Chapter II: Nocturne (2)

Upon a hill in Thessaly
Stand broken columns in a line
About a cold forgotten shrine
Beneath a moon in Thessaly.

This is the first of the monthly volumes of poetry to be issued by Mr. Kennerley. It awakens pleasant anticipation of those to follow.

_Lyrical Poems_, By Lucy Lyttelton. (Thomas B. Mosher.)

The twilight mood also prevails in the poems of Lucy Lyttelton, although the crest of a fine modern impulse may be traced in _A Vision_, _The Japanese Widow_, _The Black Madonna_, and _A Song of Revolution_.

"Where is Owen Griffiths?" Broken and alone
Crushed he lies in darkness beneath Festiniog stone.
"Bring his broken body before me to the throne
For a crown.

"Oftentimes in secret in prayer he came to me,
Now to men and angels I know him openly.
I that was beside him when he came to die
Fathoms down.

"And, Evan Jones, stand forward, whose life was shut in gloom,
And a narrow grave they gave you 'twixt marble tomb and tomb.
But now the great that trod you shall give you elbow room
And renown."

These poems unite delicacy and strength. They convince us of sincerity and intensity of vision.

_A. C. H._

NOTES AND ANNOUNCEMENTS.

It is hardly necessary to introduce to the lovers of lyric and dramatic verse Mr. William Butler Yeats, who honors the Christmas number of _Poetry_ by his presence. A score or more of years have passed since his voice, perfect in quality, began to speak and sing in high loyalty to the beauty of poetic art, especially the ancient poetic art of his own Irish people. His influence, reinforced by the prompt allegiance of Lady Gregory, Mr. Douglass Hyde, the late J. M. Synge, and many other Irish men and women of letters, has sufficed to lift the beautiful old Gaelic literature out of the obscurity of merely local recognition into a position of international importance. This fact alone is a sufficient acknowledgment of Mr. Yeats' genius, and of the enthusiasm which his leadership has inspired among the thinkers and singers of his race.

Mr. George Sterling, of Carmel-by-the-Sea, California, is well known to American readers of poetry through his two books of verse, _Wine of Wizardry_ and _The House of Orchids_.

Mr. Clark Ashton Smith, also of California, is a youth whose talent has been acclaimed quite recently by a few newspapers of his own state, and recognized by one or two eastern publications.

Mr. John Reed, of New York, and Alice Corbin, the wife of William P. Henderson, the Chicago painter, are Americans. The latter has contributed verse and prose to various magazines. The former is a young journalist, born in 1887, who has published little verse as yet.

Rabindranath Tagore, the poet of Bengal, is sufficiently introduced by Mr. Pound's article.

BOOKS RECEIVED

_The Vaunt of Man and Other Poems_, by William Ellery Leonard.
B. W. Huebsch.
_Romance, Vision and Satire_: English Alliterative Poems of
the XIV Century, Newly Rendered in the Original Metres,
by Jessie L. Weston. Houghton Mifflin Co.
_Etain The Beloved_, by James H. Cousins. Maunsel & Co.
_Uriel and Other Poems_, by Percy MacKaye. Houghton Mifflin Co.
_The Unconquered Air_, by Florence Earle Coates.
Houghton Mifflin Co.
_A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass_, by Amy Lowell.
Houghton Mifflin Co.
_The Lure of the Sea_, by J. E. Patterson. George H. Doran Co.
_The Roadside Fire_, by Amelia Josephine Burr. George H. Doran Co.
_By the Way._ Verses, Fragments and Notes, by William Allingham.
Arranged by Helen Allingham. Longmans, Green & Co.
_Gabriel_, A Pageant of Vigil, by Isabelle Howe Fiske.
Thomas B. Mosher.
_Pilgrimage to Haunts of Browning_, by Pauline Leavens.
The Bowrons, Chicago.
_The Wind on the Heath_, Ballads and Lyrics, by May Byron.
George H. Doran.
_Valley Song and Verse_, by William Hutcheson.
Fraser, Asher & Co.
_The Queen of Orplede_, by Charles Wharton Stork. Elkin Mathews.
_Pocahontas_, A Pageant, by Margaret Ullman. The Poet Lore Co.
_Poems_, by Robert Underwood Johnson. The Century Co.
_Songs Before Birth_, Isabelle Howe Fiske. Thomas B. Mosher.
_Book Titles From Shakespeare_, by Volney Streamer.
Thomas B. Mosher.
_A Bunch of Blossoms_, Little Verses for Little Children,
by E. Gordon Browne. Longmans, Green & Co.
_June on the Miami_, by William Henry Venable. Stewart & Kidd.
_The Tragedy of Etarre_, A Poem, by Rhys Carpenter.
Sturgis & Walton Co.
_In Other Words_, by Franklin P. Adams. Doubleday, Page & Co.
_Verses and Sonnets_, by Julia Stockton Dinsmore.
Doubleday, Page & Co.
_Anna Marcella's Book of Verses_, by Cyrenus Cole.
Printed for Personal Distribution.
_Atala_, An American Idyl, by Anna Olcott Commelin.
E. P. Dutton & Co.
_Spring in Tuscany_, an Authology. Thos. B. Mosher.

Poetry VOL. I
A Magazine of Verse NO. 4

JANUARY, 1913

GENERAL WILLIAM BOOTH ENTERS INTO HEAVEN

(_To be sung to the tune of_ THE BLOOD OF THE LAMB _with indicated
instruments_.)

[Sidenote: Bass drums]

Booth led boldly with his big bass drum.
_Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?_
The saints smiled gravely, and they said, "He's come,"
_Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?_
Walking lepers followed, rank on rank,
Lurching bravos from the ditches dank,
Drabs from the alleyways and drug-fiends pale--
Minds still passion-ridden, soul-powers frail!
Vermin-eaten saints with mouldy breath,
Unwashed legions with the ways of death--
_Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?_

Every slum had sent its half-a-score
The round world over--Booth had groaned for more.
Every banner that the wide world flies

[Sidenote: Banjo]

Bloomed with glory and transcendent dyes.
Big-voiced lasses made their banjos bang!
Tranced, fanatical, they shrieked and sang,
_Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?_
Hallelujah! It was queer to see
Bull-necked convicts with that land make free!
Loons with bazoos blowing blare, blare, blare--
On, on, upward through the golden air.
_Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?_

[Sidenote: Bass drums slower and softer]

Booth died blind, and still by faith he trod,
Eyes still dazzled by the ways of God.
Booth led boldly and he looked the chief:
Eagle countenance in sharp relief,
Beard a-flying, air of high command
Unabated in that holy land.

[Sidenote: Flutes]

Jesus came from out the Court-House door,
Stretched his hands above the passing poor.
Booth saw not, but led his queer ones there
Round and round the mighty Court-House square.
Yet in an instant all that blear review
Marched on spotless, clad in raiment new.
The lame were straightened, withered limbs uncurled
And blind eyes opened on a new sweet world.

[Sidenote: Bass drums louder and faster]

Drabs and vixens in a flash made whole!
Gone was the weasel-head, the snout, the jowl;
Sages and sibyls now, and athletes clean.
Rulers of empires, and of forests green!

[Sidenote: Grand Chorus--tambourines--all instruments in full blast]

The hosts were sandalled and their wings were fire--
_Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?_
But their noise played havoc with the angel-choir.
_Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?_
Oh, shout Salvation! it was good to see
Kings and princes by the Lamb set free.
The banjos rattled, and the tambourines
Jing-jing-jingled in the hands of queens!

[Sidenote: Reverently sung--no instruments]

And when Booth halted by the curb for prayer
He saw his Master through the flag-filled air.
Christ came gently with a robe and crown
For Booth the soldier while the throng knelt down.
He saw King Jesus--they were face to face,
And he knelt a-weeping in that holy place.
_Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?_

_Nicholas Vachel Lindsay_

WASTE LAND

Briar and fennel and chincapin,
And rue and ragweed everywhere;
The field seemed sick as a soul with sin,
Or dead of an old despair,
Born of an ancient care.

The cricket's cry and the locust's whirr,
And the note of a bird's distress,
With the rasping sound of the grasshopper,
Clung to the loneliness
Like burrs to a trailing dress.

So sad the field, so waste the ground,
So curst with an old despair,
A woodchuck's burrow, a blind mole's mound,
And a chipmunk's stony lair,
Seemed more than it could bear.

So lonely, too, so more than sad,
So droning-lone with bees--
I wondered what more could Nature add
To the sum of its miseries ...
And _then_--I saw the trees.

Skeletons gaunt that gnarled the place,
Twisted and torn they rose--
The tortured bones of a perished race
Of monsters no mortal knows,
They startled the mind's repose.

And a man stood there, as still as moss,
A lichen form that stared;
With an old blind hound that, at a loss,
Forever around him fared
With a snarling fang half bared.

I looked at the man; I saw him plain;
Like a dead weed, gray and wan,
Or a breath of dust. I looked again--
And man and dog were gone,
Like wisps of the graying dawn....

Were they a part of the grim death there--
Ragweed, fennel, and rue?
Or forms of the mind, an old despair,
That there into semblance grew
Out of the grief I knew?

_Madison Cawein_

MY LADY OF THE BEECHES

Here among the beeches
Winds and wild perfume,
That the twilight pleaches
Into gleam and gloom,
Build for her a room.

Her, whose Beauty cometh,
Misty as the morn,
When the wild bee hummeth,
At its honey-horn,
In the wayside thorn.

As the wood grows dimmer,
With the drowsy night,
Like a moonbeam glimmer
Here she walks in white,
With a firefly-light.

Moths around her flitting,
Like a moth she goes;
Here a moment sitting
By this wilding rose,
With my heart's repose.

Every bough that dances
Has assumed the grace
Of her form: and Fancies,
Flashed from eye and face,
Brood about the place.

And the water, shaken
In its plunge and poise,
To itself has taken
Quiet of her voice,
And restrains its joys.

Would that these could tell me
What and whence she is;
She, who doth enspell me,
Fill my soul with bliss
Of her spirit kiss.

Though the heart beseech her,
And the soul implore,
Who is it may reach her--
Safe behind the door
Of all woodland lore?

_Madison Cawein_

THE WAYFARERS

Earth, I dare not cling to thee
Lest I should lose my precious soul.

_'Tis not more wondrous than the fluff
Within the milkweed's autumn boll._

Earth, shall my sacred essences
But sink into thy senseless dust?

_The springtide takes its way with them--
And blossoms blow as blossoms must._

Earth, I swear with solemn vow,
I feel a greatness in my breath!

_The grass-seed hath its dream of God,
Its visioning of life and death._

_Anita Fitch_

_LES CRUELS AMOUREUX_

Two lovers wakened in their tombs--
They had been dead a hundred years--
And in the _langue_ of old Provence
They spoke of ancient tears.

"_M'amour_," she called, "I've pardoned you;"
(How sad her dreaming seemed to be!)
"When I had kissed your dead face once
Love's sweet returned to me."

"_M'amour_," he called, "it was too late."
(How dreary seemed his ghostly sighs!)
"Blessed the soul that love forgives,"
He whispered, "ere it dies."

And then they turned again and slept
With must and mold in ancient way;
And so they'll sleep and wake, 'tis told,
Until the Judgment Day.

ENVOI

_O damoiseau et damoiselle_,
Guard ye your loving while ye live!
Sin not against love's sacred flame--
While yet ye may, forgive.

_Anita Fitch_

LOVE-SONGS OF THE OPEN ROAD

MORNING

The morning wind is wooing me; her lips have swept my brow.
Was ever dawn so sweet before? the land so fair as now?
The wanderlust is luring to wherever roads may lead,
While yet the dew is on the hedge. So how can I but heed?

The forest whispers of its shades; of haunts where we have been,--
And where may friends be better made than under God's green inn?
Your mouth is warm and laughing and your voice is calling low,
While yet the dew is on the hedge. So how can I but go?

NOON

The bees are humming, humming in the clover;
The bobolink is singing in the rye;
The brook is purling, purling in the valley,
And the river's laughing, radiant, to the sky!

The buttercups are nodding in the sunlight;
The winds are whispering, whispering to the pine;
The joy of June has found me; as an aureole it's crowned me
Because, oh best belovèd, you are mine!

NIGHT

In Arcady by moonlight,
(Where only lovers go),
There is a pool where only
The fairest roses grow.

Why are the moonlit roses
So sweet beyond compare?
Among their purple shadows
My love is waiting there.

* * * * *

To Arcady by moonlight
The roads are open wide,
But only joy can enter
And only joy abide.

There is the peace unending
That perfect faith can know--
In Arcady by moonlight,
Where only lovers go.

_Kendall Banning_

SYMPATHY

As one within a moated tower,
I lived my life alone;
And dreamed not other granges' dower,
Nor ways unlike mine own.
I thought I loved. But all alone
As one within a moated tower
I lived. Nor truly knew
One other mortal fortune's hour.
As one within a moated tower,
One fate alone I knew.
Who hears afar the break of day
Before the silvered air
Reveals her hooded presence gray,
And she, herself, is there?
I know not how, but now I see
The road, the plain, the pluming tree,
The carter on the wain.
On my horizon wakes a star.
The distant hillsides wrinkled far
Fold many hearts' domain.
On one the fire-worn forests sweep,
Above a purple mountain-keep
And soar to domes of snow.
One heart has swarded fountains deep
Where water-lilies blow:
And one, a cheerful house and yard,
With curtains at the pane,
Board-walks down lawns all clover-starred,
And full-fold fields of grain.
As one within a moated tower
I lived my life alone;
And dreamed not other granges' dower
Nor ways unlike mine own.
But now the salt-chased seas uncurled
And mountains trooped with pine
Are mine. I look on all the world
And all the world is mine.

_Edith Wyatt_

A SONG OF HAPPINESS

Ah Happiness:
Who called you "Earandel"?
(Winter-star, I think, that is);
And who can tell the lovely curve
By which you seem to come, then swerve
Before you reach the middle-earth?
And who is there can hold your wing,
Or bind you in your mirth,
Or win you with a least caress,
Or tear, or kiss, or anything--
Insensate happiness?

Once I thought to have you
Fast there in a child:
All her heart she gave you,
Yet you would not stay.
Cruel, and careless,
Not half reconciled,
Pain you cannot bear;
When her yellow hair
Lay matted, every tress;
When those looks of hers,
Were no longer hers,
You went: in a day
She wept you all away.

Once I thought to give
You, plighted, holily--
No more fugitive,
Returning like the sea:
But they that share so well
Heaven must portion Hell
In their copartnery:
Care, ill fate, ill health,
Came we know not how
And broke our commonwealth.
Neither has you now.

Some wait you on the road,
Some in an open door
Look for the face you show'd
Once there--no more.
You never wear the dress
You danced in yesterday;
Yet, seeming gone, you stay,
And come at no man's call:
Yet, laid for burial,
You lift up from the dead
Your laughing, spangled head.

Yes, once I did pursue
You, unpursuable;
Loved, longed for, hoped for you--
Blue-eyed and morning brow'd.
Ah, lovely happiness!
Now that I know you well,
I dare not speak aloud
Your fond name in a crowd;
Nor conjure you by night,
Nor pray at morning-light,
Nor count at all on you:

But, at a stroke, a breath,
After the fear of death,
Or bent beneath a load;
Yes, ragged in the dress,
And houseless on the road,
I might surprise you there.
Yes: who of us shall say
When you will come, or where?
Ask children at their play,
The leaves upon the tree,
The ships upon the sea,
Or old men who survived,
And lived, and loved, and wived.
Ask sorrow to confess
Your sweet improvidence,
And prodigal expense
And cold economy,
Ah, lovely happiness!

_Ernest Rhys_

HELEN IS ILL

When she is ill my laughter cowers;
An exile with a broken rhyme,
My head upon the breast of time,
I hear the heart-beat of the hours;
I close my eyes without a sigh;
The vision of her flutters by
As glints the light of Mary's eyes
Upon the lakes in Paradise.

I seem to reach an olden town
And enter at the sunset gate;
And as the streets I hurry down,
I find the men are all elate,
As if an angel of the Lord
Had passed with dearest word and nod,
Remembered like a yearning chord
Of songs the people sing to God;
I come upon the sunrise gate--
As silent as her listless room--
There seven beggers sing and wait
And this the song that breaks the gloom:

God a 'mercy is most kind;
She the fairest passed this way;
We the lowest were not blind;
God a 'mercy bless the day.

_Roscoe W. Brink_

VERSES, TRANSLATIONS, AND REFLECTIONS
FROM "THE ANTHOLOGY"

HERMES OF THE WAYS

The hard sand breaks,
And the grains of it
Are clear as wine.

Far off over the leagues of it,
The wind,
Playing on the wide shore,
Piles little ridges,
And the great waves
Break over it.

But more than the many-foamed ways
Of the sea,
I know him
Of the triple path-ways,
Hermes,
Who awaiteth.

Dubious,
Facing three ways,
Welcoming wayfarers,
He whom the sea-orchard
Shelters from the west,
From the east
Weathers sea-wind;
Fronts the great dunes.

Wind rushes
Over the dunes,
And the coarse, salt-crusted grass
Answers.

Heu,
It whips round my ankles!

II

Small is
This white stream,
Flowing below ground
From the poplar-shaded hill,
But the water is sweet.

Apples on the small trees
Are hard,
Too small,
Too late ripened
By a desperate sun
That struggles through sea-mist.

The boughs of the trees
Are twisted
By many bafflings;
Twisted are
The small-leafed boughs.

But the shadow of them
Is not the shadow of the mast head
Nor of the torn sails.

Hermes, Hermes,
The great sea foamed,
Gnashed its teeth about me;
But you have waited,
Where sea-grass tangles with
Shore-grass.

_H. D._

PRIAPUS

_Keeper-of-Orchards_

I saw the first pear
As it fell.
The honey-seeking, golden-banded,
The yellow swarm
Was not more fleet than I,
(Spare us from loveliness!)
And I fell prostrate,
Crying,
Thou hast flayed us with thy blossoms;
Spare us the beauty
Of fruit-trees!

The honey-seeking
Paused not,
The air thundered their song,
And I alone was prostrate.

O rough-hewn
God of the orchard,
I bring thee an offering;
Do thou, alone unbeautiful
(Son of the god),
Spare us from loveliness.

The fallen hazel-nuts,
Stripped late of their green sheaths,
The grapes, red-purple,
Their berries
Dripping with wine,
Pomegranates already broken,
And shrunken fig,
And quinces untouched,
I bring thee as offering.

_H. D._

EPIGRAM

(_After the Greek_)

The golden one is gone from the banquets;
She, beloved of Atimetus,
The swallow, the bright Homonoea:
Gone the dear chatterer;
Death succeeds Atimetus.

_H. D._,
"_Imagiste_."

EDITORIAL COMMENT

STATUS RERUM

_London, December 10, 1912_

The state of things here in London is, as I see it, as follows:

I find Mr. Yeats the only poet worthy of serious study. Mr. Yeats' work is already a recognized classic and is part of the required reading in the Sorbonne. There is no need of proclaiming him to the American public.

As to his English contemporaries, they are food, sometimes very good food, for anthologies. There are a number of men who have written a poem, or several poems, worth knowing and remembering, but they do not much concern the young artist studying the art of poetry.

The important work of the last twenty-five years has been done in Paris. This work is little likely to gain a large audience in either America or England, because of its tone and content. There has been no "man with a message," but the work has been excellent and the method worthy of our emulation. No other body of poets having so little necessity to speak could have spoken so well as these modern Parisians and Flemings.

There has been some imitation here of their manner and content. Any donkey can imitate a man's manner. There has been little serious consideration of their _method_. It requires an artist to analyze and apply a method.

Among the men of thirty here, Padraic Colum is the one whom we call most certainly a poet, albeit he has written very little verse--and but a small part of that is worthy of notice. He is fairly unconscious of such words as "aesthetics," "technique" and "method." He is at his best in _Garadh_, a translation from the Gaelic, beginning:

O woman, shapely as a swan,
On your account I shall not die.
The men you've slain--a trivial clan--
Were less than I:

and in _A Drover_. He is bad whenever he shows a trace of reading. I quote the opening of _A Drover_, as I think it shows "all Colum" better than any passage he has written. I think no English-speaking writer now living has had the luck to get so much of himself into twelve lines.

To Meath of the pastures,
From wet hills by the sea,
Through Leitrim and Longford
Go my cattle and me.

I hear in the darkness
Their slipping and breathing.
I name them the bye-ways
They're to pass without heeding.

Then the wet, winding roads,
Brown bogs with black water;
And my thoughts on white ships
And the King o' Spain's daughter.

I would rather talk about poetry with Ford Madox Hueffer than with any man in London. Mr. Hueffer's beliefs about the art may be best explained by saying that they are in diametric opposition to those of Mr. Yeats.

Mr. Yeats has been subjective; believes in the glamour and associations which hang near the words. "Works of art beget works of art." He has much in common with the French symbolists. Mr. Hueffer believes in an exact rendering of things. He would strip words of all "association" for the sake of getting a precise meaning. He professes to prefer prose to verse. You would find his origins in Gautier or in Flaubert. He is objective. This school tends to lapse into description. The other tends to lapse into sentiment.

Mr. Yeats' method is, to my way of thinking, very dangerous, for although he is the greatest of living poets who use English, and though he has sung some of the moods of life immortally, his art has not broadened much in scope during the past decade. His gifts to English art are mostly negative; i. e., he has stripped English poetry of many of its faults. His "followers" have come to nothing. Neither Synge, Lady Gregory nor Colum can be called his followers, though he had much to do with bringing them forth, yet nearly every man who writes English verse seriously is in some way indebted to him.

Mr. Hueffer has rarely "come off." His touch is so light and his attitude so easy that there seems little likelihood of his ever being taken seriously by anyone save a few specialists and a few of his intimates. His last leaflet, _High Germany_, contains, however, three poems from which one may learn his quality. They are not Victorian. I do not expect many people to understand why I praise them. They are _The Starling_, _In the Little Old Market-Place_ and _To All the Dead_.

The youngest school here that has the nerve to call itself a school is that of the _Imagistes_. To belong to a school does not in the least mean that one writes poetry to a theory. One writes poetry when, where, because, and as one feels like writing it. A school exists when two or three young men agree, more or less, to call certain things good; when they prefer such of their verses as have certain qualities to such of their verses as do not have them.

Space forbids me to set forth the program of the _Imagistes_ at length, but one of their watchwords is Precision, and they are in opposition to the numerous and unassembled writers who busy themselves with dull and interminable effusions, and who seem to think that a man can write a good long poem before he learns to write a good short one, or even before he learns to produce a good single line.

Among the very young men, there seems to be a gleam of hope in the work of Richard Aldington, but it is too early to make predictions.

There are a number of men whose names are too well known for it to seem necessary to tell them over. America has already found their work in volumes or anthologies. Hardy, Kipling, Maurice Hewlett, Binyon, Robert Bridges, Sturge Moore, Henry Newbolt, McKail, Masefield, who has had the latest cry; Abercrombie, with passionate defenders, and Rupert Brooke, recently come down from Cambridge.

There are men also, who are little known to the general public, but who contribute liberally to the "charm" or the "atmosphere" of London: Wilfred Scawen Blunt, the grandest of old men, the last of the great Victorians; great by reason of his double sonnet, beginning--

He who has once been happy is for aye
Out of destruction's reach;

Ernest Rhys, weary with much editing and hack work, to whom we owe gold digged in Wales, translations, transcripts, and poems of his own, among them the fine one to Dagonet; Victor Plarr, one of the "old" Rhymers' Club, a friend of Dowson and of Lionel Johnson. His volume, _In The Dorian Mood_, has been half forgotten, but not his verses _Epitaphium Citharistriae_. One would also name the Provost of Oriel, not for original work, but for his very beautiful translations from Dante.

In fact one might name nearly a hundred writers who have given pleasure with this or that matter in rhyme. But it is one thing to take pleasure in a man's work and another to respect him as a great artist.

_Ezra Pound_

REVIEWS

_The Lyric Year_, Mr. Kennerley's new annual, contains among its hundred contributions nearly a score of live poems, among which a few excite the kind of keen emotion which only art of real distinction can arouse.

Among the live poems the present reviewer would count none of the prize-winners, not even Mr. Sterling's, the best of the three, whose rather stiff formalities in praise of Browning are, however, lit now and then by shining lines, as--

Drew as a bubble from old infamies....
The shy and many-colored soul of man.

The other two prize-poems must have been measured by some academic foot-rule dug up from the eighteenth century. Orrick Johns' _Second Avenue_ is a _Grays Elegy_ essay of prosy moralizing, without a finely poetic line in it, or any originality of meaning or cadence. And the second prize went to an ode still more hopelessly academic. Indeed, _To a Thrush_, by Thomas Augustine Daly, is one of the most stilted poems in the volume, a far-away echo of echoes, full of the approved "poetic" words--_throstle_, _pregnant_, _vernal_, _cerulean_, _teen_, _chrysmal_, even _paraclete_--and quite guiltless of inspiration.

But one need not linger with these. As we face the other way one poem outranks the rest and ennobles the book. This is _The Renascence_, said to be by Edna St. Vincent Millay, who, according to the editor, is only twenty years old. This poem is the daring flight of a wide-winged imagination, and the art of it, though not faultless, is strong enough to carry us through keen emotions of joy and agony to a climax of spiritual serenity. Though marred by the last twelve lines, which should be struck out for stating the thesis too explicitly, this poem arouses high hopes of its youthful author.

Among the other live poems--trees, saplings or flowers--are various species. _Kisa-Gotami_, by Arthur Davison Ficke, tells its familiar story of the Buddha in stately cadences which sustain the beauty of the tale. _Jetsam_, a "_Titanic_" elegy by Herman Montagu Donner, carries the dread and dangerous subject without violating its terrors and sanctities with false sentiment or light rhythm. Ridgeley Torrence's _Ritual for a Funeral_ is less sure of its ground, sometimes escaping into vapors, but on the whole noble in feeling and flute-like in cadence. Mrs. Conkling's bird ode has now and then an airy delicacy, and Edith Wyatt's _City Swallow_ gives the emotion of flight above the roofs and smoke of a modern town.

Of the shorter poems who could ignore Harry Kemp's noble lyric dialogue, _I Sing the Battle_; _The Forgotten Soul_ by Margaret Widdemer, _Selma_, by Willard H. Wright; _Comrades_ by Fannie Stearns Davis, or Nicholas Vachel Lindsay's tribute to O. Henry, a more vital elegy than Mr. Sterling's? These are all simple and sincere--straight modern talk which rises into song without the aid of worn-out phrases. _Paternity_, by William Rose Benét, _To My Vagrant Love_, by Elouise Briton, and _Dedication_, by Pauline Florence Brower, are delicate expressions of intimate emotion; and _Martin_, by Joyce Kilmer, touches with grace a lighter subject.

To have gathered such as these together is perhaps enough, but more may be reasonably demanded. As a whole the collection, like the prizes, is too academic; Georgian and Victorian standards are too much in evidence. The ambition of _The Lyric Year_ is to be "an annual Salon of American poetry;" to this end poets and their publishers are invited to contribute gratis the best poems of the year, without hope of reward other than the three prizes. That so many responded to the call, freely submitting their works to anonymous judges, shows how eager is the hitherto unfriended American muse to seize any helping hand.

However, if this annual is to speak with any authority as a Salon, it should take a few lessons from art exhibitions. Mr. Earle's position as donor, editor and judge, is as if Mr. Carnegie should act as hanging committee at the Pittsburg show, and help select the prize-winners. And Messrs. Earle, Braithwaite and Wheeler, this year's jury of awards, are not, even though all have written verse, poets of recognized distinction in the sense that Messrs. Chase, Alexander, Hassam, Duveneck, and other jurymen in our various American Salons, are distinguished painters.

In these facts lie the present weaknesses of _The Lyric Year_. However, the remedy for them is easy and may be applied in future issues. Meantime the venture is to be welcomed; at last someone, somewhere, is trying to do something for the encouragement of the art in America. _Poetry_, which is embarked in the same adventure, rejoices in companionship.

_H. M._

* * * * *

Already many books of verses come to us, of which a few are poetry. Sometimes the poetry is an aspiration rather than an achievement; but in spite of crude materials and imperfect artistry one may feel the beat of wings and hear the song. Again one searches in vain for the magic touch, even though the author has interesting things to say in creditable and more or less persuasive rhymed eloquence.

Of recent arrivals Mr. John Hall Wheelock has the most searching vision and appealing voice. In _The Human Fantasy_ (Sherman, French & Co.) his subject is New York, typified in the pathetic little love-affair of two young starvelings, which takes its course through a stirring, exacting milieu to a renunciation that leaves the essential sanctities intact. The poet looks through the slang and shoddy of the lovers, and the dust and glare of the city, to the divine power of passion in both. In _The Beloved Adventure_ the emotion is less poignant; or, rather, the poet has included many indifferent pieces which obscure the quality of finer lyrics. More rigorous technique and resolute use of the waste-basket would make more apparent the fact that we have here a true poet, one with a singing voice, and a heart deeply moved by essential spiritual beauty in the common manifestations of human character. At his best he writes with immense concentration and unflagging vigor; and his hearty young appetite for life in all its manifestations helps him to transmute the repellant discords of the modern town into harmony. The fantasy of _Love in a City_ is a "true thing" and a vital.

Mr. Hermann Hagedorn is also a true poet, capable of lyric rapture, but sometimes, when he seems least aware, his muse escapes him. _The Infidel_, the initial poem of his _Poems and Ballads_ (Houghton Mifflin Co.), recalls his _Woman of Corinth_, and others in this book remind one of this and of his Harvard class poem, _The Troop of the Guard_, in that the words do not, like colored sands, dance inevitably into the absolute shape determined by the wizardry of sound. He is still somewhat hampered by the New England manner, a trend toward an external formalism not dependent on interior necessity. This influence makes for academic and lifeless work, and it must be deeply rooted since it casts its chill also over the Boston school of painters.

But now and then Mr. Hagedorn frees himself; perhaps in the end he may escape altogether. In such poems as _Song_, _Doors_, _Broadway_, _Discovery_, _The Wood-Gatherer_, _The Crier in the Night_ and _A Chant on the Terrible Highway_, we feel that he begins to speak for himself, to sing with his own voice. Such poems are a challenging note that should arrest the attention of all seekers after sincere poetic expression.

Mr. Percy MacKaye, in _Uriel and Other Poems_ (Houghton Mifflin Co.), shows also the Boston influence, but perhaps it is difficult to escape the academic note in such poems for occasions as these. With fluent eloquence and a ready command of verse forms he celebrates dead poets, addresses noted living persons, and contributes to a number of ceremonial observances. The poems in which he is most freely lyric are perhaps _In the Bohemian Redwoods_ and _To the Fire-Bringer_, the shorter of his elegies in honor of Moody, his friend.

In two dramatic poems, _The Tragedy of Etarre_, by Rhys Carpenter (Sturgis & Walton Co.), and _Gabriel, a Pageant of Vigil_, by Mrs. Isabelle Howe Fiske (Mosher), the academic note is confidently insisted on. The former shows the more promise of ultimate freedom. It is an Arthurian venture of which the prologue is the strongest part. In firm-knit iambics Mr. Carpenter strikes out many effective lines and telling situations. Indeed, they almost prompt the profane suggestion that, simplified and compressed, they might yield a psychological libretto for some "advanced" composer.

Mrs. Fiske's venture is toward heaven itself; but her numerous archangels are of the earth earthy.

In _The Unconquered Air and Other Poems_ (Houghton Mifflin Co.), Mrs. Florence Earle Coates shows not inspiration but wide and humane sympathies. Her verse is typical of much which has enough popular appeal and educative value to be printed extensively in the magazines; verse in which subjects of modern interest and human sentiment are expressed in the kind of rhymed eloquence which passes for poetry with the great majority.

These poets may claim the justification of illustrious precedent. The typical poem of this class in America, the most famous verse rhapsody which stops short of lyric rapture, is Lowell's _Commemoration Ode_.

NOTES

Our poets this month play divers instruments. The audience may listen to H. D.'s flute, the 'cello of Mr. Rhys, the big bass drum of Mr. Lindsay, and so on through the orchestra, fitting each poet to his special strain. Some of these performers are well known, others perhaps will be.

Mr. Ernest Rhys is of Welsh descent. In 1888-9 he lectured in America, and afterward returned to London, where he has published _A London Rose_, Arthurian plays and poems, and Welsh ballads, and edited _Everyman's Library_.

Mr. Madison Cawein, the well-known Kentucky poet resident in Louisville, scarcely needs an introductory word. His is landscape poetry chiefly, but sometimes, as in Wordsworth, figures blend with the scene and become a part of nature. A volume of his own selections from his various books has recently been published by The MacMillan Company.

Mr. Nicholas Vachel Lindsay is the vagabond poet who loves to tramp through untravelled country districts without a cent in his pocket, exchanging "rhymes for bread" at farmers' hearths. The magazines have published engaging articles by him, but in verse he has been usually his own publisher as yet.

"H. D., _Imagiste_," is an American lady resident abroad, whose identity is unknown to the editor. Her sketches from the Greek are not offered as exact translations, or as in any sense finalities, but as experiments in delicate and elusive cadences, which attain sometimes a haunting beauty.

Mr. Kendall Banning is an editor and writer of songs. "The Love Songs of the Open Road," with music by Lena Branscord, will soon be published by Arthur Schmidt of Boston.

Mrs. Anita Fitch of New York has contributed poems to various magazines.

The February number of POETRY will be devoted to the work of two poets, Messrs. Arthur Davison Ficke and Witter Bynner.

BOOKS RECEIVED

_The Lyric Year._ Mitchell Kennerley.
_Poems and Ballads_, by Hermann Hagedorn. Houghton Mifflin Co.
_Shadows of the Flowers_, by T. B. Aldrich. Houghton Mifflin Co.
_Poems and Plays_, by William Vaughn Moody. Houghton Mifflin Co.
_Nimrod_, by Francis Rolt-Wheeler. Lothrop, Lee and Shepard.
_The Shadow Garden and Other Plays_, by Madison Cawein.
G. P. Putman's Sons.
_Via Lucis_, by Alice Harper. M. E. Church South,
Nashville, Tenn.
_Songs of Courage and Other Poems_, by Bertha F. Gordon.
The Baker & Taylor Co.
_Narrative Lyrics_, by Edward Lucas White. G. P. Putnam's Sons.
_The Dance of Dinwiddie_, by Marshall Moreton. Stewart & Kidd Co.
_The Three Visions and Other Poems_, by John A. Johnson.
Stewart & Kidd Co.
_Hands Across The Equator_, by Alfred Ernest Keet.
Privately printed.
_Songs Under Open Skies_, by M. Jay Flannery. Stewart & Kidd Co.
_Denys Of Auxerre_, by James Barton. Christophers, London.

_Songs in Many Moods_, by Charles Washburn Nichols.
L. H. Blackmer Press.
_The Lord's Prayer._ A Sonnet Sequence by Francis Howard Williams.
George W. Jacobs & Co.
_The Buccaneers_, by Don C. Seitz. Harper & Bros.
_The Tale of a Round-House_, by John Masefield. The MacMillan Co.
_XXXIII Love Sonnets_, by Florence Brooks. John Marone.
_The Poems of Ida Ahlborn Weeks._ Published By Her Friends,
Sabula, Iowa.
_The Poems of LeRoy Titus Weeks._ Published by the author.
_Ripostes_, by Ezra Pound. Stephen Swift.
_The Spinning Woman of the Sky_, by Alice Corbin.
The Ralph Fletcher Seymour Co.
_The Irish Poems of Alfred Perceval Graves._ Maunsel & Co.
_Welsh Poetry Old and New, in English Verse_,
by Alfred Perceval Graves. Longmans, Green & Co.

Poetry VOL. I
A Magazine of Verse NO. 5

FEBRUARY, 1913

POEMS
BY
ARTHUR DAVISON FICKE

SWINBURNE, AN ELEGY

I

The autumn dusk, not yearly but eternal,
Is haunted by thy voice.
Who turns his way far from the valleys vernal
And by dark choice
Disturbs those heights which from the low-lying land
Rise sheerly toward the heavens, with thee may stand
And hear thy thunders down the mountains strown.
But none save him who shares thy prophet-sight
Shall thence behold what cosmic dawning-light
Met thy soul's own.

II

Master of music! unmelodious singing
Must build thy praises now.
Master of vision! vainly come we, bringing
Words to endow
Thy silence,--where, beyond our clouded powers,
The sun-shot glory of resplendent hours
Invests thee of the Dionysiac flame.
Yet undissuaded come we, here to make
Not thine enrichment but our own who wake
Thy echoing fame.

III

Not o'er thy dust we brood,--we who have never
Looked in thy living eyes.
Nor wintry blossom shall we come to sever
Where thy grave lies.
Let witlings dream, with shallow pride elate,
That they approach the presence of the great
When at the spot of birth or death they stand.
But hearts in whom thy heart lives, though they be
By oceans sundered, walk the night with thee
In alien land.

IV

For them, grief speaks not with the tidings spoken
That thou art of the dead.
No lamp extinguished when the bowl is broken,
No music fled
When the lute crumbles, art thou nor shalt be;
But as a great wave, lifted on the sea,
Surges triumphant toward the sleeping shore,
Thou fallest, in splendor of irradiant rain,
To sweep resurgent all the ocean plain
Forevermore.

V

The seas of earth with flood tides filled thy bosom;
The sea-winds to thy voice
Lent power; the Grecian with the English blossom
Twined, to rejoice
Upon thy brow in chaplets of new bloom;
And over thee the Celtic mists of doom
Hovered to give their magics to thy hand;
And past the moon, where Music dwells alone,
She woke, and loved, and left her starry zone
At thy command.

VI

For thee spake Beauty from the shadowy waters;
For thee Earth garlanded
With loveliness and light her mortal daughters;
Toward thee was sped
The arrow of swift longing, keen delight,
Wonder that pierces, cruel needs that smite,
Madness and melody and hope and tears.
And these with lights and loveliness illume
Thy pages, where rich Summer's faint perfume
Outlasts the years.

VII

Outlasts, too well! For of the hearts that know thee
Few know or dare to stand
On thy keen chilling heights; but where below thee
Thy lavish hand
Has scattered brilliant jewels of summer song
And flowers of passionate speech, there grope the throng
Crying--"Behold! this bauble, this is he!"
And of their love or hate, the foolish wars
Echo up faintly where amid lone stars
Thy soul may be.

VIII

But some, who find in thee a word exceeding
Even thy power of speech--
To whom each song,--like an oak-leaf crimson, bleeding,
Fallen,--can teach
Tidings of that high forest whence it came
Where the wooded mountain-slope in one vast flame
Burns as the Autumn kindles on its quest--
These rapt diviners gather close to thee:--
Whom now the Winter holds in dateless fee
Sealèd of rest.

IX

Strings never touched before,--strange accents chanting,--
Strange quivering lambent words,--
A far exalted hope serene or panting
Mastering the chords,--
A sweetness fierce and tragic,--these were thine,
O singing lover of dark Proserpine!
O spirit who lit the Maenad hills with song!
O Augur bearing aloft thy torch divine,
Whose flickering lights bewilder as they shine
Down on the throng.

X

Not thy deep glooms, but thine exceeding glory
Maketh men blind to thee.
For them thou hast no evening fireside story.
But to be free--
But to arise, spurning all bonds that fold
The spirit of man in fetters forged of old--
This was the mighty trend of thy desire;
Shattering the Gods, teaching the heart to mould
No longer idols, but aloft to hold
The soul's own fire.

XI

Yea, thou didst burst the final gates of capture;
And thy strong heart has passed
From youth, half-blinded by its golden rapture,
Into the vast
Desolate bleakness of life's iron spaces;
And there found solace, not in faiths, or faces,
Or aught that must endure Time's harsh control.
In the wilderness, alone, when skies were cloven,
Thou hast thy garment and thy refuge woven
From thine own soul.

XII

The faiths and forms of yesteryear are waning,
Dropping, like leaves.
Through the wood sweeps a great wind of complaining
As Time bereaves
Pitiful hearts of all that they thought holy.
The icy stars look down on melancholy
Shelterless creatures of a pillaged day:
A day of disillusionment and terror,
A day that yields no solace for the error
It takes away.

XIII

Thee with no solace, but with bolder passion
The bitter day endowed.
As battling seas from the frail swimmer fashion
At last the proud
Indomitable master of their tides,
Who with exultant power splendidly rides
The terrible summit of each whelming wave,--
So didst thou reap, from fields of wreckage, gain;
Harvesting the wild fruit of the bitter main,
Strength that shall save.

XIV

Here where old barks upon new headlands shatter,
And worlds seem torn apart,
Amid the creeds now vain to shield or flatter
The mortal heart,
Where the wild welter of strange knowledge won
From grave and engine and the chemic sun
Subdues the age to faith in dust and gold:
The bardic laurel thou hast dowered with youth,
In living witness of the spirit's truth,
Like prophets old.

XV

Thee shall the future time with joy inherit.
Hast thou not sung and said:
"Save its own light, none leads the mortal spirit,
None ever led"?
Time shall bring many, even as thy steps have trod,
Where the soul speaks authentically of God,
Sustained by glories strange and strong and new.
Yet these most Orphic mysteries of thy heart
Only to kindred can thy speech impart;
And they are few.

XVI

Few men shall love thee, whom fierce powers have lifted
High beyond meed of praise.
But as some bark whose seeking sail has drifted
Through storm of days,
We hail thee, bearing back thy golden flowers
Gathered beyond the Western Isles, in bowers
That had not seen, till thine, a vessel's wake.
And looking on thee from our land-built towers
Know that such sea-dawn never can be ours
As thou sawest break.

XVII

Now sailest thou dim-lighted, lonelier water.
By shores of bitter seas
Low is thy speech with Ceres' ghostly daughter,
Whose twined lilies
Are not more pale than thou, O bard most sweet,
Most bitter;--for whose brow sedge-crowns were mete
And crowns of splendid holly green and red;
Who passest from the dust of careless feet
To lands where sunrise thou hast sought shall greet
Thy holy head.

XVIII

Thou hast followed after him whose hopes were greatest,--
That meteor-soul divine;
Near whom divine we hail thee: thou the latest
Of that bright line
Of flame-lipped masters of the spell of song,
Enduring in succession proud and long,
The banner-bearers in triumphant wars:
Latest; and first of that bright line to be,
For whom thou also, flame-lipped, spirit-free,
Art of the stars.

TO A CHILD--TWENTY YEARS HENCE

You shall remember dimly,
Through mists of far-away,
Her whom, our lips set grimly,
We carried forth today.

But when, in days hereafter,
Unfolding time shall bring
Knowledge of love and laughter
And trust and triumphing,--

Then from some face the fairest,
From some most joyous breast,
Garner what there is rarest
And happiest and best,--

The youth, the light the rapture
Of eager April grace,--
And in that sweetness, capture
Your mother's far-off face.

And all the mists shall perish
That have between you moved.
You shall see her you cherish;
And love, as we have loved.

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.

AMONG SHADOWS

In halls of sleep you wandered by,
This time so indistinguishably
I cannot remember aught of it,
Save that I know last night we met.
I know it by the cloudy thrill
That in my heart is quivering still;
And sense of loveliness forgot
Teases my fancy out of thought.
Though with the night the vision wanes
Its haunting presence still may last--
As odour of flowers faint remains
In halls where late a queen has passed.

A WATTEAU MELODY

Oh, let me take your lily hand,
And where the secret star-beams shine
Draw near, to see and understand
Pierrot and Columbine.

Around the fountains, in the dew,
Where afternoon melts into night,
With gracious mirth their gracious crew
Entice the shy birds of delight.

Of motley dress and maskèd face,
Of sparkling unrevealing eyes,
They track in gentle aimless chase
The moment as it flies.

Their delicate beribboned rout,
Gallant and fair, of light intent,
Weaves through the shadows in and out
With infinite artful merriment.

* * * * *

Dear Lady of the lily hand,
Do then our stars so clearly shine
That we, who do not understand,
May mock Pierrot and Columbine?

Beyond this garden-grove I see
The wise, the noble and the brave
In ultimate futility
Go down into the grave.

And all they dreamed and all they sought,
Crumbled and ashen grown, departs;
And is as if they had not wrought
These works with blood from out their hearts.

The nations fall, the faiths decay,
The great philosophies go by,--
And life lies bare, some bitter day,
A charnel that affronts the sky.

The wise, the noble and the brave,--
They saw and solved, as we must see
And solve, the universal grave,
The ultimate futility.

* * * * *

Look, where beside the garden-pool
A Venus rises in the grove,
More suave, more debonair, more cool
Than ever burned with Paphian love.

'Twas here the delicate ribboned rout
Of gallants and the fair ones went
Among the shadows in and out
With infinite artful merriment.

Then let me take your lily hand,
And let us tread, where starbeams shine,
A dance; and be, and understand
Pierrot and Columbine.

_Arthur Davison Ficke_

POEMS
BY
WITTER BYNNER

APOLLO TROUBADOUR

When a wandering Italian
Yesterday at noon
Played upon his hurdy-gurdy
Suddenly a tune,
There was magic in my ear-drums:
Like a baby's cup and spoon
Tinkling time for many sleigh-bells,
Many no-school, rainy-day-bells,
Cow-bells, frog-bells, run-away-bells,
Mingling with an ocean medley
As of elemental people
More emotional than wordy,--
Mermaids laughing off their tantrums,
Mermen singing loud and sturdy,--
Silver scales and fluting shells,
Popping weeds and gurgles deadly,
Coral chime from coral steeple,
Intermittent deep-sea bells
Ringing over floating knuckles,
Buried gold and swords and buckles,
And a thousand bubbling chuckles,
Yesterday at noon,--
Such a melody as star-fish,
And all fish that really are fish,
In a gay, remote battalion
Play at midnight to the moon!

Could any playmate on our planet,
Hid in a house of earth's own granite,
Be so devoid of primal fire
That a wind from this wild crated lyre
Should find no spark and fan it?
Would any lady half in tears,
Whose fashion, on a recent day
Over the sea, had been to pay
Vociferous gondoliers,
Beg that the din be sent away
And ask a gentleman, gravely treading
As down the aisle at his own wedding,
To toss the foreigner a quarter
Bribing him to leave the street;
That motor-horns and servants' feet
Familiar might resume, and sweet
To her offended ears,
The money-music of her peers!

Apollo listened, took the quarter
With his hat off to the buyer,
Shrugged his shoulder small and sturdy,
Led away his hurdy-gurdy
Street by street, then turned at last
Toward a likelier piece of earth
Where a stream of chatter passed,
Yesterday at noon;
By a school he stopped and played
Suddenly a tune....
What a melody he made!
Made in all those eager faces,
Feet and hands and fingers!
How they gathered, how they stayed
With smiles and quick grimaces,
Little man and little maid!--
How they took their places,
Hopping, skipping, unafraid,
Darting, rioting about,
Squealing, laughing, shouting out!
How, beyond a single doubt,
In my own feet sprang the ardour
(Even now the motion lingers)
To be joining in their paces!
Round and round the handle went,--
Round their hearts went harder;--
Apollo urged the happy rout
And beamed, ten times as well content
With every son and daughter
As though their little hands had lent
The gentleman his quarter.--
(You would not guess--nor I deny--
That that same gentleman was I!)
No gentleman may watch a god
With proper happiness therefrom;
So street by street again I trod
The way that we had come.
He had not seen me following
And yet I think he knew;
For still, the less I heard of it,
The more his music grew:
As if he made a bird of it
To sing the distance through....
And, O Apollo, how I thrilled,
You liquid-eyed rapscallion,
With every twig and twist of Spring,
Because your music rose and filled
Each leafy vein with dew,--
With melody of olden sleigh-bells,
Over-the-sea-and-far-away-bells,
And the heart of an Italian,
And the tinkling cup and spoon,--
Such a melody as star-fish,
And all fish that really are fish,
In a gay remote battalion
Play at midnight to the moon!

ONE OF THE CROWD