>I shall never find any</div> - <div class='line in28'>greater than you.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>OUR PRAYER OF THANKS</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'>God,</div> - <div class='line'>For the gladness here where the sun is shining at evening on the weeds at the river,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Our prayer of thanks.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'>God,</div> - <div class='line'>For the laughter of children who tumble barefooted and bareheaded in the summer grass,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Our prayer of thanks.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'>God,</div> - <div class='line'>For the sunset and the stars, the women and their white arms that hold us,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Our prayer of thanks.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'>God,</div> - <div class='line'>If you are deaf and blind, if this is all lost to you,</div> - <div class='line'>God, if the dead in their coffins amid the silver handles on the edge of town, or the reckless dead of war days thrown unknown in pits, if these dead are forever deaf and blind and lost,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Our prayer of thanks.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'>God,</div> - <div class='line'>The game is all your way, the secrets and the signals and the system; and so, for the break of the game and the first play and the last,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Our prayer of thanks.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='chapter'> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_301'>301</span> - <h2 class='c005'>Clara Shanafelt</h2> -</div> - -<h3 class='c013'>TO THEE</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>White foam flower, red flame flower</div> - <div class='line in8'>On my tree of delight.</div> - <div class='line'>Lean from the shadow</div> - <div class='line'>Like singing in sorrow—</div> - <div class='line'>Pale flower of thy smile, flame flower of thy touch,</div> - <div class='line in8'>In my night.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>CAPRICE</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Who will be naming the wind</div> - <div class='line'>That lifts me and leaves me;</div> - <div class='line'>Swelleth my budding flame,</div> - <div class='line'>Foully bereaves me?</div> - <div class='line'>From the land whose forgotten name</div> - <div class='line'>Man shall not find,</div> - <div class='line'>Blowest thou, wind?</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>A VIVID GIRL</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Her face is fair and smooth and fine,</div> - <div class='line'>Childlike, with secret laughter lit,</div> - <div class='line'>Drooping in pity, bright with wit,</div> - <div class='line'>A flower, a flame—God fashioned it.</div> - <div class='line'>Who sees her tastes the sacred wine.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_302'>302</span> - <h3 class='c014'>INVOCATION</h3> -</div> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>O glass-blower of time,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Hast blown all shapes at thy fire?</div> - <div class='line'>Canst thou no lovelier bell,</div> - <div class='line in2'>No clearer bubble, clear as delight, inflate me—</div> - <div class='line'>Worthy to hold such wine</div> - <div class='line in2'>As was never yet trod from the grape,</div> - <div class='line'>Since the stars shed their light, since the moon</div> - <div class='line in2'>Troubled the night with her beauty?</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>PASTEL</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>She has a clear, wind-sheltered loveliness,</div> - <div class='line'>Like pale streams winding far and hills withdrawn</div> - <div class='line'>From the bright reaches of the noon. Dawn</div> - <div class='line'>Is her lifting fancy, but her heart</div> - <div class='line'>Is orchard boughs and dusk and quietness.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>A GALLANT WOMAN</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>She burst fierce wine</div> - <div class='line'>From the tough skin of pain,</div> - <div class='line'>Like wind that wrings from rigid skies</div> - <div class='line'>A scant and bitter gleam,</div> - <div class='line'>Long after the autumnal dusk</div> - <div class='line'>Has folded all the valleys in.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_303'>303</span> - <h3 class='c014'>SCHERZO</h3> -</div> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>The elder’s bridal in July,</div> - <div class='line'>Bright as a cloud!</div> - <div class='line'>A ripe blonde girl,</div> - <div class='line'>Billowing to the ground in foamy petticoats,</div> - <div class='line'>With breasts full-blown</div> - <div class='line'>Swelling her bodice.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>But later</div> - <div class='line'>When the small black-ruddy berries</div> - <div class='line'>Tempt the birds to strip the stems,</div> - <div class='line'>And the leaves begin to yellow and fall off</div> - <div class='line'>While late summer’s still in its green,</div> - <div class='line'>Then you look lank and used up,</div> - <div class='line'>Elder;</div> - <div class='line'>Your big bones stick out,</div> - <div class='line'>You’re the kind of woman</div> - <div class='line'>Wears bleak at forty.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>I’ll take my constant pleasure</div> - <div class='line'>In a willow-tree that ripples silver</div> - <div class='line'>All the summer.</div> - <div class='line'>And when the winter comes in greasy rags</div> - <div class='line'>Like a half-naked beggar,</div> - <div class='line'>Lets out the plaited splendor</div> - <div class='line'>Of her bright and glancing hair.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='chapter'> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_304'>304</span> - <h2 class='c005'>Frances Shaw</h2> -</div> - -<h3 class='c013'>WHO LOVES THE RAIN</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'>Who loves the rain</div> - <div class='line in2'>And loves his home,</div> - <div class='line'>And looks on life with quiet eyes,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Him will I follow through the storm;</div> - <div class='line in2'>And at his hearth-fire keep me warm;</div> - <div class='line'>Nor hell nor heaven shall that soul surprise,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Who loves the rain,</div> - <div class='line in2'>And loves his home,</div> - <div class='line'>And looks on life with quiet eyes.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>THE HARP OF THE WIND</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>My house stands high—</div> - <div class='line'>Where the harp of the wind</div> - <div class='line'>Plays all day,</div> - <div class='line'>Plays all night;</div> - <div class='line'>And the city light</div> - <div class='line'>Is far away.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Where hangs the harp that the winds play?—</div> - <div class='line'>High in the air—</div> - <div class='line'>Over the sea?</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>The long straight streets of the far-away town,</div> - <div class='line'>Where the lines of light go sweeping down,</div> - <div class='line'>Are the strings of its minstrelsy.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>And the harp of the wind</div> - <div class='line'>Gives to the wind</div> - <div class='line'>A song of the city’s tears;</div> - <div class='line'>Thin and faint, the cry of a child,</div> - <div class='line'>Plaint of the soul unreconciled,</div> - <div class='line'>A song of the passing years.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_305'>305</span> - <h3 class='c014'>THE RAGPICKER</h3> -</div> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>The Ragpicker sits and sorts her rags:</div> - <div class='line in2'>Silk and homespun and threads of gold</div> - <div class='line'>She plucks to pieces and marks with tags;</div> - <div class='line in2'>And her eyes are ice and her fingers cold.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>The Ragpicker sits in the back of my brain;</div> - <div class='line in2'>Keenly she looks me through and through.</div> - <div class='line'>One flaming shred I have hidden away—</div> - <div class='line in2'>She shall not have my love for you.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>COLOGNE CATHEDRAL</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>The little white prayers</div> - <div class='line in2'>Of Elspeth Fry</div> - <div class='line'>Float up the arches</div> - <div class='line in2'>Into the sky.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>A little black bird</div> - <div class='line in2'>On the belfry high</div> - <div class='line'>Pecks at them</div> - <div class='line in2'>As they go by.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>STAR THOUGHT</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>I shall see a star tonight</div> - <div class='line'>From a distant mountain height;</div> - <div class='line'>From a city you will see</div> - <div class='line'>The same star that shines on me.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>’Tis not of the firmament</div> - <div class='line'>On a solar journey bent;</div> - <div class='line'>Fixed it is through time and weather;—</div> - <div class='line'>’Tis a thought we hold together.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_306'>306</span> - <h3 class='c014'>THE CHILD’S QUEST</h3> -</div> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>My mother twines me roses wet with dew;</div> - <div class='line'>Oft have I sought the garden through and through;</div> - <div class='line'>I cannot find the tree whereon</div> - <div class='line'>My mother’s roses grew.</div> - <div class='line in4'>Seek not, O child, the tree whereon</div> - <div class='line in4'>Thy mother’s roses grew.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>My mother tells me tales of noble deeds;</div> - <div class='line'>Oft have I sought her book when no one heeds;</div> - <div class='line'>I cannot find the page, alas,</div> - <div class='line'>From which my mother reads.</div> - <div class='line in4'>Seek not, O child, to find the page</div> - <div class='line in4'>From which thy mother reads.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>My mother croons me songs all soft and low,</div> - <div class='line'>Through the white night where little breezes blow;</div> - <div class='line'>Yet never when the morning dawns,</div> - <div class='line'>My mother’s songs I know.</div> - <div class='line in4'>Seek not, O child, at dawn of day</div> - <div class='line in4'>Thy mother’s songs to know.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>LITTLE PAGAN RAIN SONG</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>In the dark and peace of my final bed,</div> - <div class='line'>The wet grass waving above my head,</div> - <div class='line'>At rest from love, at rest from pain,</div> - <div class='line'>I lie and listen to the rain.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'>Falling, softly falling,</div> - <div class='line in4'>Song of my soul that is free;</div> - <div class='line in2'>Song of my soul that has not forgot</div> - <div class='line in4'>The sleeping body of me.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_307'>307</span>When quiet and calm and straight I lie,</div> - <div class='line'>High in the air my soul rides by:</div> - <div class='line'>Shall I await thee, soul, in vain?</div> - <div class='line'>Hark to the answer in the rain.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'>Falling, softly falling,</div> - <div class='line in4'>Song of my soul that is free;</div> - <div class='line in2'>Song of my soul that will not forget</div> - <div class='line in4'>The sleeping body of me.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='chapter'> - <h2 class='c005'>Constance Lindsay Skinner</h2> -</div> - -<h3 class='c013'>SONGS OF THE COAST-DWELLERS</h3> - -<h4 class='c013'>THE CHIEF’S PRAYER AFTER THE SALMON CATCH</h4> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>O Kia-Kunæ, praise!</div> - <div class='line'>Thou hast opened thy hand among the stars,</div> - <div class='line'>And sprinkled the sea with food;</div> - <div class='line'>The catch is great; thy children will live.</div> - <div class='line'>See, on the roofs of the villages, the red meat drying;</div> - <div class='line'>Another year thou hast encompassed us with life.</div> - <div class='line'>Praise! Praise! Kunæ!</div> - <div class='line'>O Father, we have waited with shut mouths,</div> - <div class='line'>With hearts silent, and hands quiet,</div> - <div class='line'>Waited the time of prayer;</div> - <div class='line'>Lest with fears we should beset thee,</div> - <div class='line'>And pray the unholy prayer of asking.</div> - <div class='line'>We waited silently; and thou gavest life.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Oh, praise! Praise! Praise!</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Open the silent mouths, the shut hearts, my tribe:</div> - <div class='line'>Sing high the prayer of Thanksgiving,</div> - <div class='line'>The prayer He taught in the beginning to the Kwakiutl—</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_308'>308</span>The good rejoicing prayer of thanks.</div> - <div class='line'>As the sea sings on the wet shore, when the ice thunders back,</div> - <div class='line'>And the blue water floats again, warm, shining, living,</div> - <div class='line'>So break thy ice-bound heart, and the cold lip’s silence—</div> - <div class='line'>Praise Kunæ for life, as wings up-flying, as eagles to the sun.</div> - <div class='line'>Praise! Praise! Praise!</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h4 class='c013'>SONG OF WHIP-PLAITING</h4> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>In the dawn I gathered cedar-boughs</div> - <div class='line'>For the plaiting of thy whip.</div> - <div class='line'>They were wet with sweet drops;</div> - <div class='line'>They still thought of the night.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>All alone I shredded cedar-boughs,</div> - <div class='line'>Green boughs in the pale light,</div> - <div class='line'>Where the morning meets the sea,</div> - <div class='line'>And the great mountain stops.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Earth was very still.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>I heard no sound but the whisper of my knife,</div> - <div class='line'>My black flint knife.</div> - <div class='line'>It whispered among the white strands of the cedar,</div> - <div class='line'>Whispered in parting the sweet cords for thy whip.</div> - <div class='line'>O sweet-smelling juice of cedar—</div> - <div class='line'>Life-ooze of love!</div> - <div class='line'>My knife drips:</div> - <div class='line'>Its whisper is the only sound in all the world!</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Finer than young sea-lions’ hairs</div> - <div class='line'>Are my cedar-strands:</div> - <div class='line'>They are fine as little roots deep down.</div> - <div class='line'>(O little roots of cedar</div> - <div class='line'>Far, far under the bosom of Tsa-Kumts!—</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_309'>309</span>They have plaited her through with love.)</div> - <div class='line'>Now, into my love-gift</div> - <div class='line'>Closely, strongly, I will weave them—</div> - <div class='line'>Little strands of pain!</div> - <div class='line'>Since I saw thee</div> - <div class='line'>Standing with thy torch in my doorway,</div> - <div class='line'>Their little roots are deep in me.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>In the dawn I gathered cedar-boughs:</div> - <div class='line'>Sweet, sweet was their odor,</div> - <div class='line'>They were wet with tears—</div> - <div class='line'>The sweetness will not leave my hands,</div> - <div class='line'>No, not in salt sea-washings:</div> - <div class='line'>Tears will not wash away sweetness,</div> - <div class='line'>I shall have sweet hands for thy service.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>(Ah—sometimes—thou wilt be gentle?</div> - <div class='line'>Little roots of pain are deep, deep in me</div> - <div class='line'>Since I saw thee standing in my doorway.)</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>I have quenched thy torch—</div> - <div class='line'>I have plaited thy whip.</div> - <div class='line'>I am thy Woman!</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h4 class='c013'>NO ANSWER IS GIVEN</h4> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>I am Ah-woa-te, the Hunter.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>I met a maiden in the shadow of the rocks;</div> - <div class='line'>Her eyes were strange and clear,</div> - <div class='line'>Her fair lips were shaped like the bow of dawning.</div> - <div class='line'>I asked her name,</div> - <div class='line'>Striking my spear in the deep earth for resting.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>“I am Kantlak, a maiden, named for the Morning.</div> - <div class='line'>On the mountain-top I heard two eagles talking—</div> - <div class='line'>The word was Love.</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_310'>310</span>They cried it, beating their wings on each other</div> - <div class='line'>Until they bled; and she fell,</div> - <div class='line'>Yet, falling, still weakly cried it</div> - <div class='line'>To him soaring: and died.</div> - <div class='line'>I came to a mossy low valley of flowers.</div> - <div class='line'>There I saw Men-iak, the white grouse,</div> - <div class='line'>(White with chaste dreams, like the Spring Moon, fairer than flowers).</div> - <div class='line'>Through the forest a dark bird swooped, with fierce eyes,</div> - <div class='line'>And Men-iak flew down to it.</div> - <div class='line'>Her white breast is red-dyed, she lies on the moss;</div> - <div class='line'>Yet faintly cries the same strange word,</div> - <div class='line'>Hunter, will you come to my little fire and tell me</div> - <div class='line'>What Love is?”</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>I could not see the maiden’s face clearly, for the dusk,</div> - <div class='line'>Where she sat by her small fire—only her eyes.</div> - <div class='line'>In the little flicker I saw her feet; they were bare—</div> - <div class='line'>Tireless, slim brown feet.</div> - <div class='line'>I saw how fair her lips were—</div> - <div class='line'>I drew nearer to cast my log on the fire. I said:</div> - <div class='line'>“Maiden, I am the Hunter.</div> - <div class='line'>When dusk ends the chase I leave the Mighty Killing.</div> - <div class='line'>Far or near, where gleams some little fire,</div> - <div class='line'>I grope through the forest with my heavy log;</div> - <div class='line'>Till I find one by the fire, sitting alone without fuel.</div> - <div class='line'>I cast my log gladly into the fire—thus,</div> - <div class='line'>It grips, the flames mount, the warmth embraces.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>“Almost I can see your face, Woman;</div> - <div class='line'>The bow of your fair lips is hot with speeded arrows,</div> - <div class='line'>Your strange clear eyes have darkened.</div> - <div class='line'>Fear not—our fire will outlast the dark.”</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>“Hunter, what of the cold on the bleak hillside</div> - <div class='line'>When the log burns gray, and the fire is ashes?”</div> - <div class='line'>I replied, “I have never seen this:</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_311'>311</span>When the fire burns low I am asleep.”</div> - <div class='line'>She said: “What of me, if I sleep not, and see the ashes?”</div> - <div class='line'>I yawned: I said, “I know not;</div> - <div class='line'>I wake in the sun and go forth.”</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>The bow of her lips was like the moon’s cold circle.</div> - <div class='line'>She said, “Hunter, you have told me of Love!”</div> - <div class='line'>“It may be so,” I answered. I wished to sleep.</div> - <div class='line'>She said, “Already it is ashes.”</div> - <div class='line'>I looked and saw that her face was gray,</div> - <div class='line'>As if the wind had blown the ashes over it.</div> - <div class='line'>I was angry; I said, “Better you had slept.”</div> - <div class='line'>She said, “Yes—but I lie bleeding on the moss,</div> - <div class='line'>Crying this word.”</div> - <div class='line'>I answered, “This is so; but wherefore?” and asked, idly,</div> - <div class='line'>“Wherefore remember him who brought to your lone little fire</div> - <div class='line'>The log that now is ashes?”</div> - <div class='line'>She shivered in the cold dawn;</div> - <div class='line'>I saw that her eyes were darker than shadows.</div> - <div class='line'>Her fair mouth was like my perfect bow,</div> - <div class='line'>But I could fit no more arrows to it.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>She said, “Hunter, see how gray are these rocks</div> - <div class='line'>Where we have sheltered our brief night.”</div> - <div class='line'>I looked—they were ashen.</div> - <div class='line'>She said: “See how they come together here—and here—</div> - <div class='line'>As the knees, the breast, the great brow, the forgotten eyes,</div> - <div class='line'>Of a woman,</div> - <div class='line'>Sitting, waiting, stark and still,</div> - <div class='line'>And always gray;</div> - <div class='line'>Though hunters camp each night between her knees,</div> - <div class='line'>And little fires are kindled and burned out in her hollows.”</div> - <div class='line'>It was so; the mountain was a stone woman sitting.</div> - <div class='line'>Kantlak said: “She remembers him who turned her fire to ashes;</div> - <div class='line'>She waits to know the meaning of her waiting—</div> - <div class='line'>Why the love that wounded her can never be cast out.”</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_312'>312</span>I asked idly, “Who will tell her?”—</div> - <div class='line'>And laughed, for the sun was up. I reached for my arrows;</div> - <div class='line'>I drew my strong spear from the deep earth by her feet.</div> - <div class='line'>Kantlak looked up to the other gray face, and said,</div> - <div class='line'>“No answer is given.”</div> - <div class='line'>Down to the cold white endless sea-shore</div> - <div class='line'>Slowly she went, with bent head.</div> - <div class='line'>A young deer cast its leaping shadow on the pool.</div> - <div class='line'>I ran upon the bright path, swaying my spear.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='chapter'> - <h2 class='c005'>James Stephens</h2> -</div> - -<h3 class='c013'>WHAT TOMAS AN BUILE SAID IN A PUB</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>I saw God. Do you doubt it?</div> - <div class='line'>Do you dare to doubt it?</div> - <div class='line'>I saw the Almighty Man. His hand</div> - <div class='line'>Was resting on a mountain, and</div> - <div class='line'>He looked upon the World and all about it:</div> - <div class='line'>I saw Him plainer than you see me now,</div> - <div class='line'>You mustn’t doubt it.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>He was not satisfied;</div> - <div class='line'>His look was all dissatisfied.</div> - <div class='line'>His beard swung on a wind far out of sight</div> - <div class='line'>Behind the world’s curve, and there was light</div> - <div class='line'>Most fearful from His forehead, and He sighed,</div> - <div class='line'>“That star went always wrong, and from the start</div> - <div class='line'>I was dissatisfied.”</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>He lifted up His hand—</div> - <div class='line'>I say He heaved a dreadful hand</div> - <div class='line'>Over the spinning Earth, then I said: “Stay—</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_313'>313</span>You must not strike it, God; I’m in the way;</div> - <div class='line'>And I will never move from where I stand.”</div> - <div class='line'>He said, “Dear child, I feared that you were dead,”</div> - <div class='line'>And stayed His hand.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>BESSIE BOBTAIL</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>As down the street she wambled slow,</div> - <div class='line'>She had not got a place to go:</div> - <div class='line'>She had not got a place to fall</div> - <div class='line'>And rest herself—no place at all.</div> - <div class='line'>She stumped along and wagged her pate</div> - <div class='line'>And said a thing was desperate.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Her face was screwed and wrinkled tight</div> - <div class='line'>Just like a nut—and, left and right,</div> - <div class='line'>On either side she wagged her head</div> - <div class='line'>And said a thing; and what she said</div> - <div class='line'>Was desperate as any word</div> - <div class='line'>That ever yet a person heard.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>I walked behind her for a while</div> - <div class='line'>And watched the people nudge and smile.</div> - <div class='line'>But ever as she went she said,</div> - <div class='line'>As left and right she swung her head,</div> - <div class='line'>—“Oh, God He knows,” and “God He knows:”</div> - <div class='line'>And surely God Almighty knows.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>HATE</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>My enemy came high,</div> - <div class='line'>And I</div> - <div class='line'>Stared fiercely in his face.</div> - <div class='line'>My lips went writhing back in a grimace,</div> - <div class='line'>And stern I watched him with a narrow eye.</div> - <div class='line'>Then, as I turned away, my enemy,</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_314'>314</span>That bitter heart and savage, said to me:</div> - <div class='line'>“Some day, when this is past,</div> - <div class='line'>When all the arrows that we have are cast,</div> - <div class='line'>We may ask one another why we hate,</div> - <div class='line'>And fail to find a story to relate.</div> - <div class='line'>It may seem to us then a mystery</div> - <div class='line'>That we could hate each other.”</div> - <div class='line in20'>Thus said he,</div> - <div class='line'>And did not turn away,</div> - <div class='line'>Waiting to hear what I might have to say.</div> - <div class='line'>But I fled quickly, fearing if I stayed</div> - <div class='line'>I might have kissed him as I would a maid.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>THE WASTE PLACES</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in16'>I</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>As a naked man I go</div> - <div class='line in2'>Through the desert sore afraid,</div> - <div class='line'>Holding up my head although</div> - <div class='line in2'>I’m as frightened as a maid.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>The couching lion there I saw</div> - <div class='line in2'>From barren rocks lift up his eye;</div> - <div class='line'>He parts the cactus with his paw,</div> - <div class='line in2'>He stares at me as I go by.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>He would follow on my trace</div> - <div class='line in2'>If he knew I was afraid,</div> - <div class='line'>If he knew my hardy face</div> - <div class='line in2'>Hides the terrors of a maid.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>In the night he rises and</div> - <div class='line in2'>He stretches forth, he snuffs the air;</div> - <div class='line'>He roars and leaps along the sand,</div> - <div class='line in2'>He creeps and watches everywhere.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_315'>315</span>His burning eyes, his eyes of bale,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Through the darkness I can see;</div> - <div class='line'>He lashes fiercely with his tail,</div> - <div class='line in2'>He would love to spring at me.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>I am the lion in his lair;</div> - <div class='line in2'>I am the fear that frightens me;</div> - <div class='line'>I am the desert of despair</div> - <div class='line in2'>And the nights of agony.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Night or day, whate’er befall,</div> - <div class='line in2'>I must walk that desert land,</div> - <div class='line'>Until I can dare to call</div> - <div class='line in2'>The lion out to lick my hand.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in16'>II</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>As a naked man I tread</div> - <div class='line in2'>The gloomy forests, ring on ring,</div> - <div class='line'>Where the sun that’s overhead</div> - <div class='line in2'>Cannot see what’s happening.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>There I go: the deepest shade,</div> - <div class='line in2'>The deepest silence pressing me;</div> - <div class='line'>And my heart is more afraid</div> - <div class='line in2'>Than a maiden’s heart would be.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Every day I have to run</div> - <div class='line in2'>Underneath the demon tree,</div> - <div class='line'>Where the ancient wrong is done</div> - <div class='line in2'>While I shrink in agony.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>There the demon held a maid</div> - <div class='line in2'>In his arms, and as she, daft,</div> - <div class='line'>Screamed again in fear, he laid</div> - <div class='line in2'>His lips upon her lips and laughed.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_316'>316</span>And she beckoned me to run,</div> - <div class='line in2'>And she called for help to me,</div> - <div class='line'>And the ancient wrong was done</div> - <div class='line in2'>Which is done eternally.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>I am the maiden and the fear;</div> - <div class='line in2'>I am the sunless shade, the strife;</div> - <div class='line'>I the demon lips, the sneer</div> - <div class='line in2'>Showing under every life.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>I must tread that gloomy way</div> - <div class='line in2'>Until I shall dare to run</div> - <div class='line'>And bear the demon with his prey</div> - <div class='line in2'>From the forest to the sun.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>HAWKS</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>And as we walked the grass was faintly stirred;</div> - <div class='line in2'>We did not speak—there was no need to speak.</div> - <div class='line'>Above our heads there flew a little bird,</div> - <div class='line in2'>A silent one who feared that we might seek</div> - <div class='line'>Her hard-hid nest.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Poor little frightened one!</div> - <div class='line in2'>If we had found your nest that sunny day</div> - <div class='line'>We would have passed it by; we would have gone</div> - <div class='line in2'>And never looked or frightened you away.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>O little bird! there’s many have a nest,</div> - <div class='line in2'>A hard-found, open place, with many a foe;</div> - <div class='line'>And hunger and despair and little rest,</div> - <div class='line in2'>And more to fear than you can know.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in4'>Shield the nests where’er they be,</div> - <div class='line in4'>On the ground or on the tree;</div> - <div class='line in4'>Guard the poor from treachery.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_317'>317</span> - <h3 class='c014'>DARK WINGS</h3> -</div> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Sing while you may, O bird upon the tree!</div> - <div class='line in2'>Although on high, wide-winged above the day,</div> - <div class='line'>Chill evening broadens to immensity,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Sing while you may.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>On thee, wide-hovering too, intent to slay,</div> - <div class='line in2'>The hawk’s slant pinion buoys him terribly—</div> - <div class='line'>Thus near the end is of thy happy lay.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>The day and thou and miserable me</div> - <div class='line in2'>Dark wings shall cover up and hide away</div> - <div class='line'>Where no song stirs of bird or memory:</div> - <div class='line in2'>Sing while you may.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='chapter'> - <h2 class='c005'>George Sterling</h2> -</div> - -<h3 class='c013'>A LEGEND OF THE DOVE</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'>Soft from the linden’s bough,</div> - <div class='line'>Unmoved against the tranquil afternoon,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Eve’s dove laments her now:</div> - <div class='line'>“Ah, gone! long gone! shall not I find thee soon?”</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'>That yearning in his voice</div> - <div class='line'>Told not to Paradise a sorrow’s tale:</div> - <div class='line in2'>As other birds rejoice</div> - <div class='line'>He sang, a brother to the nightingale.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'>By twilight on her breast</div> - <div class='line'>He saw the flower sleep, the star awake;</div> - <div class='line in2'>And calling her from rest,</div> - <div class='line'>Made all the dawn melodious for her sake.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'><span class='pageno' id='Page_318'>318</span>And then the Tempter’s breath,</div> - <div class='line'>The sword of exile and the mortal chain—</div> - <div class='line in2'>The heritage of death</div> - <div class='line'>That gave her heart to dust, his own to pain....</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in2'>In Eden desolate</div> - <div class='line'>The seraph heard his lonely music swoon,</div> - <div class='line in2'>As now, reiterate;</div> - <div class='line'>“Ah, gone! long gone! shall not I find thee soon?”</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>KINDRED</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Musing, between the sunset and the dark,</div> - <div class='line'>As Twilight in unhesitating hands</div> - <div class='line'>Bore from the faint horizon’s underlands,</div> - <div class='line'>Silvern and chill, the moon’s phantasmal ark,</div> - <div class='line'>I heard the sea, and far away could mark</div> - <div class='line'>Where that unalterable waste expands</div> - <div class='line'>In sevenfold sapphire from the mournful sands,</div> - <div class='line'>And saw beyond the deep a vibrant spark.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>There sank the sun Arcturus, and I thought:</div> - <div class='line'>Star, by an ocean on a world of thine,</div> - <div class='line'>May not a being, born like me to die,</div> - <div class='line'>Confront a little the eternal Naught</div> - <div class='line'>And watch our isolated sun decline—</div> - <div class='line'>Sad for his evanescence, even as I?</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>OMNIA EXEUNT IN MYSTERIUM</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>The stranger in my gates—lo! that am I,</div> - <div class='line'>And what my land of birth I do not know,</div> - <div class='line'>Nor yet the hidden land to which I go.</div> - <div class='line'>One may be lord of many ere he die,</div> - <div class='line'>And tell of many sorrows in one sigh,</div> - <div class='line'>But know himself he shall not, nor his woe,</div> - <div class='line'>Nor to what sea the tears of wisdom flow;</div> - <div class='line'>Nor why one star is taken from the sky.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_319'>319</span>An urging is upon him evermore,</div> - <div class='line'>And though he bide, his soul is wanderer,</div> - <div class='line'>Scanning the shadows with a sense of haste—</div> - <div class='line'>Where fade the tracks of all who went before:</div> - <div class='line'>A dim and solitary traveller</div> - <div class='line'>On ways that end in evening and the waste.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>THE LAST DAYS</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>The russet leaves of the sycamore</div> - <div class='line'>Lie at last on the valley floor—</div> - <div class='line'>By the autumn wind swept to and fro</div> - <div class='line'>Like ghosts in a tale of long ago.</div> - <div class='line'>Shallow and clear the Carmel glides</div> - <div class='line'>Where the willows droop on its vine-walled sides.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>The bracken-rust is red on the hill;</div> - <div class='line'>The pines stand brooding, somber and still;</div> - <div class='line'>Gray are the cliffs, and the waters gray,</div> - <div class='line'>Where the seagulls dip to the sea-born spray.</div> - <div class='line'>Sad November, lady of rain,</div> - <div class='line'>Sends the goose-wedge over again.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Wilder now, for the verdure’s birth,</div> - <div class='line'>Falls the sunlight over the earth;</div> - <div class='line'>Kildees call from the fields where now</div> - <div class='line'>The banding blackbirds follow the plow;</div> - <div class='line'>Rustling poplar and brittle weed</div> - <div class='line'>Whisper low to the river-reed.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Days departing linger and sigh:</div> - <div class='line'>Stars come soon to the quiet sky;</div> - <div class='line'>Buried voices, intimate, strange,</div> - <div class='line'>Cry to body and soul of change;</div> - <div class='line'>Beauty, eternal fugitive,</div> - <div class='line'>Seeks the home that we cannot give.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='chapter'> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_320'>320</span> - <h2 class='c005'>Wallace Stevens</h2> -</div> - -<h3 class='c013'>PETER QUINCE AT THE CLAVIER</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in20'>I</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Just as my fingers on these keys</div> - <div class='line'>Make music, so the self-same sounds</div> - <div class='line'>On my spirit make a music too.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Music is feeling then, not sound;</div> - <div class='line'>And thus it is that what I feel,</div> - <div class='line'>Here in this room, desiring you,</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Thinking of your blue-shadowed silk,</div> - <div class='line'>Is music. It is like the strain</div> - <div class='line'>Waked in the elders by Susanna:</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Of a green evening, clear and warm,</div> - <div class='line'>She bathed in her still garden, while</div> - <div class='line'>The red-eyed elders, watching, felt</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>The basses of their being throb</div> - <div class='line'>In witching chords, and their thin blood</div> - <div class='line'>Pulse pizzicati of Hosanna.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in20'>II</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>In the green water, clear and warm,</div> - <div class='line'>Susanna lay.</div> - <div class='line'>She searched</div> - <div class='line'>The touch of springs,</div> - <div class='line'>And found</div> - <div class='line'>Concealed imaginings.</div> - <div class='line'>She sighed</div> - <div class='line'>For so much melody.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_321'>321</span>Upon the bank she stood</div> - <div class='line'>In the cool</div> - <div class='line'>Of spent emotions.</div> - <div class='line'>She felt, among the leaves,</div> - <div class='line'>The dew</div> - <div class='line'>Of old devotions.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>She walked upon the grass,</div> - <div class='line'>Still quavering.</div> - <div class='line'>The winds were like her maids,</div> - <div class='line'>On timid feet,</div> - <div class='line'>Fetching her woven scarves,</div> - <div class='line'>Yet wavering.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>A breath upon her hand</div> - <div class='line'>Muted the night.</div> - <div class='line'>She turned—</div> - <div class='line'>A cymbal crashed,</div> - <div class='line'>And roaring horns.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in20'>III</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Soon, with a noise like tambourines,</div> - <div class='line'>Came her attendant Byzantines.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>They wondered why Susanna cried</div> - <div class='line'>Against the elders by her side:</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>And as they whispered, the refrain</div> - <div class='line'>Was like a willow swept by rain.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Anon, their lamps’ uplifted flame</div> - <div class='line'>Revealed Susanna and her shame.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>And then the simpering Byzantines,</div> - <div class='line'>Fled, with a noise like tambourines.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in20'><span class='pageno' id='Page_322'>322</span>IV</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Beauty is momentary in the mind—</div> - <div class='line'>The fitful tracing of a portal;</div> - <div class='line'>But in the flesh it is immortal.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>The body dies; the body’s beauty lives.</div> - <div class='line'>So evenings die, in their green going,</div> - <div class='line'>A wave, interminably flowing.</div> - <div class='line'>So gardens die, their meek breath scenting</div> - <div class='line'>The cowl of Winter, done repenting.</div> - <div class='line'>So maidens die, to the auroral</div> - <div class='line'>Celebration of a maiden’s choral.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Susanna’s music touched the bawdy strings</div> - <div class='line'>Of those white elders; but, escaping,</div> - <div class='line'>Left only Death’s ironic scraping.</div> - <div class='line'>Now, in its immortality, it plays</div> - <div class='line'>On the clear viol of her memory,</div> - <div class='line'>And makes a constant sacrament of praise.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>IN BATTLE</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Death’s nobility again</div> - <div class='line'>Beautified the simplest men.</div> - <div class='line'>Fallen Winkle felt the pride</div> - <div class='line'>Of Agamemnon</div> - <div class='line'>When he died.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>What could London’s</div> - <div class='line'>Work and waste</div> - <div class='line'>Give him—</div> - <div class='line'>To that salty, sacrificial taste?</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>What could London’s</div> - <div class='line'>Sorrow bring—</div> - <div class='line'>To that short, triumphant sting?</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_323'>323</span> - <h3 class='c014'>SUNDAY MORNING</h3> -</div> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in24'>I</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Complacencies of the peignoir, and late</div> - <div class='line'>Coffee and oranges in a sunny chair,</div> - <div class='line'>And the green freedom of a cockatoo</div> - <div class='line'>Upon a rug, mingle to dissipate</div> - <div class='line'>The holy hush of ancient sacrifice.</div> - <div class='line'>She dreams a little, and she feels the dark</div> - <div class='line'>Encroachment of that old catastrophe,</div> - <div class='line'>As a calm darkens among water-lights.</div> - <div class='line'>The pungent oranges and bright, green wings</div> - <div class='line'>Seem things in some procession of the dead,</div> - <div class='line'>Winding across wide water, without sound.</div> - <div class='line'>The day is like wide water, without sound,</div> - <div class='line'>Stilled for the passing of her dreaming feet</div> - <div class='line'>Over the seas, to silent Palestine,</div> - <div class='line'>Dominion of the blood and sepulchre.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in24'>II</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>She hears, upon that water without sound,</div> - <div class='line'>A voice that cries: “The tomb in Palestine</div> - <div class='line'>Is not the porch of spirits lingering;</div> - <div class='line'>It is the grave of Jesus, where he lay.”</div> - <div class='line'>We live in an old chaos of the sun,</div> - <div class='line'>Or old dependency of day and night,</div> - <div class='line'>Or island solitude, unsponsored, free,</div> - <div class='line'>Of that wide water, inescapable.</div> - <div class='line'>Deer walk upon our mountains, and the quail</div> - <div class='line'>Whistle about us their spontaneous cries;</div> - <div class='line'>Sweet berries ripen in the wilderness;</div> - <div class='line'>And, in the isolation of the sky,</div> - <div class='line'>At evening, casual flocks of pigeons make</div> - <div class='line'>Ambiguous undulations as they sink,</div> - <div class='line'>Downward to darkness, on extended wings.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in24'><span class='pageno' id='Page_324'>324</span>III</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>She says: “I am content when wakened birds,</div> - <div class='line'>Before they fly, test the reality</div> - <div class='line'>Of misty fields, by their sweet questionings;</div> - <div class='line'>But when the birds are gone, and their warm fields</div> - <div class='line'>Return no more, where, then, is paradise?”</div> - <div class='line'>There is not any haunt of prophecy,</div> - <div class='line'>Nor any old chimera of the grave,</div> - <div class='line'>Neither the golden underground, nor isle</div> - <div class='line'>Melodious, where spirits gat them home,</div> - <div class='line'>Nor visionary South, nor cloudy palm</div> - <div class='line'>Remote on heaven’s hill, that has endured</div> - <div class='line'>As April’s green endures; or will endure</div> - <div class='line'>Like her remembrance of awakened birds,</div> - <div class='line'>Or her desire for June and evening, tipped</div> - <div class='line'>By the consummation of the swallow’s wings.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in24'>IV</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>She says, “But in contentment I still feel</div> - <div class='line'>The need of some imperishable bliss.”</div> - <div class='line'>Death is the mother of beauty; hence from her,</div> - <div class='line'>Alone, shall come fulfilment to our dreams</div> - <div class='line'>And our desires. Although she strews the leaves</div> - <div class='line'>Of sure obliteration on our paths—</div> - <div class='line'>The path sick sorrow took, the many paths</div> - <div class='line'>Where triumph rang its brassy phrase, or love</div> - <div class='line'>Whispered a little out of tenderness—</div> - <div class='line'>She makes the willow shiver in the sun</div> - <div class='line'>For maidens who were wont to sit and gaze</div> - <div class='line'>Upon the grass, relinquished to their feet.</div> - <div class='line'>She causes boys to bring sweet-smelling pears</div> - <div class='line'>And plums in ponderous piles. The maidens taste</div> - <div class='line'>And stray impassioned in the littering leaves.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in24'><span class='pageno' id='Page_325'>325</span>V</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Supple and turbulent, a ring of men</div> - <div class='line'>Shall chant in orgy on a summer morn</div> - <div class='line'>Their boisterous devotion to the sun—</div> - <div class='line'>Not as a god, but as a god might be,</div> - <div class='line'>Naked among them, like a savage source.</div> - <div class='line'>Their chant shall be a chant of paradise,</div> - <div class='line'>Out of their blood, returning to the sky;</div> - <div class='line'>And in their chant shall enter, voice by voice,</div> - <div class='line'>The windy lake wherein their lord delights,</div> - <div class='line'>The trees, like seraphim, and echoing hills,</div> - <div class='line'>That choir among themselves long afterward.</div> - <div class='line'>They shall know well the heavenly fellowship</div> - <div class='line'>Of men that perish and of summer morn—</div> - <div class='line'>And whence they came and whither they shall go,</div> - <div class='line'>The dew upon their feet shall manifest.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='chapter'> - <h2 class='c005'>Ajan Syrian</h2> -</div> - -<h3 class='c013'>THE SYRIAN LOVER IN EXILE REMEMBERS THEE, LIGHT OF MY LAND</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Rose and amber was the sunset on the river,</div> - <div class='line'>Red-rose the hills about Bingariz.</div> - <div class='line'>High upon their brows, the black tree-branches</div> - <div class='line'>Spread wide across the turquoise sky.</div> - <div class='line'>I saw the parrots fly—</div> - <div class='line'>A cloud of rising green from the long green grasses,</div> - <div class='line'>A mist of gold and green winging fast</div> - <div class='line'>Into the gray shadow-silence of the tamarisks.</div> - <div class='line'>Pearl-white and wild was the flood below the ford.</div> - <div class='line'>I ran down the long hot road to thy door;</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_326'>326</span>Thy door shone—a white flower in the dusk lingering to close.</div> - <div class='line'>The stars rose and stood above thy casement.</div> - <div class='line'>I cast my cloak and climbed to thee,</div> - <div class='line'>To thee, Makhir Subatu!</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'> · · · · ·</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Naked she stood and glistening like the stars over her—</div> - <div class='line'>Her hair trailed about her like clouds about the moon—</div> - <div class='line'>Naked as the soul seeking love,</div> - <div class='line'>As the soul that waits for death.</div> - <div class='line'>White with benediction, pendulous, unfolding from the dark</div> - <div class='line'>As the crystal sky of morning, she waited,</div> - <div class='line'>And leaned her light above the earth of my desire.</div> - <div class='line'>Like a world that spins from the hand of Infinity,</div> - <div class='line'>Up from the night I leaped—</div> - <div class='line'>To thee, Makhir Subatu!</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'> · · · · ·</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Pearl-bright and wild, a flood without a ford,</div> - <div class='line'>The River of Love flowed on.</div> - <div class='line'>Her eyes were gleaming sails in a storm,</div> - <div class='line'>Dipping, swooning, beckoning.</div> - <div class='line'>The dawn came and trampled over her;</div> - <div class='line'>Gray-arched and wide, the sanctuary of light descended.</div> - <div class='line'>It was the altar where I lay;</div> - <div class='line'>And I lifted my face at last, praying.</div> - <div class='line'>I saw the first glow fall about her,</div> - <div class='line'>Like marble pillars coming forth from the shadow.</div> - <div class='line'>I raised my hands, thanking the gods</div> - <div class='line'>That in love I had grown so tall</div> - <div class='line'>I could touch the two lamps in heaven,</div> - <div class='line'>The sun and moon hanging in the low heaven beneath her face.</div> - <div class='line'>How great through love had I grown</div> - <div class='line'>To breathe my flame into the two lamps of heaven!</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_327'>327</span>O eyes of the eagle and the dove,</div> - <div class='line'>Eyes red-starred and white-starred,</div> - <div class='line'>Eyes that have too much seen, too much confessed,</div> - <div class='line'>Close, close, beneath my kisses!</div> - <div class='line'>Tell me no more, demand me no more—it is day.</div> - <div class='line'>I see the gold-green rain of parrot-wings</div> - <div class='line'>Sparkling athwart the gray and rose-gold morning.</div> - <div class='line'>I go from thy closed door down the long lone road</div> - <div class='line'>To the ricefields beyond the river,</div> - <div class='line'>Beyond the river that has a ford.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'> · · · · ·</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>I came to thee with hope, with desire. I have them no longer.</div> - <div class='line'>Sleep, sleep; I am locked in thee.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'> · · · · ·</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Thus the exile lover remembers thee, Makhir Subatu!</em></div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='chapter'> - <h2 class='c005'>Rabindranath Tagore</h2> -</div> - -<h3 class='c013'>FROM “GITANJALI”</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in28'>I</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Thou hast made me known to friends whom I knew not. Thou hast given me seats in homes not my own. Thou hast brought the distant near and made a brother of the stranger. I am uneasy at heart when I have to leave my accustomed shelter; I forgot that there abides the old in the new, and that there also thou abidest.</div> - <div class='line'>Through birth and death, in this world or in others, wherever thou leadest me it is thou, the same, the one companion of my endless life who ever linkest my heart with bonds of joy to the unfamiliar. When one knows thee, then alien there is none, then no door is shut. Oh, grant me my prayer that I may never lose the bliss of the touch of the One in the play of the many.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in28'><span class='pageno' id='Page_328'>328</span>II</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>No more noisy, loud words from me, such is my master’s will. Henceforth I deal in whispers. The speech of my heart will be carried on in murmurings of a song.</div> - <div class='line'>Men hasten to the King’s market. All the buyers and sellers are there. But I have my untimely leave in the middle of the day, in the thick of work.</div> - <div class='line'>Let then the flowers come out in my garden, though it is not their time, and let the midday bees strike up their lazy hum.</div> - <div class='line'>Full many an hour have I spent in the strife of the good and the evil, but now it is the pleasure of my playmate of the empty days to draw my heart on to him, and I know not why is this sudden call to what useless inconsequence!</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in28'>III</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>On the day when the lotus bloomed, alas, my mind was straying, and I knew it not. My basket was empty and the flower remained unheeded.</div> - <div class='line'>Only now and again a sadness fell upon me, and I started up from my dream and felt a sweet trace of a strange smell in the south wind.</div> - <div class='line'>That vague fragrance made my heart ache with longing, and it seemed to me that it was the eager breath of the summer seeking for its completion.</div> - <div class='line'>I knew not then that it was so near, that it was mine, and this perfect sweetness had blossomed in the depth of my own heart.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in28'>IV</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>By all means they try to hold me secure who love me in this world. But it is otherwise with thy love, which is greater than theirs, and thou keepest me free. Lest I forget them they never venture to leave me alone. But day passes by after day and thou art not seen.</div> - <div class='line'>If I call not thee in my prayers, if I keep not thee in my heart—thy love for me still waits for my love.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in28'><span class='pageno' id='Page_329'>329</span>V</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>I was not aware of the moment when I first crossed the threshold of this life. What was the power that made me open out into this vast mystery like a bud in the forest at midnight? When in the morning I looked upon the light I felt in a moment that I was no stranger in this world, that the inscrutable without name and form had taken me in its arms in the form of my own mother. Even so, in death the same unknown will appear as ever known to me. And because I love this life, I know I shall love death as well. The child cries out when from the right breast the mother takes it away to find in the very next moment its consolation in the left one.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in28'>VI</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Thou art the sky and thou art the nest as well. Oh, thou beautiful, there in the nest it is thy love that encloses the soul with colors and sounds and odors. There comes the morning with the golden basket in her right hand bearing the wreath of beauty, silently to crown the earth. And there comes the evening over the lonely meadows deserted by herds, through trackless paths, carrying cool draughts of peace in her golden pitcher from the western ocean of rest.</div> - <div class='line'>But there, where spreads the infinite sky for the soul to take her flight in, reigns the stainless white radiance. There is no day nor night, nor form nor color, and never never a word.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>FROM “THE GARDENER”</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in32'>I</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Over the green and yellow rice fields sweep the shadows of the autumn clouds, followed by the swift-chasing sun.</div> - <div class='line'>The bees forget to sip their honey; drunken with the light they foolishly hum and hover; and the ducks in the sandy riverbank clamor in joy for mere nothing.</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_330'>330</span>None shall go back home, brothers, this morning, none shall go to work.</div> - <div class='line'>We will take the blue sky by storm and plunder the space as we run.</div> - <div class='line'>Laughters fly floating in the air like foams in the flood.</div> - <div class='line'>Brothers, we shall squander our morning in futile songs.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in32'>II</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Keep me fully glad with nothing. Only take my hand in your hand.</div> - <div class='line'>In the gloom of the deepening night take up my heart and play with it as you list. Bind me close to you with nothing.</div> - <div class='line'>I will spread myself out at your feet and lie still. Under this clouded sky I will meet silence with silence. I will become one with the night clasping the earth in my breast.</div> - <div class='line'>Make my life glad with nothing.</div> - <div class='line'>The rains sweep the sky from end to end. Jasmines in the wet untamable wind revel in their own perfume. The cloud-hidden stars thrill in secret. Let me fill to the full of my heart with nothing but my own depth of joy.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in32'>III</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>My soul is alight with your infinitude of stars. Your world has broken upon me like a flood. The flowers of your garden blossom in my body. The joy of life that is everywhere burns like an incense in my heart. And the breath of all things plays on my life as on a pipe of reeds.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in32'>IV</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Leave off your works, bride. Listen, the guest has come. Do you hear, he is gently shaking the fastening chain of the door?</div> - <div class='line'>Let not your anklets be loud, and your steps be too hurried to meet him.</div> - <div class='line'>Leave off your works, bride; the guest has come, in the evening.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_331'>331</span>No, it is not the wind, bride. Do not be frightened.</div> - <div class='line'>It is the full-moon night of April, shadows are pale in the courtyard, the sky overhead is bright.</div> - <div class='line'>Draw your veil over your face if you must, take the lamp from your room if you fear.</div> - <div class='line'>No, it is not the wind, bride; do not be frightened.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Have no word with him if you are shy, stand aside by the door when you meet him.</div> - <div class='line'>If he asks you questions, lower your eyes in silence, if you wish.</div> - <div class='line'>Do not let your bracelets jingle, when, lamp in hand, you lead him in.</div> - <div class='line'>Have no word with him if you are shy.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Have you not finished your works yet, bride? Listen, the guest has come.</div> - <div class='line'>Have you not lit the lamp in the cowshed?</div> - <div class='line'>Have you not got ready the offering basket for the evening service?</div> - <div class='line'>Have you not put the auspicious red mark at the parting of your hair, and done your toilet for the night?</div> - <div class='line'>O bride, do you hear, the guest has come?</div> - <div class='line'>Have you not finished your works yet?</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in32'>V</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Come as you are, tarry not over your toilet.</div> - <div class='line'>If your braiding has come loose, if the parting of your hair be not straight, if the ribbons of your bodice be not fastened, do not mind.</div> - <div class='line'>Come as you are, tarry not over your toilet.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Come with quick steps over the grass.</div> - <div class='line'>If your feet are pale with the dew, if your anklets slacken, if pearls drop out of your chain, do not mind.</div> - <div class='line'>Come with quick steps over the grass.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_332'>332</span>Do you see the clouds wrapping the sky?</div> - <div class='line'>Flocks of cranes fly up from the further riverbank and fitful gusts of wind rush over the heath.</div> - <div class='line'>The anxious cattle run to their stalls in the village.</div> - <div class='line'>Do you see the clouds wrapping the sky?</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>In vain you light your toilet lamp; it flickers and goes out in the wind.</div> - <div class='line'>Surely, who would know that with lamp-black your eyelids are not touched? For your eyes are darker than rain clouds.</div> - <div class='line'>In vain you light your toilet lamp; it goes out.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Come as you are, tarry not over your toilet.</div> - <div class='line'>If the wreath is not woven, who cares? If the wrist-chain has not been tied, leave it by.</div> - <div class='line'>The sky is overcast with clouds; it is late.</div> - <div class='line'>Come as you are, tarry not over your toilet.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in32'>VI</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Lest I should know you too easily, you play with me.</div> - <div class='line'>You blind me with flashes of laughter to hide your tears.</div> - <div class='line'>I know, I know your art;</div> - <div class='line'>You never say the word you would.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Lest I should prize you not, you elude me in a thousand ways.</div> - <div class='line'>Lest I should mix you with the crowd, you stand aside.</div> - <div class='line'>I know, I know your art;</div> - <div class='line'>You never walk the path you would.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Your claim is more than others; that is why you are silent.</div> - <div class='line'>With a playful carelessness you avoid my gifts.</div> - <div class='line'>I know, I know your art;</div> - <div class='line'>You never accept what you would.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in32'><span class='pageno' id='Page_333'>333</span>VII</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Amidst the rush and roar of life, O beauty, carved in stone, you stand mute and still, alone and aloof.</div> - <div class='line'>Great Time sits enamoured at your feet and repeats to you:</div> - <div class='line'>“Speak, speak to me, my love; speak, my mute bride!”</div> - <div class='line'>But your speech is shut up in stone, O you immovably fair!</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in32'>VIII</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Tell me if this is all true, my lover? tell me if it is true.</div> - <div class='line'>When the eyes of me flash their lightning on you, dark clouds in your breast make stormy answer;</div> - <div class='line'>Is it then true that the dew drops fall from the night when I am seen, and the morning light is glad when it wraps my body?</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Is it true, is it true, that your love travelled alone through ages and worlds in search of me? that when you found me at last, your age-long desire found utter peace in my gentle speech, and my eyes and lips and flowing hair?</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Is it then true that the mystery of the Infinite is written on this little brow of mine?</div> - <div class='line'>Tell me, my lover, if all this is true!</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in32'>IX</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>With a glance of your eyes you could plunder all the wealth of songs struck from poets’ harps, fair woman!</div> - <div class='line'>But for their praises you have no ear; therefore do I come to praise you.</div> - <div class='line'>You could humble at your feet the proudest heads of all the world;</div> - <div class='line'>But it is your loved ones, unknown to fame, whom you choose to worship; therefore I worship you.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_334'>334</span>Your perfect arms would add glory to kingly splendor with their touch;</div> - <div class='line'>But you use them to sweep away the dust, and to make clean your humble home; therefore I am filled with awe.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='chapter'> - <h2 class='c005'>Sara Teasdale</h2> -</div> - -<h3 class='c013'>LEAVES</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>One by one, like leaves from a tree,</div> - <div class='line'>All my faiths have forsaken me;</div> - <div class='line'>But the stars above my head</div> - <div class='line'>Burn in white and delicate red,</div> - <div class='line'>And beneath my feet the earth</div> - <div class='line'>Brings the sturdy grass to birth.</div> - <div class='line'>I who was content to be</div> - <div class='line'>But a silken-singing tree,</div> - <div class='line'>But a rustle of delight</div> - <div class='line'>In the wistful heart of night,</div> - <div class='line'>I have lost the leaves that knew</div> - <div class='line'>Touch of rain and weight of dew.</div> - <div class='line'>Blinded by a leafy crown</div> - <div class='line'>I looked neither up nor down—</div> - <div class='line'>But the little leaves that die</div> - <div class='line'>Have left me room to see the sky;</div> - <div class='line'>Now for the first time I know</div> - <div class='line'>Stars above and earth below.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>MORNING</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>I went out on an April morning</div> - <div class='line in2'>All alone, for my heart was high.</div> - <div class='line'>I was a child of the shining meadow,</div> - <div class='line in2'>I was a sister of the sky.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_335'>335</span>There in the windy flood of morning</div> - <div class='line in2'>Longing lifted its weight from me,</div> - <div class='line'>Lost as a sob in the midst of cheering,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Swept as a sea-bird out to sea.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>THE FLIGHT</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Look back with longing eyes and know that I will follow,</div> - <div class='line'>Lift me up in your love as a light wing lifts a swallow,</div> - <div class='line'>Let our flight be far in sun or windy rain—</div> - <div class='line'><em>But what if I heard my first love calling me again?</em></div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Hold me on your heart as the brave sea holds the foam,</div> - <div class='line'>Take me far away to the hills that hide your home;</div> - <div class='line'>Peace shall thatch the roof and love shall latch the door—</div> - <div class='line'><em>But what if I heard my first love calling me once more?</em></div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>OVER THE ROOFS</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>I said, “I have shut my heart,</div> - <div class='line in2'>As one shuts an open door,</div> - <div class='line'>That Love may starve therein</div> - <div class='line in2'>And trouble me no more.”</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>But over the roofs there came</div> - <div class='line in2'>The wet new wind of May,</div> - <div class='line'>And a tune blew up from the curb</div> - <div class='line in2'>Where the street-pianos play.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>My room was white with the sun</div> - <div class='line in2'>And Love cried out in me,</div> - <div class='line'>“I am strong, I will break your heart</div> - <div class='line in2'>Unless you set me free.”</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_336'>336</span> - <h3 class='c014'>DEBT</h3> -</div> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>What do I owe to you</div> - <div class='line in2'>Who loved me deep and long?</div> - <div class='line'>You never gave my spirits wings</div> - <div class='line in2'>Nor gave my heart a song.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>But oh, to him I loved,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Who loved me not at all,</div> - <div class='line'>I owe the little gate</div> - <div class='line in2'>That led through heaven’s wall.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>SONGS IN A HOSPITAL</h3> - -<h4 class='c013'>THE BROKEN FIELD</h4> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>My soul is a dark ploughed field</div> - <div class='line in2'>In the cold rain;</div> - <div class='line'>My soul is a broken field</div> - <div class='line in2'>Ploughed by pain.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Where windy grass and flowers</div> - <div class='line in2'>Were growing,</div> - <div class='line'>The field lies broken now</div> - <div class='line in2'>For another sowing.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Great Sower, when you tread</div> - <div class='line in2'>My field again,</div> - <div class='line'>Scatter the furrows there</div> - <div class='line in2'>With better grain.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h4 class='c013'>OPEN WINDOWS</h4> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Out of the window a sea of green trees</div> - <div class='line in2'>Lift their soft boughs like arms of a dancer;</div> - <div class='line'>They beckon and call me, “Come out in the sun!”</div> - <div class='line in2'>But I cannot answer.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_337'>337</span>I am alone with Weakness and Pain,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Sick abed and June is going,</div> - <div class='line'>I cannot keep her, she hurries by</div> - <div class='line in2'>With the silver-green of her garments blowing.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Men and women pass in the street</div> - <div class='line in2'>Glad of the shining sapphire weather;</div> - <div class='line'>But we know more of it than they,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Pain and I together.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>They are the runners in the sun,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Breathless and blinded by the race,</div> - <div class='line'>But we are watchers in the shade</div> - <div class='line in2'>Who speak with Wonder face to face.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>AFTER DEATH</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Now while my lips are living</div> - <div class='line in2'>Their words must stay unsaid,</div> - <div class='line'>And will my soul remember</div> - <div class='line in2'>To speak when I am dead?</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Yet if my soul remembered</div> - <div class='line in2'>You would not heed it, dear,</div> - <div class='line'>For now you must not listen,</div> - <div class='line in2'>And then you could not hear.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>IN MEMORIAM F. O. S.</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>You go a long and lovely journey,</div> - <div class='line in2'>For all the stars, like burning dew,</div> - <div class='line'>Are luminous and luring footprints</div> - <div class='line in2'>Of souls adventurous as you.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_338'>338</span>Oh, if you lived on earth elated,</div> - <div class='line in2'>How is it now that you can run</div> - <div class='line'>Free of the weight of flesh and faring</div> - <div class='line in2'>Far past the birthplace of the sun?</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>SWALLOW FLIGHT</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>I love my hour of wind and light,</div> - <div class='line in2'>I love men’s faces and their eyes,</div> - <div class='line'>I love my spirit’s veering flight</div> - <div class='line in2'>Like swallows under evening skies.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>THE ANSWER</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>When I go back to earth</div> - <div class='line'>And all my joyous body</div> - <div class='line'>Puts off the red and white</div> - <div class='line'>That once had been so proud,</div> - <div class='line'>If men should pass above</div> - <div class='line'>With false and feeble pity,</div> - <div class='line'>My dust will find a voice</div> - <div class='line'>To answer them aloud:</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>“Be still, I am content,</div> - <div class='line'>Take back your poor compassion!—</div> - <div class='line'>Joy was a flame in me</div> - <div class='line'>Too steady to destroy.</div> - <div class='line'>Lithe as a bending reed</div> - <div class='line'>Loving the storm that sways her—</div> - <div class='line'>I found more joy in sorrow</div> - <div class='line'>Than you could find in joy.”</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='chapter'> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_339'>339</span> - <h2 class='c005'>Eunice Tietjens</h2> -</div> - -<h3 class='c013'>THE BACCHANTE TO HER BABE</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><em>Scherzo</em></div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in4'>Come, sprite, and dance! The sun is up,</div> - <div class='line in4'>The wind runs laughing down the sky</div> - <div class='line in4'>That brims with morning like a cup.</div> - <div class='line in4'>Sprite, we must race him,</div> - <div class='line in4'>We must chase him—</div> - <div class='line in4'>You and I!</div> - <div class='line in4'>And skim across the fuzzy heather—</div> - <div class='line in4'>You and joy and I together</div> - <div class='line in4'>Whirling by!</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in4'>You merry little roll of fat!—</div> - <div class='line in4'>Made warm to kiss, and smooth to pat,</div> - <div class='line in4'>And round to toy with, like a cub;</div> - <div class='line in4'>To put one’s nozzle in and rub</div> - <div class='line in4'>And breathe you in like breath of kine,</div> - <div class='line in4'>Like juice of vine,</div> - <div class='line in4'>That sets my morning heart a-tingling,</div> - <div class='line in4'>Dancing, jingling,</div> - <div class='line in4'>All the glad abandon mingling</div> - <div class='line in4'>Of wind and wine!</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in4'>Sprite, you are love, and you are joy,</div> - <div class='line in4'>A happiness, a dream, a toy,</div> - <div class='line in4'>A god to laugh with,</div> - <div class='line in4'>Love to chaff with,</div> - <div class='line in4'>The sun come down in tangled gold,</div> - <div class='line in4'>The moon to kiss, and spring to hold.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in4'>There was a time once, long ago,</div> - <div class='line in4'>Long—oh, long since ... I scarcely know.</div> - <div class='line in4'><span class='pageno' id='Page_340'>340</span>Almost I had forgot ...</div> - <div class='line in4'>There was a time when you were not,</div> - <div class='line in4'>You merry sprite, save as a strain,</div> - <div class='line in4'>The strange dull pain</div> - <div class='line in4'>Of green buds swelling</div> - <div class='line in4'>In warm, straight dwelling</div> - <div class='line in4'>That must burst to the April rain.</div> - <div class='line in4'>A little heavy I was then,</div> - <div class='line in4'>And dull—and glad to rest. And when</div> - <div class='line in4'>The travail came</div> - <div class='line in4'>In searing flame ...</div> - <div class='line in4'>But, sprite, that was so long ago!—</div> - <div class='line in4'>A century!—I scarcely know.</div> - <div class='line in4'>Almost I had forgot</div> - <div class='line in4'>When you were not.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in4'>So, little sprite, come dance with me!</div> - <div class='line in4'>The sun is up, the wind is free!</div> - <div class='line in4'>Come now and trip it,</div> - <div class='line in4'>Romp and skip it,</div> - <div class='line in4'>Earth is young and so are we.</div> - <div class='line in4'>Sprite, you and I will dance together</div> - <div class='line in4'>On the heather,</div> - <div class='line in4'>Glad with all the procreant earth,</div> - <div class='line in4'>With all the fruitage of the trees,</div> - <div class='line in4'>And golden pollen on the breeze,</div> - <div class='line in4'>With plants that bring the grain to birth,</div> - <div class='line in4'>With beast and bird,</div> - <div class='line in4'>Feathered and furred,</div> - <div class='line in4'>With youth and hope and life and love,</div> - <div class='line in4'>And joy thereof—</div> - <div class='line in4'>While we are part of all, we two—</div> - <div class='line in4'>For my glad burgeoning in you!</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in4'>So, merry little roll of fat,</div> - <div class='line in4'>Made warm to kiss and smooth to pat</div> - <div class='line in4'><span class='pageno' id='Page_341'>341</span>And round to toy with, like a cub,</div> - <div class='line in4'>To put one’s nozzle in and rub,</div> - <div class='line in4'>My god to laugh with,</div> - <div class='line in4'>Love to chaff with,</div> - <div class='line in4'>Come and dance beneath the sky,</div> - <div class='line in4'>You and I!</div> - <div class='line in4'>Look out with those round wondering eyes,</div> - <div class='line in4'>And squirm, and gurgle—and grow wise!</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>THE STEAM SHOVEL</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Beneath my window in a city street</div> - <div class='line'>A monster lairs, a creature huge and grim</div> - <div class='line'>And only half believed: the strength of him—</div> - <div class='line'>Steel-strung and fit to meet</div> - <div class='line'>The strength of earth—</div> - <div class='line'>Is mighty as men’s dreams that conquer force.</div> - <div class='line'>Steam belches from him. He is the new birth</div> - <div class='line'>Of old Behemoth, late-sprung from the source</div> - <div class='line'>Whence Grendel sprang, and all the monster clan</div> - <div class='line'>Dead for an age, now born again of man.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>The iron head,</div> - <div class='line'>Set on a monstrous, jointed neck,</div> - <div class='line'>Glides here and there, lifts, settles on the red</div> - <div class='line'>Moist floor, with nose dropped in the dirt, at beck</div> - <div class='line'>Of some incredible control.</div> - <div class='line'>He snorts, and pauses couchant for a space,</div> - <div class='line'>Then slowly lifts, and tears the gaping hole</div> - <div class='line'>Yet deeper in earth’s flank. A sudden race</div> - <div class='line'>Of loosened earth and pebbles trickles there</div> - <div class='line'>Like blood-drops in a wound.</div> - <div class='line'>But he, the monster, swings his load around—</div> - <div class='line'>Weightless it seems as air.</div> - <div class='line'>His mammoth jaw</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_342'>342</span>Drops widely open with a rasping sound,</div> - <div class='line'>And all the red earth vomits from his maw.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>O thwarted monster, born at man’s decree,</div> - <div class='line'>A lap-dog dragon, eating from his hand</div> - <div class='line'>And doomed to fetch and carry at command,</div> - <div class='line'>Have you no longing ever to be free?</div> - <div class='line'>In warm, electric days to run a-muck,</div> - <div class='line'>Ranging like some mad dinosaur,</div> - <div class='line'>Your fiery heart at war</div> - <div class='line'>With this strange world, the city’s restless ruck,</div> - <div class='line'>Where all drab things that toil, save you alone,</div> - <div class='line'>Have life;</div> - <div class='line'>And you the semblance only, and the strife?</div> - <div class='line'>Do you not yearn to rip the roots of stone</div> - <div class='line'>Of these great piles men build,</div> - <div class='line'>And hurl them down with shriek of shattered steel,</div> - <div class='line'>Scorning your own sure doom, so you may feel,</div> - <div class='line'>You too, the lust with which your fathers killed?</div> - <div class='line'>Or is your soul in very deed so tame,</div> - <div class='line'>The blood of Grendel watered to a gruel,</div> - <div class='line'>That you are well content</div> - <div class='line'>With heart of flame</div> - <div class='line'>Thus placidly to chew your cud of fuel</div> - <div class='line'>And toil in peace for man’s aggrandizement?</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Poor helpless creature of a half-grown god,</div> - <div class='line'>Blind of yourself and impotent!</div> - <div class='line'>At night,</div> - <div class='line'>When your forerunners, sprung from quicker sod,</div> - <div class='line'>Would range through primal woods, hot on the scent,</div> - <div class='line'>Or wake the stars with amorous delight,</div> - <div class='line'>You stand, a soiled, unwieldy mass of steel,</div> - <div class='line'>Black in the arc-light, modern as your name,</div> - <div class='line'>Dead and unsouled and trite;</div> - <div class='line'>Till I must feel</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_343'>343</span>A quick creator’s pity for your shame:</div> - <div class='line'>That man, who made you and who gave so much,</div> - <div class='line'>Yet cannot give the last transforming touch;</div> - <div class='line'>That with the work he cannot give the wage—</div> - <div class='line'>For day, no joy of night,</div> - <div class='line'>For toil, no ecstasy of primal rage.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>THE GREAT MAN</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>I cannot always feel his greatness.</div> - <div class='line'>Sometimes he walks beside me, step by step,</div> - <div class='line'>And paces slowly in the ways—</div> - <div class='line'>The simple, wingless ways</div> - <div class='line'>That my thoughts tread. He gossips with me then,</div> - <div class='line'>And finds it good;</div> - <div class='line'>Not as an eagle might, his great wings folded, be content</div> - <div class='line'>To walk a little, knowing it his choice,</div> - <div class='line'>But as a simple man,</div> - <div class='line'>My friend.</div> - <div class='line'>And I forget.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Then suddenly a call floats down</div> - <div class='line'>From the clear airy spaces,</div> - <div class='line'>The great keen, lonely heights of being.</div> - <div class='line'>And he who was my comrade hears the call</div> - <div class='line'>And rises from my side, and soars,</div> - <div class='line'>Deep-chanting, to the heights.</div> - <div class='line'>Then I remember.</div> - <div class='line'>And my upward gaze goes with him, and I see</div> - <div class='line'>Far off against the sky</div> - <div class='line'>The glint of golden sunlight on his wings.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='chapter'> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_344'>344</span> - <h2 class='c005'>Ridgely Torrence</h2> -</div> - -<h3 class='c013'>THE BIRD AND THE TREE</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Blackbird, blackbird in the cage,</div> - <div class='line'>There’s something wrong tonight.</div> - <div class='line'>Far off the sheriff’s footfall dies,</div> - <div class='line'>The minutes crawl like last year’s flies</div> - <div class='line'>Between the bars, and like an age</div> - <div class='line'>The hours are long tonight.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>The sky is like a heavy lid</div> - <div class='line'>Out here beyond the door tonight.</div> - <div class='line'>What’s that? A mutter down the street.</div> - <div class='line'>What’s that? The sound of yells and feet.</div> - <div class='line'>For what you didn’t do or did</div> - <div class='line'>You’ll pay the score tonight.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>No use to reek with reddened sweat,</div> - <div class='line'>No use to whimper and to sweat.</div> - <div class='line'>They’ve got the rope; they’ve got the guns,</div> - <div class='line'>They’ve got the courage and the guns;</div> - <div class='line'>And that’s the reason why tonight</div> - <div class='line'>No use to ask them any more.</div> - <div class='line'>They’ll fire the answer through the door—</div> - <div class='line'>You’re out to die tonight.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>There where the lonely cross-road lies,</div> - <div class='line'>There is no place to make replies;</div> - <div class='line'>But silence, inch by inch, is there,</div> - <div class='line'>And the right limb for a lynch is there;</div> - <div class='line'>And a lean daw waits for both your eyes,</div> - <div class='line'>Blackbird.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Perhaps you’ll meet again some place.</div> - <div class='line'>Look for the mask upon the face:</div> - <div class='line'>That’s the way you’ll know them there—</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_345'>345</span>A white mask to hide the face.</div> - <div class='line'>And you can halt and show them there</div> - <div class='line'>The things that they are deaf to now,</div> - <div class='line'>And they can tell you what they meant—</div> - <div class='line'>To wash the blood with blood. But how</div> - <div class='line'>If you are innocent?</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Blackbird singer, blackbird mute,</div> - <div class='line'>They choked the seed you might have found.</div> - <div class='line'>Out of a thorny field you go—</div> - <div class='line'>For you it may be better so—</div> - <div class='line'>And leave the sowers of the ground</div> - <div class='line'>To eat the harvest of the fruit,</div> - <div class='line'>Blackbird.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>THE SON</h3> - -<div class='nf-center-c0'> -<div class='nf-center c002'> - <div><em>Southern Ohio Market Town</em></div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>I heard an old farm-wife,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Selling some barley,</div> - <div class='line'>Mingle her life with life</div> - <div class='line in2'>And the name “Charley.”</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Saying: “The crop’s all in,</div> - <div class='line in2'>We’re about through now;</div> - <div class='line'>Long nights will soon begin,</div> - <div class='line in2'>We’re just us two now.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>“Twelve bushel at sixty cents,</div> - <div class='line in2'>It’s all I carried—</div> - <div class='line'>He sickened making fence;</div> - <div class='line in2'>He was to be married—</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>“It feels like frost was near—</div> - <div class='line in2'>His hair was curly.</div> - <div class='line'>The spring was late that year,</div> - <div class='line in2'>But the harvest early.”</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='chapter'> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_346'>346</span> - <h2 class='c005'>Charles Hanson Towne</h2> -</div> - -<h3 class='c013'>BEYOND THE STARS</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Three days I heard them grieve when I lay dead,</div> - <div class='line'>(It was so strange to me that they should weep!)</div> - <div class='line'>Tall candles burned about me in the dark,</div> - <div class='line'>And a great crucifix was on my breast,</div> - <div class='line'>And a great silence filled the lonesome room.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>I heard one whisper, “Lo! the dawn is breaking,</div> - <div class='line'>And he has lost the wonder of the day.”</div> - <div class='line'>Another came whom I had loved on earth,</div> - <div class='line'>And kissed my brow and brushed my dampened hair.</div> - <div class='line'>Softly she spoke: “Oh, that he should not see</div> - <div class='line'>The April that his spirit bathed in! Birds</div> - <div class='line'>Are singing in the orchard, and the grass</div> - <div class='line'>That soon will cover him is growing green.</div> - <div class='line'>The daisies whiten on the emerald hills,</div> - <div class='line'>And the immortal magic that he loved</div> - <div class='line'>Wakens again—and he has fallen asleep.”</div> - <div class='line'>Another said: “Last night I saw the moon</div> - <div class='line'>Like a tremendous lantern shine in heaven,</div> - <div class='line'>And I could only think of him—and sob.</div> - <div class='line'>For I remembered evenings wonderful</div> - <div class='line'>When he was faint with Life’s sad loveliness,</div> - <div class='line'>And watched the silver ribbons wandering far</div> - <div class='line'>Along the shore, and out upon the sea.</div> - <div class='line'>Oh, I remembered how he loved the world,</div> - <div class='line'>The sighing ocean and the flaming stars,</div> - <div class='line'>The everlasting glamour God has given—</div> - <div class='line'>His tapestries that wrap the earth’s wide room.</div> - <div class='line'>I minded me of mornings filled with rain</div> - <div class='line'>When he would sit and listen to the sound</div> - <div class='line'>As if it were lost music from the spheres.</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_347'>347</span>He loved the crocus and the hawthorn-hedge,</div> - <div class='line'>He loved the shining gold of buttercups,</div> - <div class='line'>And the low droning of the drowsy bees</div> - <div class='line'>That boomed across the meadows. He was glad</div> - <div class='line'>At dawn or sundown; glad when Autumn came</div> - <div class='line'>With her worn livery and scarlet crown,</div> - <div class='line'>And glad when Winter rocked the earth to rest.</div> - <div class='line'>Strange that he sleeps today when Life is young,</div> - <div class='line'>And the wild banners of the Spring are blowing</div> - <div class='line'>With green inscriptions of the old delight.”</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>I heard them whisper in the quiet room.</div> - <div class='line'>I longed to open then my sealed eyes,</div> - <div class='line'>And tell them of the glory that was mine.</div> - <div class='line'>There was no darkness where my spirit flew,</div> - <div class='line'>There was no night beyond the teeming world.</div> - <div class='line'>Their April was like winter where I roamed;</div> - <div class='line'>Their flowers were like stones where now I fared.</div> - <div class='line'>Earth’s day! it was as if I had not known</div> - <div class='line'>What sunlight meant!... Yea, even as they grieved</div> - <div class='line'>For all that I had lost in their pale place,</div> - <div class='line'>I swung beyond the borders of the sky,</div> - <div class='line'>And floated through the clouds, myself the air,</div> - <div class='line'>Myself the ether, yet a matchless being</div> - <div class='line'>Whom God had snatched from penury and pain</div> - <div class='line'>To draw across the barricades of heaven.</div> - <div class='line'>I clomb beyond the sun, beyond the moon;</div> - <div class='line'>In flight on flight I touched the highest star;</div> - <div class='line'>I plunged to regions where the Spring is born,</div> - <div class='line'>Myself (I asked not how) the April wind,</div> - <div class='line'>Myself the elements that are of God.</div> - <div class='line'>Up flowery stairways of eternity</div> - <div class='line'>I whirled in wonder and untrammeled joy,</div> - <div class='line'>An atom, yet a portion of His dream—</div> - <div class='line'>His dream that knows no end....</div> - <div class='line in32'>I was the rain,</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_348'>348</span>I was the dawn, I was the purple east,</div> - <div class='line'>I was the moonlight on enchanted nights,</div> - <div class='line'>(Yet time was lost to me); I was a flower</div> - <div class='line'>For one to pluck who loved me; I was bliss,</div> - <div class='line'>And rapture, splendid moments of delight;</div> - <div class='line'>And I was prayer, and solitude, and hope;</div> - <div class='line'>And always, always, always I was love.</div> - <div class='line'>I tore asunder flimsy doors of time,</div> - <div class='line'>And through the windows of my soul’s new sight</div> - <div class='line'>I saw beyond the ultimate bounds of space.</div> - <div class='line'>I was all things that I had loved on earth—</div> - <div class='line'>The very moonbeam in that quiet room,</div> - <div class='line'>The very sunlight one had dreamed I lost,</div> - <div class='line'>The soul of the returning April grass,</div> - <div class='line'>The spirit of the evening and the dawn,</div> - <div class='line'>The perfume in unnumbered hawthorn-blooms.</div> - <div class='line'>There was no shadow on my perfect peace,</div> - <div class='line'>No knowledge that was hidden from my heart.</div> - <div class='line'>I learned what music meant; I read the years;</div> - <div class='line'>I found where rainbows hide, where tears begin;</div> - <div class='line'>I trod the precincts of things yet unborn.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Yea, while I found all wisdom (being dead),</div> - <div class='line'>They grieved for me ... I should have grieved for them!</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='chapter'> - <h2 class='c005'>Louis Untermeyer</h2> -</div> - -<h3 class='c013'>LANDSCAPES</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>The rain was over, and the brilliant air</div> - <div class='line'>Made every little blade of grass appear</div> - <div class='line'>Vivid and startling—everything was there</div> - <div class='line'>With sharpened outlines, eloquently clear,</div> - <div class='line'>As though one saw it in a crystal sphere.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_349'>349</span>The rusty sumac with its struggling spires;</div> - <div class='line'>The goldenrod with all its million fires</div> - <div class='line'>(A million torches swinging in the wind);</div> - <div class='line'>A single poplar, marvellously thinned,</div> - <div class='line'>Half like a naked boy, half like a sword;</div> - <div class='line'>Clouds, like the haughty banners of the Lord;</div> - <div class='line'>A group of pansies with their shrewish faces,</div> - <div class='line'>Little old ladies cackling over laces;</div> - <div class='line'>The quaint, unhurried road that curved so well;</div> - <div class='line'>The prim petunias with their rich, rank smell;</div> - <div class='line'>The lettuce-birds, the creepers in the field—</div> - <div class='line'>How bountifully were they all revealed!</div> - <div class='line'>How arrogantly each one seemed to thrive—</div> - <div class='line'>So frank and strong, so radiantly alive!</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>And over all the morning-minded earth</div> - <div class='line'>There seemed to spread a sharp and kindling mirth,</div> - <div class='line'>Piercing the stubborn stones until I saw</div> - <div class='line'>The toad face heaven without shame or awe,</div> - <div class='line'>The ant confront the stars, and every weed</div> - <div class='line'>Grow proud as though it bore a royal seed;</div> - <div class='line'>While all the things that die and decompose</div> - <div class='line'>Sent forth their bloom as richly as the rose....</div> - <div class='line'>Oh, what a liberal power that made them thrive</div> - <div class='line'>And keep the very dirt that died, alive.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>And now I saw the slender willow-tree</div> - <div class='line'>No longer calm or drooping listlessly,</div> - <div class='line'>Letting its languid branches sway and fall</div> - <div class='line'>As though it danced in some sad ritual;</div> - <div class='line'>But rather like a young, athletic girl,</div> - <div class='line'>Fearless and gay, her hair all out of curl,</div> - <div class='line'>And flying in the wind—her head thrown back,</div> - <div class='line'>Her arms flung up, her garments flowing slack,</div> - <div class='line'>And all her rushing spirits running over....</div> - <div class='line'>What made a sober tree seem such a rover—</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_350'>350</span>Or made the staid and stalwart apple-trees,</div> - <div class='line'>That stood for years knee-deep in velvet peace,</div> - <div class='line'>Turn all their fruit to little worlds of flame,</div> - <div class='line'>And burn the trembling orchard there below?</div> - <div class='line'>What lit the heart of every golden-glow—</div> - <div class='line'>Oh, why was nothing weary, dull, or tame?...</div> - <div class='line'>Beauty it was, and keen, compassionate mirth</div> - <div class='line'>That drives the vast and energetic earth.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>And, with abrupt and visionary eyes,</div> - <div class='line'>I saw the huddled tenements arise.</div> - <div class='line'>Here where the merry clover danced and shone</div> - <div class='line'>Sprang agonies of iron and of stone;</div> - <div class='line'>There, where green Silence laughed or stood enthralled,</div> - <div class='line'>Cheap music blared and evil alleys sprawled.</div> - <div class='line'>The roaring avenues, the shrieking mills;</div> - <div class='line'>Brothels and prisons on those kindly hills—</div> - <div class='line'>The menace of these things swept over me;</div> - <div class='line'>A threatening, unconquerable sea....</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>A stirring landscape and a generous earth!</div> - <div class='line'>Freshening courage and benevolent mirth—</div> - <div class='line'>And then the city, like a hideous sore....</div> - <div class='line'>Good God, and what is all this beauty for?</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>“FEUERZAUBER”</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>I never knew the earth had so much gold—</div> - <div class='line in2'>The fields run over with it, and this hill</div> - <div class='line'>Hoary and old,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Is young with buoyant blooms that flame and thrill.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Such golden fires, such yellow—lo, how good</div> - <div class='line in2'>This spendthrift world, and what a lavish God—</div> - <div class='line'>This fringe of wood,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Blazing with buttercup and goldenrod.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_351'>351</span>You too, beloved, are changed. Again I see</div> - <div class='line in2'>Your face grow mystical, as on that night</div> - <div class='line'>You turned to me,</div> - <div class='line in2'>And all the trembling world—and you—were white.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Aye, you are touched; your singing lips grow dumb;</div> - <div class='line in2'>The fields absorb you, color you entire....</div> - <div class='line'>And you become</div> - <div class='line in2'>A goddess standing in a world of fire!</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>ON THE BIRTH OF A CHILD</h3> - -<div class='nf-center-c0'> -<div class='nf-center c002'> - <div><em>Jerome Epstein—August 8, 1912</em></div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Lo—to the battle-ground of life,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Child, you have come, like a conquering shout,</div> - <div class='line'>Out of a struggle—into strife;</div> - <div class='line in2'>Out of a darkness—into doubt.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Girt with the fragile armor of youth,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Child, you must ride into endless wars,</div> - <div class='line'>With the sword of protest, the buckler of truth,</div> - <div class='line in2'>And a banner of love to sweep the stars.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>About you the world’s despair will surge;</div> - <div class='line in2'>Into defeat you must plunge and grope—</div> - <div class='line'>Be to the faltering an urge;</div> - <div class='line in2'>Be to the hopeless years a hope!</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Be to the darkened world a flame;</div> - <div class='line in2'>Be to its unconcern a blow—</div> - <div class='line'>For out of its pain and tumult you came,</div> - <div class='line in2'>And into its tumult and pain you go.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_352'>352</span> - <h3 class='c014'>IRONY</h3> -</div> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Why are the things that have no death</div> - <div class='line'>The ones with neither sight nor breath!</div> - <div class='line'>Eternity is thrust upon</div> - <div class='line'>A bit of earth, a senseless stone.</div> - <div class='line'>A grain of dust, a casual clod</div> - <div class='line'>Receives the greatest gift of God.</div> - <div class='line'>A pebble in the roadway lies—</div> - <div class='line in26'>It never dies.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>The grass our fathers cut away</div> - <div class='line'>Is growing on their graves to-day;</div> - <div class='line'>The tiniest brooks that scarcely flow</div> - <div class='line'>Eternally will come and go.</div> - <div class='line'>There is no kind of death to kill</div> - <div class='line'>The sands that lie so meek and still....</div> - <div class='line'>But Man is great and strong and wise—</div> - <div class='line in26'>And so he dies.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='chapter'> - <h2 class='c005'>Allen Upward</h2> -</div> - -<h3 class='c013'>SCENTED LEAVES FROM A CHINESE JAR</h3> - -<h4 class='c013'>THE ACACIA LEAVES</h4> - -<p class='c017'>The aged man, when he beheld winter approaching, counted -the leaves as they lapsed from the acacia trees; while his son was -talking of the spring.</p> - -<h4 class='c013'>THE BITTER PURPLE WILLOWS</h4> - -<p class='c017'>Meditating on the glory of illustrious lineage I lifted up my eyes -and beheld the bitter purple willows growing round the tombs of -the exalted Mings.</p> - -<div> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_353'>353</span> - <h4 class='c013'>THE CORAL FISHER</h4> -</div> - -<p class='c017'>The coral fisher, who had been a long time beneath the water, -rose to the surface with nothing in his hand but a spray of crimson -seaweed. In answer to the master of the junk he said, “While I -was in the world of fishes this miserable weed appeared to me more -beautiful than coral.”</p> - -<h4 class='c013'>THE DIAMOND</h4> - -<p class='c017'>The poet Wong, after he had delighted a company of mandarins -at a feast, sat silent in the midst of his household. He explained, -“The diamond sparkles only when it is in the light.”</p> - -<h4 class='c013'>THE ESTUARY</h4> - -<p class='c017'>Some one complained to the Master, “After many lessons I do -not fully understand your doctrine.” In response the Master -pointed to the tide in the mouth of the river, and asked, “How -wide is the sea in this place?”</p> - -<h4 class='c013'>THE INTOXICATED POET</h4> - -<p class='c017'>A poet, having taken the bridle off his tongue, spoke thus: -“More fragrant than the heliotrope, which blooms all the year -round, better than vermilion letters on tablets of sendal, are thy -kisses, thou shy one!”</p> - -<h4 class='c013'>THE JONQUILS</h4> - -<p class='c017'>I have heard that a certain princess, when she found that she -had been married by a demon, wove a wreath of jonquils and sent -it to the lover of former days.</p> - -<h4 class='c013'>THE MARIGOLD</h4> - -<p class='c017'>Even as the seed of the marigold, carried by the wind, lodges -on the roofs of palaces, and lights the air with flame-colored -blossoms, so may the child-like words of the insignificant poet -confer honor on lofty and disdainful mandarins.</p> - -<div> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_354'>354</span> - <h4 class='c013'>THE MERMAID</h4> -</div> - -<p class='c017'>The sailor boy who leant over the side of the Junk of Many -Pearls, and combed the green tresses of the sea with his ivory -fingers, believing that he had heard the voice of a mermaid, cast -his body down between the waves.</p> - -<h4 class='c013'>THE MIDDLE KINGDOM</h4> - -<p class='c017'>The emperors of fourteen dynasties, clad in robes of yellow silk -embroidered with the Dragon, wearing gold diadems set with -pearls and rubies, and seated on thrones of incomparable ivory, -have ruled over the Middle Kingdom for four thousand years.</p> - -<h4 class='c013'>THE MILKY WAY</h4> - -<p class='c017'>My mother taught me that every night a procession of junks -carrying lanterns moves silently across the sky, and the water -sprinkled from their paddles falls to the earth in the form of dew. -I no longer believe that the stars are junks carrying lanterns, no -longer that the dew is shaken from their oars.</p> - -<h4 class='c013'>THE ONION</h4> - -<p class='c017'>The child who threw away leaf after leaf of the many-coated -onion, to get to the sweet heart, found in the end that he had -thrown away the heart itself.</p> - -<h4 class='c013'>THE SEA-SHELL</h4> - -<p class='c017'>To the passionate lover, whose sighs come back to him on every -breeze, all the world is like a murmuring sea-shell.</p> - -<h4 class='c013'>THE STUPID KITE</h4> - -<p class='c017'>A kite, while devouring a skylark, complained, “Had I known -that thy flesh was no sweeter than that of a sparrow I should have -listened longer to thy delicious notes.”</p> - -<div> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_355'>355</span> - <h4 class='c013'>THE WINDMILL</h4> -</div> - -<p class='c017'>The exquisite painter Ko-tsu was often reproached by an industrious -friend for his fits of idleness. At last he excused himself -by saying, “You are a watermill—a windmill can grind only when -the wind blows.”</p> - -<h4 class='c013'>THE WORD</h4> - -<p class='c017'>The first time the emperor Han heard a certain Word he said, -“It is strange.” The second time he said, “It is divine.” The -third time he said, “Let the speaker be put to death.”</p> - -<div class='chapter'> - <h2 class='c005'>John Hall Wheelock</h2> -</div> - -<h3 class='c013'>SUNDAY EVENING IN THE COMMON</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Look—on the topmost branches of the world</div> - <div class='line in2'>The blossoms of the myriad stars are thick;</div> - <div class='line in2'>Over the huddled rows of stone and brick</div> - <div class='line'>A few sad wisps of empty smoke are curled</div> - <div class='line in2'>Like ghosts, languid and sick.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>One breathless moment now the city’s moaning</div> - <div class='line in2'>Fades, and the endless streets seem vague and dim;</div> - <div class='line in2'>There is no sound around the world’s rim,</div> - <div class='line'>Save in the distance a small band is droning</div> - <div class='line in2'>Some desolate old hymn.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Van Wyck, how often have we been together</div> - <div class='line in2'>When this same moment made all mysteries clear—</div> - <div class='line in2'>The infinite stars that brood above us here,</div> - <div class='line'>And the gray city in the soft June weather,</div> - <div class='line in2'>So tawdry and so dear!</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_356'>356</span> - <h3 class='c014'>SPRING</h3> -</div> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>The air is full of dawn and spring;</div> - <div class='line in2'>Outside the room I see</div> - <div class='line'>A swallow, like a shaft of light,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Shift sideways suddenly.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>There is no room for death at all</div> - <div class='line in2'>In earth or heaven above;</div> - <div class='line'>He never yet believed in death</div> - <div class='line in2'>Who ever learned to love.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Build me a tomb when I am dead,</div> - <div class='line in2'>But leave a window free</div> - <div class='line'>That I may watch the swallow’s flight,</div> - <div class='line in2'>And spring come back to me.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Build me a tomb of steel and stone,</div> - <div class='line in2'>But leave one window free,</div> - <div class='line'>That I may feel the spring come back—</div> - <div class='line in2'>And you come back to me!</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>LIKE MUSIC</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Your body’s motion is like music;</div> - <div class='line in2'>Her stride ecstatical and bright</div> - <div class='line'>Moves to the rhythm of dumb music,</div> - <div class='line in2'>The unheard music of delight.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>The silent splendor of the creation</div> - <div class='line in2'>Speaks through your body’s stately strength,</div> - <div class='line'>And the lithe harmony of beauty</div> - <div class='line in2'>Undulates through its lovely length.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_357'>357</span>And rhythmically your bosom’s arches,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Alternately, with every breath</div> - <div class='line'>Lift lifeward in long lines of beauty</div> - <div class='line in2'>And lapse along the slopes of death.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>THE THUNDER-SHOWER</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>The lightning flashed, and lifted</div> - <div class='line in2'>The lids of heaven apart,</div> - <div class='line'>The fiery thunder rolled you</div> - <div class='line in2'>All night long through my heart.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>From dreams of you at dawn</div> - <div class='line in2'>I rose to the window ledge:</div> - <div class='line'>The storm had passed away,</div> - <div class='line in2'>The lake lapped on the sedge.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>The lyre of heaven trembled</div> - <div class='line in2'>Still with the thought of you,</div> - <div class='line'>The twilight on the waters,</div> - <div class='line in2'>And all my spirit, too.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>SONG</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>All my love for my sweet</div> - <div class='line in2'>I bared one day to her.</div> - <div class='line'>Carelessly she took it,</div> - <div class='line in2'>And like a conqueror</div> - <div class='line'>She bowed the neck of my soul</div> - <div class='line in2'>To fit it to her yoke,</div> - <div class='line'>And bridled the lips of Song—</div> - <div class='line in2'>Fear within me awoke!</div> - <div class='line'>But Love cried: “Swiftly, swiftly</div> - <div class='line in2'>Bear her along the road;</div> - <div class='line'>Beautiful is the goal</div> - <div class='line in2'>And Beauty is the goad.”</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_358'>358</span> - <h3 class='c014'>ALONE</h3> -</div> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Ah, never in all my life</div> - <div class='line in2'>Have I ever fled away</div> - <div class='line'>From the loneliness that follows</div> - <div class='line in2'>My spirit night and day!</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Though I fly to the dearest face,</div> - <div class='line in2'>It follows without rest—</div> - <div class='line'>To the kind heart of love,</div> - <div class='line in2'>And the belovèd breast.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Though I walk amid the crowd,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Still I walk apart;</div> - <div class='line'>Alone, alone I lie</div> - <div class='line in2'>Even at the loved one’s heart.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>NIRVANA</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Sleep on—I lie at heaven’s high oriels,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Over the stars that murmur as they go</div> - <div class='line in2'>Lighting your lattice-window far below.</div> - <div class='line'>And every star some of the glory spells</div> - <div class='line in2'>Whereof I know.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>I have forgotten you, long long ago;</div> - <div class='line in2'>Like the sweet, silver singing of thin bells</div> - <div class='line'>Vanished, or music fading faint and low.</div> - <div class='line in2'>Sleep on—I lie at heaven’s high oriels,</div> - <div class='line'>Who loved you so.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>TRIUMPH OF THE SINGER</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>I shake my hair in the wind of morning</div> - <div class='line in2'>For the joy within me that knows no bounds.</div> - <div class='line'>I echo backward the vibrant beauty</div> - <div class='line in2'>Wherewith heaven’s hollow lute resounds.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_359'>359</span>I shed my song on the feet of all men,</div> - <div class='line in2'>On the feet of all shed out like wine;</div> - <div class='line'>On the whole and the hurt I shed my bounty,</div> - <div class='line in2'>The beauty within me that is not mine.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Turn not away from my song, nor scorn me,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Who bear the secret that holds the sky</div> - <div class='line'>And the stars together; but know within me</div> - <div class='line in2'>There speaks another more wise than I.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Nor spurn me here from your heart to hate me,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Yet hate me here if you will. Not so</div> - <div class='line'>Myself you hate, but the love within me</div> - <div class='line in2'>That loves you whether you would or no.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Here love returns with love to the lover</div> - <div class='line in2'>And beauty unto the heart thereof,</div> - <div class='line'>And hatred unto the heart of the hater,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Whether he would or no, with love!</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='chapter'> - <h2 class='c005'>Hervey White</h2> -</div> - -<h3 class='c013'>LAST NIGHT</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Last night the full moon laid a cloth of white</div> - <div class='line'>Within my window, spread upon my bed,</div> - <div class='line'>And, with her old-time splendor, asked of me</div> - <div class='line'>To share her harvest supper. I arose,</div> - <div class='line'>And stepped without to pay my greetings. When, Behold!</div> - <div class='line'>The old world flowered again, as it had done</div> - <div class='line'>When I was twenty, at the gate of life;</div> - <div class='line'>The meadows held untouched their virgin bloom,</div> - <div class='line'>The darkling trees with gleaming leaves flashed bright,</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_360'>360</span>Dewy and pendant till the waiting morn;</div> - <div class='line'>The shadows lay like cool soft soothing hands</div> - <div class='line'>Upon the pastures pulsing with sweet June:</div> - <div class='line'>I, too, was young again, and God was just,</div> - <div class='line'>And through my blood propelled great future acts—</div> - <div class='line'>Big things to do, and thoughts, and voice to speak—</div> - <div class='line'>So potent was the charm of my white queen.</div> - <div class='line'>It was not till I walked for many miles,</div> - <div class='line'>And came back weary to my quiet room,</div> - <div class='line'>That I had once more taken back my years,</div> - <div class='line'>My cares, my listlessness, and stagnant grief.</div> - <div class='line'>And, even as I sit in full faced day,</div> - <div class='line'>My memory faintly shadows out this song.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>I SAW THE CLOUDS</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>I saw the clouds among the hills</div> - <div class='line in2'>Trailing their plumes of rainy gray.</div> - <div class='line'>The purple of the woods behind</div> - <div class='line in2'>Fell down to where the valley lay</div> - <div class='line'>In sweet satiety of rain,</div> - <div class='line'>With ripened fruit, and full filled grain.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>I saw the graves, upon the plain,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Of pioneers, who took the land,</div> - <div class='line'>And tamed the stubborn elements</div> - <div class='line in2'>Till they were gentle to the hand.</div> - <div class='line'>Their children, now in fortune’s ways,</div> - <div class='line'>Dwell in their father’s palaces.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>I saw some old forgotten lays;</div> - <div class='line in2'>And treasured volumes I passed by.</div> - <div class='line'>They were but repetitions cheap</div> - <div class='line in2'>For any hucksterer to buy.</div> - <div class='line'>The clouds, the graves, the worn old song,</div> - <div class='line'>I bear them in my heart along.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='chapter'> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_361'>361</span> - <h2 class='c005'>Margaret Widdemer</h2> -</div> - -<h3 class='c013'>THE BEGGARS</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>The little pitiful, worn, laughing faces,</div> - <div class='line'>Begging of Life for Joy!</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>I saw the little daughters of the poor,</div> - <div class='line'>Tense from the long day’s working, strident, gay,</div> - <div class='line'>Hurrying to the picture-place. There curled</div> - <div class='line'>A hideous flushed beggar at the door,</div> - <div class='line'>Trading upon his horror, eyeless, maimed,</div> - <div class='line'>Complacent in his profitable mask.</div> - <div class='line'>They mocked his horror, but they gave to him</div> - <div class='line'>From the brief wealth of pay-night, and went in</div> - <div class='line'>To the cheap laughter and the tawdry thoughts</div> - <div class='line'>Thrown on the screen; in to the seeking hand</div> - <div class='line'>Covered by darkness, to the luring voice</div> - <div class='line'>Of Horror, boy-masked, whispering of rings,</div> - <div class='line'>Of silks, of feathers, bought—so cheap!—with just</div> - <div class='line'>Their slender starved child-bodies, palpitant</div> - <div class='line'>For beauty, laughter, passion—that is life:</div> - <div class='line'>(A frock of satin for an hour’s shame,</div> - <div class='line'>A coat of fur for two days’ servitude;</div> - <div class='line'>“And the clothes last,” the thought runs on, within</div> - <div class='line'>The poor warped girl-minds drugged with changeless days;</div> - <div class='line'>“Who cares or knows after the hour is done?”)</div> - <div class='line'>—Poor little beggars at Life’s door for Joy!</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>The old man crouched there, eyeless, horrible,</div> - <div class='line'>Complacent in the marketable mask</div> - <div class='line'>That earned his comforts—and they gave to him!</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>But ah, the little painted, wistful faces</div> - <div class='line'>Questioning Life for Joy!</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_362'>362</span> - <h3 class='c014'>TERESINA’S FACE</h3> -</div> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>He saw it last of all before they herded in the steerage,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Dark against the sunset where he lingered by the hold,</div> - <div class='line'>The tear-stained dusk-rose face of her, the little Teresina,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Sailing out to lands of gold:</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Ah, the days were long, long days, still toiling in the vineyard,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Working for the coins that set him free to go to her,</div> - <div class='line'>Where gay it glowed, the flower face of little Teresina,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Where the joy and riches were:</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Hard to find one rose-face where the dark rose-faces cluster,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Where the outland laws are strange and outland voices hum,</div> - <div class='line'>(Only one lad’s hoping, and the word of Teresina,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Who would wait for him to come!)</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'> · · · · ·</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>God grant he may not find her, since he might not win her freedom,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Nor yet be great enough to love, in such marred, captive wise,</div> - <div class='line'>The patient, painted face of her, the little Teresina,</div> - <div class='line in4'>With its cowed, all-knowing eyes!</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>GREEK FOLK SONG</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Under dusky laurel leaf,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Scarlet leaf of rose,</div> - <div class='line'>I lie prone, who have known</div> - <div class='line in2'>All a woman knows.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Love and grief and motherhood,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Fame and mirth and scorn—</div> - <div class='line'>These are all shall befall</div> - <div class='line in2'>Any woman born.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_363'>363</span>Jewel-laden are my hands,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Tall my stone above—</div> - <div class='line'>Do not weep that I sleep,</div> - <div class='line in2'>Who was wise in love.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Where I walk, a shadow gray</div> - <div class='line in2'>Through gray asphodel,</div> - <div class='line'>I am glad, who have had</div> - <div class='line in2'>All that life can tell.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='chapter'> - <h2 class='c005'>Florence Wilkinson</h2> -</div> - -<h3 class='c013'>OUR LADY OF IDLENESS</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in4'>They in the darkness gather and ask</div> - <div class='line in4'>Her name, the mistress of their endless task.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line c004'><em>The Toilers</em></div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in4'>Tinsel-makers in factory gloom,</div> - <div class='line in4'>Miners in ethylene pits,</div> - <div class='line in4'>Divers and druggists mixing poisonous bloom;</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in4'>Huge hunters, men of brawn,</div> - <div class='line in4'>Half-naked creatures of the tropics,</div> - <div class='line in4'>Furred trappers stealing forth at Labrador dawn;</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in4'>Catchers of beetles, sheep-men in bleak sheds,</div> - <div class='line in4'>Pearl-fishers perched on Indian coasts,</div> - <div class='line in4'>Children in stifling towers pulling threads;</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in4'>Dark bunchy women pricking intricate laces,</div> - <div class='line in4'>Myopic jewelers’ apprentices,</div> - <div class='line in4'>Arabs who chase the long-legged birds in sandy places:</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in4'><span class='pageno' id='Page_364'>364</span>They are her invisible slaves,</div> - <div class='line in4'>The genii of her costly wishes,</div> - <div class='line in4'>Climbing, descending, running under waves.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in4'>They strip earth’s dimmest cell,</div> - <div class='line in4'>They burn and drown and stifle</div> - <div class='line in4'>To build her inconceivable and fragile shell.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line c004'><em>The Artist-Artisans</em></div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in4'>They have painted a miracle-shawl</div> - <div class='line in4'>Of cobwebs and whispering shadows,</div> - <div class='line in4'>And trellised leaves that ripple on a wall.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in4'>They have broidered a tissue of cost,</div> - <div class='line in4'>Spun foam of the sea</div> - <div class='line in4'>And lilied imagery of the vanishing frost.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in4'>Her floating skirts have run</div> - <div class='line in4'>Like iridescent marshes,</div> - <div class='line in4'>Or like the tossed hair of a stormy sun.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in4'>Her silver cloak has shone</div> - <div class='line in4'>Blue as a mummy’s beads,</div> - <div class='line in4'>Green as the ice-glints of an Arctic zone.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in4'>She is weary and has lain</div> - <div class='line in4'>At last her body down.</div> - <div class='line in4'>What, with her clothing’s beauty, they have slain!</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line c004'><em>The Angel With the Sword</em></div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in4'>Come, brothers, let us lift</div> - <div class='line in4'>Her pitiful body on high,</div> - <div class='line in4'>Her tight-shut hands that take to heaven no gift</div> - <div class='line in4'><span class='pageno' id='Page_365'>365</span>But ashes of costly things.</div> - <div class='line in4'>We seven archangels will</div> - <div class='line in4'>Bear her in silence on our flame-tipped wings.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line c004'><em>The Toilers</em></div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in4'>Lo, she is thinner than fire</div> - <div class='line in4'>On a burned mill-town’s edge,</div> - <div class='line in4'>And smaller than a young child’s dead desire.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in4'>Yea, emptier than the wage</div> - <div class='line in4'>Of a spent harlot crying for her beauty,</div> - <div class='line in4'>And grayer than the mumbling lips of age.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line c004'><em>A Lost Girl</em></div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line in4'>White as a drowned one’s feet</div> - <div class='line in4'>Twined with the wet sea-bracken,</div> - <div class='line in4'>And naked as a Sin driven from God’s littlest street.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>STUDENTS</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>John Brown and Jeanne at Fontainebleau—</div> - <div class='line'>’Twas Toussaint, just a year ago;</div> - <div class='line'>Crimson and copper was the glow</div> - <div class='line'>Of all the woods at Fontainebleau.</div> - <div class='line'>They peered into that ancient well,</div> - <div class='line'>And watched the slow torch as it fell.</div> - <div class='line'>John gave the keeper two whole sous,</div> - <div class='line'>And Jeanne that smile with which she woos</div> - <div class='line'>John Brown to folly. So they lose</div> - <div class='line'>The Paris train. But never mind!—</div> - <div class='line'>All-Saints are rustling in the wind,</div> - <div class='line'>And there’s an inn, a crackling fire—</div> - <div class='line'>(It’s <i><span lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">deux-cinquante</span></i>, but Jeanne’s desire);</div> - <div class='line'>There’s dinner, candles, country wine,</div> - <div class='line'>Jeanne’s lips—philosophy divine!</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_366'>366</span>There was a bosquet at Saint Cloud</div> - <div class='line'>Wherein John’s picture of her grew</div> - <div class='line'>To be a Salon masterpiece—</div> - <div class='line'>Till the rain fell that would not cease.</div> - <div class='line'>Through one long alley how they raced!—</div> - <div class='line'>’Twas gold and brown, and all a waste</div> - <div class='line'>Of matted leaves, moss-interlaced.</div> - <div class='line'>Shades of mad queens and hunter-kings</div> - <div class='line'>And thorn-sharp feet of dryad-things</div> - <div class='line'>Were company to their wanderings;</div> - <div class='line'>Then rain and darkness on them drew.</div> - <div class='line'>The rich folks’ motors honked and flew.</div> - <div class='line'>They hailed an old cab, heaven for two;</div> - <div class='line'>The bright Champs-Elysées at last—</div> - <div class='line'>Though the cab crawled it sped too fast.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Paris, upspringing white and gold:</div> - <div class='line'>Flamboyant arch and high-enscrolled</div> - <div class='line'>War-sculpture, big, Napoleonic—</div> - <div class='line'>Fierce chargers, angels histrionic;</div> - <div class='line'>The royal sweep of gardened spaces,</div> - <div class='line'>The pomp and whirl of columned Places;</div> - <div class='line'>The <i><span lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Rive Gauche</span></i>, age-old, gay and gray;</div> - <div class='line'>The <em>impasse</em> and the loved café;</div> - <div class='line'>The tempting tidy little shops;</div> - <div class='line'>The convent walls, the glimpsed tree-tops;</div> - <div class='line'>Book-stalls, old men like dwarfs in plays;</div> - <div class='line'>Talk, work, and Latin Quarter ways.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>May—Robinson’s, the chestnut trees—</div> - <div class='line'>Were ever crowds as gay as these?</div> - <div class='line'>The quick pale waiters on a run,</div> - <div class='line'>The round green tables, one by one,</div> - <div class='line'>Hidden away in amorous bowers—</div> - <div class='line'>Lilac, laburnum’s golden showers.</div> - <div class='line'>Kiss, clink of glasses, laughter heard,</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_367'>367</span>And nightingales quite undeterred.</div> - <div class='line'>And then that last extravagance—</div> - <div class='line'>O Jeanne, a single amber glance</div> - <div class='line'>Will pay him!—“Let’s play millionaire</div> - <div class='line'>For just two hours—on princely fare,</div> - <div class='line'>At some hotel where lovers dine</div> - <div class='line'><i><span lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">A deux</span></i> and pledge across the wine!”</div> - <div class='line'>They find a damask breakfast-room,</div> - <div class='line'>Where stiff silk roses range their bloom.</div> - <div class='line'>The garçon has a splendid way</div> - <div class='line'>Of bearing in <i><span lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">grand déjeuner</span></i>.</div> - <div class='line'>Then to be left alone, alone,</div> - <div class='line'>High up above Rue Castiglione;</div> - <div class='line'>Curtained away from all the rude</div> - <div class='line'>Rumors, in silken solitude;</div> - <div class='line'>And, John, her head upon your knees—</div> - <div class='line'>Time waits for moments such as these.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='chapter'> - <h2 class='c005'>Marguerite Wilkinson</h2> -</div> - -<h3 class='c013'>A WOMAN’S BELOVED<br /> <em>A Psalm</em></h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>To what shall a woman liken her beloved,</div> - <div class='line'>And with what shall she compare him to do him honor?</div> - <div class='line'>He is like the close-folded new leaves of the woodbine, odorless, but sweet,</div> - <div class='line'>Flushed with a new and swiftly rising life,</div> - <div class='line'>Strong to grow and give glad shade in summer.</div> - <div class='line'>Even thus should a woman’s beloved shelter her in time of anguish.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>And he is like the young robin, eager to try his wings,</div> - <div class='line'>For within soft-stirring wings of the spirit has she cherished him,</div> - <div class='line'>And with the love of the mother bird shall she embolden him, that his flight may avail.</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_368'>368</span>A woman’s beloved is to her as the roots of the willow,</div> - <div class='line'>Long, strong, white roots, bedded lovingly in the dark.</div> - <div class='line'>Into the depths of her have gone the roots of his strength and of his pride,</div> - <div class='line'>That she may nourish him well and become his fulfilment.</div> - <div class='line'>None may tear him from the broad fields where he is planted!</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>A woman’s beloved is like the sun rising upon the waters, making the dark places light,</div> - <div class='line'>And like the morning melody of the pine trees.</div> - <div class='line'>Truly, she thinks the roses die joyously</div> - <div class='line'>If they are crushed beneath his feet.</div> - <div class='line'>A woman’s beloved is to her a great void that she may illumine,</div> - <div class='line'>A great king that she may crown, a great soul that she may redeem.</div> - <div class='line'>And he is also the perfecting of life,</div> - <div class='line'>Flowers for the altar, bread for the lips, wine for the chalice.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>You that have known passion, think not that you have fathomed love.</div> - <div class='line'>It may be that you have never seen love’s face.</div> - <div class='line'>For love thrusts aside storm-clouds of passion to unveil the heavens,</div> - <div class='line'>And, in the heart of a woman, only then is love born.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>To what shall I liken a woman’s beloved,</div> - <div class='line'>And with what shall I compare him to do him honor?</div> - <div class='line'>He is a flower, a song, a struggle, a wild storm,</div> - <div class='line'>And, at the last, he is redemption, power, joy, fulfilment and perfect peace.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>AN INCANTATION</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>O great sun of heaven, harm not my love;</div> - <div class='line'>Sear him not with your flame, blind him not with your beauty,</div> - <div class='line'>Shine for his pleasure!</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_369'>369</span>O gray rains of heaven, harm not my love;</div> - <div class='line'>Drown not in your torrent the song of his heart,</div> - <div class='line'>Lave and caress him.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>O swift winds of heaven, harm not my love;</div> - <div class='line'>Bruise not nor buffet him with your rough humor,</div> - <div class='line'>Sing you his prowess!</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>O mighty triad, strong ones of heaven,</div> - <div class='line'>Sun, rain, and wind, be gentle, I charge you—</div> - <div class='line'>For your mad mood of wrath have me—I am ready—</div> - <div class='line'>But spare him, my lover, most proud and most dear,</div> - <div class='line'>O sun, rain and wind, strong ones of heaven!</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='chapter'> - <h2 class='c005'>William Carlos Williams</h2> -</div> - -<h3 class='c013'>SICILIAN EMIGRANT’S SONG</h3> - -<div class='nf-center-c0'> -<div class='nf-center c002'> - <div><em>In New York Harbor</em></div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>O—eh—lee! La—la!</div> - <div class='line in2'>Donna! Donna!</div> - <div class='line'>Blue is the sky of Palermo;</div> - <div class='line'>Blue is the little bay;</div> - <div class='line'>And dost thou remember the orange and fig,</div> - <div class='line'>The lively sun and the sea breeze at evening?</div> - <div class='line in2'>Hey—la!</div> - <div class='line'>Donna! Donna! Maria!</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>O—eh—li! La—la!</div> - <div class='line in2'>Donna! Donna!</div> - <div class='line'>Gray is the sky of this land.</div> - <div class='line'>Gray and green is the water.</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_370'>370</span>I see no trees, dost thou? The wind</div> - <div class='line'>Is cold for the big woman there with the candle.</div> - <div class='line in2'>Hey—la!</div> - <div class='line'>Donna! Donna! Maria!</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>O—eh—li! O—la!</div> - <div class='line in2'>Donna! Donna!</div> - <div class='line'>I sang thee by the blue waters;</div> - <div class='line'>I sing thee here in the gray dawning.</div> - <div class='line'>Kiss, for I put down my guitar;</div> - <div class='line'>I’ll sing thee more songs after the landing.</div> - <div class='line in2'>O Jesu, I love thee!</div> - <div class='line'>Donna! Donna! Maria!</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>PEACE ON EARTH</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>The Archer is wake!</div> - <div class='line'>The Swan is flying!</div> - <div class='line'>Gold against blue</div> - <div class='line'>An Arrow is lying.</div> - <div class='line'>There is hunting in heaven—</div> - <div class='line'>Sleep safe till tomorrow.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>The Bears are abroad!</div> - <div class='line'>The Eagle is screaming!</div> - <div class='line'>Gold against blue</div> - <div class='line'>Their eyes are gleaming!</div> - <div class='line'>Sleep!</div> - <div class='line'>Sleep safe till tomorrow.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>The Sisters lie</div> - <div class='line'>With their arms intertwining;</div> - <div class='line'>Gold against blue</div> - <div class='line'>Their hair is shining!</div> - <div class='line'>The Serpent writhes!</div> - <div class='line'>Orion is listening!</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_371'>371</span>Gold against blue</div> - <div class='line'>His sword is glistening!</div> - <div class='line'>Sleep!</div> - <div class='line'>There is hunting in heaven—</div> - <div class='line'>Sleep safe till tomorrow.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>THE SHADOW</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Soft as the bed in the earth</div> - <div class='line'>Where a stone has lain—</div> - <div class='line'>So soft, so smooth and so cool,</div> - <div class='line'>Spring closes me in</div> - <div class='line'>With her arms and her hands.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Rich as the smell</div> - <div class='line'>Of new earth on a stone,</div> - <div class='line'>That has lain, breathing</div> - <div class='line'>The damp through its pores—</div> - <div class='line'>Spring closes me in</div> - <div class='line'>With her blossomy hair;</div> - <div class='line'>Brings dark to my eyes.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>METRIC FIGURE</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>There is a bird in the poplars—</div> - <div class='line'>It is the sun!</div> - <div class='line'>The leaves are little yellow fish</div> - <div class='line'>Swimming in the river;</div> - <div class='line'>The bird skims above them—</div> - <div class='line'>Day is on his wings.</div> - <div class='line'>Phoenix!</div> - <div class='line'>It is he that is making</div> - <div class='line'>The great gleam among the poplars.</div> - <div class='line'>It is his singing</div> - <div class='line'>Outshines the noise</div> - <div class='line'>Of leaves clashing in the wind.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_372'>372</span> - <h3 class='c014'>SUB TERRA</h3> -</div> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Where shall I find you—</div> - <div class='line'>You, my grotesque fellows</div> - <div class='line'>That I seek everywhere</div> - <div class='line'>To make up my band?</div> - <div class='line'>None, not one</div> - <div class='line'>With the earthy tastes I require:</div> - <div class='line'>The burrowing pride that rises</div> - <div class='line'>Subtly as on a bush in May.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Where are you this day—</div> - <div class='line'>You, my seven-year locusts</div> - <div class='line'>With cased wings?</div> - <div class='line'>Ah, my beauties, how I long!</div> - <div class='line'>That harvest</div> - <div class='line'>That shall be your advent—</div> - <div class='line'>Thrusting up through the grass,</div> - <div class='line'>Up under the weeds,</div> - <div class='line'>Answering me—</div> - <div class='line'>That shall be satisfying!</div> - <div class='line'>The light shall leap and snap</div> - <div class='line'>That day as with a million lashes!</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Oh, I have you!</div> - <div class='line'>Yes, you are about me in a sense,</div> - <div class='line'>Playing under the blue pools</div> - <div class='line'>That are my windows.</div> - <div class='line'>But they shut you out still</div> - <div class='line'>There in the half light—</div> - <div class='line'>For the simple truth is</div> - <div class='line'>That though I see you clear enough ...</div> - <div class='line'>You are not there.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>It is not that—it is you,</div> - <div class='line'>You I want, my companions!</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_373'>373</span>God! if I could only fathom</div> - <div class='line'>The guts of shadows!—</div> - <div class='line'>You to come with me</div> - <div class='line'>Poking into negro houses</div> - <div class='line'>With their gloom and smell!</div> - <div class='line'>In among children</div> - <div class='line'>Leaping around a dead dog!</div> - <div class='line'>Mimicking</div> - <div class='line'>Onto the lawns of the rich!</div> - <div class='line'>You!</div> - <div class='line'>To go with me a-tip-toe</div> - <div class='line'>Head down under heaven,</div> - <div class='line'>Nostrils lipping the wind!</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>SLOW MOVEMENT</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>All those treasures that lie in the little bolted box whose tiny space is</div> - <div class='line'>Mightier than the room of the stars, being secret and filled with dreams:</div> - <div class='line'>All those treasures—I hold them in my hand—are straining continually</div> - <div class='line'>Against the sides and the lid and the two ends of the little box in which I guard them;</div> - <div class='line'>Crying that there is no sun come among them this great while and that they weary of shining;</div> - <div class='line'>Calling me to fold back the lid of the little box and to give them sleep finally.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>But the night I am hiding from them, dear friend, is far more desperate than their night!</div> - <div class='line'>And so I take pity on them and pretend to have lost the key to the little house of my treasures;</div> - <div class='line'>For they would die of weariness were I to open it, and not be merely faint and sleepy</div> - <div class='line'>As they are now.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_374'>374</span> - <h3 class='c014'>POSTLUDE</h3> -</div> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Now that I have cooled to you</div> - <div class='line'>Let there be gold of tarnished masonry,</div> - <div class='line'>Temples soothed by the sun to ruin</div> - <div class='line'>That sleep utterly.</div> - <div class='line'>Give me hand for the dances,</div> - <div class='line'>Ripples at Philae, in and out,</div> - <div class='line'>And lips, my Lesbian,</div> - <div class='line'>Wall flowers that once were flame.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Your hair is my Carthage</div> - <div class='line'>And my arms the bow,</div> - <div class='line'>And our words arrows</div> - <div class='line'>To shoot the stars</div> - <div class='line'>Who from that misty sea</div> - <div class='line'>Swarm to destroy us.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>But you there beside me—</div> - <div class='line'>Oh, how shall I defy you,</div> - <div class='line'>Who wound me in the night</div> - <div class='line'>With breasts shining</div> - <div class='line'>Like Venus and like Mars?</div> - <div class='line'>The night that is shouting Jason</div> - <div class='line'>When the loud eaves rattle</div> - <div class='line'>As with waves above me</div> - <div class='line'>Blue at the prow of my desire.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='chapter'> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_375'>375</span> - <h2 class='c005'>Charles Erskine Scott Wood</h2> -</div> - -<h3 class='c013'>THE POET IN THE DESERT<br /> <em>Extracts from the Prologue</em></h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>I have come into the Desert because my soul is athirst as the Desert is athirst;</div> - <div class='line'>My soul which is the soul of all; universal, not different.</div> - <div class='line'>We are athirst for the waters which make beautiful the path</div> - <div class='line'>And entice the grass, the willows and poplars,</div> - <div class='line'>So that in the heat of the day we may lie in a cool shadow,</div> - <div class='line'>Soothed as by the hands of quiet women, listening to the discourse of running waters as the voices of women, exchanging the confidences of love.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'> · · · · ·</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>The mountains afar girdle the Desert as a zone of amethyst;</div> - <div class='line'>Pale, translucent walls of opal,</div> - <div class='line'>Girdling the Desert as Life is girt by Eternity.</div> - <div class='line'>They lift their heads high above our tribulation</div> - <div class='line'>Into the azure vault of Time;</div> - <div class='line'>Theirs are the airy castles which are set upon foundations of sapphire.</div> - <div class='line'>My soul goes out to them as the bird to her secret nest.</div> - <div class='line'>They are the abode of peace.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'> · · · · ·</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>The flowers bloom in the Desert joyously—</div> - <div class='line'>They do not weary themselves with questioning;</div> - <div class='line'>They are careless whether they be seen, or praised.</div> - <div class='line'>They blossom unto life perfectly and unto death perfectly, leaving nothing unsaid.</div> - <div class='line'>They spread a voluptuous carpet for the feet of the Wind</div> - <div class='line'>And to the frolic Breezes which overleap them, they whisper:</div> - <div class='line'>“Stay a moment, Brother; plunder us of our passion;</div> - <div class='line'>Our day is short, but our beauty is eternal.”</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_376'>376</span>Never have I found a place, or a season, without beauty.</div> - <div class='line'>Neither the sea, where the white stallions champ their bits and rear against their bridles,</div> - <div class='line'>Nor the Desert, bride of the Sun, which sits scornful, apart,</div> - <div class='line'>Like an unwooed princess, careless, indifferent.</div> - <div class='line'>She spreads her garments, wonderful beyond estimation,</div> - <div class='line'>And embroiders continually her mantle.</div> - <div class='line'>She is a queen, seated on a throne of gold</div> - <div class='line'>In the Hall of Silence.</div> - <div class='line'>She insists upon humility.</div> - <div class='line'>She insists upon meditation.</div> - <div class='line'>She insists that the soul be free.</div> - <div class='line'>She requires an answer.</div> - <div class='line'>She demands the final reply to thoughts which cannot be answered.</div> - <div class='line'>She lights the sun for a torch</div> - <div class='line'>And sets up the great cliffs as sentinels:</div> - <div class='line'>The morning and the evening are curtains before her chambers.</div> - <div class='line'>She displays the stars as her coronet.</div> - <div class='line'>She is cruel and invites victims,</div> - <div class='line'>Restlessly moving her wrists and ankles,</div> - <div class='line'>Which are loaded with sapphires.</div> - <div class='line'>Her brown breasts flash with opals.</div> - <div class='line'>She slays those who fear her,</div> - <div class='line'>But runs her hand lovingly over the brow of those who know her,</div> - <div class='line'>Soothing with a voluptuous caress.</div> - <div class='line'>She is a courtesan, wearing jewels,</div> - <div class='line'>Enticing, smiling a bold smile;</div> - <div class='line'>Adjusting her brilliant raiment negligently,</div> - <div class='line'>Lying brooding upon her floor which is richly carpeted;</div> - <div class='line'>Her brown thighs beautiful and naked.</div> - <div class='line'>She toys with the dazzelry of her diadems,</div> - <div class='line'>Smiling inscrutably.</div> - <div class='line'>She is a nun, withdrawing behind her veil;</div> - <div class='line'>Gray, subdued, silent, mysterious, meditative; unapproachable.</div> - <div class='line'>She is fair as a goddess sitting beneath a flowering peach-tree, beside a clear river.</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_377'>377</span>Her body is tawny with the eagerness of the Sun</div> - <div class='line'>And her eyes are like pools which shine in deep cañons.</div> - <div class='line'>She is beautiful as a swart woman, with opals at her throat,</div> - <div class='line'>Rubies on her wrists and topaz about her ankles.</div> - <div class='line'>Her breasts are like the evening and the day stars;</div> - <div class='line'>She sits upon her throne of light, proud and silent, indifferent to her wooers.</div> - <div class='line'>The Sun is her servitor, the Stars are her attendants, running before her.</div> - <div class='line'>She sings a song unto her own ears, solitary, but it is sufficient—</div> - <div class='line'>It is the song of her being. Oh, if I may sing the song of my being it will be sufficient.</div> - <div class='line'>She is like a jeweled dancer, dancing upon a pavement of gold;</div> - <div class='line'>Dazzling, so that the eyes must be shaded.</div> - <div class='line'>She wears the stars upon her bosom and braids her hair with the constellations.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>I know the Desert is beautiful, for I have lain in her arms and she has kissed me.</div> - <div class='line'>I have come to her, that I may know freedom;</div> - <div class='line'>That I may lie upon the breast of the Mother and breathe the air of primal conditions.</div> - <div class='line'>I have come out from the haunts of men;</div> - <div class='line'>From the struggle of wolves upon a carcass,</div> - <div class='line'>To be melted in Creation’s crucible and be made clean;</div> - <div class='line'>To know that the law of Nature is freedom.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='chapter'> - <h2 class='c005'>Edith Wyatt</h2> -</div> - -<h3 class='c013'>ON THE GREAT PLATEAU</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>In the Santa Clara Valley, far away and far away,</div> - <div class='line'>Cool-breathed waters dip and dally, linger towards another day—</div> - <div class='line'>Far and far away—far away.</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_378'>378</span>Slow their floating step, but tireless, terraced down the great Plateau.</div> - <div class='line'>Towards our ways of steam and wireless, silver-paced the brookbeds go.</div> - <div class='line'>Past the ladder-walled Pueblos, past the orchards, pear and quince,</div> - <div class='line'>Where the back-locked river’s ebb flows, miles and miles the valley glints,</div> - <div class='line'>Shining backwards, singing downwards, towards horizons blue and bay.</div> - <div class='line'>All the roofs the roads ensconce so dream of visions far away—</div> - <div class='line'>Santa Cruz and Ildefonso, Santa Clara, Santa Fé.</div> - <div class='line'>Ancient, sacred fears and faiths, ancient, sacred faiths and fears—</div> - <div class='line'>Some were real, some were wraiths—Indian, Franciscan years,</div> - <div class='line'>Built the Khivas, swung the bells; while the wind sang plain and free,</div> - <div class='line'>“Turn your eyes from visioned hells!—look as far as you can see!”</div> - <div class='line'>In the Santa Clara Valley, far away and far away,</div> - <div class='line'>Dying dreams divide and dally, crystal-terraced waters sally—</div> - <div class='line'>Linger towards another day, far and far away—far away.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>As you follow where you find them, up along the high Plateau,</div> - <div class='line'>In the hollows left behind them Spanish chapels fade below—</div> - <div class='line'>Shaded court and low corrals. In the vale the goat-herd browses.</div> - <div class='line'>Hollyhocks are seneschals by the little buff-walled houses.</div> - <div class='line'>Over grassy swale and alley have you ever seen it so—</div> - <div class='line'>Up the Santa Clara Valley, riding on the Great Plateau?</div> - <div class='line'>Past the ladder-walled Pueblos, past the orchards, pear and quince,</div> - <div class='line'>Where the trenchèd waters’ ebb flows, miles and miles the valley glints,</div> - <div class='line'>Shining backwards, singing downwards towards horizons blue and bay.</div> - <div class='line'>All the haunts the bluffs ensconce so breathe of visions far away,</div> - <div class='line'>As you ride near Ildefonso back again to Santa Fé.</div> - <div class='line'>Pecos, mellow with the years, tall-walled Taos—who can know</div> - <div class='line'>Half the storied faiths and fears haunting green New Mexico?</div> - <div class='line'>Only from her open places down arroyos blue and bay,</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_379'>379</span>One wild grace of many graces dallies towards another day.</div> - <div class='line'>Where her yellow tufa crumbles, something stars and grasses know,</div> - <div class='line'>Something true, that crowns and humbles, shimmers from the Great Plateau:</div> - <div class='line'>Blows where cool-paced waters dally from the stillness of Puyé,</div> - <div class='line'>Down the Santa Clara Valley through the world from far away—</div> - <div class='line'>Far and far away—far away.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>SUMMER HAIL</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Once the heavens’ gabled door</div> - <div class='line'>Opened: down a stabled floor,</div> - <div class='line'>Down the thunders, something galloped far and wide,</div> - <div class='line'>Glancing far and fleet</div> - <div class='line'>Down the silver street—</div> - <div class='line'>And I knew of nothing, nothing else beside.</div> - <div class='line in14'><em>Pitty patty polt—</em></div> - <div class='line in14'><em>Shoe the wild colt!</em></div> - <div class='line in14'><em>Here a nail! There a nail!</em></div> - <div class='line in14'><em>Pitty patty polt!</em></div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Good and badness, die away.</div> - <div class='line'>Strength and swiftness down the day,</div> - <div class='line'>Dapple happy down my glancing silver street!</div> - <div class='line'>Oh, the touch of summer cold!—</div> - <div class='line'>Beauty swinging quick and bold,</div> - <div class='line'>Dipping, dappling where the distant roof-tops meet!</div> - <div class='line in14'><em>Pitty patty polt—</em></div> - <div class='line in14'><em>Shoe the wild colt!</em></div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Listen, dusty care:</div> - <div class='line'>Through a magic air,</div> - <div class='line'>Once I watched the way of perfect splendor ride,</div> - <div class='line'>Swishing far and gray,</div> - <div class='line'>Buoyant and gay—</div> - <div class='line'>And I knew of nothing, nothing else beside.</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_380'>380</span>Good and badness, go your ways,</div> - <div class='line'>Vanish far and fleet.</div> - <div class='line'>Strength and swiftness run my days,</div> - <div class='line'>Down my silver street.</div> - <div class='line'>Little care, forevermore</div> - <div class='line'>Be you lesser than before.</div> - <div class='line'>Mighty frozen rain,</div> - <div class='line'>Come! oh, come again!</div> - <div class='line'>Let the heavens’ door be rended</div> - <div class='line'>With the touch of summer cold—</div> - <div class='line'>Dappling hoof-beats clatter splendid,</div> - <div class='line'>Infinitely gay and bold!</div> - <div class='line in14'><em>Pitty patty polt—</em></div> - <div class='line in14'><em>Shoe the wild colt!</em></div> - <div class='line in14'><em>Here a nail and there a nail!</em></div> - <div class='line in14'><em>Pitty patty polt!</em></div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Once the heavens’ gabled door</div> - <div class='line'>Opened: down the stabled floor,</div> - <div class='line'>Down the thunders something galloped wide and far;</div> - <div class='line'>Something dappled far and fleet,</div> - <div class='line'>Glancing down my silver street,</div> - <div class='line'>And I saw the ways of life just as they are.</div> - <div class='line in14'><em>Pitty patty polt—</em></div> - <div class='line in14'><em>Shoe the wild colt!</em></div> - <div class='line in14'><em>Here a nail! There a nail!</em></div> - <div class='line in14'><em>Pitty patty polt!</em></div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<h3 class='c014'>TO F. W.</h3> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>You are my companion</div> - <div class='line'>Down the silver road,</div> - <div class='line'>Still and many-changing,</div> - <div class='line'>Infinitely changing.</div> - <div class='line'>You are my companion.</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_381'>381</span>Something sings in lives—</div> - <div class='line'>Days of walking on and on,</div> - <div class='line'>Deep beyond all singing,</div> - <div class='line'>Wonderful past singing.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Wonderful our road,</div> - <div class='line'>Long and many-changing,</div> - <div class='line'>Infinitely changing.</div> - <div class='line'>This, more wonderful—</div> - <div class='line'>We are here together,</div> - <div class='line'>You and I together,</div> - <div class='line'>I am your companion;</div> - <div class='line'>You are my companion,</div> - <div class='line'>My own, true companion.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Let the road-side fade:</div> - <div class='line'>Morning on the mountain-top,</div> - <div class='line'>Hours along the valley,</div> - <div class='line'>Days of walking on and on,</div> - <div class='line'>Pulse away in silence,</div> - <div class='line'>In eternal silence.</div> - <div class='line'>Let the world all fade,</div> - <div class='line'>Break and pass away.</div> - <div class='line'>Yet will this remain,</div> - <div class='line'>Deep beyond all singing,</div> - <div class='line'>My own true companion,</div> - <div class='line'>Beautiful past singing:</div> - <div class='line'>We were here together—</div> - <div class='line'>On this earth together;</div> - <div class='line'>I was your companion,</div> - <div class='line'>You were my companion,</div> - <div class='line'>My own true companion.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_382'>382</span> - <h3 class='c014'>A CITY AFTERNOON</h3> -</div> - -<div class='lg-container-b c008'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>Green afternoon serene and bright, along my street you sail away</div> - <div class='line'>Sun-dappled like a ship of light that glints upon a rippled bay.</div> - <div class='line'>Afar, freight-engines call and toll; the sprays flash on the fragrant grass;</div> - <div class='line'>The children and the nurses stroll; the charging motors plunge and pass.</div> - <div class='line'>Invisibly the shadows grow, empurpling in a rising tide</div> - <div class='line'>The walks where light-gowned women go, white curb, gray asphalt iris-dyed.</div> - <div class='line'>A jolting trolley shrills afar; nasturtiums blow, and ivy vines;</div> - <div class='line'>Wet scents of turf and black-smoothed tar float down the rooftrees’ vergent lines.</div> - <div class='line'>Where will you go, my afternoon, that glints so still and swift away,</div> - <div class='line'>Blue-shaded like a ship of light bound outward from a wimpled bay?</div> - <div class='line'>Oh—thrilling, pulsing, dark and bright, shall you, your work, your pain, your mirth,</div> - <div class='line'>Fly into the immortal night and silence of our mother earth?</div> - <div class='line'>She bore all Eden’s green and dew, and Persia’s scented wine and rose,</div> - <div class='line'>And, flowering white against the blue, acanthus leaf and marbled pose.</div> - <div class='line'>And deep the Maenad’s choric dance, Crusader’s cross, and heathen crest</div> - <div class='line'>Lie sunk with rose and song and lance all veiled and vanished in her breast.</div> - </div> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>And all those afternoons once danced and sparkled in the sapphire light</div> - <div class='line'>And iris shade as you have glanced, green afternoon, in vibrant flight.</div> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_383'>383</span>As, down dim vistas, echoing, dead afternoons entreat our days,</div> - <div class='line'>What breath of beauty will you sing to souls unseen and unknown ways?</div> - <div class='line'>How close and how unanswering, green afternoon, you pulse away,</div> - <div class='line'>So little and so great a thing—deep towards the bourne of every day.</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='chapter'> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_385'>385</span> - <h2 class='c005'>BIBLIOGRAPHY</h2> -</div> -<p class='c006'>The editors desire to express their thanks to the poets represented -in this anthology; also to the publishers of books marked with an asterisk -(*), and to the editors and publishers of magazines listed below, -for their very kind permission to use the poems here reprinted.</p> - -<p class='c007'>The endeavor has been to list below all the books of verse, or books -about poetry, thus far printed by the poets quoted in this anthology: -and then to refer the reader to magazines which first published the -quoted poems, and to some of the anthologies which have included them. -It has been impossible, however, to note in every case the magazine in -which a poem was first printed, the records not being included in the -volumes from which they are taken; but we have tried to credit especially -certain periodicals which make a specialty of this subject.</p> - -<p class='c007'>A recent revision of the bibliography, for the ninth edition, enables -the editors to include all titles of books published up to Oct. 1st, 1919.</p> - -<table class='table0' summary=''> - <tr><td class='c018' colspan='2'>CONRAD AIKEN</td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Earth Triumphant</td> - <td class='c019'>Macmillan Co., New York: 1914</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>* Turns and Movies</td> - <td class='c019'>Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston: 1916</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>The Jig of Forslin</td> - <td class='c019'>Four Seas Co., Boston: 1916</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Nocturne of Remembered Spring</td> - <td class='c019'>Four Seas Co.: 1917</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>The Charnel Rose: Senlin, a Biography</td> - <td class='c019'>Four Seas Co.: 1918</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In <cite>Poetry</cite>: Sept., 1915 (Vol. VI).</td> - <td class='c019'> </td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td class='c018' colspan='2'>ZOË AKINS</td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>* Interpretations</td> - <td class='c019'>Grant Richards, London: 1912</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>* Interpretations</td> - <td class='c019'>Mitchell Kennerley, New York: 1914</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In <cite>Poetry</cite>: Jan., 1915 (Vol. V).</td> - <td class='c019'> </td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td class='c018' colspan='2'>RICHARD ALDINGTON</td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>* Images, Old and New</td> - <td class='c019'>Poetry Bookshop, London: 1915</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>* Images, Old and New</td> - <td class='c019'>Four Seas Co., Boston: 1916</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Reverie (ed. of 50)</td> - <td class='c019'>Clerk’s Press, Cleveland: 1917</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_386'>386</span>War and Love</td> - <td class='c019'>Four Seas Co.: 1919</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Images of War</td> - <td class='c019'>Beaumont Press, London: 1919</td> - </tr> - <tr><td class='c018' colspan='2'>In <cite>Poetry</cite>: Jan., 1914 (Vol. III); Oct., 1915 (Vol. VII); Oct., 1912 (Vol. I).</td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In <cite>Some Imagist Poets</cite>: I-II</td> - <td class='c019'>Houghton Mifflin Co.: 1915, 1916</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In <cite><span lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Des Imagistes</span></cite></td> - <td class='c019'>Albert & Chas. Boni, New York: 1914</td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td class='c018' colspan='2'>MARY ALDIS</td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>* Flashlights</td> - <td class='c019'>Duffield & Co., New York: 1916</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In <cite>Others: An Anthology of the New Verse</cite></td> - <td class='c019'>Alf. A. Knopf, N.Y.: 1916</td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td class='c018' colspan='2'>WALTER CONRAD ARENSBERG</td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Poems</td> - <td class='c019'>Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston: 1914</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>* Idols</td> - <td class='c019'>Houghton Mifflin Co.: 1916</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In <cite>Others: An Anthology of the New Verse</cite></td> - <td class='c019'>Alf. A. Knopf, N. Y.: 1916</td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td class='c018' colspan='2'>WILTON AGNEW BARRETT</td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In <cite>Poetry</cite>: Oct., 1915 (Vol. VII).</td> - <td class='c019'> </td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td class='c018' colspan='2'>JOSEPH WARREN BEACH</td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Sonnets of the Head and Heart</td> - <td class='c019'>Richard G. Badger, Boston: 1903</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In <cite>Poetry</cite>: May, 1915 (Vol. VI).</td> - <td class='c019'> </td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td class='c018' colspan='2'>WILLIAM ROSE BENÉT</td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Merchants from Cathay</td> - <td class='c019'>Century Co., New York: 1913</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>* The Falconer of God</td> - <td class='c019'>Yale Univ. Press, New Haven, Conn.: 1914</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>The Great White Wall</td> - <td class='c019'>Yale Univ. Press: 1916</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>The Burglar of the Zodiac</td> - <td class='c019'>Yale Univ. Press: 1918</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In <cite>Poetry</cite>: June, 1914 (Vol. IV); April, 1916 (Vol. VIII).</td> - <td class='c019'> </td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td class='c018' colspan='2'>MAXWELL BODENHEIM</td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Minna and Myself</td> - <td class='c019'>Pagan Pub. Co., New York: 1918</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In <cite>Poetry</cite>: Aug., 1914 (Vol. IV).</td> - <td class='c019'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In <cite>Others</cite>: Sept., 1915 (Vol. I).</td> - <td class='c019'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In <cite>Others: An Anthology of the New Verse</cite></td> - <td class='c019'>Alf. A. Knopf, N. Y.: 1916</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In <cite>Catholic Anthology</cite></td> - <td class='c019'>Elkin Mathews, London: 1915</td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td class='c018' colspan='2'><span class='pageno' id='Page_387'>387</span>GORDON BOTTOMLEY</td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>* Chambers of Imagery: Series I-II</td> - <td class='c019'>Elkin Mathews, London: 1912</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Laodice and Danaë</td> - <td class='c019'>Four Seas Co., Boston: 1916</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In <cite>Georgian Poetry</cite>: I-II</td> - <td class='c019'>Poetry Bookshop, London: 1912, 1915</td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td class='c018' colspan='2'>ROLLO BRITTEN</td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In <cite>Poetry</cite>: June, 1913 (Vol. III).</td> - <td class='c019'> </td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td class='c018' colspan='2'>RUPERT BROOKE</td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>* The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke</td> - <td class='c019'>John Lane Co., London and N. Y.: 1915</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Selected Poems</td> - <td class='c019'>Sidgwick & Jackson, London: 1917</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Rupert Brooke, a Memoir, by Edward Marsh</td> - <td class='c019'>John Lane Co.: 1918</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In <cite>Poetry</cite>: Oct., 1914 (Vol. V); April, 1915 (Vol. VI).</td> - <td class='c019'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In <cite>New Numbers</cite></td> - <td class='c019'>Privately printed, London: 1914–1915</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In <cite>Georgian Poetry</cite>: I-II</td> - <td class='c019'>Poetry Bookshop, London: 1912, 1915</td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td class='c018' colspan='2'>WITTER BYNNER</td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>An Ode to Harvard and Other Poems</td> - <td class='c019'>Small, Maynard & Co.: 1907</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Tiger</td> - <td class='c019'>Mitchell Kennerley, New York: 1913</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>The Little King</td> - <td class='c019'>Mitchell Kennerley: 1914</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>* The New World</td> - <td class='c019'>Mitchell Kennerley: 1915</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Iphigenia in Tauris</td> - <td class='c019'>Mitchell Kennerley: 1916</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Grenstone Poems</td> - <td class='c019'>Fred. A. Stokes Co.: 1917</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>A Canticle of Praise (Ltd. ed.)</td> - <td class='c019'>Privately printed by John Henry Nash, San Francisco: 1919</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>The Beloved Stranger</td> - <td class='c019'>Alf. A. Knopf, N. Y.: 1919</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In <cite>Poetry</cite>: April, 1914 (Vol. IV); Feb., 1913 (Vol. I).</td> - <td class='c019'> </td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td class='c018' colspan='2'>JOSEPH CAMPBELL (Seosamh MacCathmhaoil)</td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>The Garden of the Bees</td> - <td class='c019'>Erskine Mayne, Belfast: 1905</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>The Rushlight</td> - <td class='c019'>Maunsel & Co., Ltd., Dublin: 1906</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>The Gilly of Christ</td> - <td class='c019'>Maunsel & Co., Ltd.: 1907</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>The Man-Child</td> - <td class='c019'>Loch Press, London: 1907</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>The Mountainy Singer</td> - <td class='c019'>Maunsel & Co., Ltd.: 1909</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Mearing Stones</td> - <td class='c019'>Maunsel & Co., Ltd.: 1911</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Judgment: a Play</td> - <td class='c019'>Maunsel & Co., Ltd.: 1912</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_388'>388</span>*Irishy</td> - <td class='c019'>Maunsel & Co., Ltd.: 1913</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Earth of Cualann</td> - <td class='c019'>Maunsel & Co., Ltd.: 1917</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>The Mountainy Singer</td> - <td class='c019'>Four Seas Co., Boston: 1919</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In <cite>Poetry</cite>: March, 1916 (Vol. VII).</td> - <td class='c019'> </td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td class='c018' colspan='2'>NANCY CAMPBELL</td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>The Little People</td> - <td class='c019'>Arthur Humphreys, London: 1910</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Agnus Dei</td> - <td class='c019'>Maunsel & Co., Ltd., Dublin: 1912</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In <cite>Poetry</cite>: Aug., 1915 (Vol. VI).</td> - <td class='c019'> </td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td class='c018' colspan='2'>SKIPWITH CANNÉLL</td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In <cite>Poetry</cite>: Sept., 1914 (Vol. IV).</td> - <td class='c019'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In <cite>Others: An Anthology of the New Verse</cite></td> - <td class='c019'>Alf. A. Knopf, N. Y.: 1916</td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td class='c018' colspan='2'>WILLA SIBERT CATHER</td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>April Twilights</td> - <td class='c019'>Richard G. Badger, Boston: 1903</td> - </tr> - <tr><td class='c018' colspan='2'>In <cite>McClure’s Magazine</cite>: June, 1909 (Vol. XXXIII); June, 1912 (Vol. XXXIX).</td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td class='c018' colspan='2'>PADRAIC COLUM</td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>* Wild Earth</td> - <td class='c019'>Maunsel & Co., Ltd., Dublin: 1910 (<em>cir.</em>)</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>* Wild Earth and Other Poems</td> - <td class='c019'>Henry Holt & Co., New York: 1916</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In <cite>Poetry</cite>: July, 1915 (Vol. VI); March, 1914 (Vol. III).</td> - <td class='c019'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In <cite>Others</cite>: Dec., 1915 (Vol. I).</td> - <td class='c019'> </td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td class='c018' colspan='2'>GRACE HAZARD CONKLING</td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>* Afternoons of April</td> - <td class='c019'>Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston: 1915</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In <cite>Poetry</cite>: Nov., 1915 (Vol. VII).</td> - <td class='c019'> </td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td class='c018' colspan='2'>ALICE CORBIN (Mrs. Wm. P. Henderson)</td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>* The Spinning Woman of the Sky</td> - <td class='c019'>Ralph Fletcher Seymour, Chicago: 1912</td> - </tr> - <tr><td class='c018' colspan='2'>In <cite>Poetry</cite>: Dec., 1914 (Vol. V); Jan., 1916 (Vol. VII); Dec., 1912 (Vol. I).</td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In <cite>Catholic Anthology</cite></td> - <td class='c019'>Elkin Mathews, London: 1915</td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td class='c018' colspan='2'><span class='pageno' id='Page_389'>389</span>ADELAIDE CRAPSEY</td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>* Verse</td> - <td class='c019'>The Manas Press, Rochester, N. Y.: 1915</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>A Study in English Metrics</td> - <td class='c019'>Alf. A. Knopf, New York: 1918</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In <cite>Others</cite>: March, 1916 (Vol. II).</td> - <td class='c019'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In <cite>Others: An Anthology of the New Verse</cite></td> - <td class='c019'>Alf. A. Knopf, N. Y.: 1916</td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td class='c018' colspan='2'>H. D. (Mrs. Richard Aldington)</td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>* Sea-garden: Imagist Poems</td> - <td class='c019'>Constable & Co., Ltd., London; Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston: 1916</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In <cite>Poetry</cite>: Jan., 1913 (Vol. I); March, 1915 (Vol. V).</td> - <td class='c019'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In <cite><span lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Des Imagistes</span></cite></td> - <td class='c019'>Albert & Chas. Boni, New York: 1914</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In <cite>Some Imagist Poets</cite>: I-II</td> - <td class='c019'>Houghton Mifflin Co.: 1915, 1916</td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td class='c018' colspan='2'>MARY CAROLYN DAVIES</td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Songs</td> - <td class='c019'>Univ. of Cal. Press, Berkeley, Cal.: 1914 (<em>cir.</em>)</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>The Drums in our Street</td> - <td class='c019'>Macmillan Co.: 1918</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>The Slave with Two Faces (a play)</td> - <td class='c019'>Egmont Arens, New York: 1918</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>A Little Freckled Person (child verse)</td> - <td class='c019'>Houghton Mifflin Co.: 1919</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Youth Riding</td> - <td class='c019'>Macmillan Co.: 1919</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In <cite>Others</cite>: July, 1915 (Vol. II).</td> - <td class='c019'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In <cite>Others: An Anthology of the New Verse</cite></td> - <td class='c019'>Alf. A. Knopf, N. Y.: 1916</td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td class='c018' colspan='2'>FANNIE STEARNS DAVIS (Mrs. Augustus McK. Gifford)</td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Myself and I</td> - <td class='c019'>Macmillan Co., New York: 1914</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Crack O’Dawn</td> - <td class='c019'>Macmillan Co.: 1915</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In <cite>Poetry</cite>: March, 1913 (Vol. I).</td> - <td class='c019'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In <cite>Atlantic Monthly</cite>: Jan., 1913 (Vol. CXI).</td> - <td class='c019'> </td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td class='c018' colspan='2'>WALTER DE LA MARE</td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Songs of Childhood</td> - <td class='c019'>Longmans, Green & Co., London: 1902, 1916</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Poems</td> - <td class='c019'>John Murray, London: 1906</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>A Child’s Day</td> - <td class='c019'>Constable & Co., Ltd., London: 1912</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Peacock Pie</td> - <td class='c019'>Constable & Co., Ltd.: 1913</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>* The Listeners</td> - <td class='c019'>Constable & Co., Ltd.: 1912</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>* The Listeners</td> - <td class='c019'>Henry Holt & Co., New York: 1915</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_390'>390</span>The Sunken Garden and Other Poems (Ltd. ed.)</td> - <td class='c019'>Beaumont Press, London: 1917</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Peacock Pie</td> - <td class='c019'>Henry Holt & Co.: 1917</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Motley and Other Poems</td> - <td class='c019'>Henry Holt & Co.: 1918</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In <cite>Georgian Poetry</cite>: I-II</td> - <td class='c019'>Poetry Bookshop, London: 1912, 1915</td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td class='c018' colspan='2'>LEE WILSON DODD</td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>A Modern Alchemist</td> - <td class='c019'>Richard G. Badger, Boston: 1906</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>* The Middle Miles</td> - <td class='c019'>Yale Univ. Press, New Haven, Conn.: 1915</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In <cite>Poetry</cite>: Jan., 1915 (Vol. V).</td> - <td class='c019'> </td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td class='c018' colspan='2'>JOHN DRINKWATER</td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Cophetua</td> - <td class='c019'>David Nutt, London: 1912</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Rebellion</td> - <td class='c019'>David Nutt: 1914</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>* Swords and Ploughshares</td> - <td class='c019'>Sidgwick & Jackson, London: 1915</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Olton Pools</td> - <td class='c019'>Sidgwick & Jackson: 1916</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Poems: 1908–1914</td> - <td class='c019'>Sidgwick & Jackson: 1917</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Pawns: Three Poetic Plays</td> - <td class='c019'>Sidgwick & Jackson: 1917</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Tides</td> - <td class='c019'>Sidgwick & Jackson: 1917</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Loyalties</td> - <td class='c019'>Sidgwick & Jackson: 1919</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In <cite>Poetry</cite>: Dec., 1915 (Vol. VII).</td> - <td class='c019'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In <cite>Georgian Poetry</cite>: I-II</td> - <td class='c019'>Poetry Bookshop, London: 1912, 1915</td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td class='c018' colspan='2'>LOUISE DRISCOLL</td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In <cite>Poetry</cite>: Nov., 1914 (Vol. V).</td> - <td class='c019'> </td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td class='c018' colspan='2'>DOROTHY DUDLEY (Mrs. Henry B. Harvey)</td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In <cite>Poetry</cite>: June, 1915 (Vol. VI).</td> - <td class='c019'> </td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td class='c018' colspan='2'>HELEN DUDLEY</td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In <cite>Poetry</cite>: Oct., 1912 (Vol. I), Aug., 1914 (Vol. IV).</td> - <td class='c019'> </td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td class='c018' colspan='2'>MAX EASTMAN</td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>* Child of the Amazons and Other Poems</td> - <td class='c019'>Mitchell Kennerley: 1913</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Colors of Life</td> - <td class='c019'>Alf. A. Knopf, New York: 1918</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>The Enjoyment of Poetry</td> - <td class='c019'>Chas. Scribner’s Sons, New York: 1913</td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td class='c018' colspan='2'><span class='pageno' id='Page_391'>391</span>T. S. ELIOT</td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Prufrock and Other Observations</td> - <td class='c019'>The Egoist, Ltd., London: 1917</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Ezra Pound, his Metric and Poetry</td> - <td class='c019'>Alf. A. Knopf, New York: 1917</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In <cite>Others</cite>: Sept., 1915 (Vol. I).</td> - <td class='c019'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In <cite>Others: An Anthology of the New Verse</cite></td> - <td class='c019'>Alf. A. Knopf, N. Y.: 1916</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In <cite>Catholic Anthology</cite></td> - <td class='c019'>Elkin Mathews, London: 1915</td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td class='c018' colspan='2'>ARTHUR DAVISON FICKE</td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>From the Isles</td> - <td class='c019'>Samurai Press, Cranleigh and London: 1907</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>The Happy Princess and Other Poems</td> - <td class='c019'>Small, Maynard & Co.: 1907</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>The Earth Passion</td> - <td class='c019'>Samurai Press: 1908</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>The Breaking of Bonds</td> - <td class='c019'>Mitchell Kennerley, New York: 1910</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Twelve Japanese Painters</td> - <td class='c019'>Ralph Fletcher Seymour Co., Chicago: 1913</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Mr. Faust</td> - <td class='c019'>Mitchell Kennerley: 1913</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>* Sonnets of a Portrait Painter</td> - <td class='c019'>Mitchell Kennerley: 1914</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>* The Man on the Hilltop</td> - <td class='c019'>Mitchell Kennerley: 1915</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>An April Elegy</td> - <td class='c019'>Mitchell Kennerley: 1917</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In <cite>Poetry</cite>: March, 1915 (Vol. V); Feb., 1913 (Vol. I).</td> - <td class='c019'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In <cite>The Forum</cite>: Aug., 1914 (Vol. LII).</td> - <td class='c019'> </td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td class='c018' colspan='2'>JOHN GOULD FLETCHER</td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Fire and Wine</td> - <td class='c019'>Grant Richards, London: 1913</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Fool’s Gold</td> - <td class='c019'>Max Goschen, Ltd., London: 1913</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>The Dominant City</td> - <td class='c019'>Max Goschen, Ltd.: 1913</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>The Book of Nature</td> - <td class='c019'>Constable & Co., Ltd., London: 1913</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Visions of the Evening</td> - <td class='c019'>Erskine McDonald, London: 1913</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>* Irradiations</td> - <td class='c019'>Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston: 1916</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>* Goblins and Pagodas</td> - <td class='c019'>Houghton Mifflin Co.: 1916</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>The Tree of Life</td> - <td class='c019'>Chatto & Windus, London: 1918</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Japanese Prints</td> - <td class='c019'>Four Seas Co., Boston: 1918</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In <cite>Poetry</cite>: Dec., 1913 (Vol. III); March, 1916 (Vol. VI); Sept., 1914 (Vol. IV).</td> - <td class='c019'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In <cite>Some Imagist Poets</cite>: I-II</td> - <td class='c019'>Houghton Mifflin Co.: 1915, 1916</td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td class='c018' colspan='2'>F. S. FLINT</td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In the Net of the Stars</td> - <td class='c019'>Elkin Mathews, London: 1909</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>* Cadences</td> - <td class='c019'>Poetry Bookshop, London: 1915</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>The Mosella of Decimus Magnus Ansonius</td> - <td class='c019'>The Egoist, London: 1916</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_392'>392</span>Philip II (translated from the French of Emile Verhaeren)</td> - <td class='c019'>Constable & Co., Ltd., London: 1916</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>The Love Poems of Emile Verhaeren (Translated from French)</td> - <td class='c019'>Constable & Co., Ltd.: 1916</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>The Closed Door (from French of Jean de Bosschère)</td> - <td class='c019'>John Lane Co., London & New York: 1917</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In <cite>Poetry</cite>: July, 1913 (Vol. II).</td> - <td class='c019'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In <cite><span lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Des Imagistes</span></cite></td> - <td class='c019'>Albert & Chas. Boni, New York: 1914</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In <cite>Some Imagist Poets</cite>: I-II</td> - <td class='c019'>Houghton Mifflin Co.: 1915, 1916</td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td class='c018' colspan='2'>MOIREEN FOX (Mrs. a Cheavasa)</td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Liadain and Curithir</td> - <td class='c019'>B. H. Blackwell, Oxford, Eng.: 1917</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Midyir and Etain</td> - <td class='c019'>Candle Press, Dublin: 1918</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In <cite>Poetry</cite>: March, 1915 (Vol. V).</td> - <td class='c019'> </td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td class='c018' colspan='2'>FLORENCE KIPER FRANK</td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Cinderelline</td> - <td class='c019'>Dramatic Publ. Co., Chicago: 1913</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>* The Jew to Jesus and Other Poems</td> - <td class='c019'>Mitchell Kennerley: 1915</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In <cite>Poetry</cite>: Nov., 1914 (Vol. V).</td> - <td class='c019'> </td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td class='c018' colspan='2'>ROBERT FROST</td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>* A Boy’s Will</td> - <td class='c019'>David Nutt, London: 1913</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>* A Boy’s Will</td> - <td class='c019'>Henry Holt & Co., New York: 1915</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>* North of Boston</td> - <td class='c019'>David Nutt, London: 1914</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>* North of Boston</td> - <td class='c019'>Henry Holt & Co., New York: 1915</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Mountain Interval</td> - <td class='c019'>Henry Holt & Co.: 1916</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In <cite>Poetry</cite>: Feb., 1914 (Vol. III).</td> - <td class='c019'> </td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td class='c018' colspan='2'>HAMLIN GARLAND</td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Prairie Songs</td> - <td class='c019'>Stone & Kimball, Chicago: 1893</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In <cite>Poetry</cite>: Nov. 1913 (Vol. III).</td> - <td class='c019'> </td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td class='c018' colspan='2'>WILFRID WILSON GIBSON</td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>The Golden Helm</td> - <td class='c019'>Elkin Mathews, London: 1903</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>The Nets of Love</td> - <td class='c019'>Elkin Mathews, London: 1905</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>On the Threshold</td> - <td class='c019'>Samurai Press, Cranleigh & London: 1907</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>The Stonefolds</td> - <td class='c019'>Samurai Press: 1907</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>The Web of Life</td> - <td class='c019'>Samurai Press: 1908</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_393'>393</span>Fires I-II</td> - <td class='c019'>Elkin Mathews, London: 1912</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Daily Bread</td> - <td class='c019'>Elkin Mathews, London: 1913</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Womenkind</td> - <td class='c019'>Adams & Black, London: 1913</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Womenkind</td> - <td class='c019'>Macmillan Co., New York: 1912</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>* Borderlands</td> - <td class='c019'>Elkin Mathews, London: 1914</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>* Thoroughfares</td> - <td class='c019'>Elkin Mathews, London: 1914</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>* Borderlands and Thoroughfares</td> - <td class='c019'>Macmillan Co., New York: 1914</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>* Battle and Other Poems</td> - <td class='c019'>Elkin Mathews, London; Macmillan Co., New York: 1916</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Daily Bread</td> - <td class='c019'>Macmillan Co., New York: 1916</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Fires</td> - <td class='c019'>Macmillan Co., New York: 1916</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Livelihood</td> - <td class='c019'>Macmillan Co., N. Y. & London: 1917</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Collected Works</td> - <td class='c019'>Macmillan Co., N. Y. & London: 1917</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Hill Tracks</td> - <td class='c019'>Macmillan Co., N. Y. & London: 1918</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In <cite>Poetry</cite>: March, 1916 (Vol. III); June, 1914 (Vol. IV); Aug., 1915 (Vol. VI).</td> - <td class='c019'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In <cite>Georgian Poetry</cite>: I-II</td> - <td class='c019'>Poetry Bookshop, London: 1912, 1915</td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td class='c018' colspan='2'>RICHARD BUTLER GLAENZER</td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Beggar and King</td> - <td class='c019'>Yale Univ. Press, New Haven, Conn.: 1917</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In <cite>Poetry</cite>: July, 1914 (Vol. IV).</td> - <td class='c019'> </td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td class='c018' colspan='2'>DOUGLAS GOLDRING</td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>A Country Boy</td> - <td class='c019'>Adelphi Press, London: 1910</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Streets</td> - <td class='c019'>Max Goschen, London: 1912</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In the Town</td> - <td class='c019'>Selwyn & Blount, London: 1916</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>*On the Road</td> - <td class='c019'>Selwyn & Blount, London: 1916</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In <cite>Poetry</cite>: May, 1915 (Vol. VI).</td> - <td class='c019'> </td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td class='c018' colspan='2'>HERMANN HAGEDORN</td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>The Silver Blade</td> - <td class='c019'>Alfred Unger, Berlin: 1907</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>The Woman of Corinth (out of print)</td> - <td class='c019'>Houghton Mifflin Co.: 1908</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>A Troop of the Guard and Other Poems (out of print)</td> - <td class='c019'>Houghton Mifflin Co.: 1909</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>* Poems and Ballads</td> - <td class='c019'>Macmillan Co., New York: 1909</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>The Great Maze and The Heart of Youth</td> - <td class='c019'>Macmillan Co.: 1916</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Hymn of Free Peoples Triumphant</td> - <td class='c019'>Macmillan Co.: 1918</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In <cite>Poetry</cite>: Sept., 1915 (Vol. VI).</td> - <td class='c019'> </td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td class='c018' colspan='2'><span class='pageno' id='Page_394'>394</span>THOMAS HARDY</td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Wessex Poems, and Other Verses</td> - <td class='c019'>Macmillan & Co., Ltd., London</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Wessex Poems, and Other Verses</td> - <td class='c019'>Harper & Bros., N. Y.: 1899</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Poems of the Past and the Present</td> - <td class='c019'>Macmillan & Co., Ltd., London</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Poems of the Past and the Present</td> - <td class='c019'>Harper & Bros., N. Y.: 1901</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>The Dynasts: a Drama in Three Parts</td> - <td class='c019'>Macmillan & Co.: 1904</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>The Dynasts: a Drama in Three Parts</td> - <td class='c019'>Macmillan Co., N. Y.: 1904</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>* Time’s Laughing-stocks</td> - <td class='c019'>Macmillan & Co., Ltd., London: 1909</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>* Satires of Circumstance</td> - <td class='c019'>Macmillan & Co., Ltd., London: 1914</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Selected Poems</td> - <td class='c019'>Macmillan & Co., Ltd., London: 1916</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Moments of Vision and Miscellaneous Verse</td> - <td class='c019'>Macmillan & Co., Ltd. 1917</td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td class='c018' colspan='2'>RALPH HODGSON</td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>* Eve</td> - <td class='c019'>Flying Fame, London: 1913</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>The Bull</td> - <td class='c019'>Flying Fame: 1913</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>* The Mystery</td> - <td class='c019'>Flying Fame: 1913</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>The Song of Honour (out of print)</td> - <td class='c019'>Flying Fame: 1913</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Seven Broadsides (Decorated by Lovat Fraser)</td> - <td class='c019'>Flying Fame: 1913</td> - </tr> - <tr><td class='c018' colspan='2'>All the above re-issued by the Poetry Bookshop, London: 1914</td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Poems</td> - <td class='c019'>Macmillan Co., New York: 1917</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>The Last Blackbird and Other Lines</td> - <td class='c019'>George Allen & Unwin, Ltd., London; Macmillan Co., New York: 1917</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In <cite>Georgian Poetry</cite>: 1913–1915</td> - <td class='c019'>Poetry Bookshop, London: 1915</td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td class='c018' colspan='2'>HORACE HOLLEY</td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>The Inner Garden</td> - <td class='c019'>Sherman French & Co., Boston: 1913</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>The Stricken King</td> - <td class='c019'>Shakespeare Head Press, Stafford-on-Avon: 1913</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Divinations and Creation</td> - <td class='c019'>Mitchell Kennerley, New York: 1916</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In <cite>Poetry</cite>: May, 1915 (Vol. VI).</td> - <td class='c019'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In <cite>Others: An Anthology of the New Verse</cite></td> - <td class='c019'>Alf. A. Knopf, N. Y.: 1916</td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td class='c018' colspan='2'>HELEN HOYT</td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In <cite>Poetry</cite>: Aug., 1913 (Vol. II); Aug., 1915 (Vol. VI).</td> - <td class='c019'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In <cite>Masses</cite>: Dec., 1915 (Vol. VIII).</td> - <td class='c019'> </td> - </tr> - <tr><td class='c018' colspan='2'>In <cite>Others: An Anthology of the New Verse</cite> Alf. A. Knopf, N. Y.: 1916</td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td class='c018' colspan='2'><span class='pageno' id='Page_395'>395</span>FORD MADOX HUEFFER</td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Collected Poems</td> - <td class='c019'>Max Goschen, London: 1914</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>* Antwerp</td> - <td class='c019'>Poetry Bookshop, London: 1915</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>On Heaven and Poems Written on Active Service</td> - <td class='c019'>John Lane Co., London & New York: 1918</td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td class='c018' colspan='2'>SCHARMEL IRIS</td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>* Lyrics of a Lad</td> - <td class='c019'>Seymour Daughaday & Co., Chicago: 1914</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In <cite>Poetry</cite>: Dec., 1914 (Vol. V).</td> - <td class='c019'> </td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td class='c018' colspan='2'>ORRICK JOHNS</td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Asphalt and Other Poems</td> - <td class='c019'>Alf. A. Knopf, New York: 1917</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In <cite>Poetry</cite>: Feb., 1914 (Vol. III).</td> - <td class='c019'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In <cite>Catholic Anthology</cite></td> - <td class='c019'>Elkin Mathews: 1915</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In <cite>Others: An Anthology of the New Verse</cite></td> - <td class='c019'>Alf. A. Knopf, N. Y.: 1916</td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td class='c018' colspan='2'>JOYCE KILMER</td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Summer of Love</td> - <td class='c019'>Doubleday Page & Co.: 1911</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>* Trees and Other Poems</td> - <td class='c019'>George H. Doran Co., New York: 1914</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Main Street and Other Poems</td> - <td class='c019'>George H. Doran Co.: 1917</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Joyce Kilmer: Poems, Essays and Letters; with a Memoir by Robert Coates Holliday</td> - <td class='c019'>George H. Doran Co.: 1918</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In <cite>Poetry</cite>: Aug., 1913 (Vol. II); April, 1914 (Vol. IV).</td> - <td class='c019'> </td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td class='c018' colspan='2'>ALFRED KREYMBORG</td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>* Mushrooms</td> - <td class='c019'>John Marshall Co., Ltd., New York: 1916</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Plays for Poem-mimes</td> - <td class='c019'>The Other Press, New York: 1918</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In <cite>Poetry</cite>: Feb., 1916 (Vol. VII).</td> - <td class='c019'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In <cite>Catholic Anthology</cite></td> - <td class='c019'>Elkin Mathews, London: 1915</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In <cite>Others: An Anthology of the New Verse</cite></td> - <td class='c019'>Alf. A. Knopf, N. Y.: 1916</td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td class='c018' colspan='2'>WILLIAM LAIRD</td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In <cite>Poetry</cite>: Sept., 1914 (Vol. IV); July, 1913 (Vol. II).</td> - <td class='c019'> </td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td class='c018' colspan='2'>D. H. LAWRENCE</td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Love Poems and Others</td> - <td class='c019'>Duckworth, London: 1913</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>* Amores</td> - <td class='c019'>Duckworth, London: 1916</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_396'>396</span>* Amores</td> - <td class='c019'>B. W. Huebsch, New York: 1916</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Look! We have Come Through</td> - <td class='c019'>Chatto & Windus, London: 1917</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Look! We have Come Through</td> - <td class='c019'>B. W. Huebsch: 1918</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>New Poems</td> - <td class='c019'>Martin Secker, London: 1918</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In <cite>Poetry</cite>: Jan., 1914 (Vol. III); Dec., 1914 (Vol. V).</td> - <td class='c019'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In <cite>Some Imagist Poets</cite>: I-II</td> - <td class='c019'>Houghton Mifflin Co.: 1915, 1916</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In <cite>Georgian Poetry</cite>: I-II</td> - <td class='c019'>Poetry Bookshop, London: 1912, 1915</td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td class='c018' colspan='2'>AGNES LEE (Mrs. Otto Freer)</td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Verses for Children</td> - <td class='c019'>Copeland and Day, Boston: 1898</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Verses for Children</td> - <td class='c019'>Small, Maynard & Co., Boston: 1901</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>The Border of the Lake</td> - <td class='c019'>Sherman, French & Co., Boston: 1910</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>* The Sharing</td> - <td class='c019'>Sherman, French & Co.: 1914</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Théophile Gautier’s Émaux et Camées (Translation)</td> - <td class='c019'>George D. Sproul, New York: 1903</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Fernand Gregh’s La Maison de l’Enfance (Translation)</td> - <td class='c019'>Dodd, Mead & Co., New York: 1907</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In <cite>Poetry</cite>: Oct., 1914 (Vol. V).</td> - <td class='c019'> </td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td class='c018' colspan='2'>WILLIAM ELLERY LEONARD</td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>The Vaunt of Man and Other Poems</td> - <td class='c019'>B. W. Huebsch, N. Y.: 1913</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Fragments of Empedocles, translated into English verse</td> - <td class='c019'>Open Court Pub. Co., Chicago: 1908</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Aesop and Hyssop (fables in verse)</td> - <td class='c019'>Open Court Pub. Co.: 1912</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Of the Nature of Things, by Lucretius, translated into blank verse</td> - <td class='c019'>J. M. Dent & Sons, London; E. P. Dutton & Co., New York: 1916</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In <cite>Poetry</cite>: Oct., 1913 (Vol. III).</td> - <td class='c019'> </td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td class='c018' colspan='2'>VACHEL LINDSAY</td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Rhymes to be Traded for Bread</td> - <td class='c019'>Privately printed, Springfield, Ill.: 1912</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>The Village Magazine</td> - <td class='c019'>Privately printed, Springfield, Ill.: 1912</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>* General William Booth Enters into Heaven and Other Poems</td> - <td class='c019'>Mitchell Kennerley, 1913; Macmillan Co.: 1916</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>* The Congo and Other Poems</td> - <td class='c019'>Macmillan Co.: 1915</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>The Chinese Nightingale and Other Poems</td> - <td class='c019'>Macmillan Co.: 1917</td> - </tr> - <tr><td class='c018' colspan='2'>In <cite>Poetry</cite>: Jan., 1913 (Vol. I); April, 1914 (Vol. IV); Feb., 1915 (Vol. V).</td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td class='c018' colspan='2'><span class='pageno' id='Page_397'>397</span>AMY LOWELL</td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>* A Dome of Many-coloured Glass</td> - <td class='c019'>Houghton Mifflin Co.: 1912</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>* A Dome of Many-coloured Glass</td> - <td class='c019'>Macmillan Co., New York: 1914</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>* Sword Blades and Poppy Seed</td> - <td class='c019'>Macmillan Co.: 1914</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Men, Women and Ghosts</td> - <td class='c019'>Macmillan Co.: 1916</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Can Grande’s Castle</td> - <td class='c019'>Macmillan Co.: 1918</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Pictures of the Floating World</td> - <td class='c019'>Macmillan Co.: 1919</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Six French Poets—Studies in Contemporary Literature</td> - <td class='c019'>Macmillan Co.: 1915</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Tendencies in Modern American Poetry</td> - <td class='c019'>Macmillan Co.: 1917</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In <cite>Poetry</cite>: Aug., 1916 (Vol. VIII); April, 1915 (Vol. VI); April, 1914 (Vol. IV); Sept., 1915 (Vol. VI); July, 1913 (Vol. II).</td> - <td class='c019'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In <cite>The Little Review</cite>: Aug., 1915 (Vol. II).</td> - <td class='c019'> </td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td class='c018' colspan='2'>PERCY MACKAYE</td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Poems</td> - <td class='c019'>Macmillan Co., New York: 1909</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Lincoln: Centenary Ode</td> - <td class='c019'>Macmillan Co.: 1909</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Uriel and Other Poems</td> - <td class='c019'>Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston: 1912</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>The Present Hour</td> - <td class='c019'>Macmillan Co.: 1914</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>The Sistine Eve and Other Poems (reprint of Poems, 1909)</td> - <td class='c019'>Macmillan Co.: 1915</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>* Collected Poems</td> - <td class='c019'>Macmillan Co.: 1916</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Poems and Plays (2 vols.)</td> - <td class='c019'>Macmillan Co.: 1916</td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td class='c018' colspan='2'>FREDERIC MANNING</td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>The Vigil of Brunhilde</td> - <td class='c019'>John Murray, London: 1905</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Poems</td> - <td class='c019'>John Murray, London: 1908</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Eidola</td> - <td class='c019'>John Murray, London; E. P. Dutton & Co., N. Y.: 1917</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In <cite>Poetry</cite>: June, 1913 (Vol. II).</td> - <td class='c019'> </td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td class='c018' colspan='2'>JOHN MASEFIELD</td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>* Salt Water Ballads</td> - <td class='c019'>Grant Richards, London: 1902</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Ballads (out of print)</td> - <td class='c019'>Elkin Mathews, London: 1903</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Ballads and Poems</td> - <td class='c019'>Elkin Mathews, London: 1910</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>The Everlasting Mercy</td> - <td class='c019'>Sidgwick & Jackson, London: 1911</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>The Widow in the Bye Street</td> - <td class='c019'>Sidgwick & Jackson, London: 1912</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>The Everlasting Mercy and the Widow in the Bye Street</td> - <td class='c019'>Macmillan Co., New York: 1912</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_398'>398</span>The Story of a Round-house and Other Poems (including Dauber)</td> - <td class='c019'>Macmillan Co., N. Y.: 1912</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>The Daffodil Fields</td> - <td class='c019'>Macmillan Co., N. Y.: 1913</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>The Daffodil Fields</td> - <td class='c019'>Wm. Heinemann, London: 1913</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Dauber</td> - <td class='c019'>Wm. Heinemann, London: 1914</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Philip the King and Other Poems</td> - <td class='c019'>Macmillan Co., N. Y.: 1914</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Philip the King</td> - <td class='c019'>Wm. Heinemann, London: 1914</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>John M. Synge: a Few Personal Recollections (Edition limited to 500)</td> - <td class='c019'>Macmillan Co., N. Y.: 1915</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Good Friday and Other Poems</td> - <td class='c019'>Macmillan Co., N. Y.: 1916</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Good Friday and Other Poems</td> - <td class='c019'>Wm. Heinemann, London: 1916</td> - </tr> - <tr><td class='c018' colspan='2'>* Sonnets Macmillan Co., N. Y.: 1916</td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>* Salt-water Poems and Ballads (reprint)</td> - <td class='c019'>Macmillan Co., N. Y.: 1916</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Lollingdon Downs and Other Poems</td> - <td class='c019'>Wm. Heinemann, London; Macmillan Co., N. Y.: 1917</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Rosas (autographed ed.)</td> - <td class='c019'>Macmillan Co., N. Y.: 1917</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Poems and Plays (collected, 2 vols.)</td> - <td class='c019'>Macmillan Co., N. Y.: 1918</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>A Poem and Two Plays</td> - <td class='c019'>Wm. Heinemann, London: 1919</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In <cite>Georgian Poetry</cite>: I-II</td> - <td class='c019'>Poetry Bookshop, London: 1912, 1915</td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td class='c018' colspan='2'>EDGAR LEE MASTERS</td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>A Book of Verses</td> - <td class='c019'>Way & Williams, Chicago: 1898</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Maximilian, a Tragedy in blank verse</td> - <td class='c019'>Richard G. Badger: 1902</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>The Blood of the Prophets, by Dexter Wallace</td> - <td class='c019'>Rooks Press, Chicago: 1905</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Songs and Sonnets, by Webster Ford</td> - <td class='c019'>Rooks Press: 1911</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>* Spoon River Anthology</td> - <td class='c019'>Macmillan Co.: 1915</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>* Songs and Satires</td> - <td class='c019'>Macmillan Co.: 1916</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>The Great Valley</td> - <td class='c019'>Macmillan Co.: 1916</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Spoon River Anthology (with additions)</td> - <td class='c019'>Macmillan Co.: 1916</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Toward the Gulf</td> - <td class='c019'>Macmillan Co.: 1918</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Starved Rock</td> - <td class='c019'>Macmillan Co.: 1919</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In <cite>Reedy’s Mirror</cite>: 1914.</td> - <td class='c019'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In <cite>Poetry</cite>: Feb., 1915 (Vol. V).</td> - <td class='c019'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In <cite>Catholic Anthology</cite></td> - <td class='c019'>Elkin Mathews, London: 1915</td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td class='c018' colspan='2'>ALICE MEYNELL</td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Poems</td> - <td class='c019'>John Lane Co., London: 1896</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Poems</td> - <td class='c019'>Copeland & Day, Boston: 1896</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_399'>399</span>* Later Poems</td> - <td class='c019'>John Lane Co., London and N. Y.: 1902</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>* Poems (including above)</td> - <td class='c019'>Chas. Scribner’s Sons, N. Y.: 1913</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In <cite>Poetry</cite>: March, 1913 (Vol. I).</td> - <td class='c019'> </td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td class='c018' colspan='2'>MAX MICHELSON</td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In <cite>Poetry</cite>: July, 1915 (Vol. VI); May, 1916 (Vol. III).</td> - <td class='c019'> </td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td class='c018' colspan='2'>EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY</td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Renascence and Other Poems</td> - <td class='c019'>Mitchell Kennerley, New York: 1917</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In <cite>The Forum</cite>: July, 1913; Oct., 1914; Aug., 1915.</td> - <td class='c019'> </td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td class='c018' colspan='2'>HAROLD MONRO</td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Judas</td> - <td class='c019'>Sampson Low, London: 1908</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Before Dawn</td> - <td class='c019'>Constable & Co., Ltd., London: 1911</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>* Children of Love</td> - <td class='c019'>Poetry Bookshop, London: 1914</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Trees</td> - <td class='c019'>Poetry Bookshop, London: 1915</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In <cite>Catholic Anthology</cite></td> - <td class='c019'>Elkin Mathews, London: 1915</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In <cite>Georgian Poetry</cite>: I-II</td> - <td class='c019'>Poetry Bookshop, London: 1912, 1915</td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td class='c018' colspan='2'>HARRIET MONROE</td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Valeria and Other Poems</td> - <td class='c019'>Privately printed: 1892</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Valeria and Other Poems</td> - <td class='c019'>A. C. McClurg & Co., Chicago: 1893</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Columbian Ode (with decorations by Will. H. Bradley)</td> - <td class='c019'>W. Irving Way & Co., Chicago: 1893</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>The Passing Show</td> - <td class='c019'>Houghton Mifflin Co.: 1903</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>* You and I</td> - <td class='c019'>Macmillan Co.: 1914</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In <cite>Poetry</cite>: Feb., 1914 (Vol. III); Sept., 1914 (Vol. III); Aug., 1915 (Vol. IV).</td> - <td class='c019'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In <cite>Catholic Anthology</cite></td> - <td class='c019'>Elkin Mathews: 1915</td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td class='c018' colspan='2'>JOHN G. NEIHARDT</td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>The Divine Enchantment</td> - <td class='c019'>James T. White & Co., N. Y.: 1900 (<em>cir.</em>)</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>A Bundle of Myrrh</td> - <td class='c019'>Outing Co., New York: 1907</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>* Man-Song</td> - <td class='c019'>Mitchell Kennerley, New York: 1909</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>The Stranger at the Gate</td> - <td class='c019'>Mitchell Kennerley: 1912</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>The Song of Hugh Glass</td> - <td class='c019'>Macmillan Co., New York: 1915</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>* The Quest (Collected Lyrics)</td> - <td class='c019'>Macmillan Co.: 1916</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>The Song of Three Friends</td> - <td class='c019'>Macmillan Co.: 1919</td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td class='c018' colspan='2'><span class='pageno' id='Page_400'>400</span>YONE NOGUCHI</td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>From the Eastern Sea</td> - <td class='c019'>Privately printed, London: 1906; Elkin Mathews, London: 1910; Japan Press, Tokio: 1910</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>* The Pilgrimage</td> - <td class='c019'>The Valley Press, Kamalsura, Japan: 1909; Elkin Mathews,London; Mitchell Kennerley, New York: 1912</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Spirit of Japanese Poetry</td> - <td class='c019'>E. P. Dutton & Co., New York: 1914</td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td class='c018' colspan='2'>GRACE FALLOW NORTON</td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Little Gray Songs from St. Joseph’s</td> - <td class='c019'>Houghton Mifflin Co.: 1912</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>* The Sister of the Wind</td> - <td class='c019'>Houghton Mifflin Co.: 1914</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Roads</td> - <td class='c019'>Houghton Mifflin Co.: 1916</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>What is Your Legion?</td> - <td class='c019'>Houghton Mifflin Co.: 1916</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In <cite>Poetry</cite>: Jan., 1914 (Vol. III); Dec., 1915 (Vol. VII).</td> - <td class='c019'> </td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td class='c018' colspan='2'>JAMES OPPENHEIM</td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Monday Morning and Other Poems</td> - <td class='c019'>Sturgis & Walton Co., N. Y.: 1909</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>The Pioneers</td> - <td class='c019'>B. W. Huebsch, New York: 1910</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>* Songs for the New Age</td> - <td class='c019'>Century Co., New York: 1914</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>War and Laughter</td> - <td class='c019'>Century Co., New York: 1916</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>The Book of Self</td> - <td class='c019'>Alf. A. Knopf, New York: 1917</td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td class='c018' colspan='2'>PATRICK ORR</td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In <cite>Poetry</cite>: Jan., 1915 (Vol. V).</td> - <td class='c019'> </td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td class='c018' colspan='2'>SEUMAS O’SULLIVAN</td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>New Songs (in collaboration)</td> - <td class='c019'>O’Donoghue, Dublin: 1904</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>The Twilight People</td> - <td class='c019'>Whaley, Dublin: 1905</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Verses, Sacred and Profane</td> - <td class='c019'>Maunsel & Co., Ltd., Dublin: 1908</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>The Earth Lover</td> - <td class='c019'>New Nation Press, Dublin: 1909</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Selected Lyrics</td> - <td class='c019'>Thos. B. Mosher, Portland, Maine: 1910</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Poems</td> - <td class='c019'>Maunsel & Co., Ltd.: 1912</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>An Epilogue and Other Poems</td> - <td class='c019'>Maunsel & Co., Ltd.: 1914</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Requiem and Other Poems</td> - <td class='c019'>Privately ptd., Dublin: 1917</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>The Rosses and Other Poems</td> - <td class='c019'>Maunsel & Co., Ltd.: 1918</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In <cite>Poetry</cite>: Dec., 1914 (Vol. V).</td> - <td class='c019'> </td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td class='c018' colspan='2'><span class='pageno' id='Page_401'>401</span>JOSEPHINE PRESTON PEABODY (Mrs. Lionel S. Marks)</td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Marlowe, A Drama</td> - <td class='c019'>Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston: 1901</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>The Singing Leaves</td> - <td class='c019'>Houghton Mifflin Co.: 1908</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Fortune and Men’s Eyes</td> - <td class='c019'>Houghton Mifflin Co.: 1909</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>* The Singing Man</td> - <td class='c019'>Houghton Mifflin Co.: 1911</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>The Piper</td> - <td class='c019'>Houghton Mifflin Co.: 1911</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>The Wolf of Gubbio</td> - <td class='c019'>Houghton Mifflin Co.: 1914</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>* Harvest Moon</td> - <td class='c019'>Houghton Mifflin Co.: 1916</td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td class='c018' colspan='2'>EZRA POUND</td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>A Lume Spento (ed. of 100)</td> - <td class='c019'>Autonelli, Venice, Italy: 1908</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>A Quinzaine for this Yule</td> - <td class='c019'>Pollock, London (100); Elkin Mathews, London (100): 1908</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>* Personæ</td> - <td class='c019'>Elkin Mathews, London: 1909</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>* Exultations</td> - <td class='c019'>Elkin Mathews: 1909</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Provença</td> - <td class='c019'>Small, Maynard & Co., Boston: 1910</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Canzoni</td> - <td class='c019'>Elkin Mathews, London: 1911</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>* Ripostes</td> - <td class='c019'>Stephen Swift & Co., Ltd., London: 1912</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Sonnets and Ballate of Guido Cavalcanti</td> - <td class='c019'>Small, Maynard & Co., Boston; Stephen Swift & Co., London: 1912</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>* Poems (Vols. I-II)</td> - <td class='c019'>Elkin Mathews: 1913</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>* Cathay</td> - <td class='c019'>Elkin Mathews: 1915</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>* Lustra</td> - <td class='c019'>Elkin Mathews: 1916</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>* Lustra, with Earlier Poems</td> - <td class='c019'>Alfred A. Knopf, New York: 1917</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Certain Noble Plays of Japan, trans. by Ernest Fenollosa and Ezra Pound, with Introd. by W. B. Yeats</td> - <td class='c019'>Cuala Press, Dundrum, Ireland: 1916</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Noh, or Accomplishment: a Study of the Classical Stage of Japan with trans. of 15 plays, by E. F. & E. P.</td> - <td class='c019'>Macmillan & Co., Ltd., London; Alf. A. Knopf, New York: 1917</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Pavannes and Divisions (prose essays)</td> - <td class='c019'>Alf. A. Knopf: 1918</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In <cite>Poetry</cite>: April, 1913 (Vol. II); Nov., 1913 (Vol. III); March, 1915 (Vol. V); Dec., 1915 (Vol. VII).</td> - <td class='c019'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In <cite>Catholic Anthology</cite></td> - <td class='c019'>Elkin Mathews, London: 1915</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In <cite>Others: An Anthology of the New Verse</cite></td> - <td class='c019'>Alf. A. Knopf, N. Y.: 1916</td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td class='c018' colspan='2'>JOHN REED</td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>* Sangar</td> - <td class='c019'>Privately printed, Riverside, Conn.: 1912</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>The Day in Bohemia</td> - <td class='c019'>Privately printed, Riverside, Conn.: 1913</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_402'>402</span>Tamburlaine and Other Poems</td> - <td class='c019'>Fred. C. Bursch, Riverside, Conn.: 1916</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In <cite>Poetry</cite>: Dec., 1912 (Vol. I).</td> - <td class='c019'> </td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td class='c018' colspan='2'>ERNEST RHYS</td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>The Great Cockney Tragedy</td> - <td class='c019'>T. Fisher Unwin, London: 1891</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>A London Rose and Other Rhymes</td> - <td class='c019'>John Lane, London: 1894</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Welsh Ballads</td> - <td class='c019'>David Nutt, London: 1898</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Guenevere</td> - <td class='c019'>J. M. Dent & Sons, Ltd., London: 1905</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Lays of the Round Table</td> - <td class='c019'>J. M. Dent & Sons, Ltd.: 1905</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Enid</td> - <td class='c019'>J. M. Dent & Sons, Ltd.: 1908</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>The Masque of the Grail</td> - <td class='c019'>Elkin Mathews, London: 1908</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>The Leaf-burners</td> - <td class='c019'>J. M. Dent & Sons, Ltd.: 1916</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In <cite>Poetry</cite>: Sept., 1913 (Vol. II); Jan., 1913 (Vol. I).</td> - <td class='c019'> </td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td class='c018' colspan='2'>EDWIN ARLINGTON ROBINSON</td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>The Torrent and the Night Before (out of print)</td> - <td class='c019'>Privately printed, Gardiner, Me.: 1896</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>The Children of the Night</td> - <td class='c019'>Richard G. Badger: 1897</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Captain Craig</td> - <td class='c019'>Houghton Mifflin Co.: 1902</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>* The Children of the Night.</td> - <td class='c019'>Chas. Scribner’s Sons, New York: 1905</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>* The Town Down the River</td> - <td class='c019'>Chas. Scribner’s Sons: 1910</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>* Captain Craig</td> - <td class='c019'>Macmillan Co., New York: 1915</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>* The Man Against the Sky</td> - <td class='c019'>Macmillan Co.: 1916</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Merlin</td> - <td class='c019'>Macmillan Co.: 1917</td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td class='c018' colspan='2'>CARL SANDBURG</td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>* Chicago Poems</td> - <td class='c019'>Henry Holt & Co., New York: 1916</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Cornhuskers</td> - <td class='c019'>Henry Holt & Co.: 1918</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In <cite>Poetry</cite>: March, 1914 (Vol. III); Oct., 1915 (Vol. VII); June, 1914 (Vol. IV).</td> - <td class='c019'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In <cite>Catholic Anthology</cite></td> - <td class='c019'>Elkin Mathews, London: 1915</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In <cite>Others: An Anthology of the New Verse</cite></td> - <td class='c019'>Alf. A. Knopf, N. Y.: 1916</td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td class='c018' colspan='2'>CLARA SHANAFELT</td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In <cite>Poetry</cite>: Oct., 1913 (Vol. III); May, 1915 (Vol. VI); June, 1916 (Vol. VII).</td> - <td class='c019'> </td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td class='c018' colspan='2'><span class='pageno' id='Page_403'>403</span>FRANCES SHAW</td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Ragdale Book of Verse</td> - <td class='c019'>Privately printed, Lake Forest, Ill.: 1911</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Songs of a Baby’s Day</td> - <td class='c019'>A. C. McClurg & Co., Chicago: 1917</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In <cite>Poetry</cite>: March, 1914 (Vol. III); July, 1915 (Vol. VI).</td> - <td class='c019'> </td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td class='c018' colspan='2'>CONSTANCE LINDSAY SKINNER</td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In <cite>Poetry</cite>: Oct., 1914 (Vol. V).</td> - <td class='c019'> </td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td class='c018' colspan='2'>JAMES STEPHENS</td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>* Insurrections</td> - <td class='c019'>Maunsel & Co., Ltd., Dublin: 1909</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>* Insurrections</td> - <td class='c019'>Macmillan Co., New York: 1912</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>The Hill of Vision</td> - <td class='c019'>Macmillan Co.: 1912</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>The Hill of Vision</td> - <td class='c019'>Maunsel & Co., Ltd.: 1912</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>* Songs from the Clay</td> - <td class='c019'>Macmillan Co., New York: 1914</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>* The Adventures of Seumas Beg</td> - <td class='c019'>Macmillan & Co., Ltd., London: 1915</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>* The Rocky Road to Dublin (same contents as Seumas Beg)</td> - <td class='c019'>Macmillan Co., N. Y.: 1915</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Green Branches</td> - <td class='c019'>Maunsel & Co., Ltd., Dublin; Macmillan Co., N. Y.: 1916</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Reincarnations</td> - <td class='c019'>Macmillan Co.: 1917</td> - </tr> - <tr><td class='c018' colspan='2'>In <cite>Poetry</cite>: Aug., 1914 (Vol. IV).</td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In <cite>Georgian Poetry</cite>: I—II</td> - <td class='c019'>Poetry Bookshop, London: 1912, 1915</td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td class='c018' colspan='2'>GEORGE STERLING</td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>The Testimony of the Suns</td> - <td class='c019'>A. M. Robertson, San Francisco: 1903</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>A Wine of Wizardry</td> - <td class='c019'>A. M. Robertson: 1909</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>The House of Orchids</td> - <td class='c019'>A. M. Robertson: 1911</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>* Beyond the Breakers</td> - <td class='c019'>A. M. Robertson: 1914</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Yosemite</td> - <td class='c019'>A. M. Robertson: 1915</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>The Evanescent City</td> - <td class='c019'>A. M. Robertson: 1915</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Ode on Opening of Panama Pacific International Exposition</td> - <td class='c019'>A. M. Robertson: 1915</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>The Caged Eagle</td> - <td class='c019'>A. M. Robertson: 1916</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In <cite>Poetry</cite>: Dec., 1912 (Vol. I).</td> - <td class='c019'> </td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td class='c018' colspan='2'>WALLACE STEVENS</td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In <cite>Poetry</cite>: Nov., 1915 (Vol. VII).</td> - <td class='c019'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In <cite>Others</cite>: Aug., 1915 (Vol. I).</td> - <td class='c019'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In <cite>Others: An Anthology of the New Verse</cite></td> - <td class='c019'>Alf. A. Knopf, N. Y.: 1916</td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td class='c018' colspan='2'><span class='pageno' id='Page_404'>404</span>AJAN SYRIAN</td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In <cite>Poetry</cite>: June, 1915 (Vol. VI).</td> - <td class='c019'> </td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td class='c018' colspan='2'>RABINDRANATH TAGORE</td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Gitanjali</td> - <td class='c019'>Privately printed by the India Society, London: 1912</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>* Gitanjali</td> - <td class='c019'>Macmillan & Co., Ltd., London: 1913</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>* Gitanjali</td> - <td class='c019'>Macmillan Co., New York: 1913</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>* The Gardener</td> - <td class='c019'>Macmillan Co., N. Y. and London: 1913</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Chitra</td> - <td class='c019'>India Society, London: 1913</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Chitra</td> - <td class='c019'>Macmillan Co., N. Y. and London: 1913</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Songs of Kabir (translation)</td> - <td class='c019'>India Society, London: 1914</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Songs of Kabir</td> - <td class='c019'>Macmillan Co., N. Y. and London: 1914</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>The Crescent Moon</td> - <td class='c019'>Macmillan Co., N. Y. and London: 1914</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>The Post-office</td> - <td class='c019'>Macmillan Co., N. Y. and London: 1914</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>The King of the Dark Chamber</td> - <td class='c019'>Macmillan Co., N. Y. and London: 1914</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Fruit-gathering</td> - <td class='c019'>Macmillan Co., N. Y. and London: 1916</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Stray Birds</td> - <td class='c019'>Macmillan Co., N. Y. and London: 1916</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>The Cycle of Spring</td> - <td class='c019'>Macmillan Co., N. Y. and London: 1917</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Gitanjali and Fruit-gathering (1 vol., illus’d)</td> - <td class='c019'>Macmillan Co.: 1918</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Lover’s Gift and Crossing</td> - <td class='c019'>Macmillan Co., N. Y. and London: 1918</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Gitanjali (popular ed.)</td> - <td class='c019'>Four Seas Co., Boston: 1919</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In <cite>Poetry</cite>: Dec., 1912 (Vol. I); June, 1913 (Vol. II).</td> - <td class='c019'> </td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td class='c018' colspan='2'>SARA TEASDALE</td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Sonnets to Duse</td> - <td class='c019'>Poet-lore Co., Boston: 1907</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Helen of Troy and Other Poems</td> - <td class='c019'>G. P. Putnam’s Sons, New York: 1911</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>* Rivers to the Sea</td> - <td class='c019'>Macmillan Co., New York: 1915</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Love Songs</td> - <td class='c019'>Macmillan Co.: 1917</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Sonnets to Duse</td> - <td class='c019'>Four Seas Co., Boston: 1919</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In <cite>Poetry</cite>: Oct., 1915 (Vol. VII); March, 1914 (Vol. III).</td> - <td class='c019'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In <cite>Yale Review</cite>: July, 1916 (Vol. V).</td> - <td class='c019'> </td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td class='c018' colspan='2'>EUNICE TIETJENS</td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Profiles from China</td> - <td class='c019'>Ralph Fletcher Seymour, Chicago: 1917; Alf. A. Knopf, N. Y.: 1919</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Body and Raiment</td> - <td class='c019'>Alf. A. Knopf: 1919</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In <cite>Poetry</cite>: March, 1915 (Vol. V); Sept., 1914 (Vol. IV).</td> - <td class='c019'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In <cite>The Century</cite>: June, 1915 (Vol. XC).</td> - <td class='c019'> </td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td class='c018' colspan='2'><span class='pageno' id='Page_405'>405</span>RIDGELY TORRENCE</td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>The House of a Hundred Lights</td> - <td class='c019'>Small, Maynard & Co., Boston: 1900</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>El Dorado: A Tragedy</td> - <td class='c019'>John Lane Co., New York: 1903</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Abelard and Heloise</td> - <td class='c019'>Chas. Scribner’s Sons, New York: 1907</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Plays for a Negro Theatre</td> - <td class='c019'>Macmillan Co., New York: 1917</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In <cite>Poetry</cite>: April, 1916 (Vol. VI).</td> - <td class='c019'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In <cite>The New Republic</cite>, Feb. 26, 1916.</td> - <td class='c019'> </td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td class='c018' colspan='2'>CHARLES HANSON TOWNE</td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>The Quiet Singer</td> - <td class='c019'>Mitchell Kennerley, New York: 1908</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Manhattan</td> - <td class='c019'>Mitchell Kennerley: 1909</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Youth</td> - <td class='c019'>Mitchell Kennerley: 1910</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>* Beyond the Stars and Other Poems</td> - <td class='c019'>Mitchell Kennerley: 1912</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>To-day and To-morrow</td> - <td class='c019'>Geo. H. Doran Co., New York: 1916</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Autumn Loiterers</td> - <td class='c019'>Geo. H. Doran Co.: 1917</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In <cite>Poetry</cite>: Nov., 1912 (Vol. I).</td> - <td class='c019'> </td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td class='c018' colspan='2'>LOUIS UNTERMEYER</td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>The Younger Quire (out of print)</td> - <td class='c019'>The Moods Publishing Co.: 1911</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>First Love</td> - <td class='c019'>Sherman French & Co.: 1911</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>* Challenge</td> - <td class='c019'>Century Co., New York: 1914</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>“... and Other Poets”</td> - <td class='c019'>Henry Holt & Co., New York: 1916</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>These Times</td> - <td class='c019'>Henry Holt & Co.: 1917</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Poems of Heinrich Heine (trans.)</td> - <td class='c019'>Henry Holt & Co.: 1917</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>The New Era in American Poetry</td> - <td class='c019'>Henry Holt & Co.: 1919</td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td class='c018' colspan='2'>ALLEN UPWARD</td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'><cite>In Poetry</cite>: Sept., 1913 (Vol. II).</td> - <td class='c019'> </td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td class='c018' colspan='2'>JOHN HALL WHEELOCK</td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>The Human Fantasy (out of print)</td> - <td class='c019'>Sherman French & Co.: 1911</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>* The Beloved Adventure</td> - <td class='c019'>Sherman French & Co.: 1912</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>* Love and Liberation</td> - <td class='c019'>Sherman French & Co.: 1913</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Dust and Light</td> - <td class='c019'>Charles Scribner’s Sons: 1919</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In <cite>Poetry</cite>: Aug., 1913 (Vol. II); Nov., 1915 (Vol. VII).</td> - <td class='c019'> </td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td class='c018' colspan='2'><span class='pageno' id='Page_406'>406</span>HERVEY WHITE</td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>New Songs for Old Maverick</td> - <td class='c019'>Press, Woodstock, N. Y.: 1910</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>* A Ship of Souls</td> - <td class='c019'>Maverick Press: 1910</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In an Old Man’s Garden</td> - <td class='c019'>Maverick Press: 1910</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>The Adventures of Young Maverick</td> - <td class='c019'>Maverick Press: 1911</td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td class='c018' colspan='2'>MARGARET WIDDEMER (Mrs. Robert Haven Schauffler)</td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>* The Factories with Other Lyrics</td> - <td class='c019'>John C. Winston Co., Philadelphia: 1915; Henry Holt & Co., New York: 1917</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Old Road to Paradise</td> - <td class='c019'>Henry Holt & Co.: 1918</td> - </tr> - <tr><td class='c018' colspan='2'>In <cite>Poetry</cite>: Nov., 1912 (Vol. I); Aug., 1913 (Vol. II); Feb., 1915 (Vol. V).</td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td class='c018' colspan='2'>FLORENCE WILKINSON (Mrs. Wilfrid Muir Evans)</td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>* The Far Country</td> - <td class='c019'>McClure Phillips & Co., New York: 1906</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>* The Ride Home</td> - <td class='c019'>Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston: 1916</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In <cite>Poetry</cite>: Dec., 1913 (Vol. III), Jan., 1916 (Vol. VII).</td> - <td class='c019'> </td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td class='c018' colspan='2'>MARGUERITE WILKINSON</td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>* In Vivid Gardens</td> - <td class='c019'>Sherman French & Co., Boston: 1911</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>By a Western Wayside</td> - <td class='c019'>Privately printed: 1913</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Mars, a Modern Morality Play</td> - <td class='c019'>Privately printed: 1915</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>New Voices: an Introduction to Contemporary Poetry</td> - <td class='c019'>Macmillan Co.: 1919</td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td class='c018' colspan='2'>WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS</td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>The Tempers</td> - <td class='c019'>Elkin Mathews, London: 1913</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Al Que Quiere</td> - <td class='c019'>Four Seas Co., Boston: 1917</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Kora in Hell: Improvisations</td> - <td class='c019'>Four Seas Co.: 1919</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In <cite>Poetry</cite>: June, 1913 (Vol. II); May, 1915 (Vol. VI).</td> - <td class='c019'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In <cite>Others: An Anthology of the New Verse</cite></td> - <td class='c019'>Alf. A. Knopf, N. Y.: 1916</td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td class='c018' colspan='2'>CHARLES ERSKINE SCOTT WOOD</td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>The Masque of Love</td> - <td class='c019'>Walter Hill, Chicago: 1904</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>* The Poet in the Desert</td> - <td class='c019'>Privately printed, Portland, Ore.: 1915</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_407'>407</span>The Poet in the Desert (new version)</td> - <td class='c019'>Privately printed, Portland: 1918</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>Maia: a Sonnet Sequence (limited illustrated ed.)</td> - <td class='c019'>Privately printed, Portland, Ore.: 1918</td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr><td class='c018' colspan='2'>EDITH WYATT</td></tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>The Wind in the Corn and Other Poems</td> - <td class='c019'>D. Appleton & Co., New York: 1917</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In <cite>Poetry</cite>: Jan., 1915 (Vol. V).</td> - <td class='c019'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c011'>In <cite>McClure’s Magazine</cite>: Aug., 1911.</td> - <td class='c019'> </td> - </tr> -</table> - -<div class='nf-center-c0'> -<div class='nf-center c004'> - <div><span class='small'>Printed in the United States of America.</span></div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='pbb'> - <hr class='pb c002' /> -</div> -<div class='tnotes x-ebookmaker'> - -<div class='chapter ph2'> - -<div class='nf-center-c0'> -<div class='nf-center c001'> - <div>TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES</div> - </div> -</div> - -</div> - - <ol class='ol_1 c004'> - <li>Silently corrected typographical errors and variations in spelling. - - </li> - <li>Archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings retained as printed. - </li> - </ol> - -</div> -<div class='sidenote'> </div> - -<div style='display:block; margin-top:4em'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE NEW POETRY ***</div> -<div style='text-align:left'> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will -be renamed. -</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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