Chapter I: Am Weary of Being Bitter

I am weary of being bitter and weary of being wise,
And the armor and the mask of these fall from me, after long.
I would go where the islands sleep, or where the sea-dawns rise,
And lose my bitter wisdom in the wisdom of a song.

There are magics in melodies, unknown of the sages;
The powers of purest wonder on secret wings go by.
Doubtless out of the silence of dumb preceding ages
Song woke the chaos-world—and light swept the sky.

All that we know is idle; idle is all we cherish;
Idle the will that takes loads that proclaim it strong.
For the knowledge, the strength, the burden—all shall perish:
One thing only endures, one thing only—song.

FROM “SONNETS OF A PORTRAIT PAINTER”

I am in love with high far-seeing places
That look on plains half-sunlight and half-storm,
In love with hours when from the circling faces
Veils pass, and laughing fellowship glows warm.
You who look on me with grave eyes where rapture
And April love of living burn confessed—
The Gods are good! the world lies free to capture!
Life has no walls. Oh, take me to your breast!
Take me—be with me for a moment’s span!
I am in love with all unveilèd faces.
I seek the wonder at the heart of man;
I would go up to the far-seeing places.
While youth is ours, turn toward me for a space
The marvel of your rapture-lighted face!

There are strange shadows fostered of the moon,
More numerous than the clear-cut shade of day....
Go forth, when all the leaves whisper of June,
Into the dusk of swooping bats at play;
Or go into that late November dusk
When hills take on the noble lines of death,
And on the air the faint astringent musk
Of rotting leaves pours vaguely troubling breath.
Then shall you see shadows whereof the sun
Knows nothing—aye, a thousand shadows there
Shall leap and flicker and stir and stay and run,
Like petrels of the changing foul or fair;
Like ghosts of twilight, of the moon, of him
Whose homeland lies past each horizon’s rim....

LIKE HIM WHOSE SPIRIT

Like him whose spirit in the blaze of noon
Still keeps the memory of one secret star
That in the dusk of a remembered June
Thrilled the strange hour with beauty from afar—
And perilous spells of twilight snare his heart,
And wistful moods his common thoughts subdue,
And life seethes by him utterly apart—
Last night I dreamed, today I dream, of you.
Gleams downward strike; bright bubbles upward hover
Through the charmed air; far sea-winds cool my brow.
Invisible lips tell me I shall discover
Today a temple, a mystery, a vow ...
The cycle rounds: only the false seems true.
Last night I dreamed, today I dream, of you.

John Gould Fletcher

IRRADIATIONS

I

Over the roof-tops race the shadows of clouds: Like horses the shadows of clouds charge down the street.

Whirlpools of purple and gold, Winds from the mountains of cinnabar, Lacquered mandarin moments, palanquins swaying and balancing Amid the vermilion pavilions, against the jade balustrades; Glint of the glittering wings of dragon-flies in the light; Silver filaments, golden flakes settling downwards; Rippling, quivering flutters; repulse and surrender, The sun broidered upon the rain, The rain rustling with the sun.

Over the roof-tops race the shadows of clouds: Like horses the shadows of clouds charge down the street.

II

O seeded grass, you army of little men Crawling up the low slopes with quivering quick blades of steel: You who storm millions of graves, tiny green tentacles of earth, Interlace your tangled webs tightly over my heart And do not let me go: For I would lie here for ever and watch with one eye The pilgrimaging ants in your dull savage jungles, While with the other I see the long lines of the slope Break in mid air, a wave surprisingly arrested; And above it, wavering, bodiless, colorless, unreal, The long thin lazy fingers of the heat.

III

Not noisily, but solemnly and pale, In a meditative ecstasy, you entered life, As for some strange rite, to which you alone held the clue. Child, life did not give rude strength to you; From the beginning you would seem to have thrown away, As something cold and cumbersome, that armor men use against death. You would perchance look on death face to face and from him wrest the secret Whether his face wears oftenest a smile or no? Strange, old and silent being, there is something Infinitely vast in your intense tininess: I think you could point out with a smile some curious star Far off in the heavens which no man has seen before.

IV

The morning is clean and blue, and the wind blows up the clouds: Now my thoughts, gathered from afar, Once again in their patched armor, with rusty plumes and blunted swords, Move out to war.

Smoking our morning pipes we shall ride two and two Through the woods. For our old cause keeps us together, And our hatred is so precious not death or defeat can break it.

God willing, we shall this day meet that old enemy Who has given us so many a good beating. Thank God, we have a cause worth fighting for, And a cause worth losing, and a good song to sing!

ARIZONA POEMS

MEXICAN QUARTER

By an alley lined with tumble-down shacks,
And street-lamps askew, half-sputtering,
Feebly glimmering on gutters choked with filth, and dogs
Scratching their mangy backs:
Half-naked children are running about,
Women puff cigarettes in black doorways,
Crickets are crying.
Men slouch sullenly
Into the shadows.
Behind a hedge of cactus,
The smell of a dead horse
Mingles with the smell of tamales frying.

And a girl in a black lace shawl
Sits in a rickety chair by the square of unglazed window,
And sees the explosion of the stars
Fiercely poised on the velvet sky.
And she seems humming to herself:
“Stars, if I could reach you
(You are so very near that it seems as if I could reach you),
I would give you all to the Madonna’s image
On the gray plastered altar behind the paper flowers,
So that Juan would come back to me,
And we could live again those lazy burning hours,
Forgetting the tap of my fan and my sharp words,
And I would only keep four of you—
Those two blue-white ones overhead,
To put in my ears,
And those two orange ones yonder
To fasten on my shoe-buckles.”

A little further along the street
A man squats stringing a brown guitar.
The smoke of his cigarette curls round his hair,
And he too is humming, but other words:
“Think not that at your window I wait.
New love is better, the old is turned to hate.
Fate! Fate! All things pass away;
Life is forever, youth is but for a day.
Love again if you may
Before the golden moons are blown out of the sky
And the crickets die.
Babylon and Samarkand
Are mud walls in a waste of sand.”

RAIN IN THE DESERT

The huge red-buttressed mesa over yonder Is merely a far-off temple where the sleepy sun is burning Its altar fires of pinyon and toyon for the day.

The old priests sleep, white-shrouded; Their pottery whistles lie beside them, the prayer-sticks closely feathered. On every mummied face there glows a smile.

The sun is rolling slowly Beneath the sluggish folds of the sky-serpents, Coiling, uncoiling, blue black, sparked with fires.

The old dead priests Feel in the thin dried earth that is heaped about them, Above the smell of scorching, oozing pinyon, The acrid smell of rain.

And now the showers Surround the mesa like a troop of silver dancers: Shaking their rattles, stamping, chanting, roaring, Whirling, extinguishing the last red wisp of light.

THE BLUE SYMPHONY

I

The darkness rolls upward.
The thick darkness carries with it
Rain and a ravel of cloud.
The sun comes forth upon earth.

Palely the dawn
Leaves me facing timidly
Old gardens sunken:
And in the gardens is water.

Sombre wreck-autumnal leaves;
Shadowy roofs
In the blue mist,
And a willow-branch that is broken.

O old pagodas of my soul, how you glittered across green trees!

Blue and cool:
Blue, tremulously,
Blow faint puffs of smoke
Across sombre pools.
The damp green smell of rotted wood;
And a heron that cries from out the water.

II

Through the upland meadows
I go alone.
For I dreamed of someone last night
Who is waiting for me.

Flower and blossom, tell me do you know of her?
Have the rocks hidden her voice?
They are very blue and still.

Long upward road that is leading me,
Light hearted I quit you,
For the long loose ripples of the meadow-grass
Invite me to dance upon them.

Quivering grass,
Daintily poised
For her foot’s tripping.

O blown clouds, could I only race up like you!
Oh, the last slopes that are sun-drenched and steep!

Look, the sky!
Across black valleys
Rise blue-white aloft
Jagged unwrinkled mountains, ranges of death.

Solitude. Silence.

III

One chuckles by the brook for me:
One rages under the stone.
One makes a spout of his mouth,
One whispers—one is gone.

One over there on the water
Spreads cold ripples
For me
Enticingly.

The vast dark trees
Flow like blue veils
Of tears
Into the water.

Sour sprites,
Moaning and chuckling,
What have you hidden from me?

“In the palace of the blue stone she lies forever
Bound hand and foot.”

Was it the wind
That rattled the reeds together?

Dry reeds,
A faint shiver in the grasses.

IV

On the left hand there is a temple:
And a palace on the right-hand side.
Foot-passengers in scarlet
Pass over the glittering tide.

Under the bridge
The old river flows
Low and monotonous
Day after day.

I have heard and have seen
All the news that has been:
Autumn’s gold and Spring’s green!

Now in my palace
I see foot-passengers
Crossing the river,
Pilgrims of autumn
In the afternoons.

Lotus pools;
Petals in the water:
Such are my dreams.

For me silks are outspread.
I take my ease, unthinking.

V

And now the lowest pine-branch
Is drawn across the disk of the sun.
Old friends who will forget me soon,
I must go on
Towards those blue death mountains
I have forgot so long.

In the marsh grasses
There lies forever
My last treasure,
With the hope of my heart.

The ice is glazing over;
Torn lanterns flutter,
On the leaves is snow.

In the frosty evening
Toll the old bell for me
Once, in the sleepy temple.
Perhaps my soul will hear.

Afterglow:
Before the stars peep
I shall creep into the darkness.

F. S. Flint

POEMS IN UNRHYMED CADENCE

I

London, my beautiful,
It is not the sunset
Nor the pale green sky
Shimmering through the curtain
Of the silver birch,
Nor the quietness;
It is not the hopping
Of the little birds
Upon the lawn,
Nor the darkness
Stealing over all things
That moves me.

But as the moon creeps slowly
Over the tree-tops
Among the stars,
I think of her
And the glow her passing
Sheds on men.

London, my beautiful,
I will climb
Into the branches
To the moonlit tree-tops,
That my blood may be cooled
By the wind.

II

Under the lily shadow
And the gold
And the blue and mauve
That the whin and the lilac
Pour down on the water,
The fishes quiver.

Over the green cold leaves
And the rippled silver
And the tarnished copper
Of its neck and beak,
Toward the deep black water
Beneath the arches,
The swan floats slowly.

Into the dark of the arch the swan floats
And the black depth of my sorrow
Bears a white rose of flame.

III—IN THE GARDEN

The grass is beneath my head;
And I gaze
At the thronging stars
In the aisles of night.

They fall ... they fall....
I am overwhelmed,
And afraid.

Each little leaf of the aspen
Is caressed by the wind,
And each is crying.

And the perfume
Of invisible roses
Deepens the anguish.

Let a strong mesh of roots
Feed the crimson of roses
Upon my heart;
And then fold over the hollow
Where all the pain was.

Moireen Fox

LIADAIN TO CURITHIR

_Liadain and Curithir were two poets who lived in Ireland in the seventh century. They fell in love, but while Curithir was absent making preparations for their marriage, Liadain, for some unexplained reason, took the vows of a nun. Curithir in despair became a monk. At first they continued to see each other, but when this led to the breaking of their vows, Curithir left Liadain to spend his life in penance and thus save his soul._

I

If I had known how narrow a prison is love,
Never would I have given the width of the skies
In return for thy kiss, O Curithir, thou my grief!

If I had known love’s poverty, I would have given
Dúns and forests and ploughlands and begged my bread:
For now I have lost the earth and the stars and my soul.

If I had known the strength of love, I would have laid
The ridge of the world in ashes to stay his feet:
I would have cried on a stronger lord—on Death.

II

I, that was wont to pass by all unmoved
As the long ridge of the tide sweeps to the shore,
Am broken at last on the crags of a pitiless love.

I, who was wont to see men pale at my glance,
Like the quivering grass am shaken beneath thine eyes;
At thy touch my spirit is captive, my will is lost.

I would darken the sun and moon to break from thy love,
I would shatter the world to win thee again to my side.
O aching madness of love! Have the dead repose?
Or wilt thou tear my heart in the close-shut grave?

III

I have done with blame, I have risen from the cold earth
Where night and day my forehead has known the clay.
With faltering steps I have passed out to the sun.

Now in the sight of all I stand, that all may know
(For I myself will praise thee and prove their words)
How great was thy wisdom in turning away from me.

Who that has drunken wine will keep the lees?
Who that has slain a man will wait for revenge?
Who that has had his desire of a woman will stay?

Farewell, O Curithir, let thy soul be saved!
I have not found a thing that is dearer to thee.
In the eyes of God is it priceless? Who can say!

My soul is a thing of little worth unto God:
Of less worth unto thee, O Curithir, than my love.
And unto me so small I flung it beneath thy feet.

IV

If the dark earth hold a Power that is not God
I pray It to bind up memory lest I die.

There was a day when Curithir loved me, now it is gone.
It was I that sundered his love from me, I myself;
Or it was God who struck me with madness and mocked.

If the dark earth hold a Power that is not God
I pray It to hide me for ever away from His face.

V

All things are outworn now—grief is dead,
And passion has fallen from me like a withered leaf.
Little it were to me now though Curithir were beside me:
Though he should pass I would not turn my head.
My heart is like a stone in my body.
All I have grasped I loose again from my hands.

Florence Kiper Frank

THE JEWISH CONSCRIPT

_There are nearly a quarter of a million Jews in the Czar’s army
alone.—Newspaper clipping._

They have dressed me up in a soldier’s dress,
With a rifle in my hand,
And have sent me bravely forth to shoot
My own in a foreign land.

Oh, many shall die for the fields of their homes,
And many in conquest wild;
But I shall die for the fatherland
That murdered my little child.

How many hundreds of years ago—
The nations wax and cease!—
Did the God of our fathers doom us to bear
The flaming message of peace!

We are the mock and the sport of time!
Yet why should I complain!—
For a Jew that they hung on the bloody cross,
He also died in vain.

THE MOVIES

She knows a cheap release
From worry and from pain—
The cowboys spur their horses
Over the unending plain.

The tenement rooms are small;
Their walls press on the brain.
Oh, the dip of the galloping horses
On the limitless, wind-swept plain!

YOU

I go my way complacently,
As self-respecting persons should.
You are to me the rebel thought,
You are the wayward rebel mood.

What shall we share who are separate?
We part—as alien persons should.
But oh, I have need of the rebel thought,
And a wicked urge to the rebel mood!

Robert Frost

MENDING WALL

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That sends the frozen ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
“Stay where you are until our backs are turned!”
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, “Good fences make good neighbors.”
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
“Why do they make good neighbors? Isn’t it
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That wants it down.” I could say “Elves” to him,
But it’s not elves exactly, and I’d rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father’s saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, “Good fences make good neighbors.”

AFTER APPLE-PICKING

My long two-pointed ladder’s sticking through a tree
Toward heaven still,
And there’s a barrel that I didn’t fill
Beside it, and there may be two or three
Apples I didn’t pick upon some bough.
But I am done with apple-picking now.
Essence of winter sleep is on the night,
The scent of apples: I am drowsing off.
I cannot rub the strangeness from my sight
I got from looking through a pane of glass
I skimmed this morning from the drinking trough
And held against the world of hoary grass.
It melted, and I let it fall and break.
But I was well
Upon my way to sleep before it fell,
And I could tell
What form my dreaming was about to take.
Magnified apples appear and disappear,
Stem end and blossom end,
And every fleck of russet showing clear.
My instep arch not only keeps the ache,
It keeps the pressure of a ladder-round.
I feel the ladder sway as the boughs bend.
And I keep hearing from the cellar bin
The rumbling sound
Of load on load of apples coming in.
For I have had too much
Of apple-picking: I am overtired
Of the great harvest I myself desired.
There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch,
Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall.
For all
That struck the earth,
No matter if not bruised or spiked with stubble,
Went surely to the cider-apple heap
As of no worth.
One can see what will trouble
This sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is.
Were he not gone,
The woodchuck could say whether it’s like his
Long sleep, as I describe its coming on,
Or just some human sleep.

MY NOVEMBER GUEST

My Sorrow, when she’s here with me,
Thinks these dark days of autumn rain
Are beautiful as days can be;
She loves the bare, the withered tree;
She walks the sodden pasture lane.

Her pleasure will not let me stay.
She talks and I am fain to list:
She’s glad the birds are gone away,
She’s glad her simple worsted grey
Is silver now with clinging mist.

The desolate, deserted trees,
The faded earth, the heavy sky,
The beauties she so truly sees,
She thinks I have no eye for these,
And vexes me for reason why.

Not yesterday I learned to know
The love of bare November days
Before the coming of the snow;
But it were vain to tell her so,
And they are better for her praise.

MOWING

There was never a sound beside the wood but one,
And that was my long scythe whispering to the ground.
What was it it whispered? I knew not well myself;
Perhaps it was something about the heat of the sun,
Something, perhaps, about the lack of sound—
And that was why it whispered and did not speak.
It was no dream of the gift of idle hours,
Or easy cold at the hand of fay or elf:
Anything more than the truth would have seemed too weak
To the earnest love that laid the swale in rows—
Not without feeble-pointed spikes of flowers
(Pale orchises)—and scared a bright green snake.
The fact is the sweetest dream that labor knows.
My long scythe whispered and left the hay to make.

STORM FEAR

When the wind works against us in the dark,
And pelts with snow
The lower chamber window on the east,
And whispers with a sort of stifled bark,
The beast,
“Come out! Come out!”—
It costs no inward struggle not to go,
Ah, no!
I count our strength,
Two and a child,
Those of us not asleep subdued to mark
How the cold creeps as the fire dies at length—
How drifts are piled,
Dooryard and road ungraded,
Till even the comforting barn grows far away,
And my heart owns a doubt
Whether ’tis in us to arise with day
And save ourselves unaided.

GOING FOR WATER

The well was dry beside the door,
And so we went with pail and can
Across the fields behind the house
To seek the brook if still it ran;

Not loth to have excuse to go,
Because the autumn eve was fair
(Though chill) because the fields were ours,
And by the brook our woods were there.

We ran as if to meet the moon
That slowly dawned behind the trees,
The barren boughs without the leaves,
Without the birds, without the breeze.

But once within the wood, we paused
Like gnomes that hid us from the moon,
Ready to run to hiding new
With laughter when she found us soon.

Each laid on other a staying hand
To listen ere we dared to look,
And in the hush we joined to make
We heard—we knew we heard—the brook.

A note as from a single place,
A slender tinkling fall that made
Now drops that floated on the pool
Like pearls, and now a silver blade.

THE CODE—HEROICS

There were three in the meadow by the brook,
Gathering up windrows, piling haycocks up,
With an eye always lifted toward the west,
Where an irregular, sun-bordered cloud
Darkly advanced with a perpetual dagger
Flickering across its bosom. Suddenly
One helper, thrusting pitchfork in the ground,
Marched himself off the field and home. One stayed.
The town-bred farmer failed to understand.

What was there wrong?
Something you said just now.
What did I say?
About our taking pains.
To cock the hay?—because it’s going to shower?
I said that nearly half an hour ago.
I said it to myself as much as you.

You didn’t know. But James is one big fool.
He thought you meant to find fault with his work.
That’s what the average farmer would have meant.
James had to take his time to chew it over
Before he acted; he’s just got round to act.

He _is_ a fool if that’s the way he takes me.
Don’t let it bother you. You’ve found out something.
The hand that knows his business won’t be told
To do work faster or better—those two things.
I’m as particular as anyone:
Most likely I’d have served you just the same:
But I know you don’t understand our ways.
You were just talking what was in your mind,
What was in all our minds, and you weren’t hinting.
Tell you a story of what happened once.
I was up here in Salem, at a man’s
Named Sanders, with a gang of four or five,
Doing the haying. No one liked the boss.
He was one of the kind sports call a spider,
All wiry arms and legs that spread out wavy
From a humped body nigh as big as a biscuit.
But work!—that man could work, especially
If by so doing he could get more work
Out of his hired help. I’m not denying
He was hard on himself: I couldn’t find
That he kept any hours—not for himself.
Day-light and lantern-light were one to him:
I’ve heard him pounding in the barn all night.
But what he liked was someone to encourage.
Them that he couldn’t lead he’d get behind
And drive, the way you can, you know, in mowing—
Keep at their heels and threaten to mow their legs off.
I’d seen about enough of his bulling tricks—
We call that bulling. I’d been watching him.
So when he paired off with me in the hayfield
To load the load, thinks I, look out for trouble!
I built the load and topped it off; old Sanders
Combed it down with the rake and said, “O. K.”
Everything went right till we reached the barn
With a big take to empty in a bay.
You understand that meant the easy job
For the man up on top of throwing down
The hay and rolling it off wholesale,
Where, on a mow, it would have been slow lifting.
You wouldn’t think a fellow’d need much urging
Under those circumstances, would you now?
But the old fool seizes his fork in both hands,
And looking up bewhiskered out of the pit,
Shouts like an army captain, “Let her come!”
Thinks I, d’ye mean it? “What was that you said?”
I asked out loud so’s there’d be no mistake.
“Did you say, let her come?” “Yes, let her come.”
He said it over, but he said it softer.
Never you say a thing like that to a man,
Not if he values what he is. God, I’d as soon
Murdered him as left out his middle name.
I’d built the load and knew just where to find it.
Two or three forkfuls I picked lightly round for
Like meditating, and then I just dug in
And dumped the rackful on him in ten lots.
I looked over the side once in the dust
And caught sight of him treading-water-like,
Keeping his head above. “Damn ye,” I says,
“That gets ye!” He squeaked like a squeezed rat.

That was the last I saw or heard of him.
I cleaned the rack and drove out to cool off.
As I sat mopping the hayseed from my neck,
And sort of waiting to be asked about it,
One of the boys sings out, “Where’s the old man?”
“I left him in the barn, under the hay.
If you want him you can go and dig him out.”
They realized from the way I swobbed my neck
More than was needed, something must be up.
They headed for the barn—I stayed where I was.
They told me afterward: First they forked hay,
A lot of it, out into the barn floor.
Nothing! They listened for him. Not a rustle!
I guess they thought I’d spiked him in the temple
Before I buried him, else I couldn’t have managed.
They excavated more. “Go keep his wife
Out of the barn.”
Some one looked in a window;
And curse me, if he wasn’t in the kitchen,
Slumped way down in a chair, with both his feet
Stuck in the oven, the hottest day that summer.
He looked so mad in back, and so disgusted
There was no one that dared to stir him up
Or let him know that he was being looked at.
Apparently I hadn’t buried him
(I may have knocked him down), but just my trying
To bury him had hurt his dignity.
He had gone to the house so’s not to face me.
He kept away from us all afternoon.
We tended to his hay. We saw him out
After a while picking peas in the garden:
He couldn’t keep away from doing something.

Weren’t you relieved to find he wasn’t dead?

No!—and yet I can’t say: it’s hard to tell.
I went about to kill him fair enough.

You took an awkward way. Did he discharge you?

Discharge me? No! He knew I did just right.

Hamlin Garland

TO A CAPTIVE CRANE

Ho, brother! Art thou prisoned too?
Is thy heart hot with restless pain?
I heard the call thy bugle blew
Here by the bleak and chilling main
(Whilst round me shaven parks are spread
And cindered drives wind on and on);
And at thy cry, thy lifted head,
My gladdened heart was westward drawn.

O splendid bird! your trumpet brings
To my lone heart the prairie springs.

THE MOUNTAINS ARE A LONELY FOLK

The mountains they are silent folk
They stand afar—alone,
And the clouds that kiss their brows at night
Hear neither sigh nor groan.
Each bears him in his ordered place
As soldiers do, and bold and high
They fold their forests round their feet
And bolster up the sky.

MAGIC

Within my hand I hold
A piece of lichen-spotted stone—
Each fleck red-gold—
And with closed eyes I hear the moan
Of solemn winds round naked crags
Of Colorado’s mountains. The snow
Lies deep about me. Gray and old
Hags of cedars, gaunt and bare,
With streaming, tangled hair,
Snarl endlessly. White-winged and proud,
With stately step and queenly air,
A glittering, cool and silent cloud
Upon me sails.
The wind wails,
And from the cañon stern and steep
I hear the furious waters leap.

Wilfrid Wilson Gibson

COLOR

A blue-black Nubian plucking oranges
At Jaffa by a sea of malachite,
In red tarboosh, green sash, and flowing white
Burnous—among the shadowy memories
That haunt me yet by these bleak northern seas
He lives for ever in my eyes’ delight,
Bizarre, superb in young immortal might—
A god of old barbaric mysteries.

Maybe he lived a life of lies and lust,
Maybe his bones are now but scattered dust;
Yet, for a moment he was life supreme
Exultant and unchallenged: and my rhyme
Would set him safely out of reach of time
In that old heaven where things are what they seem.

OBLIVION

Near the great pyramid, unshadowed, white,
With apex piercing the white noon-day blaze.
Swathed in white robes beneath the blinding rays
Lie sleeping Bedouins drenched in white-hot light.
About them, searing to the tingling sight,
Swims the white dazzle of the desert ways
Where the sense shudders, witless and adaze,
In a white void with neither depth nor height.

Within the black core of the pyramid,
Beneath the weight of sunless centuries,
Lapt in dead night King Cheops lies asleep:
Yet in the darkness of his chamber hid
He knows no black oblivion more deep
Than that blind white oblivion of noon skies.

TENANTS

Suddenly, out of dark and leafy ways,
We came upon the little house asleep
In cold blind stillness, shadowless and deep,
In the white magic of the full moon-blaze:
Strangers without the gate, we stood agaze,
Fearful to break that quiet, and to creep
Into the home that had been ours to keep
Through a long year of happy nights and days.

So unfamiliar in the white moon-gleam,
So old and ghostly like a house of dream
It stood, that over us there stole the dread
That even as we watched it, side by side,
The ghosts of lovers, who had lived and died
Within its walls, were sleeping in our bed.

GOLD

All day the mallet thudded far below
My garret, in an old ramshackle shed
Where ceaselessly, with stiffly nodding head
And rigid motions ever to and fro
A figure like a puppet in a show
Before the window moved till day was dead,
Beating out gold to earn his daily bread,
Beating out thin fine gold-leaf blow on blow.

And I within my garret all day long
Unto that ceaseless thudding tuned my song,
Beating out golden words in tune and time
To that dull thudding, rhyme on golden rhyme.
But in my dreams all night, in that dark shed,
With aching arms I beat fine gold for bread.

ON HAMPSTEAD HEATH

Against the green flame of the hawthorn-tree,
His scarlet tunic burns;
And livelier than the green sap’s mantling glee
The spring fire tingles through him headily
As quivering he turns

And stammers out the old amazing tale
Of youth and April weather;
While she, with half-breathed jests that, sobbing, fail,
Sits, tight-lipped, quaking, eager-eyed and pale
Beneath her purple feather.

BATTLE

THE GOING

He’s gone.
I do not understand.
I only know
That as he turned to go
And waved his hand,
In his young eyes a sudden glory shone:
And I was dazzled by a sunset glow,
And he was gone.

THE JOKE

He’d even have his joke
While we were sitting tight,
And so he needs must poke
His silly head in sight
To whisper some new jest
Chortling. But as he spoke
A rifle cracked ...
And now God knows when I shall hear the rest!

IN THE AMBULANCE

“Two rows of cabbages,
Two of curly-greens,
Two rows of early peas,
Two of kidney-beans.”

That’s what he is muttering,
Making such a song,
Keeping other chaps awake,
The whole night long.

Both his legs are shot away,
And his head is light;
So he keeps on muttering
All the blessed night:

“Two rows of cabbages,
Two of curly-greens,
Two rows of early peas,
Two of kidney-beans.”

HIT

Out of the sparkling sea
I drew my tingling body clear, and lay
On a low ledge the livelong summer day,
Basking, and watching lazily
White sails in Falmouth Bay.

My body seemed to burn
Salt in the sun that drenched it through and through,
Till every particle glowed clean and new
And slowly seemed to turn
To lucent amber in a world of blue....

I felt a sudden wrench—
A trickle of warm blood—
And found that I was sprawling in the mud
Among the dead men in the trench.

THE HOUSEWIFE

She must go back, she said,
Because she’d not had time to make the bed.
We’d hurried her away
So roughly ... and for all that we could say,
She broke from us, and passed
Into the night, shells falling thick and fast.

HILL-BORN

I sometimes wonder if it’s really true
I ever knew
Another life
Than this unending strife
With unseen enemies in lowland mud;
And wonder if my blood
Thrilled ever to the tune
Of clean winds blowing through an April noon
Mile after sunny mile
On the green ridges of the Windy Gile.

THE FEAR

I do not fear to die
’Neath the open sky,
To meet death in the fight
Face to face, upright.

But when at last we creep
Into a hole to sleep,
I tremble, cold with dread,
Lest I wake up dead.

BACK

They ask me where I’ve been,
And what I’ve done and seen.
But what can I reply
Who know it wasn’t I,
But someone, just like me,
Who went across the sea
And with my head and hands
Slew men in foreign lands ...
Though I must bear the blame
Because he bore my name.

Richard Butler Glaenzer

STAR-MAGIC

Though your beauty be a flower
Of unimagined loveliness,
It cannot lure me tonight;
For I am all spirit.

As in the billowy oleander,
Full-bloomed,
Each blossom is all but lost
In the next—
One flame in a glow
Of green-veined rhodonite;
So is heaven a crystal magnificence
Of stars
Powdered lightly with blue.

For this one night
My spirit has turned honey-moth
And has made of the stars
Its flowers.

So all uncountable are the stars
That heaven shimmers as a web,
Bursting with light
From beyond,
A light exquisite,
Immeasurable!

For this one night
My spirit has dared, and been caught
In the web of the stars.

Though your beauty were a net
Of unimagined power,
It could not hold me tonight;
For I am all spirit.

Douglas Goldring

VOYAGES

I

To come so soon to this imagined dark—
More velvet-deep than any midnight park!
Palaces hem me in, with blind black walls;
The water is hushed for a voice that never calls.
My gondolier sways silently over his oar.

II

_At St. Blaise, à la Zuecca! Oh, my dear,
Laugh your gentle laughter! This old land,
From Provence to Paris—never fear—
All the heart can feel will understand._

A small town, a white town,
A town for you and me—
With a _Café Glacier_ in the square,
And schooners at the quay;
And the _terrasse_ of a small hotel
That looks upon the sea!
There gay sounds and sweet sounds
And sounds of peace come through:
The cook sings in the kitchen,
The pink-foot ring-doves coo,
And Julien brings the Pernods
That are bad for me and you.

_At St. Blaise, à la Zuecca! Oh, my dear,
Laugh your gentle laughter! This old land,
From Provence to Paris—never fear—
All the heart can feel will understand._

III

Waves lap the beach, pines stretch to meet the sea;
A pale light on the horizon lingers and shines,
That might shine round the Graal: and we
Stand very silent, underneath the pines.

O swift expresses for the spirit’s flight!
Sometimes the moon is like a maid I know,
Looking roguishly back, and flying forward—so
I follow, flashing after. Blessed night!

IV

Do you remember, have you been these ways,
Dreaming or waking, after sunny days;
Sailed, in a moment, to imagined lands—
With one to love you, holding both your hands—
To old hot countries where the warm grape clings,
And an old, musical language strikes the ear
Like a caress, most exquisite to hear—
Your soul the voyager and your heart her wings?

Hermann Hagedorn

EARLY MORNING AT BARGIS

Clear air and grassy lea,
Stream-song and cattle-bell—
Dear man, what fools are we
In prison-walls to dwell!
To live our days apart
From green things and wide skies,
And let the wistful heart
Be cut and crushed with lies!

Bright peaks!—And suddenly
Light floods the placid dell,
The grass-tops brush my knee:
A good crop it will be,
So all is well!
O man, what fools are we
In prison-walls to dwell!

DOORS

Like a young child who to his mother’s door
Runs eager for the welcoming embrace,
And finds the door shut, and with troubled face
Calls and through sobbing calls, and o’er and o’er
Calling, storms at the panel—so before
A door that will not open, sick and numb,
I listen for a word that will not come,
And know, at last, I may not enter more.

Silence! And through the silence and the dark
By that closed door, the distant sob of tears
Beats on my spirit, as on fairy shores
The spectral sea; and through the sobbing—hark!—
Down the fair-chambered corridor of years,
The quiet shutting, one by one, of doors.

DEPARTURE

My true love from her pillow rose
And wandered down the summer lane.
She left her house to the wind’s carouse,
And her chamber wide to the rain.

She did not stop to don her coat,
She did not stop to smooth her bed—
But out she went in glad content
There where the bright path led.

She did not feel the beating storm,
But fled like a sunbeam, white and frail,
To the sea, to the air, somewhere, somewhere—
I have not found her trail.

BROADWAY

How like the stars are these white, nameless faces—
These far innumerable burning coals!
This pale procession out of stellar spaces,
This Milky Way of souls!
Each in its own bright nebulæ enfurled,
Each face, dear God, a world!

I fling my gaze out through the silent night:
In those far stars, what gardens, what high halls,
Has mortal yearning built for its delight,
What chasms and what walls?
What quiet mansions where a soul may dwell?
What heaven and what hell?

Thomas Hardy

SHE HEARS THE STORM

There was a time in former years—
While my roof-tree was his—
When I should have been distressed by fears
At such a night as this.

I should have murmured anxiously,
“The pricking rain strikes cold;
His road is bare of hedge or tree,
And he is getting old.”

But now the fitful chimney-roar,
The drone of Thorncombe trees,
The Froom in flood upon the moor,
The mud of Mellstock Leaze,

The candle slanting sooty wick’d,
The thuds upon the thatch,
The eaves-drops on the window flicked,
The clacking garden-hatch,

And what they mean to wayfarers,
I scarcely heed or mind;
He has won that storm-tight roof of hers
Which Earth grants all her kind.

THE VOICE

Woman much missed, how you call to me, call to me,
Saying that now you are not as you were
When you had changed from the one who was all to me,
But as at first, when our day was fair.

Can it be you that I hear? Let me view you, then,
Standing as when I drew near to the town
Where you would wait for me: yes, as I knew you then,
Even to the original air-blue gown!

Or is it only the breeze, in its listlessness
Travelling across the wet mead to me here,
You being ever consigned to existlessness,
Heard no more again far or near?
Thus I; faltering forward,
Leaves around me falling,
Wind oozing thin through the thorn from norward
And the woman calling.

IN THE MOONLIGHT

“O lonely workman, standing there
In a dream, why do you stare and stare
At her grave, as no other grave there were?

“If your great gaunt eyes so importune
Her soul by the shine of this corpse-cold moon,
Maybe you’ll raise her phantom soon!”

“Why, fool, it is what I would rather see
Than all the living folk there be;
But alas, there is no such joy for me!”

“Ah—she was one you loved, no doubt,
Through good and evil, through rain and drought,
And when she passed, all your sun went out?”

“Nay: she was the woman I did not love,
Whom all the others were ranked above,
Whom during her life I thought nothing of.”

THE MAN HE KILLED

“Had he and I but met
By some old ancient inn,
We should have sat us down to wet
Right many a nipperkin!

“But ranged as infantry,
And staring face to face,
I shot at him as he at me,
And killed him in his place.

“I shot him dead because—
Because he was my foe,
Just so: my foe of course he was;
That’s clear enough; although

“He thought he’d ’list, perhaps,
Off-hand like—just as I—
Was out of work—had sold his traps—
No other reason why.

“Yes; quaint and curious war is!
You shoot a fellow down
You’d treat if met where any bar is,
Or help to half-a-crown.”

Ralph Hodgson

THE MYSTERY

He came and took me by the hand
Up to a red rose tree,
He kept His meaning to Himself
But gave a rose to me.

I did not pray Him to lay bare
The mystery to me;
Enough the rose was Heaven to smell,
And His own face to see.

THREE POEMS

I

Babylon—where I go dreaming
When I weary of to-day,
Weary of a world grown gray.

II

God loves an idle rainbow,
No less than laboring seas.

III

Reason has moons, but moons not hers
Lie mirrored on her sea,
Confounding her astronomers,
But, oh, delighting me!

STUPIDITY STREET

I saw with open eyes
Singing birds sweet
Sold in the shops
For the people to eat,
Sold in the shops of
Stupidity Street.

I saw in vision
The worm in the wheat,
And in the shops nothing
For people to eat;
Nothing for sale in
Stupidity Street.

Horace Holley

CREATIVE

Renew the vision of delight
By vigil, praise and prayer,
Till every sinew leaps in might
And every sense is fair.

TWILIGHT AT VERSAILLES

Unfold for men, O God, love’s true, creative day,
To flower our barren souls by mellow sun and noon:
The glory of old thought is still, and cold, and gray,
Like gardens unrenewed beneath the sterile moon.

LOVERS

Whate’er our joy compelled, men’s praise and blame fall hollow,
A voice upon the winds that drown it as they blow:
So fair a vision led, our thought was all to follow;
So strong a passion urged, our will was all to go.

Helen Hoyt

ELLIS PARK

Little park that I pass through,
I carry off a piece of you
Every morning hurrying down
To my work-day in the town;
Carry you for country there
To make the city ways more fair.
I take your trees,
And your breeze,
Your greenness,
Your cleanness,
Some of your shade, some of your sky,
Some of your calm as I go by;
Your flowers to trim
The pavements grim;
Your space for room in the jostled street
And grass for carpet to my feet.
Your fountains take and sweet bird calls
To sing me from my office walls.
All that I can see
I carry off with me.
But you never miss my theft,
So much treasure you have left.
As I find you, fresh at morning,
So I find you, home returning—
Nothing lacking from your grace.
All your riches wait in place
For me to borrow
On the morrow.

Do you hear this praise of you,
Little park that I pass through?

THE NEW-BORN

I have heard them in the night—
The cry of their fear,
Because there is no light,
Because they do not hear
Familiar sounds and feel the familiar arm,
And they awake alone.
Yet they have never known
Danger or harm.
What is their dread?—
This dark about their bed?
But they are so lately come
Out of the dark womb
Where they were safely kept.
That blackness was good;
And the silence of that solitude
Wherein they slept
Was kind.
Where did they find
Knowledge of death?
Caution of darkness and cold?
These—of the little, new breath—
Have they a prudence so old?

RAIN AT NIGHT

Are you awake? Do you hear the rain?
How rushingly it strikes upon the ground,
And on the roof, and the wet window-pane!
Sometimes I think it is a comfortable sound,
Making us feel how safe and snug we are:
Closing us off in this dark, away from the dark outside.
The rest of the world seems dim tonight, mysterious and far.
Oh, there is no world left! Only darkness, darkness stretching wide
And full of the blind rain’s immeasurable fall!

How nothing must we seem unto this ancient thing!
How nothing unto the earth—and we so small!
Oh, wake, wake!—do you not feel my hands cling?
One day it will be raining as it rains tonight; the same wind blow—
Raining and blowing on this house wherein we lie: but you and I—
We shall not hear, we shall not ever know.
O love, I had forgot that we must die.

THE LOVER SINGS OF A GARDEN

Oh, beautiful are the flowers of your garden,
The flowers of your garden are fair:
Blue flowers of your eyes
And dusk flower of your hair;
Dew flower of your mouth
And peony-budded breasts,
And the flower of the curve of your hand
Where my hand rests.

SINCE I HAVE FELT THE SENSE OF DEATH

Since I have felt the sense of death,
Since I have borne its dread, its fear—
Oh, how my life has grown more dear
Since I have felt the sense of death!
Sorrows are good, and cares are small,
Since I have known the loss of all.

Since I have felt the sense of death,
And death forever at my side—
Oh, how the world has opened wide
Since I have felt the sense of death!
My hours are jewels that I spend,
For I have seen the hours end.

Since I have felt the sense of death,
Since I have looked on that black night—
My inmost brain is fierce with light
Since I have felt the sense of death.
O dark, that made my eyes to see!
O death, that gave my life to me!

Ford Madox Hueffer

ANTWERP

I

Gloom! An October like November; August a hundred thousand hours, And all September, A hundred thousand, dragging sunlit days, And half October like a thousand years ... And doom! That then was Antwerp ... In the name of God, How could they do it? Those souls that usually dived Into the dirty caverns of mines; Who usually hived In whitened hovels; under ragged poplars; Who dragged muddy shovels, over the grassy mud, Lumbering to work over the greasy sods ... Those men there, with the appearance of clods Were the bravest men that a usually listless priest of God Ever shrived ... And it is not for us to make them an anthem. If we found words there would come no wind that would fan them To a tune that the trumpets might blow it, Shrill through the heaven that’s ours or yet Allah’s, Or the wide halls of any Valhallas. We can make no such anthem. So that all that is ours For inditing in sonnets, pantoums, elegiacs, or lays Is this: “In the name of God, how could they do it?”

II

For there is no new thing under the sun, Only this uncomely man with a smoking gun In the gloom.... What the devil will he gain by it? Digging a hole in the mud and standing all day in the rain by it Waiting his doom; The sharp blow, the swift outpouring of the blood Till the trench of gray mud Is turned to a brown purple drain by it. Well, there have been scars

Won in many wars, Punic, Lacedæmonian, wars of Napoleon, wars for faith, wars for honor, for love, for possession, But this Belgian man in his ugly tunic, His ugly round cap, shooting on, in a sort of obsession, Overspreading his miserable land, Standing with his wet gun in his hand.... Doom! He finds that in a sudden scrimmage, And lies, an unsightly lump on the sodden grass ... An image that shall take long to pass!

III

For the white-limbed heroes of Hellas ride by upon their horses Forever through our brains. The heroes of Cressy ride by upon their stallions; And battalions and battalions and battalions— The Old Guard, the Young Guard, the men of Minden and of Waterloo, Pass, for ever staunch, Stand, for ever true; And the small man with the large paunch, And the gray coat, and the large hat, and the hands behind the back, Watches them pass In our minds for ever.... But that clutter of sodden corses On the sodden Belgian grass— That is a strange new beauty.

IV

With no especial legends of marchings or triumphs or duty, Assuredly that is the way of it, The way of beauty....

And that is the highest word you can find to say of it. For you cannot praise it with words Compounded of lyres and swords, But the thought of the gloom and the rain And the ugly coated figure, standing beside a drain, Shall eat itself into your brain: And you will say of all heroes, “They fought like the Belgians!” And you will say, “He wrought like a Belgian his fate out of gloom.” And you will say, “He bought like a Belgian His doom.” And that shall be an honorable name; “Belgian” shall be an honorable word; As honorable as the fame of the sword, As honorable as the mention of the many-chorded lyre, And his old coat shall seem as beautiful as the fabrics woven in Tyre.

V

And what in the world did they bear it for? I don’t know. And what in the world did they dare it for? Perhaps that is not for the likes of me to understand. They could very well have watched a hundred legions go Over their fields and between their cities Down into more southerly regions. They could very well have let the legions pass through their woods, And have kept their lives and their wives and their children and cattle and goods. I don’t understand. Was it just love of their land? Oh, poor dears! Can any man so love his land? Give them a thousand thousand pities And rivers and rivers of tears To wash off the blood from the cities of Flanders.

VI

This is Charing Cross; It is midnight; There is a great crowd And no light— A great crowd, all black, that hardly whispers aloud. Surely, that is a dead woman—a dead mother! She has a dead face; She is dressed all in black; She wanders to the book-stall and back, At the back of the crowd; And back again and again back, She sways and wanders.

This is Charing Cross; It is one o’clock. There is still a great cloud, and very little light; Immense shafts of shadows over the black crowd That hardly whispers aloud.... And now!... That is another dead mother, And there is another and another and another.... And little children, all in black, All with dead faces, waiting in all the waiting-places, Wandering from the doors of the waiting-room In the dim gloom. These are the women of Flanders: They await the lost. They await the lost that shall never leave the dock; They await the lost that shall never again come by the train To the embraces of all these women with dead faces; They await the lost who lie dead in trench and barrier and fosse, In the dark of the night. This is Charing Cross; it is past one of the clock; There is very little light.

There is so much pain.

_L’Envoi_:

And it was for this that they endured this gloom; This October like November, That August like a hundred thousand hours, And that September, A hundred thousand dragging sunlit days And half October like a thousand years.... Oh, poor dears!

Scharmel Iris

AFTER THE MARTYRDOM

They threw a stone, you threw a stone,
I threw a stone that day.
Although their sharpness bruised his flesh
He had no word to say.

But for the moan he did not make
To-day I make my moan;
And for the stone I threw at him
My heart must bear a stone.

LAMENT

Lady, your heart has turned to dust,
Your wail is taken by the sea.
The wind is knocking at my heart,
And will not let me be.

Your moaning smites me in my dreams,
And I must sorrow till I die.
And I shall rove, and I shall weep,
Till in the grave I lie.

ITERATION

My son is dead and I am going blind,
And in the Ishmael-wind of grief
I tremble like a leaf;
I have no mind for any word you say:
My son is dead and I am going blind.

EARLY NIGHTFALL

The pale day drowses on the western steep;
The toiler faints along the marge of sleep
Within the sunset-press, incarnadine,
The sun, a peasant, tramples out his wine.

Ah, scattered gold rests on the twilight streams;
The poppy opes her scarlet purse of dreams.
Night with the sickle-moon engarners wheat,
And binds the sheaves of stars beneath her feet.

Rest, weary heart, and every flight-worn bird!
The brooklet of the meadow lies unstirred.
Sleep, every soul, against a comrade breast!
God grant you peace, and guard you in your rest!

Orrick Johns

SONGS OF DELIVERANCE

I—THE SONG OF YOUTH

This is the song of youth, This is the cause of myself; I knew my father well and he was a fool, Therefore will I have my own foot in the path before I take a step;

I will go only into new lands, And I will walk on no plank-walks. The horses of my family are wind-broken, And the dogs are old, And the guns rusty; I will make me a new bow from an ash-tree, And cut up the homestead into arrows.

Behold how people stand around! (There are always crowds of people standing around, Whose legs have no knees)— While the engineers put up steel work ... Is it something to catch the sunlight, Jewelry and gew-gaw? I have no time to wait for them to build bridges for me; Where awful the gap seems stretching there is no gap, Leaping I take it at once from a thought to a thought. I can no more walk in the stride of other men Than be father of their children.

My treasure lured like a bright star, And I went to it young and desirous. Lo, as it stood there in its great chests, The wise men came up with the keys, Crying, “Blasphemy, blasphemy!” For I had broken the locks.... And when the procession went waving to a funeral, They cried it again; For I stayed in my home and spoke truth about the dead.

Much did I learn waiting in my youth; At the door of a great man I waited on one foot and then on the other. The files passed in and out before me to the antechamber, for at that door I was not favored: (O costly preferment!) Yet I watched them coming and going, And I learned the great man by heart from the stories on their faces. When presently the retainers arrived, one above the other in a row, saying: “The great man is ready,” I had long been a greater than he.

This is the reason for myself: When I used to go in the races, I had but one prayer, And I went first before the judges, saying; “Give everyone a distance, such as you consider best; I will run scratch.”

II—VIRGINS

I have had one fear in my life—
When I was young I feared virgins;
But I do not any more....
By contact with them I learn that each is a center,
And has a period of brightness,
And stands epitome in that brief space
Of the Universe!
Ah, the ephemeral eternal!
In virgins’ eyes I would live reflected as in a globe,
And know myself purer than crystal.

III—NO PREY AM I

No prey am I of poor thoughts. I leave all of my followers; I tire quickly of them; I send them away from me when they ask too much; for though I live alone Still will I live, night and day ...

There is not anything in me save mutation and laughter; My laughter is like a sword, Like the piston-rod that defies oceans and grades.

When I labor it is a song of battle in the broad noon; For behold the muscles of a man— They are piston-rods; they are cranes, hydraulic presses, powder-magazines: But though my body be as beautiful as a hill crowned with flowers I will despise it and make it obey me ...

Is the old love dead? Then I shall await the new, To embrace it more sturdily and passionately than ever the old; And break it under the white force of my laughter Until it lies passive in my arms. There is nothing in me but renewal; If my friend bow his head over me I soon surprise him with shouts of joy: For in an instant I am again what I was, Only with a few moments more of the infusion of earth; I tell him, the griever, to follow me and he is a griever no more; He raises his head and must follow. Yet it is my battle, not his battle, For in me I absorb others ... I hail parties and partisans from afar; Not men but parties are my comrades, Not persons but nations are my associates. I shake the hand of nations; For I am a nation and a party, and majorities do not elect me— I elect myself. I swam in the sea, and lo! The continents assembled like islands off my coast. My talk is with Homer and Bonaparte, with David and Garibaldi, with China and Pharaoh and Texas; When I laugh it is with Lucifer and Rabelais. A pathfinder is my mistress, one hard to keep and unbridled— I have no respect for tame women. My friends and I do not meet every day, For we are centuries apart, our salutations girdle the globe.

I have eaten locusts with Jeremiah; I invite all hatreds and the stings of little creatures— They enrich me, I glory in my parasites.

No man shall ever read me, For I bring about in a gesture what they cannot fathom in a life; Yet I tell Bob and Harry and Bill— It costs me nothing to be kind; If I am a generous adversary, be not deceived, neither be devoted— It is because I despise you. Yet if any man claim to be my peer I shall meet him, For that man has an insolence that I like; I am beholden to him. I know the lightning when I see it, And the toad when I see it... I warn all pretenders. Yet before I came it was known of me to the chosen, all that I should do. Every tree knew it; Every lion and every leech knew it— And called out to meet the new enemy, The new friend... What power can deny me? It was known that I should do not one thing but hundreds, For I despise my works and make them obey me. I have my time and I bide it... It was known that I should turn no whit from my end, until I had attained it.

Nothing has scathed me, Nothing ever, nor ever will. I have touched pitch, I have revelled in it and rolled in it; Buried in mire and filth, I laughed long, And sprang up. I have loved lust and vain deviltries. And taken them into my heart—

Their dirt and their lies—and my heart was aflame With a new fancy... Not me can pitch defile! For the Spring, my sister, rose under my feet And I was again naked and white, Ready to dive into the deep pool, green and bottomless, The medium for heroes, since it is dangerous and beautiful— The pool of Tomorrow! It is because I breathe like fishes and live in the waters of Tomorrow that Death fears me...

How often I have intercepted thee, O Death! O windy liar! Thou canst do nothing against me; If I command thee to stand back thou art afraid and cowerest, For I have caught thee often and punished thee...

I am the greatest laugher of all, Greater than the sun and the oak-tree, Than the frog and Apollo; I laugh all day long! I laugh at Death, I hail Death, I kiss her on the cheek as a lover his bride, But the lover goes not to his bride unless he desire her; I go not to Death until I am ready. The strong lover goes not to his bride save when he would people his land with sons; Then I, too, I go not to Death, save it be for the labor greater than all others. I shall break her with my laughter; I shall complete her... Only then shall Death be when I die!

Joyce Kilmer

TREES

I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth’s sweet flowing breast;

A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;

A tree that may in summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;

Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.

Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.

EASTER

The air is like a butterfly
With frail blue wings.
The happy earth looks at the sky
And sings.

Alfred Kreymborg

AMERICA

Up and down he goes
With terrible, reckless strides,
Flaunting great lamps
With joyous swings—
One to the East
And one to the West—
And flaunting two words
In a thunderous call
That thrills the hearts of all enemies:
All, One; All, One; All, One; All, One!
Beware that queer, wild, wonderful boy
And his playground—don’t go near!
All, One; All, One; All, One; All, One;
Up and down he goes.

OLD MANUSCRIPT

The sky
Is that beautiful old parchment
In which the sun
And the moon
Keep their diary.
To read it all,
One must be a linguist
More learned than Father Wisdom;
And a visionary
More clairvoyant than Mother Dream.
But to feel it,
One must be an apostle:
One who is more than intimate
In having been, always,
The only confidant—
Like the earth
Or the sea.

CÉZANNE

Our door was shut to the noon-day heat.
We could not see him.
We might not have heard him either—
Resting, dozing, dreaming pleasantly.
But his step was tremendous—
Are mountains on the march?

He was no man who passed;
But a great faithful horse
Dragging a load
Up the hill.

PARASITE

Good woman:
Don’t love the man.
Love yourself,
As you have done so exquisitely before.
Like that tortoise-shell cat of yours
Washing away the flies; or are they fleas?
You’ve hurt him again?
Good!
Do it often.
No—
He’ll love you the more—
Always.
Remember how he forgave you the last time,
And how he loved you in the forgiving.
Give him an adventure in godhood
And the higher moralities.
Hurt him again.
Fine!

William Laird

TRAÜMEREI AT OSTENDORFF’S

I ate at Ostendorff’s, and saw a dame
With eager golden eyes, paired with a red,
Bald, chilled, old man. Piercing the clatter came
Keen _Traümerei_. On the sound he bowed his head,
Covered his eyes, and looked on things long sped.
Her white fierce fingers strained, but could not stir
His close-locked hands, nor bring him back to her.

Let him alone, bright lady; for he clips
A fairer lass than you, with all your fire:
Let him alone; he touches sweeter lips
Than yours he hired, as others yet shall hire:
Leave him the quickening pang of clean desire,
Even though vain: nor taint those spring winds blown
From banks of perished bloom: let him alone.

Bitter-sweet melody, that call’st to tryst
Love from the hostile dark, would God thy breath
Might break upon him now through thickening mist,
The trumpet-summons of imperial Death;
That now, with fire-clean lips where quivereth
Atoning sorrow, he shall seek the eyes
Long turned towards earth from fields of paradise.

In vain: by virtue of a far-off smile,
Men may be deaf a space to gross behests
Of nearer voices; for some little while
Sharp pains of youth may burn in old men’s breasts.
But—men must eat, though angels be their guests:
The waiter brought spaghetti; he looked up,
Hemmed, blinked, and fiddled with his coffee-cup.

A VERY OLD SONG

“Daughter, thou art come to die:
Sound be thy sleeping, lass.”
“Well: without lament or cry,
Mother, let me pass.”

“What things on mould were best of all?
(Soft be thy sleeping, lass.)”
“The apples reddening till they fall
In the sun beside the convent wall.
Let me pass.”

“Whom on earth hast thou loved best?
(Sound be thy sleeping, lass.)”
“Him that shared with me thy breast;
Thee; and a knight last year our guest.
He hath an heron to his crest.
Let me pass.”

“What leavest thou of fame or hoard?
(Soft be thy sleeping, lass.)”
“My far-blown shame for thy reward;
To my brother, gold to get him a sword.
Let me pass.”

“But what wilt leave thy lover, Grim?
(Sound be thy sleeping, lass.)”
“The hair he kissed to strangle him.
Mother, let me pass.”