Chapter VII: Section THREE (3)

What! Would he throw us sops of sugared art
And poisoned commerce, snarling: “So! lie still
Till I have shown my fangs, and torn the heart
Of half the world, and gorged my sanguine fill!”--
Now, England, let him see: Rage as he will,
He cannot tear our plighted souls apart.

II

AMERICAN NEUTRALITY

How shall we keep an armed neutrality
With our own souls? Our souls belie our lips,
That seek to hold our passion in eclipse
And hide the wound of our sharp sympathy,
Saying: “One’s neighbor differs; he might be
Kindled to wrath, were one to wield the whips
Of Truth.” Great God! A red Apocalypse
Flames on the blinded world: and what do we?

_Peace!_ do we cry? Peace is the godlike plan
We love and dedicate our children to;
Yet England’s cause is ours: The rights of man,
Which little Belgium battles for anew,
Shall _we_ recant? No!--Being American,
Our souls cannot keep neutral and keep true.

III

PEACE

_Peace!_--But there is no peace. To hug the thought
Is but to clasp a lover who thinks lies.
Go: look your earnest neighbor in the eyes
And read the answer there. Peace is not bought
By distance from the fight. Peace must be fought
And bled for: ’tis a dream whose horrid price
Is haggled for by dread realities;
Peace is not paid till dreamers are distraught.

Would we not close our ears against these ills,
Urging our hearts: “Be calm! America
Is called soon to rebuild a world.”--But ah!
How shall we nobly build with neutral wills?
Can we be calm while Belgian anguish thrills?
Or would we crown with peace--Caligula?

IV

WILSON

Patience--but peace of heart we cannot choose;
Nor would he wish us cravenly to keep
Aloof in soul, who--large in statesmanship
And justice--sent our ships to Vera Cruz.
Patience must wring our hearts, while we refuse
To launch our country on that crimson deep
Which breaks the dikes of Europe, but we sleep
Watchful, still waiting by the awful fuse.

Wisdom he counsels, and he counsels well
Whose patient fortitude against the fret
And sneer of time has stood inviolable
We love his goodness and will not forget.
With him we pause beside the mouth of hell:--
The wolf of Europe has not triumphed yet.

V

KRUPPISM

Crowned on the twilight battlefield, there bends
A crooked iron dwarf, and delves for gold,
Chuckling: “One hundred thousand gatlings--sold!”
And the moon rises, and a moaning rends
The mangled living, and the dead distends,
And a child cowers on the chartless wold,
Where, searching in his safety vault of mold,
The kobold kaiser cuts his dividends.

We, who still wage his battles, are his thralls,
And dying do him homage: yea, and give
Daily our living souls to be enticed
Into his power. So long as on war’s walls
We build engines of death that he may live,
So long shall we serve Krupp instead of Christ.

VI

THE REAL GERMANY

Bismarck--or rapt Beethoven with his dreams:
Ah, which was blind? Or which bespoke his race?--
That breed which nurtured Heine’s haunting grace,
And Goethe, mastering Olympic themes
Of meditation, Mozart’s golden gleams,
And Leibnitz charting realms of time and space,
Great-hearted Schiller, and that fairy brace
Of brothers who first trailed the goblin streams.

Bismarck for these builded an iron tomb,
And clanged the door, and turned a kaiser’s key;
And simple folk that once danced merrily
Their May-ring rites, march now in roaring gloom
Toward that renascent dawn when the black womb
Of buried guns gives birth to Germany.

_Boston Transcript_ _Percy MacKaye_

LITANY OF NATIONS

The nations shall rush like the rushing of many waters ... and
shall be chased before the wind.--_Isaiah._

GREECE

Aeons of old were wandering down the seas,
When Homer sang at Chios--and the sweet
Tranquillity of marching silences
Was broken at my feet.

_Great dawns have shown the way_
_When we have wandered._
_God, in the battle sway,_
_What have we squandered?_

ITALY

Avid and Roman born in soul and sense,
Master of all else but myself was I,
When, bound by silken cords of indolence,
I saw the world go by.

FRANCE

Ravaging, roystering and repenting--save
In story and the regions of romance,
Rises the moon on whom more mad and brave,
Or beautiful than France?

GERMANY

Once German arms and German armies hurled
Thunders on Rome. Than mine no readier hand
Would wake the violin and woo the world,
Were it a fairyland.

AUSTRIA-HUNGARY

Mine is a house divided but upheld
By the sheer force of many hemming powers.
Ages, like forests, have been hewn and felled
To build my crumbling towers.

RUSSIA

Gray winters flourish and old empires fail;
And still the starry watchmen sally forth
As wardens, with me, of the frozen grail
And ramparts of the north.

BALKAN STATES

Stabbing the skies for stars and air in which
To bask awhile and breathe--shall we remain
Simply the little brothers of the rich?
God! have we fought in vain?

SPAIN

Strong was my soul in war and wise in peace.
On whom else was the Moslem vanguard hurled?
O but for me had any Genoese
Sailed and brought back a world?

SWITZERLAND

High noons and sunsets pass while I repeat
The world-old secret of the endless quest;
And with the nations ageing at my feet,
I overlook the west.

GREAT BRITAIN

Flecking the seas where war and tempest brew,
And biding till the gonfalons are furled,
My British sails have dared and driven through
Thunders that shook the world.

AMERICA

Westward the tide of empire ebbs and flows:
And westward where the new-world torches rise
And rout the night, the Great Day dawning glows
And kindles in my eyes.

JAPAN

Amid the warring peoples I that slept
And dreamt of wide dominion--confident,
Ambitious, urging, conquering--have stept
Out from the orient.

CHINA

Glory and power for ages had been mine,
Until upon me fell a sudden night,
Such as makes beacon-star republics shine:
And my eyes saw the light.

TURKEY

In infidel debate on whence and why,
They hiss my God, and know not whether hale
And wise, or worn and withering am I,
Behind the crimson veil.

_Great dawns have shown the way
When we have wandered.
God, in the battle sway,
What have we squandered?_

_The International_ _William Griffith_

TO THE NECROPHILE

(_After reading of the affectionate desire of Germany “to get
closer to France,” expressed by the German Secretary of State to
the British Ambassador at Berlin, as published in the British White
Papers._)

With love are you gone mad, O lover of France,
That you should be embracing with your arms
Her gory body for the gore that warms
Only a monster in his dalliance?
Alas! she is alive with her alarms,
Unwilling yet for the enraged romance.
Assault her sacredness of Paris, lance
Her flank with such a wound as has its charms.

For you who want for your obscene amours
The body of a soul that is not yours,
For you who want a wound to enter by,
For you who want a corpse upon your heart.
Coupling with France if France would only die,
Not yours the human vow: “_Till death us part!_”

_The Trend_ _Walter Conrad Arensberg_

LOUVAIN

Bleeding and torn, ravished with sword and flame,
By that blasphemer prince, who with the name
Of God upon his lips betrayed the state
He falsely swore to hold inviolate,
Made mad by pride and reckless of the rod,
Shaking his mailed fist in the face of God.
But not in vain her martyrdom. Louvain,
Like the brave maid of France shall rise again;
Above her clotted hair a crown shall shine,
From her dark ashes rise a hallowed shrine
Where pilgrims from far lands shall heal their pain,
Shrived by the sacred sorrow of Louvain.

_Harper’s Weekly_ _Oliver Herford_

THE ANCIENT SACRIFICE

Ye dead and gone great armies of the world,
Sweet gleam the fields where ye were used to pass,
With Death for leader, legioned like the grass,
Day after day by dews of morning pearled.

Ye dead and gone great armies, ye were hurled
’Gainst other armies, great and dead and gone,
In awful dark: ye died before the dawn,
Ne’er knowing how your flags in peace are furled!

Ye are the tall fair forests that were felled
To build a pyre for strife that it might cease;
Ye are the white lambs slaughtered to bring peace;

Ye are the sweet ships sunk that storm be quelled;
And ye are lilies plucked and set like stars
About the blood-stained shrine of bygone wars!

_The Bellman_ _Mahlon Leonard Fisher_

THE PIPES OF THE NORTH

Do ye hear ’em sternly soundin’ through the noises of the street,
O heart from the heather overseas?
Do ye leap up to greet ’em, does your pulse skip a beat?
There’s a lad with a plaid and naked knees.
Here where all is strange and foreign to the swing of kilt and sporran,
With his head proud and high and a lightin’ in his eye,
He’s skirlin’ ’em, he’s dirlin’ ’em, he’s blowin’ like a storm--
O pipes of the North, O the pibroch pourin’ forth,
You’re fierce and loud as Winter but ye make the blood run warm!

All the battle-names of story, all the jewel-names of song
Down the spate of the clangor swing and reel,
And the claymores come a-flashin’ for a thousand years along
From Can-More to bonnie Charlie and Lochiel.
Though the high-singin’ bugle and the brazen crashin’ fugue’ll--
With the drum and the fife--wake the trampin’ lines to life,
But neighin’ ’em, and brayin’ ’em, and shatterin’ all the air,
O pipes of the North, when the legions thunder forth
There’s naught like ye to lift ’em on to death or glory there!

Now he tunes an ancient ditty for the leal Highland lover,
A rill of the mountain clear and pure,
How the bee is in the blossom and the peewit passin’ over
And the cloud-shadows chasin’ on the moor.
Hark the carol of the chanter rollickin’ a skeltin’ canter,
And the hum of the drones with their “wind-arisin’” tones!
He’s flightin’ ’em, he’s kitin’ ’em, he’s flingin’ gay and free--
O pipes of the North, when the reel comes tumblin’ forth
’Tis the breeze amid the bracken or the wavelets on the sea!

Now hark the wrenchin’ sob of it, the “wild with all regret,”
O heart from the heather overseas,
For the homeland of your fathers, though you’ve never known it yet,
’Tween Tay and the outer Hebrides.
O the rugged misty Highlands, O the grim and lonely islands,
And the solemn fir and pine, and the grey tormented brine--
He’s trailin’ ’em, he’s wailin’ ’em, to tear your bosom’s core!
O pipes of the North, when the long lament goes forth
No sorrow’s left to utter, for the tongue can say no more!

Oh, Breton pipes are clear and strong, and Irish pipes are sweet
And soft upon the heather overseas,
But Scottish aye can take your throat or make ye swing your feet,
O hark the lad a-paddlin’ on the keys!
See him footin’ straight and proud through the wonder-gawkin’ crowd,
With his feathered Glengarry like a gun at the carry;
He’s bellin’ ’em, he’s yellin’ ’em, he’s skirlin’ high to you--
O pipes of the North, O the wild notes rushin’ forth,
Ye’re sure the wings of Gaelic souls as far as blood is true!

_Scribner’s Magazine_ _E. Sutton_

OUT OF BABYLON

As I stole out of Babylon beyond the stolid warders,
(My soul that dwelt in Babylon long, long ago!)
The sound of cymbals and of lutes, of viols and recorders,
Came up from khan and caravan, loud and low.

As I crept out of Babylon, the clangor and the babel,
The strife of life, the haggling in the square and mart,
Of the men who went in saffron and the men who went in sable,
It tore me and it wore me, yea, it wore my heart.

As I fled out of Babylon, the cubits of the towers
They seemed in very mockery to bar my way;
The incense of the altars, and the hanging-garden flowers,
They lured me with their glamour, but I would not stay.

We still flee out of Babylon, its vending and its vying,
Its crying up to Mammon, its bowing down to Baal;
We still flee out of Babylon, its sobbing and its sighing,
Where the strong grow ever stronger, and the weary fail!

We still flee out of Babylon, the feverish, the fretful,
That saps the sweetness of the soul and leaves but a rind;
We still flee out of Babylon, and fain would be forgetful
Of all within that thrall of wall threatening behind!

Oh, Babylon, oh, Babylon, your toiling and your teeming,
Your canyons and your wonder-wealth,--not for such as we!
We who have fled from Babylon contented are with dreaming,--
Dreaming of earth’s loveliness, happy to be free!

_The Bellman_ _Clinton Scollard_

“FUNERE MERSIT ACERBO”

(_Written by Giosué Carducci at the death of his little son Dante, and addressed to his brother Dante, who had taken his own life years before._)

O thou among the Tuscan hills asleep,
Laid with our father in one grassy bed,
Faintly, through the green sod above thy head,
Hast thou not heard a plaintive child’s voice weep?
It is my little son--at thy dark keep
He knocketh, he who wore thy name, thy dread
And sacred name; he too this life hath fled,
Whose ways, my brother, thou didst find so steep.
Among the flower-borders as he played,
By sunny, childish visions smiled upon,
The Shadow caught him to that world how other,--
Thy world long since! So now to that chill shade,
Oh, welcome him! as backward toward the sun
He turns his head, to look, and call his mother.

_The Bellman_ _Ruth Shepard Phelps_

AFTERWARDS

There was a day when death to me meant tears,
And tearful takings-leave that had to be,
And awed embarkings on an unshored sea,
And sudden disarrangement of the years.
But now I know that nothing interferes
With the fixed forces when a tired man dies;
That death is only answerings and replies,
The chiming of a bell which no one hears,
The casual slanting of a half-spent sun,
The soft recessional of noise and coil,
The coveted something time nor age can spoil;
I know it is a fabric finely spun
Between the stars and dark; to seize and keep,
Such glad romances as we read in sleep.

_Boston Transcript_ _Mahlon Leonard Fisher_

EVENING

Go, little sorrows! From the evening wood
Faint odors rise, that touch the heart like tears
With inarticulate comfort. Lo, she bears
A weary load--small cares that drug the blood,
Small envies, sick desires for lesser good,--
All day, till now the evening re-appears,
They drop away, and she with wonder rears
Her aching height from needless servitude.
The tree-tops are all music; light and soft
The brook’s small feet go tinkling toward the sea
Bearing the little day’s distress afar;
While yonder, in the stillness set aloft,
My one great Grief, still glimmering down on me,
Smiles tremulous as a bereavèd Star.

_Yale Review_ _Charlotte Wilson_

LIGHTS THROUGH THE MIST

Some for the sadness and sweetness of far evening bells,
Seeming to call a tryst,
Yet, for my choice, all the comfort and kindness that wells
From lights through the mist.

In the dim dusk so unreal that it seems like a dream
Hard for the heart to resist,
Mellowing the pain of the close-drawing darkness, they stream,
Lights through the mist.

Blurred to new beauty, the blues and the browns and the grays
Shimmer with soft amethyst;
Then God’s own glory of gold as it shines through the haze,
Lights through the mist!

_Century_ _William Rose Benét_

THE TWELVE-FORTY-FIVE

(FOR EDWARD J. WHEELER)

Within the Jersey City shed
The engine coughs and shakes its head.
The smoke, a plume of red and white,
Waves madly in the face of night.
And now the grave, incurious stars
Gleam on the groaning, hurrying cars.
Against the kind and awful reign
Of darkness, this our angry train,
A noisy little rebel, pouts
Its brief defiance, flames and shouts--
And passes on, and leaves no trace.
For darkness holds its ancient place,
Serene and absolute, the king
Unchanged, of every living thing.
The houses lie obscure and still
In Rutherford and Carlton Hill.
Our lamps intensify the dark
Of slumbering Passaic Park.
And quiet holds the weary feet
That daily tramp through Prospect Street.
What though we clang and clank and roar
Through all Passaic’s streets? No door
Will open, not an eye will see
Who this loud vagabond may be.
Upon my crimson cushioned seat,
In manufactured light and heat,
I feel unnatural and mean.
Outside the towns are cool and clean;
Curtained awhile from sound and sight
They take God’s gracious gift of night.
The stars are watchful over them.
On Clifton as on Bethlehem
The angels, leaning down the sky,
Shed peace and gentled dreams. And I--
I ride, I blasphemously ride
Through all the silent countryside.
The engine’s shriek, the headlight’s glare,
Pollute the still nocturnal air.
The cottages of Lake View sigh
And sleeping, frown as we pass by.
Why, even strident Paterson
Rests quietly as any nun.
Her foolish warring children keep
The grateful armistice of sleep.
For what tremendous errand’s sake
Are we so blatantly awake?
What precious secret is our freight?
What king must be abroad so late?
Perhaps Death roams the hills to-night
And we rush forth to give him fight.
Or else, perhaps, we speed his way
To some remote unthinking prey.
Perhaps a woman writhes in pain
And listens--listens for the train!
The train, that like an angel sings,
The train, with healing on its wings.
Now “Hawthorne!” the conductor cries.
My neighbor starts and rubs his eyes.
He hurries yawning through the car
And steps out where the houses are.
This is the reason of our quest!
Not wantonly we break the rest
Of town and village, nor do we
Lightly profane night’s sanctity.
What Love commands the train fulfils,
And beautiful upon the hills
Are these our feet of burnished steel.
Subtly and certainly I feel
That Glen Rock welcomes us to her
And silent Ridgewood seems to stir
And smile, because she knows the train
Has brought her children back again.
We carry people home--and so
God speeds us, wheresoe’er we go.
Hohokus, Waldwick, Allendale
Lift sleepy heads to give us hail.
In Ramsey, Mahwah, Suffern, stand
Houses that wistfully demand
A father--son--some human thing
That this, the midnight train, may bring.
The trains that travel in the day
They hurry folks to work or play.
The midnight train is slow and old
But of it let this thing be told,
To its high honor be it said,
It carries people home to bed.
My cottage lamp shines white and clear.
God bless the train that brought me here!

_Smart Set_ _Joyce Kilmer_

THE LAST DEMAND

Life, you have bruised me and chilled me; Fate, you have
jeered at my pain;
Dreams, you have mocked while you thrilled me--so I turn
to the battle again.
Love, you have blessed me and led me; the lips that have
kissed you, you smite;
Hope, you have urged me and fled me--but left is the joy
of the fight!

Never was I a coward! Now must I prove my worth.
World, I will give you my courage; not tears but a
hard-bought mirth.
Work of my hands I grant you, labor and toil of brain,
But heart and soul shall be wanting--for they are dead of pain!
Forward! A fight to the death, then! Life is a sorry jest.
Ahead! To the thick of tumult! Fate is a fool at the best.
Courage! The war gods are greatest! Love is a false, fair light.

To arms! For Dreams are frail bubbles, and Hope but a
song in the night.
World, I cast down the gauntlet, for you were made to defy!
Own me a foe for your mettle! Ah, fighting let me die!
Love, Hope and Dreams I give you; Life I fling at your feet;
I will drink to the dregs of the bitter--for once I had tasted of sweet!
Of one last taunt I shall rob you; stern, I will claim my due;
One recompense you shall give me, balm I will snatch from you.
’Tis neither Fame nor Glory--toys to break and regret;
_I demand to conquer Memory! I demand that I--forget._

_The Smart Set_ _Faith Baldwin_

GODSPEED!

THE SOUL SPEAKS:

“Body o’ mine--and must I lay thee low?
So long I have looked out from thy dear eye!
Ears that have brought me song, and willing hands,
And feet that carried me to pleasant fields--
Shall dust claim all, and must I say good-bye?
Godspeed!”

THE BODY SPEAKS:

“Sister o’ mine--I go from whence I came,
Perchance to bloom again, or if required,
When time is ripe, to house another soul.
Thou art more wise than I, yet recketh not,
Oh, soul o’ mine, that I at last am tired!
Godspeed!”

_Southern Woman’s Magazine_ _Jane Belfield_

AT THE END OF THE ROAD

This is the truth as I see it, my dear,
Out in the wind and the rain:
They who have nothing have little to fear,--
Nothing to lose or to gain.
Here by the road at the end o’ the year,
Let us sit down and drink of our beer,
Happy-Go-Lucky and her Cavalier,
Out in the wind and the rain.

Now we are old, hey, isn’t it fine,
Out in the wind and the rain?
Now we have nothing, why snivel and whine?
What would it bring us again?
When I was young I took you like wine,
Held you and kissed you and thought you divine--
Happy-Go-Lucky, the habit’s still mine,
Out in the wind and the rain.

Oh, my old Heart, what a life we have led,
Out in the wind and the rain!
How we have drunken and how we have fed!
Nothing to lose or to gain.
Cover the fire now; get we to bed.
Long is the journey and far has it led.
Come, let us sleep, lass, sleep like the dead,
Out in the wind and the rain.

_The Bellman_ _Madison Cawein_

PATH FLOWER

A red-cap sang in Bishop’s wood,
A lark o’er Golder’s lane,
As I the April pathway trod
Bound west for Willesden.

At foot each tiny blade grew big
And taller stood to hear,
And every leaf on every twig
Was like a little ear.

As I too paused, and both ways tried
To catch the rippling rain,--
So still, a hare kept at my side
His tussock of disdain,--

Behind me close I heard a step,
A soft pit-pat surprise,
And looking round my eyes fell deep
Into sweet other eyes;

The eyes like wells, where sun lies too,
So clear and trustful brown,
Without a bubble warning you
That here’s a place to drown.

“How many miles?” Her broken shoes
Had told of more than one.
She answered like a dreaming Muse,
“I came from Islington.”

“So long a tramp?” Two gentle nods,
Then seemed to lift a wing,
And words fell soft as willow-buds,
“I came to find the Spring.”

A timid voice, yet not afraid
In ways so sweet to roam,
As it with honey bees had played
And could no more go home.

Her home! I saw the human lair,
I heard the hucksters bawl,
I stifled with the thickened air
Of bickering mart and stall.

Without a tuppence for a ride,
Her feet had set her free.
Her rags, that decency defied,
Seemed new with liberty.

But she was frail. Who would might note
That trail of hungering
That for an hour she had forgot
In wonder of the Spring.

So shriven by her joy she glowed
It seemed a sin to chat.
“A tea-shop snuggled off the road;”
Why did I think of that?

Oh, frail, so frail! I could have wept,--
But she was passing on,
And I but muddled “You’ll accept
A penny for a bun?”

Then up her little throat a spray
Of rose climbed for it must;
A wilding lost till safe it lay
Hid by her curls of rust;

And I saw modesties at fence
With pride that bore no name;
So old it was she knew not whence
It sudden woke and came;

But that which shone of all most clear
Was startled, sadder thought
That I should give her back the fear
Of life she had forgot.

And I blushed for the world we’d made,
Putting God’s hand aside,
Till for the want of sun and shade
His little children died;
And blushed that I who every year
With Spring went up and down,
Must greet a soul that ached for her
With “penny for a bun!”

Struck as a thief in holy place
Whose sin upon him cries,
I watched the flowers leave her face,
The song go from her eyes.

Then she, sweet heart, she saw my rout,
And of her charity
A hand of grace put softly out
And took the coin from me.

A red-cap sang in Bishop’s wood,
A lark o’er Golder’s lane;
But I, alone, still glooming stood,
And April plucked in vain;

Till living words rang in my ears
And sudden music played:
_Out of such sacred thirst as hers
The world shall be remade._

Afar she turned her head and smiled
As might have smiled the Spring,
And humble as a wondering child
I watched her vanishing.

_Atlantic Monthly_ _Olive Tilford Dargan_

THE GOD-MAKER, MAN

Nevermore
Shall the shepherds of Arcady follow
Pan’s moods as he lolls by the shore
Of the mere, or lies hid in the hollow;
Nevermore
Shall they start at the sound of his reed fashioned flute;

Fallen mute
Are the strings of Apollo,
His lyre and his lute;
And the lips of the Memnons are mute
Evermore;

And the gods of the North,--are they dead or forgetful,
Our Odin and Baldur and Thor?
Are they drunk, or grown weary of worship and fretful,
Our Odin and Baldur and Thor?

And into what night have the Orient deities strayed?
You swart gods of the Nile, in dusk splendors arrayed,
Brooding Isis and sombre Osiris,
You were gone ere the fragile papyrus
That bragged you eternal decayed.

The avatars
But illumine their limited evens
And vanish like plunging stars;
They are fixed in the whirling heavens
No firmer than falling stars;
Brief lords of the changing soul, they pass
Like a breath from the face of a glass,
Or a blossom of summer blown shalloplike over
The clover
And tossed tides of grass.

Sink to silence the psalms and the pæans,
The shibboleths shift, and the faiths,
And the temples that challenged the æons
Are tenanted only by wraiths;
Swoon to silence the cymbals and psalters,
The worship grow senseless and strange,
And the mockers ask, “Where be thy altars?”
Crying, “Nothing is changeless--but Change!”
Yea, nothing seems changeless, but Change.
And yet, through the creed wrecking years,
One story forever appears:

The tale of a City Supernal--
The whisper of Something eternal--
A passion, a hope and a vision
That people the silence with Powers;
A fable of meadows Elysian
Where Time enters not with his Hours;--
Manifold are the tale’s variations,
Race and clime ever tinting the dreams.
Yet its essence, through endless mutations,
Immutable gleams.

Deathless, though godheads be dying,
Surviving the creeds that expire,
Illogical, reason defying,
Lives that passionate, primal desire;
Insistent, persistent, forever
Man cries to the silences, “Never
Shall Death reign the lord of the soul,
Shall the dust be the ultimate goal--
I will storm the black bastions of Night!
I will tread where my vision has trod,
I will set in the darkness a light,
In the vastness, a god!”

As the skull of the man grows broader, so do his creeds;
And his gods they are shaped in his image, and mirror his needs;
And he clothes them with thunders and beauty,
He clothes them with music and fire.
Seeing not, as he bows by their altars,
That he worships his own desire;
And mixed with his trust there is terror,
And mixed with his madness is ruth,
And every man grovels in error,
Yet every man glimpses a truth.

For all of the creeds are false, and all of the creeds are true;
And low at the shrines where my brothers bow, there will I bow too;
For no form of a god, and no fashion
Man has made in his desperate passion
But is worthy some worship of mine;
Not too hot with a gross belief,
Nor yet too cold with pride,
I will bow me down where my brothers bow,
Humble, but open eyed.

_Evening Sun_ _Don Marquis_

THE BEST POETRY OF 1914

I. TEN BOOKS OF POETRY FOR A SMALL LIBRARY.

[* Certain volumes of new poetry and collected editions are drawn to the individual reader’s notice by an asterisk employed to indicate special poetic distinction.]

* _The East I Know. By Paul Claudel. Translated from the French by Teresa Frances and William Rose Benét._ (Yale University Press: $1.25 net.) A volume of prose poems by one of the greatest poets living in the world to-day. Although Paul Claudel is unknown to English readers, his influence is the strongest shaping force there is on the young poetry of most European countries. This volume is as much of a literary event as the publication of John Synge’s first volume in this country. I know of no living writer of whom we may more confidently predict immortality for his work. The present volume reveals the soul of China in wonderful strophes, and though perhaps the slightest of Claudel’s books, is the volume by which Claudel may be most fittingly introduced to the American public. If any reader can set down this volume without realizing that a great new force in literature and life has been born into the world, he is incapable of imaginative appreciation.

* _The Single Hound: Poems of a Lifetime. By Emily Dickinson._ (Little, Brown, & Co.: $1.25 net.) A new volume by one of the world’s great spiritual artists, which contains much poetry that is imperishable as an integral part of American literature. With Blake’s naked uncompromising vision, and his absorption in the eternal shadows of mortality, she has a personal and fragrant beauty of feeling and expression which is unique and incomparable. Her verses are like flashes of lightning illumining the chaos of our material existence. _The Single Hound_ is the rich legacy of a great spiritual imagination. There are few books in American poetry of which we can more confidently predict immortality.

* _Collected Poems. By Norman Gale._ (Macmillan: $1.50 net.) The poet’s choice of the lyrics and longer poems by which he wishes to be definitely remembered. Indispensable to every library. No poet since the Elizabethans has managed to convey such an infectious joy into pastoral poetry, and the best of these poems are permanent treasure trove for the anthologist. Such a volume as this would alone dignify a season.

* _Georgian Poetry. Edited by E. M._ (Putnam: $1.50 net.) A superb collection of representative poems by the younger English writers who have won their reputation in the last four or five years. This book, which has gone through nine English editions already, should meet with as great success in this country. Here, and here only, will you find the authentic younger singers adequately represented by hitherto unpublished work. If this volume introduces Rupert Brooke and Lascelles Abercrombie to America, it will have done our literature a service great enough to justify its publication.

* _The Congo and Other Poems. By Vachel Lindsay._ (Macmillan: $1.25 net.) A new volume of verse by Mr. Lindsay, whose first book was the most significant publication in American poetry last year. While this book does not mark an advance, many of the poems written to be chanted aloud fully sustain the poet’s reputation, and the volume is graced with a selection of the best and less strident of the _Rhymes to be Traded for Bread._ As the poetic interpreter of the Middle West, Mr. Lindsay is performing a great social service, as well as a great service to poetry by bringing it into the homes and hearts of the people. _The Firemen’s Ball_ and _I Heard Immanuel Singing_ have qualities of permanence, and in the former Mr. Lindsay has perfected a new medium of poetic expression. But we are in danger of losing sight of Mr. Lindsay’s more delicate talent by virtue of which he is preëminently a poet

* _The Present Hour: A Book of Poems. By Percy MacKaye._ (Macmillan: $1.25 net.) The poems dealing with the present war reaffirm Mr. MacKay’s authority of utterance, and the best of the sonnets surpass William Watson’s “The Purple East.” But it is in “Fight” and “School” that the poet has at last found himself and invented a medium admirably fitted to express what he desires. These two poems have all the distinction of Masefield with the originality and shrewdness of New England feeling, and a homeliness which is unique in contemporary poetry. The volume includes many poems of occasion, all adequate, and in the case of “Goethals” and one or two others, noble. So far, Mr. MacKaye’s best volume of poems.

* _The Complete Poems of S. Weir Mitchell._ (Century Co.: $2.00 net.) The definitive edition of Dr. Mitchell’s poetry revised according to his final wishes. It should serve to make known to the present generation the graceful contemplative poetry of that rival to America’s other distinguished physician-poet, Dr. Holmes. Dr. Mitchell’s poems of occasion at their best are equal to the best of Dr. Holmes, while his “Ode to a Lycian Tomb” surpasses “The Chambered Nautilus.” It is one of the anomalies of literature that Dr. Mitchell’s novels have so long overshadowed his poetry. In this volume the best of his dramatic work is included, and “Drake” is a play of poetic distinction in its way. The volume may rest pleasantly with its peers on the same library shelf with the poems of Longfellow and Holmes. It is the harvest of sixty years devoted to poetry.

* _Songs for the New Age. By James Oppenheim._ (Century Co.: $1.25 net.) The most significant volume of new poetry of the year 1914, as Vachel Lindsay’s _General William Booth Enters Into Heaven_ was the most significant volume of 1913. With more self-conscious art than Whitman, in the verse form which Whitman was once thought to have perfected, Mr. Oppenheim sings the joys and sorrows of the race now and to come. The vision of these poems is swift and sure: their philosophy, mature and American. If there is one volume of verse this year which we might safely recommend to every American man and woman who has not read poetry before, it is this book, where they will find their dreams and strivings sung and interpreted in a book which has qualities of greatness. The form of these poems is so difficult to shape perfectly that Mr. Oppenheim’s technical achievement can only be characterized as masterly. The volume is the only one in which the use of “polyrhythmic verse” can claim complete justification since _Leaves of Grass_, and its art is as individual as its matter. _Songs for the New Age_ may reaffirm much of Whitman, but they do not echo him. The volume will prove more and more satisfying with each rereading. And its message to the American people may not pass unheeded.

* _The Grand Canyon, and Other Poems. By Henry Van Dyke._ (Scribner: $1.25 net.) Poetry of the quality familiar to Dr. Van Dyke’s readers, and fully equal to the poetry in his earlier volumes. To the more serious poems are added several delightfully humorous poems of occasion, among which _Ars Agricolaris_ is a classic of its kind.

* _The Flight, and Other Poems. By George Edward Woodberry._ (Macmillan $1.25 net.) Mr. Woodberry’s finest volume of verse, in which he gives expression to many moods of intellectual beauty and a philosophy of the ideal akin to Shelley. It contains one lyric, _Comrades_, absolutely peerless and worthy to be set beside Browning’s _The Guardian Angel_, if it does not surpass it. These poems are the fruit of a ripe culture and a passionate idealism thoroughly American in its voicing of its message. One of the most completely satisfying volumes of the year.

II. TWENTY-FIVE BOOKS OF POETRY FOR A LARGER LIBRARY.

_The List of ten books printed above and the following fifteen titles:_--

* _In Deep Places. By Amelia Josephine Burr._ (Doran: $1.00 net.) Fine dramatic monologues and narrative poems, which represent a great advance over Miss Burr’s previous book. _Jehane_ is a worthy sequel to _The Haystack in the Floods_ by William Morris. _Allah is With the Patient_ and other narrative poems are related in a blank verse of firm yet varied texture. Miss Burr’s dramatic imagination interprets Italy and England in human terms, and travel has afforded her lyric opportunities to which she has responded sensitively and well. With this volume Miss Burr has come to stay.

* _The Little King. By Witter Bynner._ (Kennerley: $.60 net.) A stark one-act play in verse of swift sure dramatic nerve about the little son of Marie Antoinette. With great economy of material and vivid historic imagination, Mr. Bynner has made _The Little King_ human and poignant in his brief little tragedy.

* _Earth Deities, and Other Rhythmic Masques. By Bliss Carman and Mary Perry King._ (Kennerley: $1.50 net.) Four masques of earth with Mr. Carman’s old familiar lyric quality directed into fresh and living channels. Each of them would afford a rare delight to an audience, particularly if accompanied by the rhythmic dances which have been designed for them by Mary Perry King.

* _Poetical Works. By Edward Dowden. In two volumes._ (Dutton: $4.00 net.) A permanent and integral part of English literature. It is gratifying to find tardy justice done at last to the merits of the late Professor Dowden as a poet. Those who care for the work of Mr. Woodberry will find the same qualities in Dowden’s poetry, but in a larger and more authoritative voice. Moreover, he is one of the great nineteenth century sonneteers. His many hymns to intellectual beauty have not an undistinguished line in them, and as a lyric poet his singing quality is infectious. This is the first edition of his poems since 1876, and contains many which have never been collected before. The second volume is a pleasant translation of Goethe’s, _The West Eastern Divan_. It will not greatly interest admirers of Prof. Dowden’s work, and should be sold separately.

* _Borderlands and Thoroughfares. By Wilfrid Wilson Gibson._ (Macmillan: $1.25 net.) Mr. Gibson’s fourth volume in three years. Though not equal to his earlier books, it will well repay the lover of poetry. The first section, entitled _Borderlands_ consists of three dramatic dialogues in free verse which aim with some success to be simple, sensuous, and passionate. _Hoops_ is one of Mr. Gibson’s most satisfactory poems. The second section, entitled _Thoroughfares_ comprises shorter poems, many of which are dramatic monologues, and of these _Solway Ford_ and _The Gorse_ represent Mr. Gibson’s best. As we have said elsewhere, Mr. Gibson’s art “satisfies our æsthetic emotions and fulfils our social needs.”

* _Aroun’ the Boreens: A Little Book of Celtic Verse. By Agnes I. Hanrahan._ (Badger: $1.00 net.) A slight volume of Irish songs equal to the very best by Eva Gore-Booth or Mrs. Hinkson, and tipped with a more delicate art. The volume should be on every shelf beside Moira O’Neill’s _Songs of the Glens of Antrim_.

* _The Cry of Youth. By Harry Kemp._ (Kennerley: $1.25 net.) Terse ringing ballads of modern life with much of Buchanan’s quality and keen technique. Despite the propagandist note, which is less insistent than in most poetry of a socialistic tendency, Mr. Kemp has succeeded with some quiet reserve in making the reader feel the pity of lonely outcast life, and in expressing his philosophy in genuine poetry. The sincerity of his work is unquestionable, and the volume merits a critical attention on its merits which we should be anxious to assist. _The Cry of Youth_ is not written solely for an audience of poets and critics. It is genuine poetry of cruelly naked emotion borne unflinchingly.

* _Songs of the Dead End. By Patrick MacGill._ (Kennerley: $1.25 net.) Poetry of labor and poetry without a brief in about equal measure. Though the former is fine, Mr. MacGill’s best work is to be found in the latter. The poet has been a navvy, a miner, a switchman, a car-coupler, a tramp, and a plate-layer, and out of grinding poverty and toil his poetry has emerged. There is danger of a wrong emphasis on his social poetry. It is good, but not better than that of several others. The less premeditated lyrics will give the greatest pleasure to the reader, and to many of them one will turn again and again.

* _Philip the King, and Other Poems. By John Masefield._ (Macmillan: $1.25 net.) A one-act play in verse which is competent but would not be distinctive were it not for a superb ballad of the Armada, which challenges comparison with Drayton. Four other poems of strong beauty which redeem the rest of the volume, and make it necessary to poetry lovers. The notable war-poem entitled _August, 1914_, is included.

* _The Wine-Press: A Tale of War. By Alfred Noyes._ (Stokes: $.60 net.) A tale of the horror of war and its blind futility, whose scene is laid in the Balkans. It is told with all of Mr. Noyes’s art and its awful lesson should be particularly timely in the midst of the present struggle. The poem is a hymn to liberty passionately voiced, and brings death and suffering home in relentless poetry.

* _Songs of Labor, and Other Poems. By Morris Rosenfeld. Translated from the Yiddish by Rose Pastor Stokes and Helena Frank._ (Badger: $.75 net.) An excellent translation of the poems of an American Yiddish poet of poignant beauty, whose work has hitherto not been accessible to English readers except in an incomplete prose version. The present translation includes many poems now published for the first time, and is adorned with two remarkable illustrations in black and white which reveal new possibilities in line. A volume which deserves to go through many editions.

* _Poems. By Clinton Scollard._ (Houghton-Mifflin: $1.25 net.) A selection of Mr. Scollard’s best poems from his numerous volumes. It should serve to define his place in American poetry, which is beside Mr. Cawein. Delicate fancy and a love of nature which is not vague are united to an opulence of expression which has not always done Mr. Scollard service, but which in almost every poem in this volume results in giving the pleasure of fine poetic sensation to the discriminating reader.

_Songs and Sonnets for England in War Time._ (Lane: $.75 net.) A collection of the best poems by English poets inspired by the war, issued for the benefit of the Prince of Wales Fund. The total profits of the volume are turned over to this fund for relief work, and the purchaser will not only procure a volume whose significance will be more and more realised as time passes, but will be contributing in small measure to this charitable work.

* _Challenge. By Louis Untermeyer._ (Century Co.: $1.00 net) One of the most significant new volumes of the year. With much of Shelley’s social enthusiasm and a genuine inspiration, he sings the strength and weakness of our democracy with the eagerness of youth. This is a volume whose significance will grow as the years go by, and it should be associated with Mr. Oppenheim’s new volume on which comment will be found elsewhere. Although democracy is the substance of his song, yet the feeling for beauty’s essence which here finds lyrical expression is the most substantially satisfying quality of his work.

III. SUPPLEMENTARY LIST OF SIGNIFICANT BOOKS OF POETRY FOR A LARGE LIBRARY

* _Earth Triumphant, and Other Tales in Verse. By Conrad Aiken._ (Macmillan: $1.25 net.) Three narrative poems of distinction, followed by shorter poems interpreting the philosophy of youth. They suggest comparison with the longer poems of John Masefield, but have a firm independent technique of their own. With genuine beauty they relate tales which reveal the heart of modern life in various phases of youth, and contain a reading of earth which differs in essentials from that of Meredith. The volume deserves a wider audience than the usual public which cares for poetry. It has a message which every American will appreciate, and if it helps to spread an interest in poetry among new circles of readers, it will only be fulfilling its mission. It is a distinguished first book of verse.

_Poems. By Walter Conrad Arensberg._ (Houghton-Mifflin: $1.00 net.) The most artistic volume of poetry this year in its technique. Aloofness, controlled emotion, conscious art, are the characteristics of his poetry. Despite an occasional _bizarrerie_, despite echoes of Verlaine and Laforgue, Mr. Arensberg is a classicist. His technique is faultless. Each line is not only exquisite in itself, but it is perfectly coördinated with every other line. If these poems leave the reader cold, they offer an abundant intellectual compensation for the “thrills” of other poets. The special qualities of his verse are unique in American poetry, and will surely appeal to a discriminating circle, though his work is unlikely to become popular.

_The Minor Poems of Joseph Beaumont. Edited by Eloise Robinson._ (Houghton-Mifflin: $5.00 net.) An authoritative text of Joseph Beaumont’s minor poems edited from a manuscript in the possession of Professor George Herbert Palmer. The poems are preceded by a critical introduction and followed by a brief but careful textual apparatus. While Beaumont was a very minor poet, the fact remains that he was a significant member of the group of metaphysical poets of whom Vaughan was the greatest, and this volume must take its place in any collection of English poetry which claims to be even reasonably complete.

_The Falconer of God, and Other Poems. By William Rose Benét._ (Yale University Press: $1.25 net.) Mr. Benét’s second collection marks an advance in facility combined with a greater restraint and reticence. It includes many fine ballads, and several dramatic soliloquies only surpassed this year by those in Miss Burr’s new volume. Although there is much which is experimental in the book, it is successful experiment, and Mr. Benét’s range of expression is continually broadening.

* _Auguries. By Laurence Binyon._ (Lane: $1.00 net.) One of the most satisfying collections of verse of a noteworthy poet who is too little known and appreciated in this country. Its grave classical beauty will never assure it popularity, but at its best it is worthy to stand beside Mr. Bridges, and it contains no poem that is not excellent. _Ferry Hinksey_ is a lyric which no future anthologist can overlook. Next to Mr. Arensberg’s poems, the most satisfying new volume artistically of the year. It demands silence and complete surrender.

_Broad-Sheet Ballads. With An Introduction by Padraic Colum._ (Norman, Remington: $.75 net.) A narrow, but good, selection of the best of the Broad-Sheet Ballads which occupy so definite a place in Irish poetry. These waifs and strays have been gathered previously in various collections, but never before in a volume calculated to appeal to the general public. An introduction telling the story of this form of art and the characteristics of its audiences and appeal to them is prefixed.

* _Syrinx: Pastels of Hellas. By Mitchell S. Buck._ (Claire-Marie: $1.25 net.) A volume of prose poems of reticent Pagan art, suggestive of the best work of Pierre Louys. Unique in American poetry, and really beautiful.

_In the High Hills. By Maxwell Struthers Burt._ (Houghton-Mifflin: $1.25 net.) The verse in this volume is of a kind that has eminent qualities without eminent distinction. The earnestness and sincerity of Mr. Burt’s poetic moods give to his poetry those sound qualities which at least compel attention, if they do not excite the emotions. The elements of poetry are not fused with imaginative heat in his work, and hence it lacks magic, but it reflects the gentlemanly feeling of a lover of poetry in verse which demands respect.

_The Sun-Thief, and Other Poems. By Rhys Carpenter._ (Oxford University Press: $1.75 net.) Competent academic verse on classical models, including a new version of the Prometheus legend.

_The Poet and Nature: What He Saw and What He Heard. By Madison Cawein._ (John P. Morton & Co.: Louisville, Kentucky. $1.50.) A volume of prose and verse designed to encourage a love of poetry in children. The first half of the volume is in the form of a juvenile story with previously published lyrics of Mr. Cawein interspersed as examples of poetic beauty: the second half of the volume consists of hitherto uncollected poems of nature by Mr. Cawein now gathered together under the title of _The Morning Road_. This part of the volume should give especial pleasure to Mr. Cawein’s readers.

_Green Days and Blue Days. By Patrick R. Chalmers._ (Norman, Remington: $1.00 net.) A pleasant volume of light verse by a contributor to _Punch_. The verses do not pretend to be more than agreeable diversions, and reflect the lighter moods of life happily and in delicate numbers.

_At the Shrine, and Other Poems. By George Herbert Clarke._ (Stewart and Kidd: $1.25 net.) A pleasant unassuming collection of somewhat academic verse reflecting a life of scholarly leisure. The closing section of letters in verse to departed novelists is particularly happy, recalling at no great distance the similar work of Austin Dobson.

* _Path Flower. By Olive Tilford Dargan._ (Scribner: $1.25 net.) With this volume of lyrical poems Olive Tilford Dargan definitely takes her place as one of our foremost younger poets. With much of Francis Thompson’s vision of an overarching heaven and a shadowed earth, and also much of Thompson’s mannerism, she is herself in the best of these poems, in which she treats high themes with high artistic fervor. Her feeling for landscape is English in its delicacy, and she has interpreted the influence of nature on human life and its incidence with clear insight and sympathy. No one will deny Mrs. Dargan’s poetic inspiration or the refinement of her vision.

_Florence on a Certain Night, and Other Poems. By Coningsby Dawson._ (Holt: $1.25 net.) A volume of undistinguished literary verse by a distinguished novelist.

* _America and Other Poems. By W. J. Dawson._ (Lane: $1.25 net.) The expression of an ideal America as seen by one with an alien tradition. The volume includes several fine ballad narratives, notably “The Kiss,” “Salome,” and the swift sure rhythmic “Last Ride of the Sheik Abdullah;” above all, “Blake’s Homecoming,” a member of the royal line of English ballads. In addition to competent lyrics on various themes, special attention should be called to the poems of childhood and the delicately imagined meditative poems of religious feeling. So many religious poems rely wholly on a good intention, “more fit to pave Hell than cause rejoicing in Heaven,” as a French critic says, that exceptions should be noted. The volume marks an appreciable advance over Dr. Dawson’s previous collections.

_A Pageant of the Thirteenth Century for the Seven Hundredth Anniversary of Roger Bacon. The Text by John Erskine._ (Columbia University Press.) A pageant reflecting the culture and endeavor of the thirteenth century in every field. The text is in verse of fine texture and imaginative expression by Professor Erskine of Columbia University. While the pageant itself has been deferred because of the war, it is still possible to enjoy the text, and to look forward to the pageant’s representation in the near future.

_Lux Juventutis: A Book of Verse. By Katharine A. Esdaile._ (Houghton-Mifflin: $1.25 net.) The first volume of a young English poet who shows considerable promise. It is characterised by classical restraint and a fine feeling for form, and does not lack singing quality.

* _Sonnets from the Patagonian. By Donald Evans._ (Claire-Marie: $1.25 net.) Eighteen impressionistic sonnets of exotic workmanship, suggesting the fantasy of Laforgue, but more extremely composed in disembodied words. They rely on tone color for much of their effect, and are bizarre to the point of irony. However, they grow on the reader as he becomes familiar with them, and their consummate art is unquestionable.

* _Sonnets of a Portrait-Painter. By Arthur Davison Ficke._ (Kennerley: $1.00 net.) A sequence of fifty-seven sonnets in an undeservedly neglected form, which do not recall too definitely Meredith’s _Modern Love_. They are extremely subtle and their intellectual content is very closely woven, so that they will prove difficult reading, but they repay careful study, and in many sonnets the lyric impulse has happily overmastered the poet completely. A collection which is worthy of several readings.

* _Arrows in the Gale. By Arturo Giovannitti._ (Hillacre Bookhouse, Riverside, Connecticut: $1.25 net.) One of the more important volumes of new verse this year. A passionate voicing of social injustice in imaginative strophes, which introduce a new poetic form with considerable art. _The Cage_, when printed in the Atlantic Monthly, last year, was called the most significant poem published in that periodical since Moody’s _Ode in Time of Hesitation_. The volume claims a hearing as fine poetry rather than as an expression of Syndicalism. There is an appreciative introduction by Helen Keller which is good criticism.