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Through the generosity of five gentlemen,Poetrywill give two hundred and fifty dollars in one or two prizes for the best poem or poems printed in its pages the first year. In addition a subscriber to the fund offers twenty-five dollars for the best epigram.
Mr. Maurice Browne, director of the Chicago Little Theatre, offers to produce, during the season of 1913-14, the best play in verse published in, or submitted to,Poetryduring its first year; provided that it may be adequately presented under the requirements and limitations of his stage.
We are fortunate in being able, through the courtesy of the Houghton-Mifflin Co., to offer our readers a poem, hitherto unprinted, from advance sheets of the complete works of the late William Vaughan Moody, which will be published in November. The lamentabledeath of this poet two years ago in the early prime of his great powers was a calamity to literature. It is fitting that the first number of a magazine published in the city where for years he wrote and taught, should contain an important poem from his hand.
Mr. Ezra Pound, the young Philadelphia poet whose recent distinguished success in London led to wide recognition in his own country, authorizes the statement that at present such of his poetic work as receives magazine publication in America will appear exclusively inPoetry. That discriminating London publisher, Mr. Elkin Mathews, "discovered" this young poet from over seas, and published "Personae," "Exultations" and "Canzoniere," three small volumes of verse from which a selection has been reprinted by the Houghton-Mifflin Co. under the title "Provença." Mr. Pound's latest work is a translation from the Italian of "Sonnets and Ballate," by Guido Cavalcanti.
Mr. Arthur Davison Ficke, another contributor, is a graduate of Harvard, who studied law and entered his father's office in Davenport, Iowa. He is the author of "The Happy Princess" and "The Breaking of Bonds," and a contributor to leading magazines. An early number ofPoetrywill be devoted exclusively to Mr. Ficke's work.
Mrs. Roscoe P. Conkling is a resident of the state of New York; a young poet who has contributed to various magazines.
Miss Lorimer is a young English poet resident in Oxford, who will publish her first volume this autumn. The LondonPoetry Review, in its August number, introduced her with a group of lyrics which were criticized with some asperity in theNew Ageand praised with equal warmth in other periodicals.
Miss Dudley, who is a Chicagoan born and bred, is still younger in the art, "To One Unknown" being the first of her poems to be printed.
Poetrywill acknowledge the receipt of books of verse and works relating to the subject, and will print brief reviews of those which seem for any reason significant. It will endeavor also to keep its readers informed of the progress of the art throughout the English-speaking world and continental Europe. The American metropolitan newspaper prints cable dispatches about post-impressionists, futurists, secessionists and other radicals in painting, sculpture and music, but so far as its editors and readers are concerned, French poetry might have died with Victor Hugo, and English with Tennyson, or at most Swinburne.
Note.—Eight months after the first general newspaper announcement of our efforts to secure a fund for a magazine of verse, and three or four months after our first use of the titlePoetry, a Boston firm of publishers announced a forthcoming periodical of the same kind, to be issued under the same name. The two are not to be confused.
THE RALPH FLETCHER SEYMOUR COMPANYPRINTERS CHICAGO
THE PIPERGGeorge Borrow in hisLavengroTells us of a Welshman, whoBy some excess of mother-witFramed a harp and played on it,Built a ship and sailed to sea,And steered it home to melodyOf his own making. I, indeed,Might write for Everyman to readA thaumalogue of wondermentMore wonderful, but rest contentWith celebrating one I knewWho built his pipes, and played them, too:No more.Ah, played! Therein is all:The hounded thing, the hunter's call;The shudder, when the quarry's breathIs drowned in blood and stilled in death;The marriage dance, the pulsing vein,The kiss that must be given again;The hope that Ireland, like a rose,Sees shining thro' her tale of woes;The battle lost, the long lamentFor blood and spirit vainly spent;And so on, thro' the varying scaleOf passion that the western GaelKnows, and by miracle of artDraws to the chanter from the heartLike water from a hidden spring,To leap or murmur, weep or sing.I see him now, a little manIn proper black, whey-bearded, wan,With eyes that scan the eastern hillsThro' thick, gold-rimmèd spectacles.His hand is on the chanter. Lo,The hidden spring begins to flowIn waves of magic. (He is deadThese seven years, but bend your headAnd listen.) Rising from the clayThe Master playsThe Ring of Day.It mounts and falls and floats awayOver the sky-line ... then is goneInto the silence of the dawn!Joseph Campbell
THE PIPER
GGeorge Borrow in hisLavengroTells us of a Welshman, whoBy some excess of mother-witFramed a harp and played on it,Built a ship and sailed to sea,And steered it home to melodyOf his own making. I, indeed,Might write for Everyman to readA thaumalogue of wondermentMore wonderful, but rest contentWith celebrating one I knewWho built his pipes, and played them, too:No more.Ah, played! Therein is all:The hounded thing, the hunter's call;The shudder, when the quarry's breathIs drowned in blood and stilled in death;The marriage dance, the pulsing vein,The kiss that must be given again;The hope that Ireland, like a rose,Sees shining thro' her tale of woes;The battle lost, the long lamentFor blood and spirit vainly spent;And so on, thro' the varying scaleOf passion that the western GaelKnows, and by miracle of artDraws to the chanter from the heartLike water from a hidden spring,To leap or murmur, weep or sing.
G
I see him now, a little manIn proper black, whey-bearded, wan,With eyes that scan the eastern hillsThro' thick, gold-rimmèd spectacles.His hand is on the chanter. Lo,The hidden spring begins to flowIn waves of magic. (He is deadThese seven years, but bend your headAnd listen.) Rising from the clayThe Master playsThe Ring of Day.It mounts and falls and floats awayOver the sky-line ... then is goneInto the silence of the dawn!
Joseph Campbell
BEYOND THE STARSThree days I heard them grieve when I lay dead,(It was so strange to me that they should weep!)Tall candles burned about me in the dark,And a great crucifix was on my breast,And a great silence filled the lonesome room.I heard one whisper, "Lo! the dawn is breaking,And he has lost the wonder of the day."Another came whom I had loved on earth,And kissed my brow and brushed my dampened hair.Softly she spoke: "Oh that he should not seeThe April that his spirit bathed in! BirdsAre singing in the orchard, and the grassThat soon will cover him is growing green.The daisies whiten on the emerald hills,And the immortal magic that he lovedWakens again—and he has fallen asleep."Another said: "Last night I saw the moonLike a tremendous lantern shine in heaven,And I could only think of him—and sob.For I remembered evenings wonderfulWhen he was faint with Life's sad loveliness,And watched the silver ribbons wandering farAlong the shore, and out upon the sea.Oh, I remembered how he loved the world,The sighing ocean and the flaming stars,The everlasting glamour God has given—His tapestries that wrap the earth's wide room.I minded me of mornings filled with rainWhen he would sit and listen to the soundAs if it were lost music from the spheres.He loved the crocus and the hawthorn-hedge,He loved the shining gold of buttercups,And the low droning of the drowsy beesThat boomed across the meadows. He was gladAt dawn or sundown; glad when Autumn cameWith her worn livery and scarlet crown,And glad when Winter rocked the earth to rest.Strange that he sleeps today when Life is young,And the wild banners of the Spring are blowingWith green inscriptions of the old delight."I heard them whisper in the quiet room.I longed to open then my sealèd eyes,And tell them of the glory that was mine.There was no darkness where my spirit flew,There was no night beyond the teeming world.Their April was like winter where I roamed;Their flowers were like stones where now I fared.Earth's day! it was as if I had not knownWhat sunlight meant!... Yea, even as they grievedFor all that I had lost in their pale place,I swung beyond the borders of the sky,And floated through the clouds, myself the air,Myself the ether, yet a matchless beingWhom God had snatched from penury and painTo draw across the barricades of heaven.I clomb beyond the sun, beyond the moon;In flight on flight I touched the highest star;I plunged to regions where the Spring is born,Myself (I asked not how) the April wind,Myself the elements that are of God.Up flowery stairways of eternityI whirled in wonder and untrammeled joy,An atom, yet a portion of His dream—His dream that knows no end....I was the rain,I was the dawn, I was the purple east,I was the moonlight on enchanted nights,(Yet time was lost to me); I was a flowerFor one to pluck who loved me; I was bliss,And rapture, splendid moments of delight;And I was prayer, and solitude, and hope;And always, always, always I was love.I tore asunder flimsy doors of time,And through the windows of my soul's new sightI saw beyond the ultimate bounds of space.I was all things that I had loved on earth—The very moonbeam in that quiet room,The very sunlight one had dreamed I lost,The soul of the returning April grass,The spirit of the evening and the dawn,The perfume in unnumbered hawthorn-blooms.There was no shadow on my perfect peace,No knowledge that was hidden from my heart.I learned what music meant; I read the years;I found where rainbows hide, where tears begin;I trod the precincts of things yet unborn.Yea, while I found all wisdom (being dead),They grieved for me ... I should have grieved for them!Charles Hanson Towne
BEYOND THE STARS
Three days I heard them grieve when I lay dead,(It was so strange to me that they should weep!)Tall candles burned about me in the dark,And a great crucifix was on my breast,And a great silence filled the lonesome room.
I heard one whisper, "Lo! the dawn is breaking,And he has lost the wonder of the day."Another came whom I had loved on earth,And kissed my brow and brushed my dampened hair.Softly she spoke: "Oh that he should not seeThe April that his spirit bathed in! BirdsAre singing in the orchard, and the grassThat soon will cover him is growing green.The daisies whiten on the emerald hills,And the immortal magic that he lovedWakens again—and he has fallen asleep."Another said: "Last night I saw the moonLike a tremendous lantern shine in heaven,And I could only think of him—and sob.For I remembered evenings wonderfulWhen he was faint with Life's sad loveliness,And watched the silver ribbons wandering farAlong the shore, and out upon the sea.Oh, I remembered how he loved the world,The sighing ocean and the flaming stars,The everlasting glamour God has given—His tapestries that wrap the earth's wide room.I minded me of mornings filled with rainWhen he would sit and listen to the soundAs if it were lost music from the spheres.He loved the crocus and the hawthorn-hedge,He loved the shining gold of buttercups,And the low droning of the drowsy beesThat boomed across the meadows. He was gladAt dawn or sundown; glad when Autumn cameWith her worn livery and scarlet crown,And glad when Winter rocked the earth to rest.Strange that he sleeps today when Life is young,And the wild banners of the Spring are blowingWith green inscriptions of the old delight."
I heard them whisper in the quiet room.I longed to open then my sealèd eyes,And tell them of the glory that was mine.There was no darkness where my spirit flew,There was no night beyond the teeming world.Their April was like winter where I roamed;Their flowers were like stones where now I fared.Earth's day! it was as if I had not knownWhat sunlight meant!... Yea, even as they grievedFor all that I had lost in their pale place,I swung beyond the borders of the sky,And floated through the clouds, myself the air,Myself the ether, yet a matchless beingWhom God had snatched from penury and painTo draw across the barricades of heaven.I clomb beyond the sun, beyond the moon;In flight on flight I touched the highest star;I plunged to regions where the Spring is born,Myself (I asked not how) the April wind,Myself the elements that are of God.Up flowery stairways of eternityI whirled in wonder and untrammeled joy,An atom, yet a portion of His dream—His dream that knows no end....I was the rain,I was the dawn, I was the purple east,I was the moonlight on enchanted nights,(Yet time was lost to me); I was a flowerFor one to pluck who loved me; I was bliss,And rapture, splendid moments of delight;And I was prayer, and solitude, and hope;And always, always, always I was love.I tore asunder flimsy doors of time,And through the windows of my soul's new sightI saw beyond the ultimate bounds of space.I was all things that I had loved on earth—The very moonbeam in that quiet room,The very sunlight one had dreamed I lost,The soul of the returning April grass,The spirit of the evening and the dawn,The perfume in unnumbered hawthorn-blooms.There was no shadow on my perfect peace,No knowledge that was hidden from my heart.I learned what music meant; I read the years;I found where rainbows hide, where tears begin;I trod the precincts of things yet unborn.
Yea, while I found all wisdom (being dead),They grieved for me ... I should have grieved for them!
Charles Hanson Towne
ΧΟΡΙΚΟΣ[CHORIKOS]The ancient songsPass deathward mournfully.Cold lips that sing no more, and withered wreaths,Regretful eyes, and drooping breasts and wings—Symbols of ancient songsMournfully passingDown to the great white surges,Watched of noneSave the frail sea-birdsAnd the lithe pale girls,Daughters of Okeanos.And the songs passFrom the green landWhich lies upon the waves as a leafOn the flowers of hyacinth;And they pass from the waters,The manifold winds and the dim moon,And they come,Silently winging through soft Kimmerian dusk,To the quiet level landsThat she keeps for us all,That she wrought for us all for sleepIn the silver days of the earth's dawning—Proserpine, daughter of Zeus.And we turn from the Kuprian's breasts,And we turn from thee,Phoibos Apollon,And we turn from the music of oldAnd the hills that we loved and the meads,And we turn from the fiery day,And the lips that were over-sweet;For silentlyBrushing the fields with red-shod feet,With purple robeSearing the flowers as with a sudden flame,Death,Thou hast come upon us.And of all the ancient songsPassing to the swallow-blue hallsBy the dark streams of Persephone,This only remains:That in the end we turn to thee,Death,That we turn to thee, singingOne last song.O Death,Thou art an healing windThat blowest over white flowersA-tremble with dew;Thou art a wind flowingOver long leagues of lonely sea;Thou art the dusk and the fragrance;Thou art the lips of love mournfully smiling;Thou art the pale peace of oneSatiate with old desires;Thou art the silence of beauty,And we look no more for the morning;We yearn no more for the sun,Since with thy white hands,Death,Thou crownest us with the pallid chaplets,The slim colorless poppiesWhich in thy garden aloneSoftly thou gatherest.And silently;And with slow feet approaching;And with bowed head and unlit eyes,We kneel before thee:And thou, leaning towards us,Caressingly layest upon usFlowers from thy thin cold hands,And, smiling as a chaste womanKnowing love in her heart,Thou sealest our eyesAnd the illimitable quietudeComes gently upon us.Richard Aldington
ΧΟΡΙΚΟΣ[CHORIKOS]
The ancient songsPass deathward mournfully.
Cold lips that sing no more, and withered wreaths,Regretful eyes, and drooping breasts and wings—Symbols of ancient songsMournfully passingDown to the great white surges,Watched of noneSave the frail sea-birdsAnd the lithe pale girls,Daughters of Okeanos.
And the songs passFrom the green landWhich lies upon the waves as a leafOn the flowers of hyacinth;And they pass from the waters,The manifold winds and the dim moon,And they come,Silently winging through soft Kimmerian dusk,To the quiet level landsThat she keeps for us all,That she wrought for us all for sleepIn the silver days of the earth's dawning—Proserpine, daughter of Zeus.
And we turn from the Kuprian's breasts,And we turn from thee,Phoibos Apollon,And we turn from the music of oldAnd the hills that we loved and the meads,And we turn from the fiery day,And the lips that were over-sweet;For silentlyBrushing the fields with red-shod feet,With purple robeSearing the flowers as with a sudden flame,Death,Thou hast come upon us.
And of all the ancient songsPassing to the swallow-blue hallsBy the dark streams of Persephone,This only remains:That in the end we turn to thee,Death,That we turn to thee, singingOne last song.
O Death,Thou art an healing windThat blowest over white flowersA-tremble with dew;Thou art a wind flowingOver long leagues of lonely sea;Thou art the dusk and the fragrance;Thou art the lips of love mournfully smiling;Thou art the pale peace of oneSatiate with old desires;Thou art the silence of beauty,And we look no more for the morning;We yearn no more for the sun,Since with thy white hands,Death,Thou crownest us with the pallid chaplets,The slim colorless poppiesWhich in thy garden aloneSoftly thou gatherest.
And silently;And with slow feet approaching;And with bowed head and unlit eyes,We kneel before thee:And thou, leaning towards us,Caressingly layest upon usFlowers from thy thin cold hands,And, smiling as a chaste womanKnowing love in her heart,Thou sealest our eyesAnd the illimitable quietudeComes gently upon us.
Richard Aldington
TO A GREEK MARBLEΠὁτνια, πὁτνια[Photnia, photnia],White grave goddess,Pity my sadness,O silence of Paros.I am not of these about thy feet,These garments and decorum;I am thy brother,Thy lover of aforetime crying to thee,And thou hearest me not.I have whispered thee in thy solitudesOf our loves in Phrygia,The far ecstasy of burning noonsWhen the fragile pipesCeased in the cypress shade,And the brown fingers of the shepherdMoved over slim shoulders;And only the cicada sang.I have told thee of the hillsAnd the lisp of reedsAnd the sun upon thy breasts,And thou hearest me not,Πὁτνια, πὁτνια[Photnia, photnia],Thou hearest me not.Richard Aldington
TO A GREEK MARBLE
Πὁτνια, πὁτνια[Photnia, photnia],White grave goddess,Pity my sadness,O silence of Paros.
I am not of these about thy feet,These garments and decorum;I am thy brother,Thy lover of aforetime crying to thee,And thou hearest me not.
I have whispered thee in thy solitudesOf our loves in Phrygia,The far ecstasy of burning noonsWhen the fragile pipesCeased in the cypress shade,And the brown fingers of the shepherdMoved over slim shoulders;And only the cicada sang.
I have told thee of the hillsAnd the lisp of reedsAnd the sun upon thy breasts,
And thou hearest me not,Πὁτνια, πὁτνια[Photnia, photnia],Thou hearest me not.
Richard Aldington
AU VIEUX JARDIN.I have sat here happy in the gardens,Watching the still pool and the reedsAnd the dark cloudsWhich the wind of the upper airTore like the green leafy boughsOf the divers-hued trees of late summer;But though I greatly delightIn these and the water-lilies,That which sets me nighest to weepingIs the rose and white color of the smooth flag-stones,And the pale yellow grassesAmong them.Richard Aldington
AU VIEUX JARDIN.
I have sat here happy in the gardens,Watching the still pool and the reedsAnd the dark cloudsWhich the wind of the upper airTore like the green leafy boughsOf the divers-hued trees of late summer;But though I greatly delightIn these and the water-lilies,That which sets me nighest to weepingIs the rose and white color of the smooth flag-stones,And the pale yellow grassesAmong them.
Richard Aldington
UNDER TWO WINDOWSI.AUBADEThe dawn is here—and the long night through I have never seen thy face,Though my feet have worn the patient grass at the gate of thy dwelling-place.While the white moon sailed till, red in the west, it found the far world-edge,No leaflet stirred of the leaves that climb to garland thy window ledge.Yet the vine had quivered from root to tip, and opened its flowers again,If only the low moon's light had glanced on a moving casement pane.Warm was the wind that entered in where the barrier stood ajar,And the curtain shook with its gentle breath, white as young lilies are;But there came no hand all the slow night through to draw the folds aside,(I longed as the moon and the vine-leaves longed!) or to set the casement wide.Three times in a low-hung nest there dreamed his fivesweet notes a bird,And thrice my heart leaped up at the sound I thoughtthou hadst surely heard.But now that thy praise is caroled aloud by a thousand throats awake,Shall I watch from afar and silently, as under the moon, for thy sake?Nay—bold in the sun I speak thy name, I too, and I wait no moreThy hand, thy face, in the window niche, but thy kiss at the open door!II.NOCTURNEMy darling, come!—The wings of the dark have wafted the sunset away,And there's room for much in a summer night, but no room for delay.A still moon looketh down from the sky, and a wavering moon looks upFrom every hollow in the green hills that holds a pool in its cup.The woodland borders are wreathed with bloom—elder, viburnum, rose;The young trees yearn on the breast of the wind that sighs of love as it goes.The small stars drown in the moon-washed blue but the greater ones abide,With Vega high in the midmost place, Altair not far aside.The glades are dusk, and soft the grass, where the flower of the elder gleams,Mist-white, moth-like, a spirit awake in the dark of forest dreams.Arcturus beckons into the east, Antares toward the south,That sendeth a zephyr sweet with thyme to seek for thy sweeter mouth.Shall the blossom wake, the star look down, all night and have naught to see?Shall the reeds that sing by the wind-brushed pool say nothing of thee and me?—My darling comes! My arms are content, my feet are guiding her way;There is room for much in a summer night, but no room for delay!Mrs. Schuyler Van Rensselaer
UNDER TWO WINDOWS
I.AUBADE
The dawn is here—and the long night through I have never seen thy face,Though my feet have worn the patient grass at the gate of thy dwelling-place.
While the white moon sailed till, red in the west, it found the far world-edge,No leaflet stirred of the leaves that climb to garland thy window ledge.
Yet the vine had quivered from root to tip, and opened its flowers again,If only the low moon's light had glanced on a moving casement pane.
Warm was the wind that entered in where the barrier stood ajar,And the curtain shook with its gentle breath, white as young lilies are;
But there came no hand all the slow night through to draw the folds aside,(I longed as the moon and the vine-leaves longed!) or to set the casement wide.
Three times in a low-hung nest there dreamed his fivesweet notes a bird,And thrice my heart leaped up at the sound I thoughtthou hadst surely heard.
But now that thy praise is caroled aloud by a thousand throats awake,Shall I watch from afar and silently, as under the moon, for thy sake?
Nay—bold in the sun I speak thy name, I too, and I wait no moreThy hand, thy face, in the window niche, but thy kiss at the open door!
II.NOCTURNE
My darling, come!—The wings of the dark have wafted the sunset away,And there's room for much in a summer night, but no room for delay.
A still moon looketh down from the sky, and a wavering moon looks upFrom every hollow in the green hills that holds a pool in its cup.
The woodland borders are wreathed with bloom—elder, viburnum, rose;The young trees yearn on the breast of the wind that sighs of love as it goes.
The small stars drown in the moon-washed blue but the greater ones abide,With Vega high in the midmost place, Altair not far aside.
The glades are dusk, and soft the grass, where the flower of the elder gleams,Mist-white, moth-like, a spirit awake in the dark of forest dreams.
Arcturus beckons into the east, Antares toward the south,That sendeth a zephyr sweet with thyme to seek for thy sweeter mouth.
Shall the blossom wake, the star look down, all night and have naught to see?Shall the reeds that sing by the wind-brushed pool say nothing of thee and me?
—My darling comes! My arms are content, my feet are guiding her way;There is room for much in a summer night, but no room for delay!
Mrs. Schuyler Van Rensselaer
THE SINGING PLACECold may lie the day,And bare of grace;At night I slip awayTo the Singing Place.A border of mist and doubtBefore the gate,And the Dancing Stars grow stillAs hushed I wait.Then faint and far awayI catch the beatIn broken rhythm and rhymeOf joyous feet,—Lifting waves of soundThat will rise and swell(If the prying eyes of thoughtBreak not the spell),Rise and swell and retreatAnd fall and flee,As over the edge of sleepThey beckon me.And I wait as the seaweed waitsFor the lifting tide;To ask would be to awake,—To be denied.I cloud my eyes in the mistThat veils the hem,—And then with a rush I am past,—I am Theirs, and of Them!And the pulsing chant swells upTo touch the sky,And the song is joy, is life,And the song am I!The thunderous music pealsAround, o'erhead—The dead would awake to hearIf there were dead;But the life of the throbbing SunIs in the song,And we weave the world anew,And the Singing ThrongFill every corner of space—Over the edge of sleepI bring but a traceOf the chants that pulse and sweepIn the Singing Place.Lily A. Long
THE SINGING PLACE
Cold may lie the day,And bare of grace;At night I slip awayTo the Singing Place.
A border of mist and doubtBefore the gate,And the Dancing Stars grow stillAs hushed I wait.Then faint and far awayI catch the beatIn broken rhythm and rhymeOf joyous feet,—Lifting waves of soundThat will rise and swell(If the prying eyes of thoughtBreak not the spell),Rise and swell and retreatAnd fall and flee,As over the edge of sleepThey beckon me.And I wait as the seaweed waitsFor the lifting tide;To ask would be to awake,—To be denied.I cloud my eyes in the mistThat veils the hem,—And then with a rush I am past,—I am Theirs, and of Them!And the pulsing chant swells upTo touch the sky,And the song is joy, is life,And the song am I!The thunderous music pealsAround, o'erhead—The dead would awake to hearIf there were dead;But the life of the throbbing SunIs in the song,And we weave the world anew,And the Singing ThrongFill every corner of space—
Over the edge of sleepI bring but a traceOf the chants that pulse and sweepIn the Singing Place.
Lily A. Long
IMMUREDWithin this narrow cell that I call "me",I was imprisoned ere the worlds began,And all the worlds must run, as first they ran,In silver star-dust, ere I shall be free.I beat my hands against the walls and findIt is my breast I beat, O bond and blind!Lily A. Long
IMMURED
Within this narrow cell that I call "me",I was imprisoned ere the worlds began,And all the worlds must run, as first they ran,In silver star-dust, ere I shall be free.I beat my hands against the walls and findIt is my breast I beat, O bond and blind!
Lily A. Long
NOGIGreat soldier of the fighting clan,Across Port Arthur's frowning face of stoneYou drew the battle sword of old Japan,And struck the White Tsar from his Asian throne.Once more the samurai swordStruck to the carved hilt in your loyal hand,That not alone your heaven-descended lordShould meanly wander in the spirit land.Your own proud way, O eastern star,Grandly at last you followed. Out it leadsTo that high heaven where all the heroes are,Lovers of death for causes and for creeds.Harriet Monroe
NOGI
Great soldier of the fighting clan,Across Port Arthur's frowning face of stoneYou drew the battle sword of old Japan,And struck the White Tsar from his Asian throne.
Once more the samurai swordStruck to the carved hilt in your loyal hand,That not alone your heaven-descended lordShould meanly wander in the spirit land.
Your own proud way, O eastern star,Grandly at last you followed. Out it leadsTo that high heaven where all the heroes are,Lovers of death for causes and for creeds.
Harriet Monroe
THE JESTERI have known great gold Sorrows:Majestic Griefs shall serve me watchfullyThrough the slow-pacing morrows:I have knelt hopeless where sea-echoingDim endless voices cried of sufferingVibrant and far in broken litany:Where white magnolia and tuberose hauntinglyPulsed their regretful sweets along the air—All things most tragical, most fair,Have still encompassed me ...I dance where in the screaming market-placeThe dusty world that watches buys and sells,With painted merriment upon my face,Whirling my bells,Thrusting my sad soul to its mockery.I have known great gold Sorrows ...Shall they not mock me, these pain-haunted ones,If it shall make them merry, and forgetThat grief shall rise and setWith the unchanging, unforgetting sunsOf their relentless morrows?Margaret Widdemer
THE JESTER
I have known great gold Sorrows:Majestic Griefs shall serve me watchfullyThrough the slow-pacing morrows:I have knelt hopeless where sea-echoingDim endless voices cried of sufferingVibrant and far in broken litany:Where white magnolia and tuberose hauntinglyPulsed their regretful sweets along the air—All things most tragical, most fair,Have still encompassed me ...
I dance where in the screaming market-placeThe dusty world that watches buys and sells,With painted merriment upon my face,Whirling my bells,Thrusting my sad soul to its mockery.
I have known great gold Sorrows ...Shall they not mock me, these pain-haunted ones,If it shall make them merry, and forgetThat grief shall rise and setWith the unchanging, unforgetting sunsOf their relentless morrows?
Margaret Widdemer
THE BEGGARSThe little pitiful, worn, laughing faces,Begging of Life for Joy!I saw the little daughters of the poor,Tense from the long day's working, strident, gay,Hurrying to the picture-place. There curledA hideous flushed beggar at the door,Trading upon his horror, eyeless, maimed,Complacent in his profitable mask.They mocked his horror, but they gave to himFrom the brief wealth of pay-night, and went inTo the cheap laughter and the tawdry thoughtsThrown on the screen; in to the seeking handCovered by darkness, to the luring voiceOf Horror, boy-masked, whispering of rings,Of silks, of feathers, bought—so cheap!—with justTheir slender starved child-bodies, palpitantFor Beauty, Laughter, Passion, that is Life:(A frock of satin for an hour's shame,A coat of fur for two days' servitude;"And the clothes last," the thought runs on, withinThe poor warped girl-minds drugged with changeless days;"Who cares or knows after the hour is done?")—Poor little beggars at Life's door for Joy!The old man crouched there, eyeless, horrible,Complacent in the marketable maskThat earned his comforts—and they gave to him!But ah, the little painted, wistful facesQuestioning Life for Joy!Margaret Widdemer
THE BEGGARS
The little pitiful, worn, laughing faces,Begging of Life for Joy!
I saw the little daughters of the poor,Tense from the long day's working, strident, gay,Hurrying to the picture-place. There curledA hideous flushed beggar at the door,Trading upon his horror, eyeless, maimed,Complacent in his profitable mask.They mocked his horror, but they gave to himFrom the brief wealth of pay-night, and went inTo the cheap laughter and the tawdry thoughtsThrown on the screen; in to the seeking handCovered by darkness, to the luring voiceOf Horror, boy-masked, whispering of rings,Of silks, of feathers, bought—so cheap!—with justTheir slender starved child-bodies, palpitantFor Beauty, Laughter, Passion, that is Life:(A frock of satin for an hour's shame,A coat of fur for two days' servitude;"And the clothes last," the thought runs on, withinThe poor warped girl-minds drugged with changeless days;"Who cares or knows after the hour is done?")—Poor little beggars at Life's door for Joy!The old man crouched there, eyeless, horrible,Complacent in the marketable maskThat earned his comforts—and they gave to him!
But ah, the little painted, wistful facesQuestioning Life for Joy!
Margaret Widdemer
Floral Design
T
The Poems and Plays of William Vaughn Moodywill soon be published in two volumes by the Houghton-Mifflin Co. Our present interest is in the volume of poems, which are themselves an absorbing drama. Moody had a slowly maturing mind; the vague vastness of his young dreams yielded slowly to a man's more definite vision of the spiritual magnificence of life. When he died at two-score years, he was just beginning to think his problem through, to reconcile, after the manner of the great poets of the earth, the world with God. Apparently the unwritten poems cancelled by death would have rounded out, in art of an austere perfection, the record of that reconciliation, for nowhere do we feel this passion of high serenity so strongly as in the first act of an uncompleted drama,The Death of Eve.
Great-minded youth must dream, and modern dreams of the meaning of life lack the props and pillars of the old dogmatism. Vagueness, confusion and despair are a natural inference from the seeming chaos of evil and good, of pain and joy. Moody from the beginning took the whole scheme of things for his province, as a truly heroic poet should; there are always large spaces on hiscanvas. In his earlier poetry, both the symbolicMasque of Judgmentand the shorter poems derived from present-day subjects, we find him picturing the confusion, stating the case, so to speak, against God. Somewhat in the terms of modern science is his statement—the universe plunging on toward its doom of darkness and lifelessness, divine fervor of creation lapsing, divine fervor of love doubting, despairing of the life it made, sweeping all away with a vast inscrutable gesture.
This seems to be the mood of theMasque of Judgment, a mood against which that very human archangel, Raphael, protests in most appealing lines. The poet broods over the earth—
The earth, that has the blue and little flowers—
The earth, that has the blue and little flowers—
with all its passionate pageantry of life and love. Like his own angel he is
a truant stillWhile battle rages round the heart of God.
a truant stillWhile battle rages round the heart of God.
The lamps are spent at the end of judgment day,
and naked from their seatsThe stars arise with lifted hands, and wait.
and naked from their seatsThe stars arise with lifted hands, and wait.
This conflict between love and doubt is the motive also ofGloucester Moors,The Daguerreotype,Old Pourquoi—those three noblest, perhaps, of the present-day poems—also ofThe BruteandThe Menagerie, and of that fine poem manqué, theOde in Time of Hesitation.The Fie-Bringeris an effort at another theme—redemption, light after darkness. But it is not so spontaneous as theMasque; though simpler, clearer, more dramatic inform, it is more deliberate and intellectual, and not so star-lit with memorable lines.The Fire-Bringeris an expression of aspiration; the poet longs for light, demands it, will wrest it from God's right hand like Prometheus. But his triumph is still theory, not experience. The reader is hardly yet convinced.
If one feels a grander motive in such poems as the one-actDeath of EveandThe Fountain, or the less perfectly achievedI Am the Woman, it is not because of the tales they tell but because of the spirit of faith that is in them—a spirit intangible, indefinable, but indomitable and triumphant. At last, we feel, this poet, already under the shadow of death, sees a terrible splendid sunrise, and offers us the glory of it in his art.
The Fountainis a truly magnificent expression of spiritual triumph in failure, and incidentally of the grandeur of Arizona, that tragic wonderland of ancient and future gods. Those Spanish wanderers, dying in the desert, in whose half-madness dreams and realities mingle, assume in those stark spaces the stature of universal humanity, contending to the last against relentless fate. In the two versions ofThe Death of Eve, both narrative and dramatic, one feels also this wild, fierce triumph, this faith in the glory of life. Especially in the dramatic fragment, by its sureness of touch and simple austerity of form, and by the majesty of its figure of the aged Eve, Moody's art reached its most heroic height. We have here the beginning of great things.
The spirit of this poet may be commended to those facile bards who lift up their voices between the feast and the cigars, whose muses dance to every vague emotion and strike their flimsy lutes for every light-o'-love. Here was one who went to his desk as to an altar, resolved that the fire he lit, the sacrifice he offered, should be perfect and complete. He would burn out his heart like a taper that the world might possess a living light. He would tell once more the grandeur of life; he would sing the immortal song.
That such devotion is easy of attainment in this clamorous age who can believe? Poetry like some of Moody's, poetry of a high structural simplicity, strict and bare in form, pure and austere in ornament, implies a grappling with giants and wrestling with angels; it is not to be achieved without deep living and high thinking, without intense persistent intellectual and spiritual struggle.
H. M.
An Anthology of Modern Bohemian Poetry, translated by P. Selver (Henry J. Drane, London).
This is a good anthology of modern Bohemian poetry, accurately translated into bad and sometimes even ridiculous English. Great credit is due the young translator for his care in research and selection. The faults of his style, though deplorable, are not such as to obscure the force and beauty of his originals.
One is glad to be thus thoroughly assured that contemporary Bohemia has a literature in verse, sensitive to the outer world and yet national. Mr. Selver's greatest revelation is Petr Bezruc, poet of the mines.
The poetry of Brezina, Sova and Vrchlicky is interesting, but Bezruc'sSongs of Silesiahave the strength of a voice comingde profundis.
A hundred years in silence I dwelt in the pit,——————The dust of the coal has settled upon my eyes———————Bread with coal is the fruit that my toiling bore;—
A hundred years in silence I dwelt in the pit,
——————
The dust of the coal has settled upon my eyes—
——————
Bread with coal is the fruit that my toiling bore;—
That is the temper of it. Palaces grow by the Danube nourished by his blood. He goes from labor to labor, he rebels, he hears a voice mocking:
I should find my senses and go to the mine once more—
I should find my senses and go to the mine once more—
And in another powerful invective:
I am the first who arose of the people of Teschen.——————They follow the stranger's plough, the slaves fare downwards.
I am the first who arose of the people of Teschen.
——————
They follow the stranger's plough, the slaves fare downwards.
He thanks God he is not in the place of the oppressor, and ends:
Thus 'twas done. The Lord wills it. Night sank o'er my people.Our doom was sealed when the night had passed;In the night I prayed to the Demon of Vengeance.The first Beskydian bard and the last.
Thus 'twas done. The Lord wills it. Night sank o'er my people.Our doom was sealed when the night had passed;In the night I prayed to the Demon of Vengeance.The first Beskydian bard and the last.
This poet is distinctly worth knowing. He is the truth where our "red-bloods" and magazine socialists are usually a rather boresome pose.
As Mr. Selver has tried to make his anthology representative of all the qualities and tendencies of contemporary Bohemian work it is not to be supposed that they are all of the mettle of Bezruc.
One hears with deep regret that Vrchlicky is just dead, after a life of unceasing activity. He has been a prime mover in the revival of the Czech nationality and literature. He has given them, besides his own work, an almost unbelievable number of translations from the foreign classics, Dante, Schiller, Leopardi. For the rest I must refer the reader to Mr. Selver's introduction.
Ezra Pound
This title-phrase has not been plucked from the spacious lawn ofBartlett's Familiar Quotations. It grew in the agreeable midland yard of Mr. Walt Mason's newspaper verse, and appeared in a tribute of his to Mr. James Whitcomb Riley, whose fifty-ninth birthday anniversary, falling on the seventh of October, has been widely celebrated in the American public libraries and daily press.
Mr. Riley's fine gift to his public, the special happiness his genius brings to his readers, cannot, for lack of space, be adequately described, or even indicated, here. Perhaps a true, if incomplete, impression of the beauty of his service may be conveyed by repeating a well-known passage of Mr. Lowes Dickinson'sLetters from John Chinaman—a passage which I can never read without thinking very gratefully of James Whitcomb Riley, and of what his art has done for American poetry-readers.
Mr. Dickinson says:—
In China our poets and literary men have taught their successors for long generations, to look for good not in wealth, not in power, not in miscellaneous activity, but in a trained, a choice, an exquisite appreciation of the most simple and universal relations of life. To feel, and in order to feel, to express, or at least to understand the expression, of all that is lovely in nature, of all that is poignant and sensitive in man, is to us in itself a sufficient end.... The pathos of life and death, the long embrace, the hand stretched out in vain, the moment that glides forever away, with its freight of music and light, into the shadow and bush of the haunted past, all that we have, all that eludes us, a bird on the wing, a perfume escaped on the gale— to all these things we are trained to respond, and the response is what we call literature.
Among Mr. Riley's many distinguished faculties of execution in expressing, in stimulating, "an exquisite appreciation of the most simple and universal relations of life," one faculty has been, in so far as I know, very little mentioned—I mean his mastery in creating character. Mr. Riley has expressed, has incarnated in the melodies and harmonies of his poems, not merely severalliving, breathing human creatures as they are made by their destinies, but a whole world of his own, a vivid world of country-roads, and country-town streets, peopled with farmers and tramps and step-mothers and children, trailing clouds of glory even when they boast of the superiorities of "Renselaer," a world of hardworking women and hard-luck men, and poverty and prosperity, and drunkards and raccoons and dogs and grandmothers and lovers. To have presented through the medium of rhythmic chronicle, a world so sharply limned, so funny, so tragic, so mean, so noble, seems to us in itself a striking achievement in the craft of verse.
No mere word of criticism can of course evoke, at all as example can, Mr. Riley's genius of identification with varied human experiences, the remarkable concentration and lyric skill of his characterization. Here are two poems of his on the same general theme—grief in the presence of death. We may well speak our pride in the wonderful range of inspiration and the poetic endowment which can create on the same subject musical stories of the soul as diverse, as searching, as fresh and true, as the beloved poems ofBereavedandHis Mother.