Chapter I: Front Matter

Vol. LXXXVIII No. 8

The
Yale Literary Magazine

Conducted by the
Students of Yale University.

“Dum mens grata manet, nomen laudesque YALENSES
Cantabunt SOBOLES, unanimique PATRES.”

May, 1923.

New Haven: Published by the Editors.
Printed at the Van Dyck Press, 121-123 Olive St., New Haven.

Price: Thirty-five Cents.

_Entered as second-class matter at the New Haven Post Office._

* * * * *

ESTABLISHED 1818

MADISON AVENUE COR. FORTY-FOURTH STREET NEW YORK

Clothing for the Tennis Player and the Golfer

Flannel Trousers, Knickers, Special Shirts, Hosiery, Shoes
Hats, Caps
Shetland Sweaters, Personal Luggage
Men’s and Boys’ Garments for
Every requirement of Dress or Sporting Wear
Ready made or to Measure

The next visit of our Representative to the HOTEL TAFT will be on May 30 and 31

BOSTON TREMONT COR. BOYLSTON

NEWPORT 220 BELLEVUE AVENUE

* * * * *

THE YALE CO-OP.

_A Story of Progress_

At the close of the fiscal year, July, 1921, the total membership was 1187.

For the same period ending July, 1922, the membership was 1696.

On May 1st, 1923, the membership was 1922, and men are still joining.

Why stay out when a membership will save you manifold times the cost of the fee.

THE YALE LITERARY MAGAZINE

Contents

MAY, 1923

Leader LAIRD SHIELDS GOLDSBOROUGH 245

The Acolyte HERBERT W. HARTMAN, JR. 249

Chopin ARTHUR MILLIKEN 250

The Bells of Antwerp MORRIS TYLER 251

Rhapsody ARTHUR MILLIKEN 253

Offering D. G. CARTER 254

Gabrielle Bartholow LEWIS P. CURTIS 255

A Little Learning LAIRD GOLDSBOROUGH 268

Notabilia: On the Francis Bergen Medal MAXWELL E. FOSTER 273

_Book Reviews_ 274

_Editor’s Table_ 277

The Yale Literary Magazine

VOL. LXXXVIII MAY, 1923 NO. 8

_EDITORS_

WALTER EDWARDS HOUGHTON, JR.
LAIRD SHIELDS GOLDSBOROUGH
MORRIS TYLER
DAVID GILLIS CARTER
NORMAN REGINALD JAFFRAY

_BUSINESS MANAGERS_

GEORGE W. P. HEFFELFINGER
WALTER CRAFTS

_Leader_

_There be two handles to all things in this world, one called_
the good, _and one_ the bad. _But a man may lay hold of
anything by whichever handle shall please him best._—Old Stoic
Maxim.

It has been usual, in the past, for Editors of THE YALE LITERARY MAGAZINE to express themselves as strongly opposed to something, when engaged in writing a leader. Two recent leaders have varied this procedure to the extent of declaring the opposition of their authors to opposition, but the principle of being opposed to something remains. At the present moment, it occurs to us that it might be interesting to suppose correct a few of the pessimistic opinions held by that rather noisy group whom we shall call The Troubled Spirits. On the basis of these suppositions, we shall then try to show that, bad as things are, there still remain a few bright spots lurking in unsuspected corners of the very evils whose existence we are admitting, for the sake of argument.

A convenient starting point may perhaps be found in the Compulsory Sunday Chapel question. It can be urged that the two services now provided prevent anyone from claiming that he is forced to listen to propaganda in the form of a sermon, on Sunday. But The Troubled Spirits, whose positions we are now admitting, regard the matter differently. If we are correctly informed, they consider it a fact, however unpleasant, that the average Yale student feels a very real, if unofficial, compulsion to attend whichever Sunday service is held at a later hour than the other. The Troubled Spirits defy the University to hold the short service at eleven o’clock, and the long one at ten—believing that their position would be more than vindicated by the lack of attendance at the earlier service. In short, so far as The Troubled Spirits are concerned, Sunday service is at eleven o’clock, and contains a sermon varying in length from twenty minutes to half an hour.

But after allowing all that, and allowing, too, that the visiting clergymen are attempting to foist opinions of their own upon the undergraduate body, there is still something to be said. In the first place, we imagine that The Troubled Spirits, on leaving college, will perform their undoubted duty of attacking Christianity with every resource in their power. Hence, were we in their place, we should ask nothing better than to have all the foremost of our enemies brought before us, at great expense, and exposed in such a manner that we could most easily detect the flaws in their armor, which we were later to pierce.

Secondly, there will be certain of The Troubled Spirits whose ardor will evaporate on leaving college, and who will allow the public opinion of their friends and relatives to force them to church again every Sunday. To these we should like to say that observations upon the sermons of more than one pitifully underpaid clergyman have convinced us, from The Troubled Spirits’ point of view, that in this respect “the worst is yet to come”. However stupid and unthinking The Troubled Spirits may find the highly cultured, and in many cases highly paid, gentlemen who speak at Yale, they will find the less highly paid, and not infrequently less cultured, type of man to whom they are destined, infinitely more stupid, and perhaps positively unpalatable. The flowers of rhetoric, when blended skillfully into a delicately fragrant and perfumed discourse, are, indeed, far more expensive than a bouquet of orchids—few of us will ever be able to afford them again. And so, after a lapse of years, I can imagine an old and embittered Troubled Spirit attempting a Drydonian paraphrase to this effect:—

Battell to some faint meaning made pretense,
Elsewhere, they never deviate into sense.

That, of course, would happen to very few Troubled Spirits, but it is not impossible.

Having attempted to prove, let us hope with some slight measure of success, that even the most troubled of The Troubled Spirits may find some crumb of consolation in present-day Sunday Chapel conditions, let us pass on to another example. Perhaps, by way of trivial digression, it might be interesting to speak of the feeling among The Troubled Spirits that Osborn Hall should be summarily destroyed as a relic of a past and barbarous age. Here, though we might admit the contentions of The Troubled Spirits as before, we think it more serviceable merely to recommend that The Troubled Spirits go and look at Osborn Hall. If our own spirits were troubled, we can imagine nothing more soothing than to look at Osborn Hall for the first time. Around the front of the main entrance runs a band of stonework carved with animals and foliage exactly resembling the woodcuts in The Troubled Spirits’ favorite magazines. One of the beavers, in particular, is gnawing away at a capitalistic grapevine with a communistic fury only to be called prophetic. Again, we have never seen anything more “advanced” than the exquisite mosaiced representation of a steamboat complete with paddle-wheels, which adorns the under surface of one of the arches. It is exactly the same thing as the “Painting Of A Train of Gear Wheels” sold recently in Paris as the latest example of Da Da. It seems, then, that this matter might very well rest by allowing The Troubled Spirits to admire Osborn Hall as a sample of the latest phase in unrepressed art, while the rest of us respect it as an example of what our grandfathers were fond of, and of what our grandsons will treat with veneration. But to return to things less trivial—

As this is written, the Senior class have voted that the most important thing needed by Yale is football victories, and we are, for once, in accord with The Troubled Spirits in thinking that our gridiron defeats are dreadful things. They may not go so far as to admit, with The Troubled Spirits, that football at Yale has become not the most manly but the most sentimental of sports, yet they do attach great weight to the matter. The Troubled Spirits, I understand, go much further, and assert that year after year the University is expected to have confidence, trust, or perhaps blind faith in the team. They would have us believe that Yale has been taught to accept defeat with a pious resignation that savors of slave morality. And then they point to other fields of endeavor. Is the student given a long cheer by his parents before going into an examination, and assured that it won’t matter anyhow if he fails? Does the greatest of generals receive the same amount of encouragement from his people no matter if his success be large or small? The Troubled Spirits have put these questions to many of us, and, without waiting for reply, answered them almost vulgarly in the negative. They remark that it is fundamentally self-evident that one must spur one’s charger, not feed him lumps of sugar, before going into battle. And therefore they would attempt to excite the student body to such a pitch that to be a member of a team defeated by Harvard would not be an wholly enviable post.

But, even supposing there was a word of truth in these extreme views, it seems to us that, while The Senior Class, The Troubled Spirits, and ourselves are agreed in desiring a football victory as soon as possible, we may as well take pleasure in a certain aspect of these defeats which is very desirable in a quiet way. It has always been held that football victories help to stimulate enrollment, and it is universally admitted that the enrollment of the University is far too large as it is. Likewise, victorious Harvard is swamped with “race problems” and what not, which do not trouble us. We are permitted to jog along without attacks from “degraded races, who are trying to cast off the yoke of oppression with the key of learning”, and want a look through our keyhole. That, at least, is a consoling thought. May it bring a little peace to The Troubled Spirits.

LAIRD SHIELDS GOLDSBOROUGH.

_The Acolyte_

Shall we then consecrate those things we know,
Clinging to patterns with complacent ease,—
Or, tired with feigning meekness on our knees,
Rise up in might and confidently go,
Leaving the rest to kneel? The candles glow
Whether or not we speak our litanies.
Yet wiser men say hope cannot appease
The lasting voice that chants, “God wills it so!”

Rather I think our fitful prayers ascend
To Him who lights the candles of our Love,
Knowing we seek in Him our human best:
Thus does the worth of God in man defend
Our emulation, make us walk above
Man’s world with Him while kneeling with the rest.

HERBERT W. HARTMAN, JR.

_Chopin_

Ethereal and pale, pure melody,
Was Shelley’s song, while Keats could never sing
Without more warmth and depth of coloring:
But Chopin soars unshackled, truly free,
For music is a higher poetry,
Not bound by clumsy words, so it may wing
Its way through groves celestial or cling
To the warm couch of wine and revelry.

I hear the sea wind crooning; far below
The cold stars shiver on the ocean floor.
What nation is that rising ’gainst the foe
In revolution fierce? What antique lore
Do those bells toll? Whence comes this overflow
Of tones so sweet that we can bear no more?

ARTHUR MILLIKEN.

_The Bells of Antwerp_

_Why do you call to me,_
_Bells of the centuries, mellowed with yearning and joy o’er the ages?_
_What is your secret that charms each new listener back to life’s pages_
_Men scrawled out in blood and carousel, love and the brine of the north
wind?_

...

“We are the keepers of secrets, sighed to us out of the darkness;
Guardians of clandestine loves that will burn past all human remembrance,
Told by our tongues that rejoice in the undying ardor of telling.
Ancient conspiracy ran to our doors, we appointing the hour,
Passed through the arras and knelt for the gesture that spelt absolution,
Forgetting that we spied the drama to curse and proclaim at our pleasure.
We are the tyrants that reigned in the city of mantle and doublet
And hose; when the gem-crusted baldric that sheltered the dagger was
slung
’Cross a heart that beat steadfast and calm with a faith most eternally
constant.
Each of us carols an air that was born of a vision-mad organist,
Preaches the infinite word that God whispered to man when his uplifted
Eyes caught a flash of eternity granted as part of the covenant.
Joyful our voices and kind to the heart that is sad with contrition,
Bringing a hope in the good that is past with the quieter ages,
Soothing humanity’s fears with our message that tells of a future.
Harsh and unmeaning and cruel is our song to the souls that are stiff
With a pride that turns faith in the mind to a stone in the heart of
the thinker,
Blinded by twilight within, which shuts out all sunshine and laughter.
Ever unchanging our call, to the winds, the clouds and the rainbow,
Rings forth in song at the moments that God as His sentinels ordered;
Now we are one with the jet-wingéd night and the cloud-mantled sunrise.”

...

“_Thus do we call to you,_
_Bells of the centuries, mellowed with yearning and joy o’er the ages._
_These be our secrets that charm each new listener back to life’s pages_
_Men scrawled out in blood and carousel, love and the brine of the north
wind._”

MORRIS TYLER.

_Rhapsody_

Moon-lit sea coast, wild rose blowing,
Smack of salt, and gray gull’s cry:
Night that is wild with the exultation
Of the bellowing breath from a cool, clear sky:

Green waves swinging down the moon-path
Pause and lean and break and roar,
Making full majestic music,
As they pound the sounding shore.

Oh, to forget! half-mad with moon-light,
And toss with the cold waves where they go,
Cedar green and molten silver,
Tireless tumult of ebb and flow,
Rapturous, wild, eternal rhythm,
To and fro.

ARTHUR MILLIKEN.

_Offering_

I will go into the city of tired eyes,
And tell my thoughts to each pedestrian,
And on its towers, beneath its leaden skies,
Inscribe a little message for all men.
And few shall read its modest letters there,
And none of them shall ever understand,
Yet all I will perform, nor greatly care,
For I may not be long within the land.