Chapter III: The Hope of Their Religion (1)

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 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, [Sidenote: _Exactly as in the first section._] CUTTING THROUGH THE JUNGLE WITH A GOLDEN TRACK. And the gray sky opened like a new-rent veil 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:— “Mumbo-Jumbo will die in the jungle; [Sidenote: _Sung to the tune of “Hark, ten thousand harps and voices.”_] 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 fell 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:— “Mumbo-Jumbo is dead in the jungle. [Sidenote: _To the tune of “Hark, ten thousand harps and voices.”_] 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:— “Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you. [Sidenote: _Dying off into a penetrating, terrified whisper._] Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you, Mumbo ... Jumbo ... will ... hoo-doo ... you.”

TO A GOLDEN HAIRED GIRL IN A LOUISIANA TOWN

You are a sunrise,
If a star should rise instead of the sun.
You are a moonrise,
If a star should come in the place of the moon.
You are the Spring,
If a face should bloom instead of an apple-bough.
You are my love,
If your heart is as kind
As your young eyes now.

THE TRAVELLER

The moon’s a devil jester
Who makes himself too free.
The rascal is not always
Where he appears to be.
Sometimes he is in my heart—
Sometimes he is in the sea;
Then tides are in my heart,
And tides are in the sea.

O traveller, abiding not
Where he pretends to be!

A NEGRO SERMON:—SIMON LEGREE

Legree’s big house was white and green.
His cotton-fields were the best to be seen.
He had strong horses and opulent cattle,
And bloodhounds bold, with chains that would rattle.
His garret was full of curious things:
Books of magic, bags of gold,
And rabbits’ feet on long twine strings.
_But he went down to the Devil._

Legree, he sported a brass-buttoned coat,
A snake-skin necktie, a blood-red shirt.
Legree, he had a beard like a goat,
And a thick hairy neck, and eyes like dirt.
His puffed-out cheeks were fish-belly white,
He had great long teeth, and an appetite.
He ate raw meat, ’most every meal,
And rolled his eyes till the cat would squeal.
His fist was an enormous size
To mash poor niggers that told him lies:
He was surely a witch-man in disguise.
_But he went down to the Devil._

He wore hip-boots, and would wade all day
To capture his slaves that had fled away.
_But he went down to the Devil._
He beat poor Uncle Tom to death
Who prayed for Legree with his last breath.
Then Uncle Tom to Eva flew,
To the high sanctoriums bright and new;
And Simon Legree stared up beneath,
And cracked his heels, and ground his teeth:
_And went down to the Devil._

He crossed the yard in the storm and gloom;
He went into his grand front room.
He said, “I killed him, and I don’t care.”
He kicked a hound, he gave a swear;
He tightened his belt, he took a lamp,
Went down cellar to the webs and damp.
There in the middle of the mouldy floor
He heaved up a slab; he found a door—
_And went down to the Devil._

His lamp blew out, but his eyes burned bright.
Simon Legree stepped down all night—
_Down, down to the Devil._
Simon Legree he reached the place,
He saw one half of the human race,
He saw the Devil on a wide green throne,
Gnawing the meat from a big ham-bone,
And he said to Mister Devil:

“I see that you have much to eat—
A red ham-bone is surely sweet.
I see that you have lion’s feet;
I see your frame is fat and fine,
I see you drink your poison wine—
Blood and burning turpentine.”

And the Devil said to Simon Legree:
“I like your style, so wicked and free.
Come sit and share my throne with me,
And let us bark and revel.”
And there they sit and gnash their teeth,
And each one wears a hop-vine wreath.
They are matching pennies and shooting craps,
They are playing poker and taking naps.
And old Legree is fat and fine:
He eats the fire, he drinks the wine—
Blood and burning turpentine—
_Down, down with the Devil;
Down, down with the Devil;
Down, down with the Devil._

ABRAHAM LINCOLN WALKS AT MIDNIGHT[36][37]

(_In Springfield, Illinois_)

It is portentous, and a thing of state
That here at midnight, in our little town
A mourning figure walks, and will not rest,
Near the old court-house pacing up and down,
Or by his homestead, or in shadowed yards
He lingers where his children used to play,
Or through the market, on the well-worn stones
He stalks until the dawn-stars burn away.

A bronzed, lank man! His suit of ancient black,
A famous high top-hat and plain worn shawl
Make him the quaint great figure that men love,
The prairie-lawyer, master of us all.

He cannot sleep upon his hillside now.
He is among us;—as in times before!
And we who toss and lie awake for long,
Breathe deep, and start, to see him pass the door.

His head is bowed. He thinks of men and kings.
Yea, when the sick world cries, how can he sleep?
Too many peasants fight, they know not why;
Too many homesteads in black terror weep.

The sins of all the war-lords burn his heart.
He sees the dreadnaughts scouring every main.
He carries on his shawl-wrapped shoulders now
The bitterness, the folly and the pain.

He cannot rest until a spirit-dawn
Shall come;—the shining hope of Europe free:
A league of sober folk, the Workers’ Earth,
Bringing long peace to Cornland, Alp and Sea.
It breaks his heart that kings must murder still,
That all his hours of travail here for men
Seem yet in vain. And who will bring white peace
That he may sleep upon his hill again?

_Edwin Meade Robinson_

Edwin Meade Robinson (no relation to Edwin Arlington Robinson) was
born November 1, 1879, at Lima, Indiana. He engaged in newspaper
work when he was scarcely out of his ’teens, joining the staff of
the Indianapolis _Sentinel_ in 1901. He began writing a daily poem
in 1904 and, for years, has conducted a column of prose and verse in
the Cleveland _Plain Dealer_.

_Mere Melodies_ (1918) is a collection of Robinson’s light and
sentimental verse, an uneven collection. _Piping and Panning_ (1920)
is a much fresher and far more vigorous assembling of this
versifier’s humorous and burlesque idioms. One of our most adroit
technicians, he is especially happy in interior rhyming; a poem like
“Halcyon Days” contains, beside the end-rhymes, rhymes hidden within
the lines and others running over from line to line.

HOW HE TURNED OUT

When he was young, his parents saw (as parents by the million see) That Rollo had an intellect of quite unequaled brilliancy; They started in his training from the hour of his nativity, And carefully they cultivated every bright proclivity.

At eight, he ate up authors like a literary cannibal, At nine he mastered Latin as the Latins mastered Hannibal; At ten he knew astronomy and differential calculus, And at eleven could dissect the tiniest animalculus.

At twelve, he learned orthometry, and started in to master all The different kinds of poetry, the lyric and the pastoral, The epic and dramatic, the descriptive and didactical, With lessons theoretical and exercises practical.

Music he learned—the old and sweet, the up-to-date and hideous; He painted like Apelles and he modeled like a Phidias; In language he was polyglot, in rhetoric Johnsonian, In eloquence Websterian, in diction Ciceronian.

At last, with learning that would set an ordinary head agog, His education far outshone his most proficient pedagog; And so he entered life, with all his lore to lift the lid for him— And what do you imagine that his erudition did for him?

Alas! I fear the truth will shock you, rather than amuse you all— To those who’ve read this sort of verse, the sequel is unusual. This man (it’s hard on humor, for it breaks the well known laws of it!) Was happier for his learning, and a great success because of it!

“HALCYON DAYS”

Ere yet the giants of modern science had gone a-slumming in smelly slums, And through the Ghettos and lazarettos had put in plumbing (and pulled out plums!) When wily wizards in inky vizards employed their talents at homicide, And poisoned goblets for faithless squablets by knightly gallants were justified; When maids were fairest, and baths were rarest, and thaumaturgy was wrought by dames, When courts were rotten and faith forgotten, and none but clergy could write their names—

When he who flouted the Church, or doubted, would find his neck fast in hempen ruff, And saint and sinner thought eggs for dinner and beer for breakfast the proper stuff; When men were scary of witch and fairy, of haunted castle, of spook and elf, When every mixer of cough-elixir was thought a vassal of Nick himself; When income taxes and prophylaxis and Comic Sections were yet unborn, When Leagues of Nations and Spring Vacations and Fall Elections were held in scorn—

When all brave fellows would fight duellos with sword and dagger, with
lance and mace,
When good men guzzled until, clean fuzzled, they’d reel and stagger
about the place;
When pious journeys and jousts and tourneys brought high adventure and
secret tryst,
When knives were many, but forks not any—’twas fist to trencher, and
mouth to fist!—
Oh, men had chances for true romances, for fame and glory, and knightly
acts ...
(And childish quarrels and beastly morals, if song and story would stick
to facts!)

_Franklin P. Adams_

Franklin P. Adams, better known to the readers of his column as F.
P. A., was born at Chicago, Illinois, November 15, 1881. He attended
the University of Michigan (1899-1900) and, after a brief career as
an insurance agent, plunged into journalism. Adams had already been
an ardent contributor to B. L. T.’s “A Line o’ Type or Two” and, in
1903, he began conducting a column of his own on the Chicago
_Journal_. Late in 1904, he came to New York, running his “Always in
Good Humor” section on _The Evening Mail_ until 1914, when he
started “The Conning Tower” for the New York _Tribune_.

Adams is the author of five volumes of a light verse that is not
only skilful but energetic as well as facile. _Tobogganing on
Parnassus_ (1909), _In Other Words_ (1912), _By and Large_ (1914),
_Weights and Measures_ (1917) and _Something Else Again_ (1920)
reveal a spirit which is essentially one of mockery. One admires
these books for their impudent—and faithful—paraphrases of Horace
and Propertius, for their last line twists _à la_ O. Henry, (with
whom Adams wrote a comic opera that never reached New York), for the
ease with which their author springs his surprises and, perhaps most
of all, for the healthy satire that runs sharply through all of his
colloquial and dexterous lines.

WAR AND PEACE

“This war is a terrible thing,” he said,
“With its countless numbers of needless dead;
A futile warfare it seems to me,
Fought for no principle I can see.
Alas, that thousands of hearts should bleed
For naught but a tyrant’s boundless greed!”

· · · · · ·

Said the wholesale grocer, in righteous mood,
As he went to adulterate salable food.

Spake as follows the merchant king:
“Isn’t this war a disgraceful thing?
Heartless, cruel, and useless, too;
It doesn’t seem that it _can_ be true.
Think of the misery, want and fear!
We ought to be grateful we’ve no war here.”

· · · · · ·

“Six a week”—to a girl—“That’s flat!
I can get a thousand to work for that.”

THE RICH MAN

The rich man has his motor-car,
His country and his town estate.
He smokes a fifty-cent cigar
And jeers at Fate.

He frivols through the livelong day,
He knows not Poverty, her pinch.
His lot seems light, his heart seems gay;
He has a cinch.

Yet though my lamp burns low and dim,
Though I must slave for livelihood—
Think you that I would change with him?
You bet I would!

THOSE TWO BOYS

When Bill was a lad he was terribly bad.
He worried his parents a lot;
He’d lie and he’d swear and pull little girls’ hair;
His boyhood was naught but a blot.

At play and in school he would fracture each rule—
In mischief from autumn to spring;
And the villagers knew when to manhood he grew
He would never amount to a thing.

When Jim was a child he was not very wild;
He was known as a good little boy;
He was honest and bright and the teacher’s delight—
To his mother and father a joy.

All the neighbors were sure that his virtue’d endure,
That his life would be free of a spot;
They were certain that Jim had a great head on him
And that Jim would amount to a lot.

And Jim grew to manhood and honor and fame
And bears a good name;
While Bill is shut up in a dark prison cell—
You never can tell.

_John G. Neihardt_

John Gneisenau Neihardt was born at Sharpsburg, Illinois, January 8,
1881. He completed a scientific course at Nebraska Normal College in
1897 and lived among the Omaha Indians for six years (1901-7),
studying their customs, characteristics and legends.

Although he had already published two books, _A Bundle of Myrrh_
(1908) was his first volume to attract notice. It was full of
spirit, enthusiasm and an insistent virility—qualities which were
extended (and overemphasized) in _Man-Song_ (1909). Neihardt found a
richer note and a new restraint in _The Stranger at the Gate_
(1911); the best of the lyrics from these three volumes appearing in
_The Quest_ (1916).

Neihardt meanwhile had been going deeper into folk-lore, the results
of which appeared in _The Song of Hugh Glass_ (1915) and _The Song
of Three Friends_ (1919). The latter, in 1920, divided the annual
prize offered by the Poetry Society, halving the honors with Gladys
Cromwell’s _Poems_. These two of Neihardt’s are detailed long poems,
part of a projected epic series celebrating the winning of the West
by the pioneers. What prevents both volumes from fulfilling the
breadth at which they aim is the disparity between the author’s
story and his style; essentially racy narratives are recited in an
archaic and incongruous speech. Yet, in spite of a false rhetoric
and a locution that considers prairies and trappers in terms of
“Ilion,” “Iseult,” “Clotho,” the “dim far shore of Styx,” Neihardt
has achieved his effects with no little skill. Dramatic, stern, and
conceived with a powerful dignity, his major works are American in
feeling if not in execution.

WHEN I AM DEAD

When I am dead and nervous hands have thrust
My body downward into careless dust;
I think the grave cannot suffice to hold
My spirit ’prisoned in the sunless mould!
Some subtle memory of you shall be
A resurrection of the life of me.
Yea, I shall be, because I love you so,
The speechless spirit of all things that grow.
You shall not touch a flower but it shall be
Like a caress upon the cheek of me.
I shall be patient in the common grass
That I may feel your footfall when you pass.
I shall be kind as rain and pure as dew,
A loving spirit ’round the life of you.
When your soft cheeks by perfumed winds are fanned,
’Twill be my kiss—and you will understand.
But when some sultry, storm-bleared sun has set,
_I will be lightning if you dare forget_!

CRY OF THE PEOPLE[38]

Tremble before thy chattels,
Lords of the scheme of things!
Fighters of all earth’s battles,
Ours is the might of kings!
Guided by seers and sages,
The world’s heart-beat for a drum,
Snapping the chains of ages,
Out of the night we come!

Lend us no ear that pities!
Offer no almoner’s hand!
Alms for the builders of cities!
When will you understand?
Down with your pride of birth
And your golden gods of trade!
A man is worth to his mother, Earth,
All that a man has made!

We are the workers and makers.
We are no longer dumb!
Tremble, O Shirkers and Takers!
Sweeping the earth—we come!
Ranked in the world-wide dawn,
Marching into the day!
_The night is gone and the sword is drawn
And the scabbard is thrown away!_

LET ME LIVE OUT MY YEARS[39]

Let me live out my years in heat of blood!
Let me die drunken with the dreamer’s wine!
Let me not see this soul-house built of mud
Go toppling to the dust—a vacant shrine.

Let me go quickly, like a candle light
Snuffed out just at the heyday of its glow.
Give me high noon—and let it then be night!
Thus would I go.

And grant that when I face the grisly Thing,
My song may trumpet down the gray Perhaps.
Let me be as a tune-swept fiddlestring
That feels the Master Melody—and snaps!

_Witter Bynner_

Witter Bynner was born at Brooklyn, New York, August 10, 1881. He
was graduated from Harvard in 1902 and has been assistant editor of
various periodicals as well as adviser to publishers. Recently, he
has spent much of his time lecturing on poetry and travelling in the
Orient.

_Young Harvard_ (1907), the first of Bynner’s volumes, was, as the
name implies, a celebration of his _alma mater. The New World_
(1915) is a much riper and far more ambitious effort. In this
extended poem, Bynner sought—almost too determinedly—to translate
the ideals of democracy into verse. Neither of these volumes
displays its author’s gifts at their best, for Bynner is, first of
all, a lyric poet. _Grenstone Poems_ (1917) and _A Canticle of Pan_
(1920) reveal a more natural singing voice. Bynner harmonizes in
many keys; transposing, modulating and shifting from one tonality to
another. This very ease is his chief defect, for Bynner’s facility
leads him not only to write too much but in too many different
styles. Many of his poems seem like sounding-boards that echo the
tones of every poet except the composer of them. Instead of a fusion
of gifts we have, too often, a disintegration.

When Bynner is least dexterous he is most ingratiating. When he does
not try to sound the whole gamut of modern poetry from the lyrics of
A. E. Housman to the attenuated epigrams of Ezra Pound, he can
strike his own note with clarity and precision. Even in _The Beloved
Stranger_ (1919), where the borrowed accents of his _alter ego_ are
only too apparent, one is arrested by lines of musical charm and
fluency.

Under the pseudonym “Emanuel Morgan,” Bynner was coauthor with
Arthur Davison Ficke (writing under the name of “Anne Knish”) of
_Spectra_ (1916). _Spectra_ was a serious burlesque of some of the
extreme manifestations of modern poetic tendencies—a remarkable hoax
that deceived many of the radical propagandists as well as most of
the conservative critics.

GRASS-TOPS

What bird are you in the grass-tops?
Your poise is enough of an answer,
With your wing-tips like up-curving fingers
Of the slow-moving hands of a dancer ...

And what is so nameless as beauty,
Which poets, who give it a name,
Are only unnaming forever?—
Content, though it go, that it came.

VOICES

O there were lights and laughter
And the motions to and fro
Of people as they enter
And people as they go ...

And there were many voices
Vying at the feast,
But mostly I remember
Yours—who spoke the least.

A FARMER REMEMBERS LINCOLN[40][41]

“Lincoln?— Well, I was in the old Second Maine, The first regiment in Washington from the Pine Tree State. Of course I didn’t get the butt of the clip; We was there for guardin’ Washington— We was all green.

“I ain’t never ben to the theayter in my life— I didn’t know how to behave. I ain’t never ben since. I can see as plain as my hat the box where he sat in When he was shot. I can tell you, sir, there was a panic When we found our President was in the shape he was in! Never saw a soldier in the world but what liked him.

“Yes, sir. His looks was kind o’ hard to forget. He was a spare man, An old farmer. Everything was all right, you know, But he wasn’t a smooth-appearin’ man at all— Not in no ways; Thin-faced, long-necked, And a swellin’ kind of a thick lip like.

“And he was a jolly old fellow—always cheerful; He wasn’t so high but the boys could talk to him their own ways. While I was servin’ at the Hospital He’d come in and say, ‘You look nice in here,’ Praise us up, you know. And he’d bend over and talk to the boys— And he’d talk so good to ’em—so close— That’s why I call him a farmer. I don’t mean that everything about him wasn’t all right, you understand, It’s just—well, I was a farmer— And he was my neighbor, anybody’s neighbor. I guess even you young folks would ’a’ liked him.”

TRAIN-MATES[42]

Outside hove Shasta, snowy height on height,
A glory; but a negligible sight,
For you had often seen a mountain-peak
But not my paper. So we came to speak ...
A smoke, a smile,—a good way to commence
The comfortable exchange of difference!
You a young engineer, five feet eleven,
Forty-five chest, with football in your heaven,
Liking a road-bed newly built and clean,
Your fingers hot to cut away the green
Of brush and flowers that bring beside a track
The kind of beauty steel lines ought to lack,—
And I a poet, wistful of my betters,
Reading George Meredith’s high-hearted letters,
Joining betweenwhile in the mingled speech
Of a drummer, circus-man, and parson, each
Absorbing to himself—as I to me
And you to you—a glad identity!

After a time, when others went away,
A curious kinship made us choose to stay,
Which I could tell you now; but at the time
You thought of baseball teams and I of rhyme,
Until we found that we were college men
And smoked more easily and smiled again;
And I from Cambridge cried, the poet still:
“I know your fine Greek theatre on the hill
At Berkeley!” With your happy Grecian head
Upraised, “I never saw the place,” you said—
“Once I was free of class, I always went
Out to the field.”

Young engineer, you meant
As fair a tribute to the better part
As ever I did. Beauty of the heart
Is evident in temples. But it breathes
Alive where athletes quicken curly wreaths,
Which are the lovelier because they die.
You are a poet quite as much as I,
Though differences appear in what we do,
And I an athlete quite as much as you.
Because you half-surmise my quarter-mile
And I your quatrain, we could greet and smile.
Who knows but we shall look again and find
The circus-man and drummer, not behind
But leading in our visible estate—
As discus-thrower and as laureate?

_James Oppenheim_

James Oppenheim was born at St. Paul, Minnesota, May 24, 1882. Two
years later his family moved to New York City, where he has lived
ever since. After a public school education, he took special courses
at Columbia University (1901-3) and engaged in settlement work,
acting in the capacity of assistant head worker of the Hudson Guild
Settlement, and superintendent of the Hebrew Technical School for
Girls (1904-7). His studies and experiences on the lower East Side
of New York furnished the material for his first, and most popular,
book of short stories, _Doctor Rast_ (1909).

Oppenheim’s initial venture as a poet, _Monday Morning and Other
Poems_ (1909), was a tentative collection; half imitative, half
experimental. In spite of its obvious indebtedness to Whitman, most
of the verses are in formal meters and regular (though ragged)
rhyme. Beauty is sought but seldom captured here; the message is
coughed out between bursts of eloquence and fits of stammering.

With _Songs for the New Age_ (1914) Oppenheim became his own
liberator. The stammering has gone, the uncouth dissonances have
resolved. One listens to a speech that, echoing the Whitmanic
sonority, develops a music that is strangely Biblical and yet local.
It is the expression of an ancient people reacting to modernity, of
a race in solution. (See Preface.) This volume, like all of
Oppenheim’s subsequent work, is analysis in terms of poetry; a slow
searching beneath the musical surface that attempts to diagnose the
twisted soul of man and the twisted times he lives in. The old
Isaiah note, with a new introspection, rises out of such poems as
“The Slave,” “We Dead,” “Tasting the Earth”; the music and imagery
of the Psalms are heard in “The Flocks,” “The Tree” and “The Runner
in the Skies.”

_War and Laughter_ (1916) holds much of its predecessor’s exaltation
and an almost ecstatic discontent. The Semitic blend of delight and
disillusion—that quality which hates the world for its shams and
hypocrisies and loves it in spite of them—is revealed in “Greed,” in
the ironic “Report on the Planet Earth” and the brightly affirmative
“Laughter.”

_The Book of Self_ (1917) is less notable, an imperfect fusion.
Oppenheim’s preoccupation with analytical psychology mars the effect
of the long passages which, in themselves, contain flashes of
clairvoyance. _The Solitary_ (1919) is a great stride forward; its
major section, a long symbolic poem called “The Sea,” breathes the
same note that was the burden of the earlier books—“We are flesh on
the way to godhood”—with greater strength and still greater control.

Besides his poetry, Oppenheim has published several volumes of short
stories, four novels, and two poetic plays. During 1916-17 he was
editor of that promising but short-lived magazine, _The Seven Arts_.

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 ...

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.

TASTING THE EARTH

In a dark hour, tasting the Earth.

As I lay on my couch in the muffled night, and the rain lashed my window, And my forsaken heart would give me no rest, no pause and no peace, Though I turned my face far from the wailing of my bereavement.... Then I said: I will eat of this sorrow to its last shred, I will take it unto me utterly, I will see if I be not strong enough to contain it.... What do I fear? Discomfort? How can it hurt me, this bitterness?

The miracle, then! Turning toward it, and giving up to it, I found it deeper than my own self.... O dark great mother-globe so close beneath me ... It was she with her inexhaustible grief, Ages of blood-drenched jungles, and the smoking of craters, and the roar of tempests, And moan of the forsaken seas, It was she with the hills beginning to walk in the shapes of the dark-hearted animals, It was she risen, dashing away tears and praying to dumb skies, in the pomp-crumbling tragedy of man ... It was she, container of all griefs, and the buried dust of broken hearts, Cry of the christs and the lovers and the child-stripped mothers, And ambition gone down to defeat, and the battle overborne, And the dreams that have no waking....

My heart became her ancient heart: On the food of the strong I fed, on dark strange life itself: Wisdom-giving and sombre with the unremitting love of ages....

There was dank soil in my mouth, And bitter sea on my lips, In a dark hour, tasting the Earth.

THE LINCOLN CHILD[43]

Clearing in the forest,
In the wild Kentucky forest,
And the stars, wintry stars strewn above!
O Night that is the starriest
Since Earth began to roll—
For a Soul
Is born out of Love!
Mother love, father love, love of Eternal God—
Stars have pushed aside to let him through—
Through heaven’s sun-sown deeps
One sparkling ray of God
Strikes the clod—
(And while an angel-host through wood and clearing sweeps!)
Born in the wild
The Child—
Naked, ruddy, new,
Wakes with the piteous human cry and at the mother-heart sleeps.

To the mother wild berries and honey,
To the father awe without end,
To the child a swaddling of flannel—
And a dawn rolls sharp and sunny
And the skies of winter bend
To see the first sweet word penned
In the godliest human annal.

Frail Mother of the Wilderness—
How strange the world shines in
And the cabin becomes chapel
And the baby lies secure—
Sweet Mother of the Wilderness,
New worlds for you begin,
You have tasted of the apple
That giveth wisdom sure....

Soon in the wide wilderness,
On a branch blown over a creek,
Up a trail of the wild coon,
In a lair of the wild bee,
The rugged boy, by danger’s stress,
Learnt the speech the wild things speak,
Learnt the Earth’s eternal tune
Of strife-engendered harmony—
Went to school where Life itself was master,
Went to church where Earth was minister—
And in Danger and Disaster
Felt his future manhood stir!

All about him the land,
Eastern cities, Western prairie,
Wild, immeasurable, grand;
But he was lost where blossomy boughs make airy
Bowers in the forest, and the sand
Makes brook-water a clear mirror that gives back
Green branches and trunks black
And clouds across the heavens lightly fanned.

Yet all the Future dreams, eager to waken,
Within that woodland soul—
And the bough of boy has only to be shaken
That the fruit drop whereby this Earth shall roll
A little nearer God than ever before.
Little recks he of war,
Of national millions waiting on his word—
Dreams still the Event unstirred
In the heart of the boy, the little babe of the wild—
But the years hurry and the tide of the sea
Of Time flows fast and ebbs, and he, even he,
Must leave the wilderness, the wood-haunts wild—
Soon shall the cyclone of Humanity
Tearing through Earth suck up this little child
And whirl him to the top, where he shall be
Riding the storm-column in the lightning-stroke,
Calm at the peak, while down below worlds rage,
And Earth goes out in blood and battle-smoke,
And leaves him with the sun—an epoch and an age!

And lo, as he grew ugly, gaunt,
And gnarled his way into a man,
What wisdom came to feed his want,
What worlds came near to let him scan!
And as he fathomed through and through
Our dark and sorry human scheme,
He knew what Shakespeare never knew,
What Dante never dared to dream—
That Men are one
Beneath the sun,
And before God are equal souls—
This truth was his,
And this it is
That round him such a glory rolls—
For not alone he knew it as a truth,
He made it of his blood, and of his brain—
He crowned it on the day when piteous Booth
Sent a whole land to weeping with world pain—
When a black cloud blotted the sun
And men stopped in the streets to sob,
To think Old Abe was dead.
Dead, and the day’s work still undone,
Dead, and war’s ruining heart athrob,
And earth with fields of carnage freshly spread—
Millions died fighting,
But in this man we mourned
Those millions, and one other—
And the States to-day uniting,
North and South,
East and West,
Speak with a people’s mouth
A rhapsody of rest
To him our beloved best,
Our big, gaunt, homely brother—
Our huge Atlantic coast-storm in a shawl,
Our cyclone in a smile—our President,
Who knew and loved us all
With love more eloquent
Than his own words—with Love that in real deeds was spent....

Oh, to pour love through deeds—
To be as Lincoln was!—
That all the land might fill its daily needs
Glorified by a human Cause!
Then were America a vast World-Torch
Flaming a faith across the dying Earth,
Proclaiming from the Atlantic’s rocky porch,
That a New World was struggling at the birth!

O living God, O Thou who living art,
And real, and near, draw, as at that babe’s birth,
Into our souls and sanctify our Earth—
Let down Thy strength that we endure
Mighty and pure
As mothers and fathers of our own Lincoln-child—
Make us more wise, more true, more strong, more mild,
That we may day by day
Rear this wild blossom through its soft petals of clay;
That hour by hour
We may endow it with more human power
Than is our own—
That it may reach the goal
Our Lincoln long has shown!
O Child, flesh of our flesh, bone of our bone,
Soul torn from out our Soul!
May you be great, and pure, and beautiful—
A Soul to search this world
To be a father, brother, comrade, son,
A toiler powerful;
A man whose toil is done
One with God’s Law above:
Work wrought through Love!

NIGHT NOTE

A little moon was restless in Eternity And, shivering beneath the stars, Dropped in the hiding arms of the western hill. Night’s discord ceased: The visible universe moved in an endless rhythm: The wheel of the heavens turned to the pulse of a cricket in the grass.

_Alice Corbin_

Alice Corbin (Mrs. William Penhallow Henderson) was born in St.
Louis, Missouri. She has been Associate Editor of _Poetry; A
Magazine of Verse_ since 1912, co-editing (with Harriet Monroe) _The
New Poetry, An Anthology_ (1917). Since 1916 she has lived in New
Mexico.

_The Spinning Woman of the Sky_ (1912) contains few hints of
originality. It is cast in an entirely different key than Miss
Corbin’s later efforts. Her recent verses, many of them uncollected,
are much richer; they reveal a close contact with primitive people
and native folk-lore. Her southern and far western sketches are
particularly colorful; a volume of New Mexico studies, _Red Earth_
(1920), being full of noteworthy and sympathetic records.

ECHOES OF CHILDHOOD

(_A Folk-Medley_)

UNCLE JIM

Old Uncle Jim was as blind as a mole,
But he could fiddle Virginia Reels,
Till you felt the sap run out of your heels,
Till you knew the devil had got your soul—

_Down the middle and swing yo’ partners,
Up agin and salute her low,
Shake yo’ foot an’ keep a-goin’,
Down the middle an’ do-se-do!_

_Mind yo’ manners an’ doan git keerless,
Swing yo’ lady and bow full low,
S’lute yo’ partner an’ turn yo’ neighbor,
Gran’-right-an’-left, and aroun’ you go!_

* * *

DELPHY

Delphy’s breast was wide and deep,
A shelf to lay a child asleep,
_Swing low, sweet chariot, swing low_;
Rocking like a lifted boat
On lazy tropic seas afloat,
_Swing low, sweet chariot, swing low_.

Delphy, when my mother died,
Taught me wisdom, curbed my pride,
_Swing low, sweet chariot, swing low_;
And when she laid her body down,
It shone, a jewel, in His crown,
_Swing low, sweet chariot, swing low_.

* * *

(_Underneath the southern moon
I was cradled to the tune
Of the banjo and the fiddle
And the plaintive negro croon._)

MANDY’S
RELIGION

I’se got religion an’ I doan care
Who knows that God an’ I are square,
I wuz carryin’ home my mistis’ wash
When God came an’ spoke to me out’n de hush.

An’ I th’ew de wash up inter de air,
An’ I climbed a tree to de golden stair,
Ef it hadn’t a been fur Mistah Wright
I’d had ter stayed dere all de night!

* * *

(_Underneath the southern moon
I was cradled to the tune
Of the banjo and the fiddle
And the plaintive negro croon._)

BETSY’S BOY

Betsy’s boy could shuffle and clog,
Though you couldn’t get him to saw a log,
Laziest boy about the place
Till he started to dance—and you saw his face!
It was all lit up like a mask of bronze
Set in a niche between temple gongs—
For he would dance and never stop
Till he fell on the floor like a spun-out top.
His feet hung loose from his supple waist,
He danced without stopping, he danced without haste.
Like Shiva the Hindu his feet were bound
In the rhythm of stars and of streams underground:

_Banjo playin’ and de sanded floor,
Fiddle cryin’, always callin’ more,
Can’t help dancin’ though de preacher says
Can’t git to heaven doin’ no sich ways,
Can’t help dancin’ though de devil stan’s
With a pitch-fork waitin’ in his brimstone han’s;
Got—ter—keep—dancin’,—can’t—stop—now,
Got—ter—keep—dancin’, I—doan—know—how ..._

_Banjo playin’ and de sanded floor,
Fiddle cryin’, always callin’ more,
People’s faces lookin’ scared an’ white,
Hands a clappin’ an’ eyes starin’ bright.
Can’t help dancin’ though de candle’s dyin’,
Can’t help dancin’ while de fiddle’s cryin’;
Got—ter—keep—dancin’, can’t—stop—now,
Got—ter—keep—dancin’,—I—doan—know—how!_

_Lola Ridge_

Lola Ridge was born in Dublin, Ireland, leaving there in infancy and
spending her childhood in Sydney, Australia. After living some years
in New Zealand, she returned to Australia to study art. In 1907, she
came to the United States, supporting herself for three years by
writing fiction for the popular magazines. She stopped this work
only, as she says, “because I found I would have to do so if I
wished to survive as an artist.” For several years she earned her
living in a variety of ways—as organizer for an educational
movement, as advertisement writer, as illustrator, artist’s model,
factory-worker, etc. In 1918, _The New Republic_ published her long
poem _The Ghetto_ and Miss Ridge, until then totally unknown, became
the “discovery” of the year.

Her volume _The Ghetto and Other Poems_ (1918) contains one poem
that is brilliant, several that are powerful and none that is
mediocre. Her title-poem is its pinnacle; in it Miss Ridge touches
strange heights. It is essentially a poem of the city, of its sodden
brutalities, its sudden beauties. Swift figures shine from these
lines, like barbaric colors leaping out of darkness; images that are
surprising but never strained glow with a condensed clarity. In her
other poems—especially in “The Song of Iron,” “Faces” and “Frank
Little at Calvary”—the same dignity is maintained, though with less
magic.

_Sun-Up_ (1920) is less integrated, more frankly experimental. But
the same vibrancy and restrained power that distinguished her
preceding book are manifest here. Her delineations are sensitive and
subtle; she accomplishes the maximum in effects with a minimum of
effort.

PASSAGES FROM “THE GHETTO”

Old Sodos no longer makes saddles. He has forgotten how ... Time spins like a crazy dial in his brain, And night by night I see the love-gesture of his arm In its green-greasy coat-sleeve Circling the Book, And the candles gleaming starkly On the blotched-paper whiteness of his face, Like a miswritten psalm ... Night by night I hear his lifted praise, Like a broken whinnying Before the Lord’s shut gate.

* * *

Lights go out And the stark trunks of the factories Melt into the drawn darkness, Sheathing like a seamless garment.

And mothers take home their babies, Waxen and delicately curled, Like little potted flowers closed under the stars....

Lights go out ... And colors rush together, Fusing and floating away. Pale worn gold like the settings of old jewels ... Mauve, exquisite, tremulous, and luminous purples, And burning spires in aureoles of light Like shimmering auras. They are covering up the pushcarts ... Now all have gone save an old man with mirrors— Little oval mirrors like tiny pools. He shuffles up a darkened street And the moon burnishes his mirrors till they shine like phosphorus.... The moon like a skull, Staring out of eyeless sockets at the old men trundling home the pushcarts.

* * *

A sallow dawn is in the sky As I enter my little green room. Without, the frail moon, Worn to a silvery tissue, Throws a faint glamour on the roofs, And down the shadowy spires Lights tip-toe out ... Softly as when lovers close street doors.

Out of the Battery A little wind Stirs idly—as an arm Trails over a boat’s side in dalliance— Rippling the smooth dead surface of the heat, And Hester street, Like a forlorn woman over-borne By many babies at her teats, Turns on her trampled bed to meet the day.

NEW ORLEANS

Do you remember
Honey-melon moon
Dripping thick sweet light
Where Canal Street saunters off by herself among quiet trees?
And the faint decayed patchouli—
Fragrance of New Orleans ...
New Orleans,
Like a dead tube rose
Upheld in the warm air ...
Miraculously whole.

WIND IN THE ALLEYS

Wind, rising in the alleys,
My spirit lifts in you like a banner streaming free of hot walls.
You are full of unshaped dreams ...
You are laden with beginnings ...
There is hope in you ... not sweet ... acrid as blood in the mouth.
Come into my tossing dust
Scattering the peace of old deaths,
Wind rising out of the alleys
Carrying stuff of flame.

_Wallace Stevens_

Wallace Stevens, of Hartford, Connecticut, is a poet whose peculiar
quality is only exceeded by his reticence. He has scrupulously kept
out of the public eye, has printed his poetry only at rare intervals
and, though much of his work has been highly praised, has
steadfastly refused to publish a volume.

Stevens’s best work may be found in the three _Others_ anthologies,
edited by Alfred Kreymborg. Some of it is penetrative, more than a
little is puzzling and all of it is provocative. In spite of what
seems a weary disdain, Stevens is a more than skilful decorator and,
like T. S. Eliot, combines irony and glamour in a highly original
idiom.

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 beings 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.

_Alfred Kreymborg_

Alfred Kreymborg, one of the most original of the younger
insurgents, was born in New York City, December 10, 1883. His
education was spasmodic, his childhood being spent beneath the roar
of the elevated trains. At ten he was an expert chess player,
devoting practically all his time to a study of the game. Later, he
became a bookkeeper for a few years, but from the ages of seventeen
to twenty-five he supported himself by teaching chess and playing
exhibition games. His passion, however, was not mathematics but
music. He dreamed of extending the borders of poetry into the realms
of tonic art, experimented with new systems of notation,
technicalities of rhythm. At thirty, he began to turn to the theater
as a medium; finding, in this way, fresh contacts that enriched and
ripened his later work.

In 1914, he organized that group of radical poets which,
half-deprecatingly, half-defiantly, called itself “Others.” (He
edited the three anthologies of their work published in 1916, 1917
and 1919.) Meanwhile, he had been working on a technique that was a
fresh attempt to rid poetry of its too frequent wordiness and
rhetorical non-essentials. _Mushrooms_ (1916) was the first
collection in this vein. Here Kreymborg continually sought for
simplification, cutting away at his lines until they assumed an
almost naked expression. Often he overdid his effects, attaining
nothing more than a false ingenuousness, a sophisticated simplicity.
Often, too, he failed to draw the line between what is innocently
childlike and what is merely childish. One sees him frequently
trying to strike curious attitudes, tripping over several of his
buffooneries and sprawling ingloriously.

But Kreymborg, for all harlequin gestures, can do something better
than tumble and talk with his tongue in his cheek. An elfin fantasy
and no little beauty of thought are his when he wants to use them.
Surprising whimsicality and passages of bright color distinguish his
_Plays for Poem-Mimes_ (1918), in which the principles of modern art
are applied to poetry and acting, as well as the more developed
_Plays for Merry Andrews_ (1920).

Kreymborg’s most ambitious volume of poetry, _Blood of Things_
(1920), is, for all the surface oddities, the work not only of an
ardent experimenter but a serious thinker. Humor is in these pages,
but it is humor lifted to a sort of exaltation. Here, in spite of
what seems a persistence of occasional charlatanry, is a rich and
sensitive imagination; a fancy that is as wild as it is
quick-witted.

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.

DAWNS

I have come
from pride
all the way up to humility
This day-to-night.
The hill
was more terrible
than ever before.
This is the top;
there is the tall, slim tree.
It isn’t bent; it doesn’t lean;
It is only looking back.
At dawn,
under that tree,
still another me of mine
was buried.
Waiting for me to come again,
humorously solicitous
of what I bring next,
it looks down.

HER EYES

Her eyes hold black whips—
dart of a whip
lashing, nay, flicking,
nay, merely caressing
the hide of a heart—
and a broncho tears through canyons—
walls reverberating,
sluggish streams
shaken to rapids and torrents
storm destroying
silence and solitude!
Her eyes throw black lariats—
one for his head,
one for his heels—
and the beast lies vanquished—
walls still,
streams still—
except for a tarn,
or is it a pool,
or is it a whirlpool
twitching with memory?

IMPROVISATION

Wind:
Why do you play
that long beautiful adagio,
that archaic air,
to-night
Will it never end?
Or is it the beginning,
some prelude you seek?

Is it a tale you strum?
_Yesterday, yesterday_—
Have you no more for us?

Wind:
Play on.
There is nor hope
nor mutiny
in you.

_Arthur Davison Ficke_

Arthur Davison Ficke was born at Davenport, Iowa, November 10, 1883.
He received his A.B. at Harvard (1904), studied for the law and was
admitted to the bar in 1908. In 1919, after two years’ service in
France, he gave up his law practice and devoted himself to
literature exclusively.

Ficke is the author of ten volumes of verse, the most representative
of which are _Sonnets of a Portrait Painter_ (1914), _The Man on the
Hilltop_ (1915) and _An April Elegy_ (1917). In these, the author
has distilled a warm spirituality, combining freshness of vision
with an intensified seriousness.

Having been an expert collector and student of Japanese prints,
Ficke has written two books on this theme. His intellectual
equipment is reinforced by a strong sense of satire. Writing under
the pseudonym “Anne Knish,” he was one of the co-authors (with
Witter Bynner) of _Spectra_ (1916), which, caricaturing some of the
wilder outgrowths of the new poetry, was taken seriously by a
majority of the critics and proved to be a brilliant hoax.

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.

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.

SONNET

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....

_Badger Clark_

Badger Clark was born at Albia, Iowa, in 1883. He moved to Dakota
Territory at the age of three months and now lives in the Black
Hills of South Dakota.

Clark is one of the few men who have lived to see their work become
part of folk-lore; many of his songs having been adapted and
paraphrased by the cowboys who have made them their own. A version
of one of his poems (“The Glory Trail”), after wide circulation
among the ranchers and cow-punchers, was printed as an example of
anonymous folk-song in _Poetry; A Magazine of Verse_ under the title
“High-Chin Bob”—and credited to “Author Unknown.”