Chapter I: Shall Not Care48 (2)

How good, that he who always knew
That being lovely was a duty,
Should have gold halls to wander through
And should himself inhabit beauty.
How like his old unselfish way
To leave those halls of splendid mirth
And comfort those condemned to stay
Upon the bleak and sombre earth.

Some people ask: What cruel chance
Made Martin’s life so sad a story?
Martin? Why, he exhaled romance
And wore an overcoat of glory.
A fleck of sunlight in the street,
A horse, a book, a girl who smiled,—
Such visions made each moment sweet
For this receptive, ancient child.

Because it was old Martin’s lot
To be, not make, a decoration,
Shall we then scorn him, having not
His genius of appreciation?
Rich joy and love he got and gave;
His heart was merry as his dress.
Pile laurel wreaths upon his grave
Who did not gain, but was, success.

_Shaemas O Sheel_

Shaemas O Sheel (Shields) was born September 19, 1886, in New York
City. After graduating from high school, he revived the ancient
Gaelic form of his family name and identified himself with the cause
of Ireland in America.

O Sheel’s two volumes, _The Blossomy Bough_ (1911) and _The Light
Feet of Goats_ (1915), owe their chief impetus to the Celtic
renascence and to W. B. Yeats in particular. But O Sheel’s poetry,
although influenced, is not merely derivative. His ancestry speaks
through him with unmistakable accents; he is typically the Irish
bard of whom Chesterton has written:

For the great Gaels of Ireland
Are the men that God made mad;
For all their wars are merry
And all their songs are sad.

A recurring if sometimes too determined mysticism and a muffled
heroism individualize the best of his work.

THEY WENT FORTH TO BATTLE, BUT THEY ALWAYS FELL

They went forth to battle, but they always fell;
Their eyes were fixed above the sullen shields;
Nobly they fought and bravely, but not well,
And sank heart-wounded by a subtle spell.
They knew not fear that to the foeman yields,
They were not weak, as one who vainly wields
A futile weapon; yet the sad scrolls tell
How on the hard-fought field they always fell.

It was a secret music that they heard,
A sad sweet plea for pity and for peace;
And that which pierced the heart was but a word,
Though the white breast was red-lipped where the sword
Pressed a fierce cruel kiss, to put surcease
On its hot thirst, but drank a hot increase.
Ah, they by some strange troubling doubt were stirred,
And died for hearing what no foeman heard.

They went forth to battle, but they always fell;
Their might was not the might of lifted spears;
Over the battle-clamor came a spell
Of troubling music, and they fought not well.
Their wreaths are willows and their tribute, tears;
Their names are old sad stories in men’s ears;
Yet they will scatter the red hordes of Hell,
Who went to battle forth and always fell.

_Roy Helton_

Roy Helton was born at Washington, D. C., in 1886. He graduated from
the University of Pennsylvania in 1908. He studied art—and found he
was color-blind. He spent two years at inventions—and found he had
no business sense. After a few more experiments, he became a
schoolmaster in West Philadelphia.

Helton’s first volume, _Youth’s Pilgrimage_ (1915), is a strange,
mystical affair, full of vague symbolism with a few purple patches.
_Outcasts in Beulah Land_ (1918) is entirely different in theme and
treatment. This is a much starker verse; a poetry of city streets,
direct and sharp.

IN PASSING

Through the dim window, I could see
The little room—a sordid square
Of helter-skelter penury:
Piano, whatnot, splintered chair....

It is so small a room that I
Seem almost at the woman’s side:
Galled jade—too fat for vanity,
And far too frankly old for pride.

Her greasy apron ’round her waist;
The dish cloth by her on the chair;
As if in some wild headlong haste,
She has come in and settled there.

Grimly she bends her back and tries
To stab the keys, with heavy hand;
A child’s first finger exercise
Before her on the music stand.

_David Morton_

David Morton was born at Elkton, Kentucky, February 21, 1886. He
graduated from Vanderbilt University in 1909, engaging in newspaper
work immediately thereafter. After ten years of writing for various
papers in the South, Morton came to New Jersey, where he now lives,
being teacher of English at Morristown High School.

The greater part of Morton’s work is in the sonnet form, a form into
which he has carried a new warmth without sacrificing the old
dignity. The best of these verses are to be found in his first
volume, _Ships in Harbor and Other Poems_.

SYMBOLS[57]

Beautiful words, like butterflies, blow by,
With what swift colors on their fragile wings!—
Some that are less articulate than a sigh,
Some that were names of ancient, lovely things.
What delicate careerings of escape,
When they would pass beyond the baffled reach,
To leave a haunting shadow and a shape,
Eluding still the careful traps of speech.

And I who watch and listen, lie in wait,
Seeing the cloudy cavalcades blow past,
Happy if some bright vagrant, soon or late,
May venture near the snares of sound, at last—
Most fortunate captor if, from time to time,
One may be taken, trembling, in a rhyme.

OLD SHIPS

There is a memory stays upon old ships,
A weightless cargo in the musty hold,—
Of bright lagoons and prow-caressing lips,
Of stormy midnights,—and a tale untold.
They have remembered islands in the dawn,
And windy capes that tried their slender spars,
And tortuous channels where their keels have gone,
And calm blue nights of stillness and the stars.

Ah, never think that ships forget a shore,
Or bitter seas, or winds that made them wise;
There is a dream upon them, evermore;
And there be some who say that sunk ships rise
To seek familiar harbors in the night,
Blowing in mists, their spectral sails like light.

_Orrick Johns_

Orrick Johns was born at St. Louis, Missouri, in 1887. He schooled
himself to be an advertising copy writer, his creative work being
kept as an avocation.

_Asphalt and Other Poems_ (1917) is a queer mixture. Cheap stanzas
crowd against lines of singular beauty; poor dialect verse elbows
lyrics that sing without a false note. The same incongruity is
evident in _Black Branches_ (1920), where much that is strained and
artificial mingles with poetry that is not only spontaneous but
searching. At his best, notably in the refreshing “Country Rhymes,”
Johns is a true singer, a lyricist of no little stature.

THE INTERPRETER

In the very early morning when the light was low
She got all together and she went like snow,
Like snow in the springtime on a sunny hill,
And we were only frightened and can’t think still.

We can’t think quite that the katydids and frogs
And the little crying chickens and the little grunting hogs,
And the other living things that she spoke for to us
Have nothing more to tell her since it happened thus.

She never is around for any one to touch,
But of ecstasy and longing she too knew much ...
And always when any one has time to call his own
She will come and be beside him as quiet as a stone.

LITTLE THINGS

There’s nothing very beautiful and nothing very gay
About the rush of faces in the town by day;
But a light tan cow in a pale green mead,
That is very beautiful, beautiful indeed ...
And the soft March wind and the low March mist
Are better than kisses in a dark street kissed ...
The fragrance of the forest when it wakes at dawn,
The fragrance of a trim green village lawn,
The hearing of the murmur of the rain at play—
These things are beautiful, beautiful as day!
And I shan’t stand waiting for love or scorn
When the feast is laid for a day new-born
Oh, better let the little things I loved when little
Return when the heart finds the great things brittle;
And better is a temple made of bark and thong
Than a tall stone temple that may stand too long.

_Margaret Widdemer_

Margaret Widdemer was born at Doylestown, Pennsylvania, and began
writing in her childhood. After graduating from Drexel Institute
Library School in 1909, she became a contributor of poems and short
stories to various magazines—her first published poem (“The
Factories”) being widely quoted. She married Robert Haven
Schauffler, the author, in August, 1919.

Miss Widdemer’s poetic work has two distinct phases. In the one
mood, she is the protesting poet, the champion of the down-trodden,
the lyricist on fire with angry passion. In the other, she is the
writer of well-made, polite and popular sentimental verse. Her
finest poems are in _Factories with Other Lyrics_ (1915), although
several of her best songs are in _The Old Road to Paradise_ (1918),
which divided, with Sandburg’s _Cornhuskers_, the Columbia Poetry
Prize in 1918.

Miss Widdemer is also the author of two books of short stories, four
novels and several books for girls.

FACTORIES

I have shut my little sister in from life and light
(For a rose, for a ribbon, for a wreath across my hair),
I have made her restless feet still until the night,
Locked from sweets of summer and from wild spring air;
I who ranged the meadowlands, free from sun to sun,
Free to sing and pull the buds and watch the far wings fly,
I have bound my sister till her playing time was done—
Oh, my little sister, was it I? Was it I?

I have robbed my sister of her day of maidenhood
(For a robe, for a feather, for a trinket’s restless spark),
Shut from love till dusk shall fall, how shall she know good,
How shall she go scatheless through the sun-lit dark?
I who could be innocent, I who could be gay,
I who could have love and mirth before the light went by,
I have put my sister in her mating-time away—
Sister, my young sister, was it I? Was it I?

I have robbed my sister of the lips against her breast,
(For a coin, for the weaving of my children’s lace and lawn),
Feet that pace beside the loom, hands that cannot rest—
How can she know motherhood, whose strength is gone?
I who took no heed of her, starved and labor-worn,
I, against whose placid heart my sleepy gold-heads lie,
Round my path they cry to me, little souls unborn—
God of Life! Creator! It was I! It was I!

THE TWO DYINGS

I can remember once, ere I was dead,
The sorrow and the prayer and bitter cry
When they who loved me stood around the bed,
Watching till I should die:

They need not so have grieved their souls for me,
Grouped statue-like to count my failing breath—
Only one thought strove faintly, bitterly
With the kind drug of Death:

How once upon a time, unwept, unknown,
Unhelped by pitying sigh or murmured prayer,
My youth died in slow agony alone
With none to watch or care.

THE MODERN WOMAN TO HER LOVER

I shall not lie to you any more,
Flatter or fawn to attain my end—
I am what never has been before,
Woman—and Friend.

I shall be strong as a man is strong,
I shall be fair as a man is fair,
Hand in locked hand we shall pass along
To a purer air:

I shall not drag at your bridle-rein,
Knee pressed to knee we shall ride the hill;
I shall not lie to you ever again—
_Will you love me still?_

_Alan Seeger_

Alan Seeger was born in New York, June 22, 1888. When he was still a
baby, his parents moved to Staten Island, where he remained through
boyhood. Later, there were several other migrations, including a
sojourn in Mexico, where Seeger spent the most impressionable years
of his youth. In 1906, he entered Harvard; became one of the editors
of the _Harvard Monthly_; returned to New York in 1910 and in 1913
set off for Paris—“a departing point,” wrote William Archer, “which
may fairly be called his Hegira, the turning point of his history.”
1914 came, and the European war had not entered its third week when,
along with some forty of his fellow-countrymen, Seeger enlisted in
the Foreign Legion of France. He was in action almost continually,
serving on various fronts. On July 1, 1916, a new advance began; a
few days later the Legion was ordered to clear the Germans out of
the village of Belloy-en-Santerre. On the fourth of July, Seeger
advanced in the first rush and his squad was practically wiped out
by hidden machine-gun fire. Seeger fell, mortally wounded, and died
the next morning.

Seeger’s literary promise was far greater than his poetic
accomplishment. With the exception of his one famous poem, there is
little of importance though much of charm in his collected _Poems_
(published, with an Introduction by William Archer, in 1916). His
letters from the front (published in 1917) show a more powerful
touch, a keener sense of perception. Had he lived a few years more,
he might have been a valuable recorder of a changed and changing
world.

“I HAVE A RENDEZVOUS WITH DEATH”[58]

I have a rendezvous with Death
At some disputed barricade,
When Spring comes back with rustling shade
And apple-blossoms fill the air—
I have a rendezvous with Death
When Spring brings back blue days and fair.

It may be he shall take my hand
And lead me into his dark land
And close my eyes and quench my breath—
It may be I shall pass him still.
I have a rendezvous with Death
On some scarred slope of battered hill,
When Spring comes round again this year
And the first meadow-flowers appear.

God knows ’twere better to be deep
Pillowed in silk and scented down,
Where love throbs out in blissful sleep,
Pulse nigh to pulse, and breath to breath,
Where hushed awakenings are dear ...
But I’ve a rendezvous with Death
At midnight in some flaming town,
When Spring trips north again this year,
And I to my pledged word am true,
I shall not fail that rendezvous.

_Willard Wattles_

Willard (Austin) Wattles was born at Bayneville, Kansas, July 8,
1888. He received his A.B. at the University of Kansas in 1909 and,
since 1910, has divided his time between teaching English and
harvesting wheat.

His first book was an anthology, _Sunflowers: A Book of Kansas
Poems_ (1914), to which he also contributed. _Lanterns in
Gethsemane_ (1918) consists, almost entirely, of mystical and
religious poems. There is, however, little of the sermonizing
unction and less cant in these fresh pages. There is an unusual
vibrancy here; a warm buoyance that glows against its theological
background. Many of Wattles’s verses have the peculiar grace of a
parable joined to a nursery rhyme; “The Builder,” “Jericho” and a
few others seem like scraps of the Scripture rendered by Mother
Goose.

THE BUILDER[59]

Smoothing a cypress beam
With a scarred hand,
I saw a carpenter
In a far land.

Down past the flat roofs
Poured the white sun;
But still he bent his back,
The patient one.

And I paused surprised
In that queer place
To find an old man
With a haunting face.

“Who art thou, carpenter,
Of the bowed head;
And what buildest thou?”
“Heaven,” he said.

CREEDS

How pitiful are little folk—
They seem so very small;
They look at stars, and think they are
Denominational.

_T. S. Eliot_

Thomas Stearns Eliot, one of the most brilliant of the young
expatriates, was born at St. Louis, Missouri, in 1888. He received
his A.B. at Harvard in 1909 and his A.M. in 1910. Subsequently, he
studied at the Sorbonne and at Merton College, Oxford, becoming a
teacher and lecturer in London, where he has lived since 1913.

_Prufrock_ appeared in England in 1917. An American edition,
including a number of other verses, was published under the title
_Poems_ in 1920. Eliot’s early work is the more important; it is
curious and sharply original. The exaltation which is the very
breath of poetry is seldom present in Eliot’s later lines. A certain
perverse brilliance takes its place, an unearthly light without
warmth which has the sparkle if not the strength of fire. It
flickers mockingly through most of Eliot’s sardonic pictures and
shines with a bright pallor out of “The Love Song of J. Alfred
Prufrock” and “Portrait of a Lady.” These two long poems are the
book’s main exhibit; they are sensitive and psychologically probing.

Eliot’s ironic rhymed verses, which constitute the bulk of his work,
are in his later style. It is this vein that tempts Eliot most—and
is his own undoing. For irony, no matter how agile and erudite—and
Eliot’s is both—must contain heat if it is to burn. And heat is one
of the few things that cannot be juggled by this acrobatic satirist.
His lines, for the most part, are a species of mordant light verse;
complex and disillusioned _vers de société_.

MORNING AT THE WINDOW

They are rattling breakfast plates in basement kitchens,
And along the trampled edges of the street
I am aware of the damp souls of housemaids
Sprouting despondently at area gates.

The brown waves of fog toss up to me
Twisted faces from the bottom of the street,
And tear from a passer-by with muddy skirts
An aimless smile that hovers in the air
And vanishes along the level of the roofs.

FROM “THE LOVE SONG OF J. ALFRED PRUFROCK”

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes,
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And, seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

PRELUDE

The winter evening settles down
With smells of steaks in passageways.
Six o’clock.
The burnt-out ends of smoky days.
And now a gusty shower wraps
The grimy scraps
Of withered leaves about his feet
And newspapers from vacant lots;
The showers beat
On broken blinds and chimney pots,
And at the corner of the street
A lonely cab-horse steams and stamps,
And then the lighting of the lamps.

_Conrad Aiken_

Conrad (Potter) Aiken was born at Savannah, Georgia, August 5, 1889.
He attended Harvard, receiving his A.B. in 1912, travelled
extensively for three years, and since then, he has devoted all his
time to literature, living at South Yarmouth, Massachusetts.

The most outstanding feature of Aiken’s creative work is its rapid
adaptability and its slow growth. His first volume, _Earth
Triumphant and Other Tales in Verse_ (1914), is the Keats tradition
crossed, paraphrased (and vulgarized) by Masefield. _Turns and
Movies_ (1916) is a complete change; Masefield is exchanged for
Masters. But in the less conspicuous half of this book, Aiken begins
to speak with his true voice. Here he is the natural musician,
playing with new rhythms, haunting cadences. _The Jig of Forslin_
(1916) is an elaboration of his method. In this volume, Aiken goes
back to the narrative—or rather, to a series of loosely connected
stories—and, reinforced by studies in analytical psychology,
explores “the process of vicarious wish fulfilment by which
civilized man enriches his circumscribed life.”

_Nocturne of Remembered Spring_ (1917), _The Charnel Rose_ (1918)
and _The House of Dust_ (1920) are packed with a tired but often
beautiful music. Even though much of it is enlivened by injections
of T. S. Eliot’s conversational idiom, the effect is often moony and
monotonous. Rain seems to fall persistently through these volumes;
dust blows down the street, the shadows blur; everything dissolves
in a mist of boredom and forgetfulness. Even the poignance seems on
the point of falling asleep.

Often Aiken loses himself in this watery welter of language. In
trying to create a closer _liaison_ between poetry and music, he
gives, too frequently, so much importance to the rise and fall of
syllables that his very excess of music defeats his purpose. His
verse, thus, gains greatly on the sensuous side but loses, in its
cloying indefiniteness, that vitality and sharpness of speech which
is the very blood of poetry.

This weakening overinsistence on sound does not prevent Aiken from
attaining many exquisite effects. Primarily, a lyric poet, he
frequently condenses an emotion in a few lines; some of his best
moments are these “lapses” into tune. The music of the Morning Song
from “Senlin” (in _The Charnel Rose_) is rich with subtleties of
rhythm. But it is much more than a lyrical movement. Beneath the
flow and flexibility of these lines, there is a delightful
whimsicality, an extraordinary summoning of the immensities that
loom behind the casual moments of everyday. And in “The Fulfilled
Dream,” Aiken can divert the stream of the subconscious, whose vague
outlines he reproduces so well, to show the dream in its vivid
strength.

Besides his varied poetry, Aiken has written a quantity of criticism
of contemporary poets, the best of his reviews having been published
in _Scepticisms_ (1919), a provocative and valuable series of
studies.

CHANCE MEETINGS

In the mazes of loitering people, the watchful and furtive,
The shadows of tree-trunks and shadows of leaves,
In the drowse of the sunlight, among the low voices,
I suddenly face you,

Your dark eyes return for a space from her who is with you,
They shine into mine with a sunlit desire,
They say an ‘I love you, what star do you live on?’
They smile and then darken,

And silent, I answer ‘You too—I have known you,—I love you!—’
And the shadows of tree-trunks and shadows of leaves
Interlace with low voices and footsteps and sunlight
To divide us forever.

THE FULFILLED DREAM

More towers must yet be built—more towers destroyed—
Great rocks hoisted in air;
And he must seek his bread in high pale sunlight
With gulls about him, and clouds just over his eyes....
And so he did not mention his dream of falling
But drank his coffee in silence, and heard in his ears
That horrible whistle of wind, and felt his breath
Sucked out of him, and saw the tower flash by
And the small tree swell beneath him....
He patted his boy on the head, and kissed his wife,
Looked quickly around the room, to remember it,—
And so went out.... For once, he forgot his pail.

Something had changed—but it was not the street—
The street was just the same—it was himself.
Puddles flashed in the sun. In the pawn-shop door
The same old black cat winked green amber eyes;
The butcher stood by his window tying his apron;
The same men walked beside him, smoking pipes,
Reading the morning paper....

He would not yield, he thought, and walk more slowly,
As if he knew for certain he walked to death:
But with his usual pace,—deliberate, firm,
Looking about him calmly, watching the world,
Taking his ease.... Yet, when he thought again
Of the same dream, now dreamed three separate times,
Always the same, and heard that whistling wind,
And saw the windows flashing upward past him,—
He slowed his pace a little, and thought with horror
How monstrously that small tree thrust to meet him!...
He slowed his pace a little and remembered his wife.

Was forty, then, too old for work like this?
Why should it be? He’d never been afraid—
His eye was sure, his hand was steady....
But dreams had meanings.
He walked more slowly, and looked along the roofs,
All built by men, and saw the pale blue sky;
And suddenly he was dizzy with looking at it,
It seemed to whirl and swim,
It seemed the color of terror, of speed, of death....
He lowered his eyes to the stones, he walked more slowly;
His thoughts were blown and scattered like leaves;
He thought of the pail.... Why, then, was it forgotten?
Because he would not need it?

Then, just as he was grouping his thoughts again
About that drug-store corner, under an arc-lamp,
Where first he met the girl whom he would marry,—
That blue-eyed innocent girl, in a soft blouse,—
He waved his hand for signal, and up he went
In the dusty chute that hugged the wall;
Above the tree; from girdered floor to floor;
Above the flattening roofs, until the sea
Lay wide and waved before him.... And then he stepped
Giddily out, from that security,
To the red rib of iron against the sky,
And walked along it, feeling it sing and tremble;
And looking down one instant, saw the tree
Just as he dreamed it was; and looked away,
And up again, feeling his blood go wild.

—He gave the signal; the long girder swung
Closer upon him, dropped clanging into place,
Almost pushing him off. Pneumatic hammers
Began their madhouse clatter, the white-hot rivets
Were tossed from below and deftly caught in pails;
He signalled again, and wiped his mouth, and thought
A place so high in the air should be more quiet.
The tree, far down below, teased at his eyes,
Teased at the corners of them, until he looked,
And felt his body go suddenly small and light;
Felt his brain float off like a dwindling vapor;
And heard a whistle of wind, and saw a tree
Come plunging up to him, and thought to himself,
‘By God—I’m done for now; the dream was right....’

MIRACLES

Twilight is spacious, near things in it seem far,
And distant things seem near.
Now in the green west hangs a yellow star.
And now across old waters you may hear
The profound gloom of bells among still trees,
Like a rolling of huge boulders beneath seas.

Silent as thought in evening contemplation
Weaves the bat under the gathering stars.
Silent as dew, we seek new incarnation,
Meditate new avatars.
In a clear dusk like this
Mary climbed up the hill to seek her son,
To lower him down from the cross, and kiss
The mauve wounds, every one.
Men with wings
In the dusk walked softly after her.
She did not see them, but may have felt
The winnowed air around her stir;
She did not see them, but may have known
Why her son’s body was light as a little stone.
She may have guessed that other hands were there
Moving the watchful air.

Now, unless persuaded by searching music
Which suddenly opens the portals of the mind,
We guess no angels,
And are contented to be blind.
Let us blow silver horns in the twilight,
And lift our hearts to the yellow star in the green,
To find perhaps, if, while the dew is rising,
Clear things may not be seen.

MORNING SONG FROM “SENLIN”

It is morning, Senlin says, and in the morning
When the light drips through the shutters like the dew,
I arise, I face the sunrise,
And do the things my fathers learned to do.
Stars in the purple dusk above the rooftops
Pale in a saffron mist and seem to die,
And I myself on a swiftly tilting planet
Stand before a glass and tie my tie.
Vine-leaves tap my window,
Dew-drops sing to the garden stones,
The robin chirps in the chinaberry tree
Repeating three clear tones.

It is morning. I stand by the mirror
And tie my tie once more.
While waves far off in a pale rose twilight
Crash on a white sand shore.
I stand by a mirror and comb my hair:
How small and white my face!—
The green earth tilts through a sphere of air
And bathes in a flame of space.
There are houses hanging above the stars
And stars hung under a sea ...
And a sun far off in a shell of silence
Dapples my walls for me....

It is morning, Senlin says, and in the morning
Should I not pause in the light to remember God?
Upright and firm I stand on a star unstable,
He is immense and lonely as a cloud.
I will dedicate this moment before my mirror
To him alone, for him I will comb my hair.
Accept these humble offerings, clouds of silence!
I will think of you as I descend the stair.

Vine-leaves tap my window,
The snail-track shines on the stones;
Dew-drops flash from the chinaberry tree
Repeating two clear tones.

It is morning, I awake from a bed of silence,
Shining I rise from the starless waters of sleep.
The walls are about me still as in the evening,
I am the same, and the same name still I keep.
The earth revolves with me, yet makes no motion,
The stars pale silently in a coral sky.
In a whistling void I stand before my mirror,
Unconcerned, and tie my tie.

There are horses neighing on far-off hills
Tossing their long white manes,
And mountains flash in the rose-white dusk,
Their shoulders black with rains....
It is morning, I stand by the mirror
And surprise my soul once more;
The blue air rushes above my ceiling,
There are suns beneath my floor....

... It is morning, Senlin says, I ascend from darkness
And depart on the winds of space for I know not where;
My watch is wound, a key is in my pocket,
And the sky is darkened as I descend the stair.
There are shadows across the windows, clouds in heaven,
And a god among the stars; and I will go
Thinking of him as I might think of daybreak
And humming a tune I know....

Vine-leaves tap at the window,
Dew-drops sing to the garden stones,
The robin chirps in the chinaberry tree
Repeating three clear tones.

_Christopher Morley_

Christopher (Darlington) Morley was born at Haverford, Pennsylvania,
May 5, 1890. He graduated from Haverford College in 1910 and was
Rhodes Scholar at New College, Oxford, England, 1910-13.

Since 1914 he has been on the staff of various periodicals, coming
to New York in 1920 to run his column (“The Bowling Green”) on the
New York _Evening Post_.

Morley is the author of ten dissimilar volumes of essays, skits,
gossip, travel-notes, light verse and serious poetry. _The Rocking
Horse_ (1919) and _Hide and Seek_ (1920) sink too often in their own
sentiment; their sweetness is frequently cloying, their charm a
little too conscious. But Morley’s vigor energizes his lines and
prevents his verses—especially those in the latter volume—from
becoming tawdry with oversweetness.

QUICKENING[60]

Such little, puny things are words in rhyme:
Poor feeble loops and strokes as frail as hairs;
You see them printed here, and mark their chime,
And turn to your more durable affairs.
Yet on such petty tools the poet dares
To run his race with mortar, bricks and lime,
And draws his frail stick to the point, and stares
To aim his arrow at the heart of Time.

Intangible, yet pressing, hemming in,
This measured emptiness engulfs us all,
And yet he points his paper javelin
And sees it eddy, waver, turn, and fall,
And feels, between delight and trouble torn,
The stirring of a sonnet still unborn.

_Leslie Nelson Jennings_

Leslie Nelson Jennings was born in 1891 at Ware, Massachusetts. When
he was five years old, he moved to California, where he has lived
ever since. For a short term, he worked on a newspaper but ill
health forced him to discontinue this work and drove him to the
hills.

Jennings’s work is still in a formative stage. His lyrics, while
personal in theme, are full of the manner and music of several of
his contemporaries. His sonnets, like those of David Morton, show
Jennings at his best; they are quiet but never dull reflections of
loveliness.

FRUSTRATE[61]

How futile are these scales in which we weigh
Pity and passion, and the spirit’s need!
Words—and the veins of desperate peoples bleed!
Words—and a lark, and hedges white with may!
O must this rapture and this grief remain
Uncaptured in our silences? And must
We stand like stones, less lyrical than dust
That flowers beneath the benison of rain?

And if I say, “I love you,” can you know,
Save by the urgent beating of my heart,
The flame that tears my baffled lips apart?
Poor symbols, cracked or broken long ago,
What witness can you bear that we have tried
To utter Beauty when our tongues were tied!

_Maxwell Bodenheim_

Maxwell Bodenheim was born at Natchez, Mississippi, May 26, 1892.
His education, with the exception of grammar school training, was
achieved under the guidance of the U. S. Army, in which Bodenheim
served a full enlistment of three years, beginning in 1910. For a
while he studied law and art in Chicago, but his mind, fascinated by
the new poetry, turned to literature. He wrote steadily for five
years without having a single poem accepted. In 1918, his first
volume appeared and even those who were puzzled or repelled by
Bodenheim’s complex idiom were forced to recognize its intense
individuality.

_Minna and Myself_ (1918) reveals, first of all, this poet’s extreme
sensitivity to words. Words, under his hands, have unexpected
growths; placid nouns and sober adjectives bear fantastic fruit.
Sometimes he packs his metaphors so close that they become
inextricably mixed. Sometimes he spins his fantasies so thin that
the cord of coherence snaps and the poem frays into ragged and
unpatterned ravellings. But, at his best, Bodenheim is as
clear-headed as he is colorful.

In _Advice_ (1920), Bodenheim’s manner—and his mannerisms—are
intensified. There is scarcely a phrase that is not tricked out with
more ornaments and associations than it can bear; whole poems sink
beneath the weight of their profuse decorations. Yet, in spite of
his verbal exaggerations, this poetry achieves a keen if too ornate
delicacy. In the realm of the whimsical-grotesque, Bodenheim walks
with a light and nimble footstep.

POET TO HIS LOVE

An old silver church in a forest
Is my love for you.
The trees around it
Are words that I have stolen from your heart.
An old silver bell, the last smile you gave,
Hangs at the top of my church.
It rings only when you come through the forest
And stand beside it.
And then, it has no need for ringing,
For your voice takes its place.

OLD AGE

In me is a little painted square Bordered by old shops with gaudy awnings. And before the shops sit smoking, open-bloused old men, Drinking sunlight. The old men are my thoughts; And I come to them each evening, in a creaking cart, And quietly unload supplies. We fill slim pipes and chat And inhale scents from pale flowers in the centre of the square.... Strong men, tinkling women, and dripping, squealing children Stroll past us, or into the shops. They greet the shopkeepers and touch their hats or foreheads to me.... Some evening I shall not return to my people.

DEATH

I shall walk down the road;
I shall turn and feel upon my feet
The kisses of Death, like scented rain.
For Death is a black slave with little silver birds
Perched in a sleeping wreath upon his head.
He will tell me, his voice like jewels
Dropped into a satin bag,
How he has tip-toed after me down the road,
His heart made a dark whirlpool with longing for me.
Then he will graze me with his hands,
And I shall be one of the sleeping, silver birds
Between the cold waves of his hair, as he tip-toes on.

_Edwin Curran_

Edwin Curran was born at Zanesville, Ohio, May 10, 1892, and was
educated at St. Thomas’ School in the city of his birth. After
working as an unskilled laborer in various trades, he learned
telegraphy in 1914 and has been employed ever since as an operator
for the Pennsylvania Railroad Company.

In 1917 he printed a little paper-bound pamphlet of thirty pages
(_First Poems_) with this naïve note: “Price of this book is 35
cents postpaid. Author is 25, unmarried, a beginner and needs
publisher. If this volume meets expenses, another, possibly better,
will be issued.” Expecting to find poetry of an absurd simplicity,
one is startled to find striking images, strange pictures and (in
such poems as “Soldier’s Epitaph” and “Sailing of Columbus”) lines
like:

We climbed the slippery alleys of the sea

and many a lyric flash like:

The stars, like bells, flash down the silver sky ...
Ringing like chimes on frozen trees, or cry
Along the marble ground.

_Second Poems_ (1920) has a similar beauty mixed with banality. Both
booklets are a jumble of passion, platitude, bad grammar and
exaltation. Curran has absolutely no critical perceptions; he has
little control over his music. For better or for worse, his mood
controls him.

AUTUMN

The music of the autumn winds sings low,
Down by the ruins of the painted hills,
Where death lies flaming with a marvelous glow,
Upon the ash of rose and daffodils.
But I can find no melancholy here
To see the naked rocks and thinning trees;
Earth strips to grapple with the winter year—
I see her gnarled hills plan for victories!

I love the earth who goes to battle now,
To struggle with the wintry whipping storm
And bring the glorious spring out from the night.
I see earth’s muscles bared, her battle brow,
And am not sad, but feel her marvelous charm
As splendidly she plunges in the fight.

THE PAINTED HILLS OF ARIZONA

The rainbows all lie crumpled on these hills,
The red dawns scattered on their colored sills.
These hills have caught the lightning in its flight,
Caught colors from the skies of day and night
And shine with shattered stars and suns; they hold
Dyed yellow, red and purple, blue and gold.
Red roses seem within their marble blown,
A painted garden chiseled in the stone;
The rose and violet trickling through their veins,
Where they drop brilliant curtains to the plains—
A ramp of rock and granite, jeweled and brightening,
Like some great colored wall of lightning!

_Edna St. Vincent Millay_

Edna St. Vincent Millay, possibly the most gifted of the younger
lyricists, was born February 22, 1892, at Rockland, Maine. After a
childhood spent almost entirely in New England, she attended Vassar
College, from which she was graduated in 1917. Since that time she
has lived in New York City. Besides her keenly individual lyrics,
Miss Millay has written a quantity of short stories under various
pseudonyms, has translated several songs, and has been connected
with the Provincetown Players both as playwright and performer.

Although the bulk of her poetry is not large, the quality of it
approaches and sometimes attains greatness. Her first long poem,
“Renascence,” was the outstanding feature of _The Lyric Year_
(1912), an anthology which revealed many new names. “Renascence” was
written when Miss Millay was scarcely nineteen; it remains today one
of the most remarkable poems of this generation. Beginning like a
child’s aimless verse it proceeds, with a calm lucidity, to an
amazing climax. It is as if a child had, in the midst of its
ingenuousness, uttered some terrific truth. The sheer cumulative
power of this poem is surpassed only by its beauty.

_Renascence_, the name of Miss Millay’s first volume, was published
in 1917. It is full of the same passion as its title-poem; here is a
hunger for beauty so intense that no delight is great enough to give
the soul peace. Such poems as “God’s World” and the unnamed sonnets
vibrate with this rapture. Magic burns from the simplest of her
lines. _Figs from Thistles_ (1920) is a far more sophisticated
booklet. Sharp and cynically brilliant, Miss Millay’s craftsmanship
no less than her intuition saves these poems from mere cleverness.

_Second April_ (1921) is an intensification of her lyrical gift
tinctured with an increasing sadness and disillusion. Her poignant
poetic play, _Aria da Capo_, first performed by the Provincetown
Players in New York, was published in _The Monthly Chapbook_ (Harold
Monro, England); the issue of July, 1920, being devoted to it.

GOD’S WORLD

O world, I cannot hold thee close enough!
Thy winds, thy wide grey skies!
Thy mists that roll and rise!
Thy woods, this autumn day, that ache and sag
And all but cry with colour! That gaunt crag
To crush! To lift the lean of that black bluff!
World, World, I cannot get thee close enough!

Long have I known a glory in it all,
But never knew I this;
Here such a passion is
As stretcheth me apart. Lord, I do fear
Thou’st made the world too beautiful this year.
My soul is all but out of me,—let fall
No burning leaf; prithee, let no bird call.

RENASCENCE{See Transcriber’s Note 1.}

All I could see from where I stood
Was three long mountains and a wood;
I turned and looked another way,
And saw three islands in a bay.
So with my eyes I traced the line
Of the horizon, thin and fine,
Straight around till I was come
Back to where I’d started from;
And all I saw from where I stood
Was three long mountains and a wood.
Over these things I could not see;
These were the things that bounded me;
And I could touch them with my hand,
Almost, I thought, from where I stand.
And all at once things seemed so small
My breath came short, and scarce at all.
But, sure, the sky is big, I said;
Miles and miles above my head;
So here upon my back I’ll lie
And look my fill into the sky.
And so I looked, and, after all,
The sky was not so very tall.
The sky, I said, must somewhere stop,
And—sure enough!—I see the top!
The sky, I thought, is not so grand;
I ’most could touch it with my hand!
And, reaching up my hand to try,
I screamed to feel it touch the sky.

I screamed, and—lo!—Infinity
Came down and settled over me;
And, pressing of the Undefined
The definition on my mind,
Held up before my eyes a glass
Through which my shrinking sight did pass
Until it seemed I must behold
Immensity made manifold;
Whispered to me a word whose sound
Deafened the air for worlds around,
And brought unmuffled to my ears
The gossiping of friendly spheres,
The creaking of the tented sky,
The ticking of Eternity.

I saw and heard, and knew at last
The How and Why of all things, past,
And present, and forevermore.
The universe, cleft to the core,
Lay open to my probing sense
That, sick’ning, I would fain pluck thence
But could not,—nay! But needs must suck
At the great wound, and could not pluck
My lips away till I had drawn
All venom out.—Ah, fearful pawn!
For my omniscience paid I toll
In infinite remorse of soul.
All sin was of my sinning, all
Atoning mine, and mine the gall
Of all regret. Mine was the weight
Of every brooded wrong, the hate
That stood behind each envious thrust,
Mine every greed, mine every lust.
And all the while for every grief,
Each suffering, I craved relief
With individual desire,—
Craved all in vain! And felt fierce fire
About a thousand people crawl;
Perished with each,—then mourned for all!
A man was starving in Capri;
He moved his eyes and looked at me;
I felt his gaze, I heard his moan,
And knew his hunger as my own.
I saw at sea a great fog-bank
Between two ships that struck and sank;
A thousand screams the heavens smote;
And every scream tore through my throat.
No hurt I did not feel, no death
That was not mine; mine each last breath
That, crying, met an answering cry
From the compassion that was I.
All suffering mine, and mine its rod;
Mine, pity like the pity of God.
Ah, awful weight! Infinity
Pressed down upon the finite Me!
My anguished spirit, like a bird,
Beating against my lips I heard;
Yet lay the weight so close about
There was no room for it without.
And so beneath the weight lay I
And suffered death, but could not die.

Deep in the earth I rested now;
Cool is its hand upon the brow
And soft its breast beneath the head
Of one who is so gladly dead.
And all at once, and over all,
The pitying rain began to fall;
I lay and heard each pattering hoof
Upon my lowly, thatchèd roof,
And seemed to love the sound far more
Than ever I had done before.
For rain it hath a friendly sound
To one who’s six feet underground;
And scarce the friendly voice or face;
A grave is such a quiet place.

The rain, I said, is kind to come
And speak to me in my new home.
I would I were alive again
To kiss the fingers of the rain,
To drink into my eyes the shine
Of every slanting silver line,
To catch the freshened, fragrant breeze
From drenched and dripping apple-trees.
For soon the shower will be done,
And then the broad face of the sun
Will laugh above the rain-soaked earth
Until the world with answering mirth
Shakes joyously, and each round drop
Rolls, twinkling, from its grass-blade top.
How can I bear it; buried here,
While overhead the sky grows clear
And blue again after the storm?
O, multi-colored, multiform,
Beloved beauty over me,
That I shall never, never see
Again! Spring-silver, autumn-gold,
That I shall never more behold!
Sleeping your myriad magics through,
Close-sepulchred away from you!
O God, I cried, give me new birth,
And put me back upon the earth!
Upset each cloud’s gigantic gourd
And let the heavy rain, down-poured
In one big torrent, set me free,
Washing my grave away from me!

I ceased; and, through the breathless hush
That answered me, the far-off rush
Of herald wings came whispering
Like music down the vibrant string
Of my ascending prayer, and—crash!
Before the wild wind’s whistling lash
The startled storm-clouds reared on high
And plunged in terror down the sky,
And the big rain in one black wave
Fell from the sky and struck my grave.

I know not how such things can be
I only know there came to me
A fragrance such as never clings
To aught save happy living things;
A sound as of some joyous elf
Singing sweet songs to please himself,
And, through and over everything,
A sense of glad awakening.
The grass, a tip-toe at my ear,
Whispering to me I could hear;
I felt the rain’s cool finger-tips
Brushed tenderly across my lips,
Laid gently on my sealèd sight,
And all at once the heavy night
Fell from my eyes and I could see,—
A drenched and dripping apple-tree,
A last long line of silver rain,
A sky grown clear and blue again.
And as I looked a quickening gust
Of wind blew up to me and thrust
Into my face a miracle
Of orchard-breath, and with the smell,—
I know not how such things can be!—
I breathed my soul back into me.
Ah! Up then from the ground sprang I
And hailed the earth with such a cry
As is not heard save from a man
Who has been dead, and lives again.
About the trees my arms I wound;
Like one gone mad I hugged the ground;
I raised my quivering arms on high;
I laughed and laughed into the sky,
Till at my throat a strangling sob
Caught fiercely, and a great heart-throb
Sent instant tears into my eyes;
O God, I cried, no dark disguise
Can e’er hereafter hide from me
Thy radiant identity!
Thou canst not move across the grass
But my quick eyes will see Thee pass,
Nor speak, however silently,
But my hushed voice will answer Thee.
I know the path that tells Thy way
Through the cool eve of every day;
God, I can push the grass apart
And lay my finger on Thy heart!

The world stands out on either side
No wider than the heart is wide;
Above the world is stretched the sky,—
No higher than the soul is high.
The heart can push the sea and land
Farther away on either hand;
The soul can split the sky in two,
And let the face of God shine through.
But East and West will pinch the heart
That cannot keep them pushed apart;
And he whose soul is flat—the sky
Will cave in on him by and by.

PITY ME NOT

Pity me not because the light of day
At close of day no longer walks the sky;
Pity me not for beauties passed away
From field and thicket as the year goes by;
Pity me not the waning of the moon,
Nor that the ebbing tide goes out to sea,
Nor that a man’s desire is hushed so soon,
And you no longer look with love on me.

This have I known always: love is no more
Than the wide blossom which the wind assails;
Than the great tide that treads the shifting shore,
Strewing fresh wreckage gathered in the gales.
Pity me that the heart is slow to learn
What the swift mind beholds at every turn.