BEREAVEDLet me come in where you sit weeping; aye,Let me, who have not any child to die,Weep with you for the little one whose loveI have known nothing of.The little arms that slowly, slowly loosedTheir pressure round your neck; the hands you usedTo kiss. Such arms, such hands I never knew.May I not weep with you.Fain would I be of service, say somethingBetween the tears, that would be comforting;But ah! so sadder than yourselves am I,Who have no child to die.
BEREAVED
Let me come in where you sit weeping; aye,Let me, who have not any child to die,Weep with you for the little one whose loveI have known nothing of.
The little arms that slowly, slowly loosedTheir pressure round your neck; the hands you usedTo kiss. Such arms, such hands I never knew.May I not weep with you.
Fain would I be of service, say somethingBetween the tears, that would be comforting;But ah! so sadder than yourselves am I,Who have no child to die.
HIS MOTHERDead! my wayward boy—my own—Notthe Law's, but mine; the goodGod's free gift to me alone,Sanctified by motherhood."Bad," you say: well, who is not?"Brutal"—"With a heart of stone"—And "red-handed." Ah! the hotBlood upon your own!I come not with downward eyes,To plead for him shamedly:God did not apologizeWhen He gave the boy to me.Simply, I make ready nowFor His verdict. You prepare—You have killed us both—and howWill you face us There!E. W.
HIS MOTHER
Dead! my wayward boy—my own—Notthe Law's, but mine; the goodGod's free gift to me alone,Sanctified by motherhood.
"Bad," you say: well, who is not?"Brutal"—"With a heart of stone"—And "red-handed." Ah! the hotBlood upon your own!
I come not with downward eyes,To plead for him shamedly:God did not apologizeWhen He gave the boy to me.
Simply, I make ready nowFor His verdict. You prepare—You have killed us both—and howWill you face us There!
E. W.
Fears have been expressed by a number of friendly critics thatPoetrymay become a house of refuge for minor poets.
The phrase is somewhat worn. Paragraphers have done their worst for the minor poet, while they have allowed the minor painter, sculptor, actor—worst of all, architect—to go scot-free. The world which laughs at the experimenter in verse, walks negligently through our streets, and goes seriously, even reverently, to the annual exhibitions in our cities, examining hundreds of pictures and statues without expecting even the prize-winners to be masterpieces.
During the past year a score or more of cash prizes, ranging from one hundred to fifteen hundred dollars, were awarded in Pittsburgh, Chicago, Washington, New York and Boston for minor works of modern art. No word of superlative praise has been uttered for one of them: the first prize-winner in Pittsburgh was a delicately pretty picture by a second-rate Englishman; in Chicago it was a clever landscape by a promising young American. If a single prize-winner in the entire list, many of which were bought at high prices by public museums, was a masterpiece, no critic has yet dared to say so.
In fact, such a word would be presumptuous, since no contemporary can utter the final verdict. Our solicitous critics should remember that Coleridge, Shelley, Keats, Burns, were minor poets to the subjects of King George the Fourth, Poe and Whitman to the subjects of King Longfellow. Moreover, we might remind them that Drayton, Lovelace, Herrick, and many another delicate lyrist of the anthologies, whose perfect songs show singular tenacity of life, remain minor poets through the slightness of their motive; they created little masterpieces, not great ones.
The Open Door will be the policy of this magazine—may the great poet we are looking for never find it shut, or half-shut, against his ample genius! To this end the editors hope to keep free of entangling alliances with any single class or school. They desire to print the best English verse which is being written today, regardless of where, by whom, or under what theory of art it is written. Nor will the magazine promise to limit its editorial comments to one set of opinions. Without muzzles and braces this is manifestly impossible unless all the critical articles are written by one person.
Mr. Ezra Pound has consented to act as foreign correspondent ofPoetry, keeping its readers informed of the present interests of the art in England, France and elsewhere.
The response of poets on both sides of the Atlantic has been most encouraging, so that the quality of the next few numbers is assured. One of our most important contributions is Mr. John G. Neihardt's brief recently finished tragedy,The Death of Agrippina, to which an entire number will be devoted within a few months.
Mr. Joseph Campbell is one of the younger poets closely associated with the renaissance of art and letters in Ireland. His first book of poems wasThe Gilly of Christ; a later volume including these isThe Mountainy Singer(Maunsel & Co.).
Mr. Charles Hanson Towne, the New York poet and magazine editor, has published three volumes of verse,The Quiet Singer(Rickey),Manhattan, andYouth and Other Poems; also five song-cycles in collaboration with two composers.
Mr. Richard Aldington is a young English poet, one of the "Imagistes," a group of ardent Hellenists who are pursuing interesting experiments invers libre; trying to attain in English certain subtleties of cadence of the kind which Mallarmé and his followers have studied in French. Mr. Aldington has published little as yet, and nothing in America.
Mrs. Van Rensselaer, the well-known writer on art, began comparatively late to publish verse in the magazines. Her volume,Poems(Macmillan), was issued in 1910.
Miss Long and Miss Widdemer are young Americans, some of whose poems have appeared in various magazines.
The last issue ofPoetryaccredited Mr. Ezra Pound'sProvencato the Houghton-Mifflin Co. This was an error; Small, Maynard & Co. are Mr. Pound's American publishers.
The Iscariot, by Eden Phillpotts. John Lane.The Poems of Rosamund Marriott Watson.John Lane.Lyrical Poems, by Lucy Lyttelton. Thomas B. Mosher.The Silence of Amor, by Fiona Macleod, Thomas B. Mosher.Spring in Tuscany and Other Lyrics.Thomas B. Mosher.Interpretations: A Book of First Poems, by Zoë Akins. Mitchell Kennerley.A Round of Rimes, by Denis A. MacCarthy. Little, Brown & Co.Voices from Erin and Other Poems, by Denis A. MacCarthy. Little, Brown & Co.Love and The Year and Other Poems, by Grace Griswold. Duffield & Co.Songs and Sonnets, by Webster Ford. The Rooks Press, Chicago.The Quiet Courage and Other Songs of the Unafraid, by Everard Jack Appleton. Stewart and Kidd Co.In Cupid's Chains and Other Poems, by Benjamin F. Woodcox. Woodcox & Fanner.Maverick, by Hervey White. Maverick Press.
The Iscariot, by Eden Phillpotts. John Lane.The Poems of Rosamund Marriott Watson.John Lane.Lyrical Poems, by Lucy Lyttelton. Thomas B. Mosher.The Silence of Amor, by Fiona Macleod, Thomas B. Mosher.Spring in Tuscany and Other Lyrics.Thomas B. Mosher.Interpretations: A Book of First Poems, by Zoë Akins. Mitchell Kennerley.A Round of Rimes, by Denis A. MacCarthy. Little, Brown & Co.Voices from Erin and Other Poems, by Denis A. MacCarthy. Little, Brown & Co.Love and The Year and Other Poems, by Grace Griswold. Duffield & Co.Songs and Sonnets, by Webster Ford. The Rooks Press, Chicago.The Quiet Courage and Other Songs of the Unafraid, by Everard Jack Appleton. Stewart and Kidd Co.In Cupid's Chains and Other Poems, by Benjamin F. Woodcox. Woodcox & Fanner.Maverick, by Hervey White. Maverick Press.
THE MOUNTAIN TOMBPour wine and dance, if manhood still have pride,Bring roses, if the rose be yet in bloom;The cataract smokes on the mountain side.Our Father Rosicross is in his tomb.Pull down the blinds, bring fiddle and clarionet,Let there be no foot silent in the room,Nor mouth with kissing nor the wine unwet.Our Father Rosicross is in his tomb.In vain, in vain; the cataract still cries,The everlasting taper lights the gloom,All wisdom shut into its onyx eyes.Our Father Rosicross sleeps in his tomb.William Butler Yeats
THE MOUNTAIN TOMB
Pour wine and dance, if manhood still have pride,Bring roses, if the rose be yet in bloom;The cataract smokes on the mountain side.Our Father Rosicross is in his tomb.
Pull down the blinds, bring fiddle and clarionet,Let there be no foot silent in the room,Nor mouth with kissing nor the wine unwet.Our Father Rosicross is in his tomb.
In vain, in vain; the cataract still cries,The everlasting taper lights the gloom,All wisdom shut into its onyx eyes.Our Father Rosicross sleeps in his tomb.
William Butler Yeats
TO A CHILD DANCING UPON THE SHOREDance there upon the shore;What need have you to careFor wind or water's roar?And tumble out your hairThat the salt drops have wet;Being young you have not knownThe fool's triumph, nor yetLove lost as soon as won.And he, the best warrior, deadAnd all the sheaves to bind!What need that you should dreadThe monstrous crying of wind?William Butler Yeats
TO A CHILD DANCING UPON THE SHORE
Dance there upon the shore;What need have you to careFor wind or water's roar?And tumble out your hairThat the salt drops have wet;Being young you have not knownThe fool's triumph, nor yetLove lost as soon as won.And he, the best warrior, deadAnd all the sheaves to bind!What need that you should dreadThe monstrous crying of wind?
William Butler Yeats
FALLEN MAJESTYAlthough crowds gathered once if she but showed her faceAnd even old men's eyes grew dim, this hand alone,Like some last courtier at a gipsy camping placeBabbling of fallen majesty, records what's gone.The lineaments, the heart that laughter has made sweet,These, these remain, but I record what's gone. A crowdWill gather and not know that through its very streetOnce walked a thing that seemed, as it were, a burning cloud.William Butler Yeats
FALLEN MAJESTY
Although crowds gathered once if she but showed her faceAnd even old men's eyes grew dim, this hand alone,Like some last courtier at a gipsy camping placeBabbling of fallen majesty, records what's gone.The lineaments, the heart that laughter has made sweet,These, these remain, but I record what's gone. A crowdWill gather and not know that through its very streetOnce walked a thing that seemed, as it were, a burning cloud.
William Butler Yeats
LOVE AND THE BIRDThe moments passed as at a play,I had the wisdom love can bring,I had my share of mother wit;And yet for all that I could say,And though I had her praise for it,And she seemed happy as a king,Love's moon was withering away.Believing every word I saidI praised her body and her mind,Till pride had made her eyes grow bright,And pleasure made her cheeks grow red,And vanity her footfall light;Yet we, for all that praise, could findNothing but darkness overhead.I sat as silent as a stoneAnd knew, though she'd not said a word,That even the best of love must die,And had been savagely undoneWere it not that love, upon the cryOf a most ridiculous little bird,Threw up in the air his marvellous moon.William Butler Yeats
LOVE AND THE BIRD
The moments passed as at a play,I had the wisdom love can bring,I had my share of mother wit;And yet for all that I could say,And though I had her praise for it,And she seemed happy as a king,Love's moon was withering away.
Believing every word I saidI praised her body and her mind,Till pride had made her eyes grow bright,And pleasure made her cheeks grow red,And vanity her footfall light;Yet we, for all that praise, could findNothing but darkness overhead.
I sat as silent as a stoneAnd knew, though she'd not said a word,That even the best of love must die,And had been savagely undoneWere it not that love, upon the cryOf a most ridiculous little bird,Threw up in the air his marvellous moon.
William Butler Yeats
THE REALISTSHope that you may understand.What can books, of men that wiveIn a dragon-guarded land;Paintings of the dolphin drawn;Sea nymphs, in their pearly waggons,Do but wake the hope to liveThat had goneWith the dragons.William Butler Yeats
THE REALISTS
Hope that you may understand.What can books, of men that wiveIn a dragon-guarded land;Paintings of the dolphin drawn;Sea nymphs, in their pearly waggons,Do but wake the hope to liveThat had goneWith the dragons.
William Butler Yeats
SANGARTO LINCOLN STEFFENSSomewhere I read a strange, old, rusty taleSmelling of war; most curiously named"The Mad Recreant Knight of the West."Once, you have read, the round world brimmed with hate,Stirred and revolted, flashed unceasinglyFacets of cruel splendor. And the strongHarried the weak ...Long past, long past, praise GodIn these fair, peaceful, happy days.The Tale:Eastward the Huns break border,Surf on a rotten dyke;They have murdered the Eastern Warder(His head on a pike)."Arm thee, arm thee, my father!"Swift rides the Goddes-bane,"And the high nobles gather"On the plain!""O blind world-wrath!" cried Sangar,"Greatly I killed in youth,"I dreamed men had done with anger"Through Goddes truth!"Smiled the boy then in faint scorn,Hard with the battle-thrill;"Arm thee, loud calls the war-horn"And shrill!"He has bowed to the voice stentorian,Sick with thought of the grave—He has called for his battered morionAnd his scarred glaive.On the boy's helm a gloveOf the Duke's daughter—In his eyes splendor of loveAnd slaughter.Hideous the Hun advancesLike a sea-tide on sand;Unyielding, the haughty lancesMake dauntless stand.And ever amid the clangor,Butchering Hun and Hun,With sorrowful face rides SangarAnd his son....Broken is the wild invader(Sullied, the whole world's fountains);They have penned the murderous raiderWith his back to the mountains.Yet tho' what had been meadIs now a bloody lake,Still drink swords where men bleed,Nor slake.Now leaps one into the press—The Hell 'twixt front and front—Sangar, bloody and torn of dress(He has borne the brunt)."Hold!" cries "Peace! God's Peace!"Heed ye what Christus says—"And the wild battle gave surceaseIn amaze."When will ye cast out hate?"Brothers—my mad, mad brothers—"Mercy, ere it be too late,"These are sons of your mothers."For sake of Him who died on Tree,"Who of all Creatures, loved the Least,"—"Blasphemer! God of Battles, He!"Cried a priest."Peace!" and with his two handsHas broken in twain his glaive.Weaponless, smiling he stands(Coward or brave?)"Traitor!" howls one rank, "Think ye"The Hun be our brother?"And "Fear we to die, craven, think ye?"The other.Then sprang his son to his side,His lips with slaver were wet,For he had felt how men diedAnd was lustful yet;(On his bent helm a gloveOf the Duke's daughter,In his eyes splendor of loveAnd slaughter)—Shouting, "Father no more of mine!"Shameful old man—abhorr'd,"First traitor of all our line!"Up the two-handed sword.He smote—fell Sangar—and thenScreaming, red, the boy ranStraight at the foe, and againHell began ...Oh, there was joy in Heaven when Sangar came.Sweet Mary wept, and bathed and bound his wounds,And God the Father healed him of despair,And Jesus gripped his hand, and laughed and laughed ...John Reed
SANGARTO LINCOLN STEFFENS
Somewhere I read a strange, old, rusty taleSmelling of war; most curiously named"The Mad Recreant Knight of the West."Once, you have read, the round world brimmed with hate,Stirred and revolted, flashed unceasinglyFacets of cruel splendor. And the strongHarried the weak ...Long past, long past, praise GodIn these fair, peaceful, happy days.The Tale:Eastward the Huns break border,Surf on a rotten dyke;They have murdered the Eastern Warder(His head on a pike)."Arm thee, arm thee, my father!"Swift rides the Goddes-bane,"And the high nobles gather"On the plain!"
"O blind world-wrath!" cried Sangar,"Greatly I killed in youth,"I dreamed men had done with anger"Through Goddes truth!"Smiled the boy then in faint scorn,Hard with the battle-thrill;"Arm thee, loud calls the war-horn"And shrill!"
He has bowed to the voice stentorian,Sick with thought of the grave—He has called for his battered morionAnd his scarred glaive.On the boy's helm a gloveOf the Duke's daughter—In his eyes splendor of loveAnd slaughter.
Hideous the Hun advancesLike a sea-tide on sand;Unyielding, the haughty lancesMake dauntless stand.And ever amid the clangor,Butchering Hun and Hun,With sorrowful face rides SangarAnd his son....
Broken is the wild invader(Sullied, the whole world's fountains);They have penned the murderous raiderWith his back to the mountains.Yet tho' what had been meadIs now a bloody lake,Still drink swords where men bleed,Nor slake.
Now leaps one into the press—The Hell 'twixt front and front—Sangar, bloody and torn of dress(He has borne the brunt)."Hold!" cries "Peace! God's Peace!"Heed ye what Christus says—"And the wild battle gave surceaseIn amaze.
"When will ye cast out hate?"Brothers—my mad, mad brothers—"Mercy, ere it be too late,"These are sons of your mothers."For sake of Him who died on Tree,"Who of all Creatures, loved the Least,"—"Blasphemer! God of Battles, He!"Cried a priest.
"Peace!" and with his two handsHas broken in twain his glaive.Weaponless, smiling he stands(Coward or brave?)"Traitor!" howls one rank, "Think ye"The Hun be our brother?"And "Fear we to die, craven, think ye?"The other.
Then sprang his son to his side,His lips with slaver were wet,For he had felt how men diedAnd was lustful yet;(On his bent helm a gloveOf the Duke's daughter,In his eyes splendor of loveAnd slaughter)—
Shouting, "Father no more of mine!"Shameful old man—abhorr'd,"First traitor of all our line!"Up the two-handed sword.He smote—fell Sangar—and thenScreaming, red, the boy ranStraight at the foe, and againHell began ...
Oh, there was joy in Heaven when Sangar came.Sweet Mary wept, and bathed and bound his wounds,And God the Father healed him of despair,And Jesus gripped his hand, and laughed and laughed ...
John Reed
A LEGEND OF THE DOVESoft from the linden's bough,Unmoved against the tranquil afternoon,Eve's dove laments her now:"Ah, gone! long gone! shall not I find thee soon?"That yearning in his voiceTold not to Paradise a sorrow's tale:As other birds rejoiceHe sang, a brother to the nightingale.By twilight on her breastHe saw the flower sleep, the star awake;And calling her from rest,Made all the dawn melodious for her sake.And then the Tempter's breath,The sword of exile and the mortal chain—The heritage of deathThat gave her heart to dust, his own to pain ...In Eden desolateThe seraph heard his lonely music swoon,As now, reiterate;"Ah gone! long gone! shall not I find thee soon?"George Sterling
A LEGEND OF THE DOVE
Soft from the linden's bough,Unmoved against the tranquil afternoon,Eve's dove laments her now:"Ah, gone! long gone! shall not I find thee soon?"
That yearning in his voiceTold not to Paradise a sorrow's tale:As other birds rejoiceHe sang, a brother to the nightingale.
By twilight on her breastHe saw the flower sleep, the star awake;And calling her from rest,Made all the dawn melodious for her sake.
And then the Tempter's breath,The sword of exile and the mortal chain—The heritage of deathThat gave her heart to dust, his own to pain ...
In Eden desolateThe seraph heard his lonely music swoon,As now, reiterate;"Ah gone! long gone! shall not I find thee soon?"
George Sterling
AT THE GRAND CAÑONThou settest splendors in my sight, O Lord!It seems as tho' a deep-hued sunset fallsForever on these Cyclopean walls—These battlements where Titan hosts have warred,And hewn the world with devastating sword,And shook with trumpets the eternal hallsWhere seraphim lay hid by bloody pallsAnd only Hell and Silence were adored.Lo! the abyss wherein great Satan's wingsMight gender tempests, and his dragons' breathFume up in pestilence. Beneath the sunOr starry outposts on terrestrial things,Is no such testimony unto DeathNor altars builded to Oblivion.George Sterling
AT THE GRAND CAÑON
Thou settest splendors in my sight, O Lord!It seems as tho' a deep-hued sunset fallsForever on these Cyclopean walls—These battlements where Titan hosts have warred,And hewn the world with devastating sword,And shook with trumpets the eternal hallsWhere seraphim lay hid by bloody pallsAnd only Hell and Silence were adored.
Lo! the abyss wherein great Satan's wingsMight gender tempests, and his dragons' breathFume up in pestilence. Beneath the sunOr starry outposts on terrestrial things,Is no such testimony unto DeathNor altars builded to Oblivion.
George Sterling
KINDREDMusing, between the sunset and the dark,As Twilight in unhesitating handsBore from the faint horizon's underlands,Silvern and chill, the moon's phantasmal ark,I heard the sea, and far away could markWhere that unalterable waste expandsIn sevenfold sapphire from the mournful sands,And saw beyond the deep a vibrant spark.There sank the sun Arcturus, and I thought:Star, by an ocean on a world of thine,May not a being, born like me to die,Confront a little the eternal NaughtAnd watch our isolated sun decline—Sad for his evanescence, even as I?George Sterling
KINDRED
Musing, between the sunset and the dark,As Twilight in unhesitating handsBore from the faint horizon's underlands,Silvern and chill, the moon's phantasmal ark,I heard the sea, and far away could markWhere that unalterable waste expandsIn sevenfold sapphire from the mournful sands,And saw beyond the deep a vibrant spark.
There sank the sun Arcturus, and I thought:Star, by an ocean on a world of thine,May not a being, born like me to die,Confront a little the eternal NaughtAnd watch our isolated sun decline—Sad for his evanescence, even as I?
George Sterling
REMEMBERED LIGHTThe years are a falling of snow,Slow, but without cessation,On hills and mountains and flowers and worlds that were;But snow and the crawling night in which it fellMay be washed away in one swifter hour of flame.Thus it was that some slant of sunsetIn the chasms of piled cloud—Transient mountains that made a new horizon,Uplifting the west to fantastic pinnacles—Smote warm in a buried realm of the spirit,Till the snows of forgetfulness were gone.Clear in the vistas of memory,The peaks of a world long unremembered,Soared further than clouds, but fell not,Based on hills that shook not nor meltedWith that burden enormous, hardly to be believed.Rent with stupendous chasms,Full of an umber twilight,I beheld that larger world.Bright was the twilight, sharp like ethereal wineAbove, but low in the clefts it thickened,Dull as with duskier tincture.Like whimsical wings outspread but unstirring,Flowers that seemed spirits of the twilight,That must pass with its passing—Too fragile for day or for darkness,Fed the dusk with more delicate hues than its own.Stars that were nearer, more radiant than ours,Quivered and pulsed in the clear thin gold of the sky.These things I beheld,Till the gold was shaken with flightOf fantastical wings like broken shadows,Forerunning the darkness;Till the twilight shivered with outcry of eldritch voices,Like pain's last cry ere oblivion.Clark Ashton Smith
REMEMBERED LIGHT
The years are a falling of snow,Slow, but without cessation,On hills and mountains and flowers and worlds that were;But snow and the crawling night in which it fellMay be washed away in one swifter hour of flame.Thus it was that some slant of sunsetIn the chasms of piled cloud—Transient mountains that made a new horizon,Uplifting the west to fantastic pinnacles—Smote warm in a buried realm of the spirit,Till the snows of forgetfulness were gone.
Clear in the vistas of memory,The peaks of a world long unremembered,Soared further than clouds, but fell not,Based on hills that shook not nor meltedWith that burden enormous, hardly to be believed.Rent with stupendous chasms,Full of an umber twilight,I beheld that larger world.
Bright was the twilight, sharp like ethereal wineAbove, but low in the clefts it thickened,Dull as with duskier tincture.Like whimsical wings outspread but unstirring,Flowers that seemed spirits of the twilight,That must pass with its passing—Too fragile for day or for darkness,Fed the dusk with more delicate hues than its own.Stars that were nearer, more radiant than ours,Quivered and pulsed in the clear thin gold of the sky.
These things I beheld,Till the gold was shaken with flightOf fantastical wings like broken shadows,Forerunning the darkness;Till the twilight shivered with outcry of eldritch voices,Like pain's last cry ere oblivion.
Clark Ashton Smith
SORROWING OF WINDSO winds that pass uncomfortedThrough all the peacefulness of spring,And tell the trees your sorrowing,That they must moan till ye are fled!Think ye the Tyrian distance holdsThe crystal of unquestioned sleep?That those forgetful purples keepNo veiled, contentious greens and golds?Half with communicated grief,Half that they are not free to passWith you across the flickering grass,Mourns each vibrating bough and leaf.And I, with soul disquieted,Shall find within the haunted springNo peace, till your strange sorrowingIs down the Tyrian distance fled.Clark Ashton Smith
SORROWING OF WINDS
O winds that pass uncomfortedThrough all the peacefulness of spring,And tell the trees your sorrowing,That they must moan till ye are fled!
Think ye the Tyrian distance holdsThe crystal of unquestioned sleep?That those forgetful purples keepNo veiled, contentious greens and golds?
Half with communicated grief,Half that they are not free to passWith you across the flickering grass,Mourns each vibrating bough and leaf.
And I, with soul disquieted,Shall find within the haunted springNo peace, till your strange sorrowingIs down the Tyrian distance fled.
Clark Ashton Smith
AMERICAI hear America singing...And the great prophet passed,Serene, clear and untroubledInto the silence vast.When will the master-poetRise, with vision strong,To mold her manifold musicInto a living song?I hear America singing...Beyond the beat and stress,The chant of her shrill, unjaded,Empiric loveliness.Laughter, beyond mere scorning,Wisdom surpassing wit,Love, and the unscathed spirit,These shall encompass it.Alice Corbin
AMERICA
I hear America singing...And the great prophet passed,Serene, clear and untroubledInto the silence vast.
When will the master-poetRise, with vision strong,To mold her manifold musicInto a living song?
I hear America singing...Beyond the beat and stress,The chant of her shrill, unjaded,Empiric loveliness.
Laughter, beyond mere scorning,Wisdom surpassing wit,Love, and the unscathed spirit,These shall encompass it.
Alice Corbin
SYMBOLSWho was it built the cradle of wrought gold?A druid, chanting by the waters old.Who was it kept the sword of vision bright?A warrior, falling darkly in the fight.Who was it put the crown upon the dove?A woman, paling in the arms of love.Oh, who but these, since Adam ceased to be,Have kept their ancient guard about the Tree?Alice Corbin
SYMBOLS
Who was it built the cradle of wrought gold?A druid, chanting by the waters old.Who was it kept the sword of vision bright?A warrior, falling darkly in the fight.Who was it put the crown upon the dove?A woman, paling in the arms of love.Oh, who but these, since Adam ceased to be,Have kept their ancient guard about the Tree?
Alice Corbin
THE STARI saw a star fall in the night,And a grey moth touched my cheek;Such majesty immortals have,Such pity for the weak.Alice Corbin
THE STAR
I saw a star fall in the night,And a grey moth touched my cheek;Such majesty immortals have,Such pity for the weak.
Alice Corbin
NODESThe endless, foolish merriment of starsBeside the pale cold sorrow of the moon,Is like the wayward noises of the worldBeside my heart's uplifted silent tune.The little broken glitter of the wavesBeside the golden sun's intense white blaze,Is like the idle chatter of the crowdBeside my heart's unwearied song of praise.The sun and all the planets in the skyBeside the sacred wonder of dim space,Are notes upon a broken, tarnished luteThat God will someday mend and put in place.And space, beside the little secret joyOf God that sings forever in the clay,Is smaller than the dust we can not see,That yet dies not, till time and space decay.And as the foolish merriment of starsBeside the cold pale sorrow of the moon,My little song, my little joy, my praise,Beside God's ancient, everlasting rune.Alice Corbin
NODES
The endless, foolish merriment of starsBeside the pale cold sorrow of the moon,Is like the wayward noises of the worldBeside my heart's uplifted silent tune.
The little broken glitter of the wavesBeside the golden sun's intense white blaze,Is like the idle chatter of the crowdBeside my heart's unwearied song of praise.
The sun and all the planets in the skyBeside the sacred wonder of dim space,Are notes upon a broken, tarnished luteThat God will someday mend and put in place.
And space, beside the little secret joyOf God that sings forever in the clay,Is smaller than the dust we can not see,That yet dies not, till time and space decay.
And as the foolish merriment of starsBeside the cold pale sorrow of the moon,My little song, my little joy, my praise,Beside God's ancient, everlasting rune.
Alice Corbin
I
Thou hast made me known to friends whom I knew not. Thou hast given me seats in homes not my own. Thou hast brought the distant near and made a brother of the stranger. I am uneasy at heart when I have to leave my accustomed shelter; I forgot that there abides the old in the new, and that there also thou abidest.
Through birth and death, in this world or in others, wherever thou leadest me it is thou, the same, the one companion of my endless life who ever linkest my heart with bonds of joy to the unfamiliar. When one knows thee, then alien there is none, then no door is shut. Oh, grant me my prayer that I may never lose the bliss of the touch of the One in the play of the many.
II
No more noisy, loud words from me, such is my master's will. Henceforth I deal in whispers. The speech of my heart will be carried on in murmurings of a song.
Men hasten to the King's market. All the buyers and sellers are there. But I have my untimely leave in the middle of the day, in the thick of work.
Let then the flowers come out in my garden, though it is not their time, and let the midday bees strike up their lazy hum.
Full many an hour have I spent in the strife of the good and the evil, but now it is the pleasure of my playmate of the empty days to draw my heart on to him, and I know not why is this sudden call to what useless inconsequence!
III
On the day when the lotus bloomed, alas, my mind was straying, and I knew it not. My basket was empty and the flower remained unheeded.
Only now and again a sadness fell upon me, and I started up from my dream and felt a sweet trace of a strange smell in the south wind.
That vague fragrance made my heart ache with longing, and it seemed to me that it was the eager breath of the summer seeking for its completion.
I knew not then that it was so near, that it was mine, and this perfect sweetness had blossomed in the depth of my own heart.
IV
By all means they try to hold me secure who love me in this world. But it is otherwise with thy love, which is greater than theirs, and thou keepest me free. Lest I forget them they never venture to leave me alone. But day passes by after day and thou are not seen.
If I call not thee in my prayers, if I keep not thee in my heart—thy love for me still waits for my love.
V
I was not aware of the moment when I first crossed the threshold of this life. What was the power that made me open out into this vast mystery like a bud in the forest at midnight? When in the morning I looked upon the light I felt in a moment that I was no stranger in this world, that the inscrutable without name and form had taken me in its arms in the form of my own mother. Even so, in death the same unknown will appear as ever known to me. And because I love this life, I know I shall love death as well. The child cries out when from the right breast the mother takes it away to find in the very next moment its consolation in the left one.
VI
Thou art the sky and thou art the nest as well. Oh, thou beautiful, there in the nest it is thy love that encloses the soul with colours and sounds and odours. There comes the morning with the golden basket in her right hand bearing the wreath of beauty, silently to crown the earth. And there comes the evening over the lonely meadows deserted by herds, through trackless paths, carrying cool draughts of peace in her golden pitcher from the western ocean of rest.
But there, where spreads the infinite sky for the soul to take her flight in, reigns the stainless white radiance. There is no day nor night, nor form nor colour, and never never a word.
Rabindranath Tagore
I
I t is curious that the influence of Poe upon Baudelaire, Verlaine, and Mallarmé, and through them upon English poets, and then through these last upon Americans, comes back to us in this round-about and indirect way. We have here an instance of what Whitman calls a "perfect return." We have denied Poe, we do not give him his full meed of appreciation even today, and yet we accept him through the disciples who have followed or have assimilated his tradition. And now that young Englishmen are beginning to feel the influence of Whitman upon French poetry, it may be that he too, through the imitation ofvers librein America, will begin to experience a "perfect return."
Must we always accept American genius in this round-about fashion? Have we no true perspective that we applaud mediocrity at home, and look abroad for genius, only to find that it is of American origin?
This bit of marginalia, extracted from a note-book of 1909, was relieved of the necessity of further elaboration by supplementary evidence received in one day from two correspondents. One, a brief sentence from Mr. Allen Upward: "It is much to be wished that America should learn to honor her sons without waiting for the literary cliques of London."
The other, the following "news note" from Mr. Paul Scott Mowrer in Paris. The date of Léon Bazalgette's translation, however, is hardly so epochal as it would seem, since Whitman has been known for many years in France, having been partly translated during the nineties.
Mr. Mowrer writes:
"It is significant of American tardiness in the development of a national literary tradition that the name of Walt Whitman is today a greater influence with the young writers of the continent than with our own. Not since France discovered Poe has literary Europe been so moved by anything American. The suggestion has even been made that 'Whitmanism' is rapidly to supersede 'Nietzscheism' as the dominant factor in modern thought. Léon Bazalgette translatedLeaves of Grassinto French in 1908. A school of followers of the Whitman philosophy and style was an almost immediate consequence. Such of the leading reviews as sympathize at all with the strong 'young' movement to break the shackles of classicism which have so long bound French prosody to the heroic couplet, the sonnet, and the alexandrine, are publishing not only articles on 'Whitmanism' as a movement, but numbers of poems in the new flexible chanting rhythms. In this regardLa Nouvelle Revue Francaise,La Renaissance Contemporaine, andL'Effort Librehave been preëminently hospitable.
"The new poems are not so much imitations of Whitman as inspirations from him. Those who have achieved most success in the mode thus far are perhaps Georges Duhamel, a leader of the 'Jeunes,' whose plays are at present attracting national notice; André Spire, who writes with something of the apostolic fervor of his Jewish ancestry; Henri Franck, who died recently, shortly after the publication of his volume,La Danse Devant l'Arche; Charles Vildrac, withLe Livre d'Amour; Philéas Lebesgue, the appearance in collected form of whoseLes Servitudesis awaited with keen interest; and finally, Jean Richard Bloch, editor ofL'Effort Libre, whose prose, for example in his book of tales entitledLevy, is said to be directly rooted in Whitmanism.
"In Germany, too, the rolling intonations of the singer of democracy have awakened echoes. TheModerne Weltdichtunghas announced itself, with Whitman as guide, and such apostles as Wilhelm Schmidtbonn, inLobegesang des Lebens, and Ernst Lissauer inDer AckerandDer Strom.
"What is it about Whitman that Europe finds so inspiriting? First, his acceptance of the universe as he found it, his magnificently shouted comradeship with all nature and all men. Such a doctrine makes an instant though hardly logical appeal in nations where socialism is the political order of the day. And next, his disregard of literary tradition. Out of books more books, and out of them still more, with the fecundity of generations. But in this process of literary propagation thought, unfortunately, instead of arising like a child ever fresh and vigorous as in the beginning, grows more and more attenuated, paler, more sickly. The acclaim of Whitman is nothing less than the inevitable revolt against the modern flood of book-inspired books. Write from nature directly, from the people directly, from the political meeting, and the hayfield, and the factory—that is what the august American seems to his young disciples across the seas to be crying to them.
"Perhaps it is because America already holds as commonplaces these fundamentals seeming so new to Europe that the Whitman schools have sprung up stronger on the eastern side of the Atlantic than on the western."
It is not that America holds as commonplaces the fundamentals expressed in Whitman that there have been more followers of the Whitman method in Europe than in America, but that American poets, approaching poetry usually through terms of feeling, and apparently loath to apply an intellectual whip to themselves or others, have made no definite analysis of the rhythmic units of Whitman. We have been content to accept the English conception of the "barbaric yawp" of Whitman. The curious mingling of the concrete and the spiritual, which is what certain modern painters, perhaps under the Whitman suggestion, are trying to achieve, was so novel as to be disconcerting, and the vehicle sooriginal as to appear uncouth—uncadenced, unmusical. The hide-bound, antiquated conception of English prosody is responsible for a great deal of dead timber. It is a significant fact that the English first accepted the spirit of Whitman, the French his method. The rhythmic measure of Whitman has yet to be correctly estimated by English and American poets. It has been sifted and weighed by the French poets, and though Whitman's influence upon modern French poetry has been questioned by English critics, the connection between his varied rhythmic units and modernvers libreis too obvious to be discounted. There may be an innate necessity sufficient to cause a breaking-up of forms in a poetic language, but there is no reason to believe that Paris, the great clearing-house of all the arts, would not be quick to adopt a suggestion from without. English poets, certainly, have not been loath to accept suggestions from Paris.
At any rate this international acceptance of the two greatest American poets, and the realization of their international influence upon us, may awaken us to a new sense of responsibility. It would be a valuable lesson, if only we could learn to turn the international eye, in private, upon ourselves. If the American poet can learn to be less parochial, to apply the intellectual whip, to visualize his art, to separate it and see it apart from himself; we may learn then to appreciate the great poet when he is "in our midst." and not wait for the approval of English or French critics.
A. C. H.
The appearance of the poems of Rabindranath Tagore, translated by himself from Bengali into English, is an event in the history of English poetry and of world poetry. I do not use these terms with the looseness of contemporary journalism. Questions of poetic art are serious, not to be touched upon lightly or in a spirit of bravura.
Bengal is a nation of fifty million people. The great age of Bengali literature is this age in which we live. And the first Bengali whom I heard singing the lyrics of Tagore said, as simply as one would say it is four o'clock, "Yes, we speak of it as the Age of Rabindranath."
The six poems now published were chosen from a hundred lyrics about to appear in book form. They might just as well have been any other six, for they do not represent a summit of attainment but an average.
These poems are cast, in the original, in metres perhaps the most finished and most subtle of any known to us. If you refine the art of the troubadours, combine it with that of the Pleiade, and add to that the sound-unit principle of the most advanced artists invers libre, you would get something like the system of Bengali verse. The sound of it when spoken is rather like good Greek, for Bengali is daughter of Sanscrit, which is a kind of uncle or elder brother of the Homeric idiom.
All this series of a hundred poems are made to music, for "Mr." Tagore is not only the great poet of Bengal, he is also their great musician. He teaches his songs, and they are sung throughout Bengal more or less as the troubadours' songs were sung through Europe in the twelfth century.
And we feel here in London, I think, much as the people of Petrarch's time must have felt about the mysterious lost language, the Greek that was just being restored to Europe after centuries of deprivation. That Greek was the lamp of our renaissance and its perfections have been the goal of our endeavor ever since.
I speak with all seriousness when I say that this beginning of our more intimate intercourse with Bengal is the opening of another period. For one thing the content of this first brief series of poems will destroy the popular conception of Buddhism, for we in the Occident are apt to regard it as a religion negative and anti-Christian.
The Greek gave us humanism; a belief inmens sana in corpore sano, a belief in proportion and balance. The Greek shows us man as the sport of the gods; the sworn foe of fate and the natural forces. The Bengali brings to us the pledge of a calm which we need overmuch in an age of steel and mechanics. It brings a quiet proclamation of the fellowship between man and the gods; between man and nature.
It is all very well to object that this is not the first time we have had this fellowship proclaimed, but in the arts alone can we find the inner heart of a people. There is a deeper calm and a deeper conviction in this eastern expression than we have yet attained. It is by the arts alone that one people learns to meet another far distant people in friendship and respect.
I speak with all gravity when I say that world-fellowship is nearer for the visit of Rabindranath Tagore to London.
Ezra Pound
The Poems of Rosamund Marriott Watson(John Lane.)
This English poet, whose singing ceased a year ago, had a real lyric gift, though a very slight one. The present volume is a collection of all her poems, from the first girlish sheafTares, toThe Lamp and the Lute, which she was preparing for publication when she died.
Through this whole life-record her poetry ripples along as smoothly and delicately as a meadow rill, with never a pause nor a flurry nor a thrill. She sings prettily of everyone, from theLast Fairyto William Ernest Henley, and of everything, fromDeath and Justiceto theOrchard of the Moon, but she has nothing arresting or important to say of any of these subjects, and no keen magic of phrase to give her warbling that intense vitality which would win for her the undying fame prophesied by her loyal husband in his preface.
Nevertheless, her feeling is genuine, her touch light, and her tune a quiet monotone of gentle soothing music which has a certain soft appeal. Perhaps the secret of it is the fine quality of soul which breathes through these numerous lyrics, a soul too reserved to tell its whole story, and too preoccupied with the little things around and within her to pay much attention to the thinking, fighting, ever-moving world without.
A big-spirited, vital, headlong narrative poem isThe Adventures of Young Maverick, by Hervey White, who runs a printing press at Woodstock, N. Y., and bravely publishesThe Wild Hawk, his own little magazine. The poem has as many moods asDon Juan, which is plainly, though not tyrannically, its model.
The poem is long for these days—five cantos and nearly six hundred Spenserian stanzas. Yet the most casual reader, one would think, could scarcely find it tedious, even though the satirical passages run heavily at times. The hero is a colt of lofty Arabian lineage, and the poem becomes eloquently pictorial in setting forth his beauty: