Chapter I: Shall Go Back

I shall go back again to the bleak shore
And build a little shanty on the sand
In such a way that the extremest band
Of brittle seaweed will escape my door
But by a yard or two, and nevermore
Shall I return to take you by the hand;
I shall be gone to what I understand
And happier than I ever was before.

The love that stood a moment in your eyes,
The words that lay a moment on your tongue,
Are one with all that in a moment dies,
A little under-said and over-sung;
But I shall find the sullen rocks and skies
Unchanged from what they were when I was young.

THE PEAR TREE

In this squalid, dirty dooryard,
Where the chickens scratch and run,
White, incredible, the pear tree
Stands apart and takes the sun,

Mindful of the eyes upon it,
Vain of its new holiness,
Like the waste-man’s little daughter
In her first communion dress.

WILD SWANS

I looked in my heart while the wild swans went over;—
And what did I see I had not seen before?
Only a question less or a question more;
Nothing to match the flight of wild birds flying.
Tiresome heart, forever living and dying!
House without air! I leave you and lock your door!
Wild swans, come over the town, come over
The town again, trailing your legs and crying!

_Mary Carolyn Davies_

Mary Carolyn Davies was born at Sprague, Washington, and was
educated in the schools at and about Portland, Oregon. At college
(the University of California) she won the Emily Chamberlin Cook
prize for Poetry in 1912, being the first freshman to win it. In the
same year, she established another precedent by being the first
woman to win the Bohemian Club prize. With the proceeds, the young
poet went to New York, arriving with the remnants of her
fortune—four dollars and eighty-five cents.

The long struggle with the city began. Miss Davies wrote short
stories, two serials, reams of sentimental verses—anything to keep
alive. She turned finally to verse, chiefly because “when the rent
is due there’s no time to write a story, only verse can save one in
time.”

Her work divides itself into two distinct classes: the hackwork
which she does for a living and the genuine poetry which she creates
for its own sake. Her first volume _The Drums in Our Street_ (1918)
was a mixture of loud bombast and quiet beauty, of blatant war-verse
and unaffected lyrics. _Youth Riding_ (1919), although as uneven as
its predecessor, is simpler and surer. The poems in _vers libre_ are
clearly musical, and her eight-line lyrics are particularly wistful
and delicate.

THE DAY BEFORE APRIL[62]

The day before April,
Alone, alone,
I walked in the woods
And I sat on a stone.

I sat on a broad stone
And sang to the birds.
The tune was God’s making
But I made the words.

THE APPLE TREE SAID:[63]

My apples are heavy upon me.
It was the Spring;
And proud was I of my petals,
Nor dreamed this thing:

That joy could grow to a burden,
Or beauty could be
Changed from snow-light to heavy
To humble me.

_Winifred Welles_

Winifred Welles was born at Norwich Town, Connecticut, January 26,
1893, and educated in the vicinity of her home.

Her frail and delicately fashioned lyrics are the distinguishing
feature of _The Hesitant Heart_ (1920). This first volume, so
appropriately named, has a frank tenderness that never grows
maudlin, a wistful introspection that never forgets to sing.

FROM A CHINESE VASE

Roaming the lonely garden, he and I
Pursue each other to the fountain’s brim,
And there grow quiet—woman and butterfly—
The frail clouds beckon me, the flowers tempt him.

My thoughts are rose-like, beautiful and bright,
Folded precise as petals are, and wings
Uplift my dreaming suddenly in flight,
And fill my soul with jagged colorings.

The waters tangle like a woman’s hair
Above the dim reflection of a face—
He thinks those are his own lips laughing there,
His own breasts curving under silk and lace.

How shall we know our real selves, he and I,
Which is the woman, which the butterfly?

HUMILIATION

How nakedly an animal
Lies down on earth to die,
Unmindful of the shining air,
And unashamed of sky.

But men and women under roofs
Draw shades and hush the floor,
And furtively they lay their dead
Behind a darkened door.

LOVE SONG FROM NEW ENGLAND

In every solemn tree the wind
Has rung a little lonesome bell,
As sweet and clear, as cool and kind
As my voice bidding you farewell.

This is an hour that gods have loved
To snatch with bare, bright hands and hold.
Mine, with a gesture, grey and gloved,
Dismiss it from me in the cold.

Closely as some dark-shuttered house
I keep my light. How should you know,
That, as you turn beneath brown boughs,
My heart is breaking in the snow?

_Herbert S. Gorman_

Herbert S. Gorman was born at Springfield, Massachusetts, January 1,
1893. After attending Technical High School he became an actor for
two seasons, deserting the stage for the newspaper. He became
assistant literary and dramatic editor of the Springfield Union,
reporter on the New York _Sun_ and reviewer for the New York _Post_,
_The Freeman_ and other journals.

His first book, _The Fool of Love_ (1920), shows, above an
indebtedness to E. A. Robinson, a keen talent and fresh personality.

THE FANATIC

Well, here it is: you call for me: I come,
But with an eagerness not quite my own;
Propelled by that decisive martyrdom
That pleased the saints upon their faggot throne.

You see them smiling in the cruel flame
That exquisitely licks their willing limbs,
And finding some sad pleasure in the game
Not quite embodied in their lusty hymns.

And so I come: and though I go, be sure
That I will come again to-morrow, too;
And, Love’s fanatic, hasten to endure
The littleness that is so great in you.

I am the weakling of that helpless strength
That throws this broken body you despise
Before your carelessness, to find at length
The faith that sleeps behind your faithless eyes.

_Babette Deutsch_

Babette Deutsch, one of the most promising of the younger
poet-critics, was born September 22, 1895, in New York City. She
received her B.A. at Barnard College in 1917, doing subsequent work
at the new School for Social Research. Since 1916, a year before she
took her degree, Miss Deutsch has been contributing poems and
critical articles to _The New Republic_, _The Dial_, _The Yale
Review_, etc.

_Banners_ (1919) is the title of her remarkable first book. The rich
emotional content is matched by the poet’s intellectual skill.
Unusually sensitive, most of these lines strive for—and attain—a
high seriousness.

THE DEATH OF A CHILD[64]

Are you at ease now,
Do you suck content
From death’s dark nipple between your wan lips?
Now that the fever of the day is spent
And anguish slips
From the small limbs,
And they lie lapped in rest,
The young head pillowed soft upon that indurate breast.
No, you are quiet,
And forever,
Tho for us the silence is so loud with tears,
Wherein we hear the dreadful-footed years
Echoing, but your quick laughter never,
Never your stumbling run, your sudden face
Thrust in bright scorn upon our solemn fears.
Now the dark mother holds you close.... O, you
We loved so,
How you lie,
So strangely still, unmoved so utterly
Dear yet, but oh a little alien too.

IN A MUSEUM

Here stillness sounds like echoes in a tomb.
The light falls cold upon these antique toys
Whereby men sought to turn the scales of doom:
Jade gods, a ritual of rigid boys.
Warm blood was spent for this unwindowed stone
Tinct with the painted pleasures of the dead;
For secrets of unwithering flesh and bone—
With these old Egypt’s night was comforted.

We lean upon the glass, our curious eyes
Staring at death, three thousand years remote.
And vanity, the worm that never dies,
Feeds on your silver ring and Pharaoh’s coat.
And are these heartbeats, then, less perilous?
Since death is close, and death is death for us.

_Alter Brody_

Alter Brody was born at Kartúshkiya-Beróza, Province of Grodno,
Russia, November 1, 1895. He came to New York City at the age of
eight and, after a cursory schooling, wrote translations for certain
Jewish and American newspapers. His first poems appeared in _The
Seven Arts_ in 1916-17.

In _A Family Album_ (1918) one sees the impress of a tense and
original mind, of imagination that is fed by strengthening fact, of
sight that is sharpened by insight. Many of Brody’s lines are
uncouth and awkward; what music he achieves is mostly fortuitous,
the melody accidental. And yet his pages are filled with a
picturesque honesty and uncompromising beauty. Much of this work is
an interpretation of the modern world against a background of old
dreams: young America seen through the eyes of old Russia. It is a
romantic realism that uplifts such poems as “Kartúshkiya-Beróza” (a
record of boyhood which is one of Brody’s finest achievements
though, unfortunately, too long to quote), “A Row of Poplars:
Central Park,” “Ghetto Twilight” and the poignant “Lamentations.” It
is, to be more accurate, a romanticism that springs from reality
and, after a fantastic flight, settles back with a new vision.

A CITY PARK

Timidly
Against a background of brick tenements
Some trees spread their branches
Skyward.
They are thin and sapless,
They are bent and weary—
Tamed with captivity;
And they huddle behind the fence
Swaying helplessly before the wind,
Forward and backward,
Like a group of panicky deer
Caught in a cage.

SEARCHLIGHTS

Tingling shafts of light, Like gigantic staffs Brandished by blind, invisible hands, Cross and recross each other in the sky,

Frantically— Groping among the stars—stubbing themselves against the bloated clouds— Tapping desperately for a sure foothold In the fluctuating mists.

Calm-eyed and inaccessible. The stars peer through the blue fissures of the sky, Unperturbed among the panic of scurrying beams; Twinkling with a cold, acrid merriment.

GHETTO TWILIGHT

An infinite weariness comes into the faces of the old tenements,
As they stand massed together on the block,
Tall and thoughtfully silent,
In the enveloping twilight.
Pensively,
They eye each other across the street,
Through their dim windows—
With a sad recognizing stare;
Watching the red glow fading in the distance,
At the end of the street,
Behind the black church spires;
Watching the vague sky lowering overhead,
Purple with clouds of colored smoke;
From the extinguished sunset;
Watching the tired faces coming home from work—
Like dry-breasted hags
Welcoming their children to their withered arms.

_Stephen Vincent Benét_

Stephen Vincent Benét, the younger brother of William Rose Benét,
was born at Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, in July, 1898. He was educated
in various parts of the country, graduating from Yale in 1919.

At seventeen he published a small book containing six dramatic
portraits, _Five Men and Pompey_ (1915), a remarkable set of
monologues which, in spite of distinct traces of Browning and Alfred
Noyes, was little short of astounding, coming from a schoolboy. In
Benét’s next volume, _Young Adventure_ (1918), one hears something
more than the speech of an infant prodigy; the precocious facility
has developed into a keen and individual vigor.

_Heavens and Earth_ (1920), the most representative collection, has
a greater imaginative sweep. Like his brother, the younger Benét is
at his best in the decoratively grotesque; his fancy exults in
running the scales between the whimsically bizarre and the lightly
diabolic.

PORTRAIT OF A BOY

After the whipping, he crawled into bed;
Accepting the harsh fact with no great weeping.
How funny uncle’s hat had looked striped red!
He chuckled silently. The moon came, sweeping
A black frayed rag of tattered cloud before
In scorning; very pure and pale she seemed,
Flooding his bed with radiance. On the floor
Fat motes danced. He sobbed; closed his eyes and dreamed.

Warm sand flowed round him. Blurts of crimson light
Splashed the white grains like blood. Past the cave’s mouth
Shone with a large fierce splendor, wildly bright,
The crooked constellations of the South;
Here the Cross swung; and there, affronting Mars,
The Centaur stormed aside a froth of stars.
Within, great casks like wattled aldermen
Sighed of enormous feasts, and cloth of gold
Glowed on the walls like hot desire. Again,
Beside webbed purples from some galleon’s hold,
A black chest bore the skull and bones in white
Above a scrawled “Gunpowder!” By the flames,
Decked out in crimson, gemmed with syenite,
Hailing their fellows by outrageous names
The pirates sat and diced. Their eyes were moons.
“Doubloons!” they said. “The words crashed gold.
Doubloons!”

_Hilda Conkling_

Hilda Conkling, most gifted of recent infant prodigies, was born at
Catskill-on-Hudson, New York, October 8, 1910. The daughter of Grace
Hazard Conkling (see page 207), she came to Northampton,
Massachusetts, with her mother when she was three years old and has
lived there since, a normal out-of-doors little girl.

Hilda began to write poems—or rather, to talk them—at the age of
four. Since that time, she has created one hundred and fifty little
verses, many of them astonishing in exactness of phrase and beauty
of vision. Hilda “tells” her poem and her mother copies it down,
arranges the line-divisions and reads it to the child for
correction. Conceding a possible half-conscious shaping by Mrs.
Conkling, the quality which shines behind all of Hilda’s little
facets of loveliness is a straightforward ingenuousness, a childlike
but sweeping fantasy.

_Poems by a Little Girl_ (1920), published when Hilda was a little
more than nine years old, is a detailed proof of this delightful
quality. Every poem bears its own stamp of unaffected originality;
“Water,” “Hay-Cock,” and a dozen others are startling in their
precision and a power of painting the familiar in unsuspected
colors. This child not only sees, feels and hears with the
concentration of a child-artist, she communicates the results of her
perceptions with the sensitivity of a master-craftsman. She hears a
chickadee talking

The way smooth bright pebbles
Drop into water.

Everything is extraordinarily vivid and fanciful to her keen senses.
The rooster’s comb is “gay as a parade;” he has “pearl trinkets on
his feet” and

The short feathers smooth along his back
Are the dark color of wet rocks,
Or the rippled green of ships
When I look at their sides through water.

She observes:

The water came in with a wavy look
Like a spider’s web.

It is too early for judgments—even for a prophecy. It is impossible
to guess how much Hilda’s vision will be distorted by knowledge and
the traditions that will accompany her growth. One can only hold
one’s breath and hope for the preservation of so remarkable a
talent.

WATER

The world turns softly
Not to spill its lakes and rivers.
The water is held in its arms
And the sky is held in the water.
What is water,
That pours silver,
And can hold the sky?

HAY-COCK

This is another kind of sweetness
Shaped like a bee-hive:
This is the hive the bees have left,
It is from this clover-heap
They took away the honey
For the other hive!

THE OLD BRIDGE

The old bridge has a wrinkled face.
He bends his back
For us to go over.
He moans and weeps
But we do not hear.
Sorrow stands in his face
For the heavy weight and worry
Of people passing.
The trees drop their leaves into the water;
The sky nods to him.
The leaves float down like small ships
On the blue surface
Which is the sky.
He is not always sad:
He smiles to see the ships go down
And the little children
Playing on the river banks.