Chapter I: Front Matter

THE LITTLE REVIEW

_Literature Drama Music Art_

MARGARET C. ANDERSON
EDITOR

FEBRUARY, 1915

Our First Year The Editor
Poems: Amy Lowell
Bright Sunlight
Ely Cathedral
Heaven’s Jester Mrs. Havelock Ellis
Green Symphony John Gould Fletcher
The Case of French Poetry Richard Aldington
The Last Woman George Soule
The Liberties of the People William L. Chenery
A Hymn to Nature (An Unpublished Goethe Poem)
My Friend, the Incurable: Alexander S. Kaun
On the Vice of Simplicity
John Cowper Powys
Muck and Music Alfred Knopf
While Hearing a Little Song Maxwell Bodenheim
A Hard Bed George Burman Foster
George Middleton’s One-Act Plays Clayton Hamilton
New York Letter George Soule
Music
Book Discussion
The Reader Critic

Published Monthly

15 cents a copy

MARGARET C. ANDERSON, Publisher
Fine Arts Building
CHICAGO

$1.50 a year

Entered as second-class matter at Postoffice, Chicago

THE LITTLE REVIEW

Vol. 1

FEBRUARY, 1915

No. 11

Copyright, 1915, by Margaret C. Anderson.

Our First Year

MARGARET C. ANDERSON.

An interesting man said recently that the five qualities which go into the making of the great personality—of the genius, perhaps—are (1) energy, (2) imagination, (3) character, (4) intellect, (5) and charm. I number them because the importance of his remark lies in the fact that he arranged them in just that order. The more you think of it the keener a judgment it seems. I can see only one possible flaw in it—a flaw that would not be corrected, I am certain, by moving number four to the place of number one, but by a reversal of number one and number two. Energy does seem the prime requisite—after you’ve spent a few days with one of those persons who has seething visions and a contempt for concentration. But Imagination!—that gift of the far gods! There is simply no question of its position in the list. It is first by virtue of every brave and beautiful thing that has been accomplished in the world.

Last March we began the publication of THE LITTLE REVIEW. Now, twelve months later, we face the humiliating—or the encouraging—spectacle of being a magazine whose function is not transparent. People are always asking me what we are really trying to do. We have not set forth a policy; we have not identified ourselves with a point of view, except in so far as we have been quite ridiculously appreciative; we have not expounded a philosophy, except in so far as we have been quite outlandishly anarchistic; we have been uncritical, indiscriminate, juvenile, exuberant, chaotic, amateurish, emotional, tiresomely enthusiastic, and a lot of other things which I can’t remember now—all the things that are usually said about faulty new undertakings. The encouraging thing is that they are said most strongly about promising ones.

Of course THE LITTLE REVIEW has done little more than approach the ideal which it has in mind. I am not proud of those limitations mentioned above—(and I am far from being unconscious of them); I am merely glad that they happen to be that particular type of limitation rather than some other. For instance, I should much rather have the limitations of the visionary or the poet or the prophet than those of the pedant or the priest or the “practical” person. Personally, I should much rather get drenched than to go always fortified with an umbrella and overshoes; I should rather see one side of a question violently than to see both sides calmly; I should rather be an extremist than a—well, it’s scarcely a matter of choice: people are either extremists or nonentities; I should far rather sense the big things about a cause or a character even vaguely than to analyze its little qualities quite clearly; in short, I should rather feel a great deal and know a little than feel a little and know a lot. And so all this may serve to express our negative attitude.

But what am I to say about our positive attitude—how possibly express all the things we hope to do? Perhaps I need not try: Oscar Wilde made explanations of such a position superfluous when he said that the worship of beauty is something entirely too splendid to be sane. That is our only attitude. I hope at least half the people who read this will understand that I did not say our platform is merely the worship of beauty. Beauty involves too many elements to be championed lightly. Beauty from the aesthete’s point of view and beauty from the artist’s point of view are two widely different things. I might paraphrase Wilde and say that the new Beauty is the new Hellenism. Certainly I want for THE LITTLE REVIEW, as I want from life, not merely beauty, not merely happiness, but a quality which proceeds from the _intensity_ with which both beauty and ugliness, pleasure and pain, are present.

This much to start with. Now there are people who complain that within their limited allowance of magazines they are forced to do without THE LITTLE REVIEW because it gives them nothing definite, nothing finished, nothing conclusive. But my idea of a magazine which makes any claim to artistic value is that it should be conducted more or less on the lines of good drama, or good fiction; that it should suggest, not conclude; that it should stimulate to thinking rather than dictate thought. Most magazines have efficient editors and definite editorial policies; that is what’s wrong with them. I have none of the qualifications of the editor; that’s why I think THE LITTLE REVIEW is in good hands. Because the editorial tradition in this country has usurped the place of the literary tradition we have lifted loyalty to policies into the place of loyalty to ideals. A veteran editor—a man of letters—once told me that there were fifty good writers to every good editor in America, and that he would teach me to be the former. He proceeded to illustrate, not by chucking out the poor stuff that was being written for his journal but by showing how it could be stuck in where it wouldn’t be too noticeable! When some manuscript that delighted his soul came in (he was very human and out of sympathy with the crusted “policy” that had somehow grown up around his own magazine) he taught me the “art” of reducing its policy to a state of negativeness that would not be out of harmony with the policy he was supposed to be supporting. Once he received some poetry that was very strong and very beautiful. He treasured it so that he kept it in his desk for months before returning it. It was so beautiful as to be beyond the appreciation of his audience, he was sure; and anyhow his journal had never gone in for publishing poetry—it merely printed reviews of poetry; so what could he do but return it? I used to feel that I was in the midst of some demoniacal scheme for achieving the ultimate futility. And so I think that “policies” are likely to be, or to become, quite damning things. Therefore instead of urging people to read us in the hope of finding what they seek in that direction, it is more honest to say outright that they will probably find less and less of it. Because as “sanity” increases in the world THE LITTLE REVIEW will strive more and more to be splendidly insane: as editors and lecturers continue to compromise in order to get their public, as book-makers continue to print rot in order to make fortunes, as writers continue to follow the market instead of _doing their Work_, as the public continues to demand vileness and vulgarity and lies, as the intellectuals continue to miss the root of the trouble, THE LITTLE REVIEW will continue to rebel, to tell the truth as we see it, to work for its ideal rather than for a policy. And in the face of new magazines of excellent quality and no personality we shall continue to soar and flash and flame, to be swamped at intervals and scramble to new heights, to be young and fearless and reckless and imaginative—

... chanter
Rêver, rire, passer, être seul, être libre,
Avoir l’œil qui regarde bien, la voix qui vibre....

—to die for these things if necessary, but to live for them vividly first.

There are other people who argue that we might be hugely successful by being better: that we might borrow a lot of money (they always say this so casually), pay high for contributions, become acutely sophisticated, fill a wide-felt need, etc. Now the first thing we shall do, as soon as we are able to pay our printer’s bills without paroxysms of terror, is to pay for contributions; it is disgusting that writers who do real work don’t make enough out of it to live on at least. But as things are now no one can _live_ by writing unless he writes badly. The only exceptions are cases which emphasize rather than disprove the point. In the meantime a magazine ought to be started for the sole purpose of printing the good things that the best magazines reject. Until we are on our feet and able to pay for stuff we can at least do this. And never, we hope, will we achieve that last emptiness: sophistication.

But there is still another function, and it seems to me very important. I have been reading a new book of Walter Lippmann’s called _Drift and Mastery_, which has more of the quality known as straight thinking than anything in the political-economic field published for a long time. Mr. Lippmann says this in his preface:

The issues that we face are very different from those of the last
century and a half. The difference, I think, might be summed up
roughly this way: those who went before inherited a conservatism
and overthrew it; we inherit freedom, and have to use it. The
sanctity of property, the patriarchal family, hereditary caste,
the dogma of sin, obedience to authority,—the rock of ages, in
brief, has been blasted for us. Those who are young today are
born into a world in which the foundations of the older order
survive only as habits or by default. So Americans can carry
through their purposes when they have them. If the standpatter is
still powerful amongst us it is because we have not learned to
use our power, and direct it to fruitful ends. The American
conservative, it seems to me, fills the vacuum where democratic
purpose should be.

So far as we are concerned, then, the case is made out against
absolutism, commercial oligarchy, and unquestioned creeds. _The
Rebel program is stated._ Scientific invention and blind social
currents have made the old authority impossible in fact, the
artillery fire of the iconoclasts has shattered its prestige. We
inherit a rebel tradition. The dominant forces in our world are
not the sacredness of property nor the intellectual leadership of
the priest; they are not the divinity of the constitution, the
glory of the industrial push, Victorian sentiment, New England
respectability, the Republican party, or John D. Rockefeller....
In the emerging morality the husband is not regarded as the
proprietor of his wife, nor the parents as autocrats over the
children.... There is a wide agreement among thinking people that
the body is not a filthy thing, and that to implant in a child
the sense of sin is a poor preparation for a temperate life.

The battle for us, in short, does not lie against crusted
prejudice, but against the chaos of a new freedom.

That is very good reasoning, if you grant the premise—which I do not. I think the old authority is just as apparent as ever; its methods and nature have merely changed. Mr. Lippmann lives among the small minority—the people who have ideas. They represent about one tenth of the population. Of the rest, five tenths have no ideas and the other four tenths have something they call ideas: the rock of ages. It is still there. The new authority is quite as strong as the old, and more insidious because it is more subtle. Young people used to be disinherited when they disagreed with their parents; now they are argued with. The former method left their minds clear; the latter befogs them—and they disinherit themselves. That is the difference. One worked from without in; the other works from within out. Of course it’s much better this way. But this is not the most important problem—this of the old rock of ages. The horrible joke of modern life is that _we have been presented with a new rock of ages_!

The rebel program is stated—exactly. More than that, it is in action. The difference between the new issues and the old, to Mr. Lippmann, is that we have now learned what we must do; to me, it is that we must learn to do something else. The battle lies not against the chaos of a new freedom, but against the dangers of a new authority.

Before I define, let me illustrate. About two months ago I spent four days in one of our second-large cities—a place of about two hundred thousand people. If I could only describe those four days and their stimulation—to fresh rebellion! The people I saw belonged to the supposedly enlightened inner circles—the representative upper middle class: the ones that still loom very large in comparison to the thinking minority from whom Mr. Lippmann draws his conclusions. Well, I had not forgotten how ignorant people can be, but I had forgotten how cruel they can be. I had not expected their knowledge to have increased, but their hypocrisy to have lessened. I had not looked for vision but at least for a beginning of sight; not for Truth, but perhaps for a willingness to stop lying. And I found scarcely a glimmer of these things. It was ghastly! But the strange part was this: all the time I found I was thinking not of the great faults of their opinions but of the great barrenness of their lives. Over and over the thought kept running through my head: There is no poetry of living in this place!

This brings me to my point. The new rock of ages is that wholly false perspective which assumes that _what one thinks is more important than what one feels_. It has been set up, quite unconsciously, by the very people who have trying to blast the old one. It is that perspective which the new generation must fight not only with the old, but in its own ranks! Here is the interest of the new battle! Our next renaissance will be concerned with changing that perspective; the genius of the future must be directed toward that end. And that is why I think it is not enough to say that there will come a time when men will think of nothing but education. There will come a time when men will think of nothing but education in imagination! And since there is no such thing as _education_ in imagination, but only _procreation_ of it,—well, the time will come when men will think of nothing but art. The crimes of ignorance are not comparable to the crimes of philistinism: there is no philosophy that will ever reach beyond that of the personality or of the artist.

The dominant forces in the new rock of ages are not of course the intellectual leadership of the priest, the divinity of the constitution, Victorian sentiment, or the Republican Party, but the intellectual leadership of cleverness, the divinity of cults, no sentiment, and the Practical Plan. They are endorsed by the most promising element in modern life: the young intellectuals who are working valiantly to create here what Europe has given to the arts and sciences,—and working in the wrong direction. Our inferiorities to the other civilizations they attribute to our puritanism, our speed, our economic evils. Oh, I get so sick of their failure to reach to the real cause! It is so silly to keep on insisting that we need poets like the French or philosophers like the Germans or musicians like the Russians, etc., etc., if we don’t begin soon to understand why we haven’t got them. We haven’t got them because, in this curious country, we haven’t got people who feel.—Think of an Irish peasant walking under the stars....

I grant you that it also becomes silly to talk eternally of “feeling” without qualifying or defining. It is like taking refuge behind that vaguest phrase in the language—“life itself.” But by “feeling” I mean simply that flight of wings which makes walking unnecessary; that dazzling tight-rope performance which takes you safely over the chasm of Experience but leaves you as bruised as though you had fallen to its depths. Feeling is that quality of spirit which will save any artist from the philosophical redundancies of a _De Profundis_. The torturing need of expressing something that far outstretches one’s capacity for expression is the foundation of art. That’s why we have so little of it in this country. There may be some Americans in whom the perspective has retained its proper balance. I happen to know of one.

It is for some such need as this that THE LITTLE REVIEW exists: to create some attitude which so far is absolutely alien to the American tradition. I have been going to the lectures of John Cowper Powys, which are spoken of in other places in this issue, and that appreciative man gave me an interesting idea the other day. I should like to see him as editor of a literary magazine whose policy was to cut off the subscription list everybody who speculated about his pose or his insincerity and failed to miss the great beauty of his words. Now Mr. Powys is as unstable as water: that is his value. He feels entirely too much ever to be fully sane. His hypothetical magazine would gather an audience that could fight successfully the great American crime which may be described briefly as _missing the point_. Thus we might establish a reign of imagination which would make stupid things as impossible as cruel things, which would consider a failure to catch some new beauty or a “moral lynching of great and independent spirits” as greater crimes than murdering a man in a dark corner.

On this basis we shall continue. If we must be sensible at least we shall make it, in Shaw’s phrase, an ecstasy of common sense. And out of all this chaos shall we produce our dancing star.

The supreme vice is shallowness. Whatever is realized is
right.—_Oscar Wilde._

Before the scientific spirit can reach its full bloom, it will
have to acquire an honest sense of the rôle that fantasy plays in
all its work. This is especially true of the social sciences. We
are just beginning to realize the importance in economics of the
economist’s utopia. We are learning the determining influence of
the thinker’s dream.—_Walter Lippmann._

Poems

AMY LOWELL

Bright Sunlight

The wind has blown a corner of your shawl
Into the fountain,
Where it floats and drifts
Among the lily-pads
Like a tissue of sapphires.
But you do not heed it,
Your fingers pick at the lichens
On the stone edge of the basin,
And your eyes follow the tall clouds
As they sail over the ilex trees.

Ely Cathedral

Anaemic women, stupidly dressed and shod
In squeaky shoes, thump down the nave to laud an expurgated God.
Bunches of lights reflect upon the pavement where
The twenty benches stop, and through the close, smelled-over air
Gaunt arches push up their whited cones,
And cover the sparse worshipers with dead men’s stones.
Behind his shambling choristers, with flattened feet
And red-flapped hood, the Bishop walks, complete
In old, frayed ceremonial. The organ wheezes
A moldy psalm-tune, and a verger sneezes.

But the great Cathedral spears into the sky
Shouting for joy.

What is the red-flapped Bishop praying for, by the bye?

Heaven’s Jester
or
The Message of a White Rose

MRS. HAVELOCK ELLIS

“It is dawn! Men and women are in the city of sleep. Waken, thou strange child of many dreams, and hear my message. A woman gave me to thee, a woman thou lovest, whose fragrance for thee is as delicate as mine, whose whiteness is thy strength and hope. But hark! the gods are pitiless. Thy name is entered in the call-book of heaven by a woman thou lovest also. In gentle jest she wrote the scrawl when thy soul passed into Paradise with hers for one brief hour. She entered those gates in the sweet sleep of Death and thou, by force of her love for thee, in the sleep of life. “Heaven’s Jester” was inscribed in the registers of Paradise and heaven’s jester thou must remain. Thy soul, after her passing from Earth, had barely gained thy body again before the cap and bells were donned by thee. Thy jests for men were written down. The jingle of thy bells drew laughter and tears. God found he had need of the fool the woman had signed to him. Hush! the jester of heavenly courts must not lower his head or hide his face. Tears ill become the piebald suit and trappings of mirth. Thou crazy clown! Didst think the woman who gave me to thee needed thy heart? Hear the message the white rose by thy bed gives to thee. She also needs thy cap and bells. It is not for thee to choose thy way of love. God’s jester is neither man nor woman nor child, but a singer of joys and woes to ease men’s souls and dry the eyes of women. Play thy part, then, and laugh thy laugh. Men win her lips, women crave her help, the world takes her service, and thou her smiles. Wouldst thou have more, thou poet lover in the guise of a fool?

Then throw thy cloak down for a lover to kneel on if Fate shows thee his face. Drown the world’s chatter with thy bells while lips kiss. In his absence make songs and sing them to ease the travail of love in her body. If no lover comes, then hearten and hasten even thine own enemy into her service, if so be she gets strength and comfort from the strange enterprise. Then make thine own soul white as the rose she has given thee. On with thy cap and bells! Grow nimble and dance. Dance and sing in thy jester’s way, for the homesickness of the heaven thou hast seen will teach thee strange melodies. When death claims thee, and the cap and bells are laid aside, God’s Jester shall sleep with a white rose on his breast.

“Dead,” they will say, but no! At last thou shalt hear the eternal song of the souls of women and be satisfied!

HEAVEN’S JESTER TO THE BODY OF HIS LADY

Heaven’s Jester said unto himself, “I have no need of my lady’s body, her soul suffices. In the passionate pressure of lips the Fool has known his God and the man has found the woman. Let that suffice!”

In the dawn the white rose spoke once more to the jester. “Thou hast lied. Thy lady’s unknown body is untried music to thee. Thy hands would touch the strings, thy ear catch the vibrations her soul modulates to sounds of sighs and sobs at the call of love. Look at my whiteness! Think of thy unrest! The secrets of thy lady’s body are not learnt through the strong desires common to the herd of men or the fainting dreams of impassioned women. Fool! inscribed as thou art in the heavenly registers by a woman as God’s Fool, thou must learn the mystic’s lore about the body of thy Love. Thy desire is towards thy lady, and her will, not thine, is thy law. Hearken then! It were the work of an instant to close thy strong hands round her throat and bruise her into forgetfulness that love is pain. To force her mouth, so much desired, into an open well for slaking thine own thirst is love’s delicious robbery. To hurtle to her breast, as if to rob and forestall the child who may one day drink there, is to have found a shrine for prayer and peace. Yes! even to rest in the hallowed forests of her body ere thou storm the citadel where thy weapon shall break into the silent house of life, is easy and has always been the way of men with woman. Woman the abandoned, man the triumphant, woman the flower, man the gatherer, woman the luscious wine and man the thirsty drinker. Thy old-world needs desire thy lady in the way of men, though prayer before and after would grace thy feasting. Listen to the secret the white rose whispers to thee. It does not suffice that thou dost need thy lady or even that thy lady needs thee. Thou must prepare thyself for her even if she has no need of thee. The gateways of thy body must be clean, pure as snow and free from taint. Thy thoughts must shine through thine eyes like stars, thy passions burn with fires at white heat, without smoke or noise. Heaven’s jester may not approach the Holy of Holies till Desire is as white flame. The sacrament of thy Lady’s Body is precious bread and wine, to be partaken of at her desire, not thine, and only in Heaven’s good time. It is not for thee to choose. Thy part is to watch and pray and laugh and sing, and maybe lead another in to the feast thou hast prepared. Thou must bring to thy lady’s white feet frankincense and myrrh, the spoils of the sorrows thou hast borne for the tired travellers on thy journey. Precious stones, too, thou must gather for her neck, from the shores of thy past desolations. Pearls thou must also offer, burnished out of the memories of thy wayward desires which knew not her chastity or her smiles. For her breasts thou must bring shields forged from thy gluttonies and petty aims. For her arms crystals wrought out of thy dreams. For her girdle rubies made from all thy heart’s desire. For her eyes? Ah! perhaps thy kiss, delicate and passionate as is the way of seas and clouds when the earth sleeps. For her forehead thou mayest weave a crown of myrtle, for friendship, as thy Love is thy Friend and is steadfast. For her ears I will tell thee the dreams of my sister, almost black with the redness the sun has poured into her heart. For her hair, only a wreath of “love in the mist,” for in that little flower is the wonder of the Great Heart thou art learning to understand. For her lips, only thy hopes made chaste and thy fears made passionate, if God wills.

Should thy Love waken with thy kisses on her closed eyes and turn towards thee with wonder and joy at the things thou hast learned and the gifts thou hast given to her, then have a care! Women are not drunk with wine but with pity, and pity is no use to Heaven’s Jester. There are signs, though, which even thou canst understand, and when Love is born, the Fool is wise. If by chance, for there is no hope in this message of the dawn, there is a resurrection day for thee, if by chance or God’s pure will, she turns to thee as God allows one spirit to turn to another spirit, when Love has prepared the altar, then clash thy cymbals, blow thy trumpet, shout till the sleepy world rejoices, shake thy bells and fling thy Jester’s cap and cloak aside, for to eat the sacramental bread and drink the wine of thy love’s pure body thou wilt not need raiment, and as thou wert born and as thou wilt die thou wilt enter into thy Holy of Holies. And if thou die of joy, thou criest:

What is Death?
Only Love freed.

THE FOOL TO THE SOUL OF HIS LADY

The Jester said to himself, “If the body of my lady is so fair a tabernacle for her soul, how can I, a Fool, understand the ways of her spirit? My lute and pipes can only render the voices of the wind, the sea, the trees and the cries of beasts in joy and pain. My bells are a Jester’s toys for assuaging the griefs of the children of men. The travailings of my lady’s spirit, like the snow on the mountains, are out of reach of a fool’s understanding. For one brief hour I heard a faint whisper in the halls of peace when my name was signed in the heavenly registers, but, except in my heart, I carried no trophy to earth by which I could tell men of the music I heard.

This is the birthday of my Lady, the festival which calls for prayer and joy. Prayer, because the paths of earth are hard for the feet of her whose tread awakens a longing for wings in the Fool standing near. Joy, because her eyes are mirrors of a time to come when love and peace will renew earth into heaven, and men and women will become as wise as eagles and children. Through her body, I love the soul of my lady, and through her soul I love her body. Neither her soul nor her body may help and comfort the Jester even though God leads and helps him by both grace and mercy. Though his heart be sore and his body sick unto death and there seems none to comfort him, he can still sing songs for men and pipe melodies for women of the wonders revealed to him.”

The White Rose, dying by the Jester’s bed, spoke once more to the Fool.

“Cast self pity out of thine heart. Learn to live as I have learned to die, and then learn to die as I have learned to live. For thee absence seems death, but trace the meaning of the soul of the woman thou lovest. Her soul is also absent from the Oversoul as her body is absent from a Lover. Only through absence can the Oversoul draw its own to itself, and only through loneliness can the Great Lover and the Lesser Lover understand one another. Words confuse and touch enslaves. Souls speak clearly in the silence. In absence a note becomes a chord, and in silence the chord becomes a symphony. The discord dissolves into harmony, and the darkness into dawn. The absence of Death is not different from that of Life, for Death is Life, and Life the discord making Death’s music. The soul of thy Lady will find thine by the aid of both Life and Death, for it is not God’s Fool who hath declared that there is no Love nor a Creater thereof. Thou art learning that all is Love. In thy prayers today for thy Lady’s peace incline thy spirit towards hers as both approach the maternal source of the Universe. It is the Mother-Spirit of the world who has hidden thy love from thy sight, and taken thine head from the touch of her hands and torn thy lips from her kisses. Is it not always so that the mothers of the smaller world wean their children into growth and knowledge? Thou art still hers even if her body is out of sight and touch, for pure love is the simple miracle of thine heritage as a son of man and of God. Nothing can take from me what the sun made of me through his shining. Even as I die the fragrance remains. Nothing can rob thee of the hours when all things seem possible because of thy hopes and her vows. Love is pain but over-love is peace. Turn thy tears into help and pity for those who weep without thy hope and for those who dwell in dungeons and are not yet registered in heaven as wise or foolish. Let thy longings for one break into prayer for the weal of the world. Thou wert not sent here only for thy pleasure or thy peace, nor was the body of thy Lady sent for thy delight, or her soul for thy strength alone. Pain is ordained for the bringers of good tidings and love lent for the redemption of the many through the loneliness of the one. Accept thy lot and thy vision shall make thee free. Resist thy fate and thy Love’s soul and thine shall sleep embedded in flesh and with no power to grow wings. On thy knees then and pray for strength and courage with thy cap and bells in readiness by thy side, and joy within thy heart. As I die thou must live.”

The Jester took the rose in his hands, and, as its petals fell, a Fool’s prayer broke the silence.

“Maker of men,” he cried, “pour into a fool’s heart the understanding of life’s joy and pain. Make my spirit at one with the great order. Let me understand what is required of me and in understanding be at peace.” As he prayed, the Jester slept, for a great weariness was on him from much dancing. In his dream, a little child ran towards him. He opened his Jester’s cloak, and the little one held the sleeves in her tiny hands.

“Give all that thou hast and all that thou art even to one so small as I,” cried the child and ran from his sight.

The Jester was awakened by the opening and clanging of a door. He went out into the courtyard. A beggar, unshaved, and swollen with dropsy, stood before him. He had evil eyes and a mouth twisted by pain. He looked at the Jester and laughed.

“Give me thy cap and bells,” he said, “I have need of them.”

The Jester took money from his pouch.

“Take all this instead,” he cried.

The old man laughed.

“Any lord or lady can throw me that,” he said, “if only to keep me from defiling them by my presence. Gold costs less to give than to gather. It is dross and could only help my body to live and suffer. Thy cap and bells would succour my spirit so that I could forget my body. With the jingle of them I could smile at the curses of the healthy or the jibes of the well-washed. Give them to me. Thou art well and happy and hast no need of help.”

The Jester bowed his head and gave up his cap and bells, but with sorrow and pain in his heart. The beggar ran away shaking the bells and dancing with glee, the Jester’s cap all awry on his swollen head. A sweet melting tenderness and faintness took hold of the Jester and an ecstasy swayed him so that he nearly fell.

“It is the soul of my Lady speaking to mine,” he whispered. “What matter the cap and bells? Let them go.”

The woman he loved stood by him and her voice was like a lute on the air as she grasped the Jester’s shoulders.

“Give all thy music to me,” she whispered, “I am in sore travail because of things a Fool cannot understand. Thy music ravishes me and makes me know that love is a consuming fire in which one burns gladly. Thy wild notes make desire in me a quenchless thirst which no drinking can assuage. Thy soft piping fills my veins with a pain which is like joy and with a joy which is like pain. Give me all, keep nothing back. I would see as thou seest, hear as thou hearest, dream as thou dreamest, so that I can play as thou, but I must tune thy pipes to the voice of my heart.”

The Jester drew his hood over his head and went to his cell. His Lady had no doubt as to what he would bring back to her, for she had learnt from him that love gives all things without question or regret. The Jester quite simply collected all the instruments he had made during the long years of his youth and his manhood. They were precious to him, for he had not been able to buy as others because of his poverty. He had gone even to the offal of the slaughter-houses, and to the dank banks of the ponds, and the waste places in hills and valleys for the things which gave his instruments such power over men with the strange cries he evoked. The Jester’s sadness had been greater than even his poverty, but the music had never failed to comfort and strengthen him. Voices from the over-world and under-world spoke to him, and the strange secrets he translated into sound. The Jester’s heart was glad at last. His Lady had need of him and of what he had made. His music was hers as his heart was hers. He laid all his precious instruments at her feet and looked in her eyes. There were smiles for him there. She bent as he knelt and took his head, as of old, between her long cool hands, and kissed his brow.

“Happy, happy Fool,” she cried, “thus to be able to give all. I will break hearts with the sweetness of these strings, I will bind others to me and know it is thy gift. Happy Fool! Goodbye!”

“May God comfort thee and me,” said the Jester, as he turned toward his cell.

THE JESTER SLEEPS

“The Jester is dead.” The words were said gravely, and the Lady who heard them looked keenly in an old man’s face.

“Dead,” she cried.

“Yes! Found dead this morning. We could not find his cap and bells nor the instruments he loved more than all other things. There seems no more music in the world now, for we all grew happy through his music and the sun.”

“Dead!” she whispered. “May I....”

She hesitated. “Yes, come.”

The old man led the way.

“He is there. We found nothing by him but the leaves of a dead white rose and the wind from his window blew them on to his breast.”

“He smiles,” said the Lady.

There was silence in the cell except for the fierce howling of an April wind and the tiny fluttering of the leaves on the breast of the Jester.

The Lady turned towards the door.

“His instruments are at the gate,” she said, impatiently. “Why did he die, I wonder? The reeds are no use to me. I cannot play upon them ... not a sound will come.”

Green Symphony

JOHN GOULD FLETCHER