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diff --git a/43224-0.txt b/43224-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..9db831a --- /dev/null +++ b/43224-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,6386 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 43224 *** + + Poetry + A Magazine of Verse + + + VOLUME I. + October-March, 1912-13 + + + Harriet Monroe ~ Editor + + + [Illustration] + + + _Reprinted with the permission + of the original publisher._ + + A. M. S. REPRINT CO. + New York, New York + + Copyright + By HARRIET MONROE + 1912-1913 + + + + + Poetry VOL. I + A Magazine of Verse NO. 1 + + + OCTOBER, 1912 + + POETRY + + + + + I + + It is a little isle amid bleak seas-- + An isolate realm of garden, circled round + By importunity of stress and sound, + Devoid of empery to master these. + At most, the memory of its streams and bees, + Borne to the toiling mariner outward-bound, + Recalls his soul to that delightful ground; + But serves no beacon toward his destinies. + + It is a refuge from the stormy days, + Breathing the peace of a remoter world + Where beauty, like the musing dusk of even, + Enfolds the spirit in its silver haze; + While far away, with glittering banners furled, + The west lights fade, and stars come out in heaven. + + + II + + It is a sea-gate, trembling with the blast + Of powers that from the infinite sea-plain roll, + A whelming tide. Upon the waiting soul + As on a fronting rock, thunders the vast + Groundswell; its spray bursts heavenward, and drives past + In fume and sound articulate of the whole + Of ocean's heart, else voiceless; on the shoal + Silent; upon the headland clear at last. + + From darkened sea-coasts without stars or sun, + Like trumpet-voices in a holy war, + Utter the heralds tidings of the deep. + And where men slumber, weary and undone, + Visions shall come, incredible hopes from far,-- + And with high passion shatter the bonds of sleep. + + _Arthur Davison Ficke_ + + + + + I AM THE WOMAN + + I am the Woman, ark of the law and its breaker, + Who chastened her steps and taught her knees to be meek, + Bridled and bitted her heart and humbled her cheek, + Parcelled her will, and cried "Take more!" to the taker, + Shunned what they told her to shun, sought what they bade her seek, + Locked up her mouth from scornful speaking: now it is open to speak. + + I am she that is terribly fashioned, the creature + Wrought in God's perilous mood, in His unsafe hour. + The morning star was mute, beholding my feature, + Seeing the rapture I was, the shame, and the power, + Scared at my manifold meaning; he heard me call + "O fairest among ten thousand, acceptable brother!" + And he answered not, for doubt; till he saw me crawl + And whisper down to the secret worm, "O mother, + Be not wroth in the ancient house; thy daughter forgets not at all!" + I am the Woman, fleër away, + Soft withdrawer back from the maddened mate, + Lurer inward and down to the gates of day + And crier there in the gate, + "What shall I give for thee, wild one, say! + The long, slow rapture and patient anguish of life, + Or art thou minded a swifter way? + Ask if thou canst, the gold, but oh if thou must, + Good is the shining dross, lovely the dust! + Look at me, I am the Woman, harlot and heavenly wife; + Tell me thy price, be unashamed; I will assuredly pay!" + + I am also the Mother: of two that I bore + I comfort and feed the slayer, feed and comfort the slain. + Did they number my daughters and sons? I am mother of more! + Many a head they marked not, here in my bosom has lain, + Babbling with unborn lips in a tongue to be, + Far, incredible matters, all familiar to me. + Still would the man come whispering, + "Wife!" but many a time my breast + Took him not as a husband: I soothed him and laid him to rest + Even as the babe of my body, and knew him for such. + My mouth is open to speak, that was dumb too much! + I say to you I am the Mother; and under the sword + Which flamed each way to harry us forth from the Lord, + I saw Him young at the portal, weeping and staying the rod, + And I, even I was His mother, and I yearned as the mother of God. + + I am also the Spirit. The Sisters laughed + When I sat with them dumb in the portals, over my lamp, + Half asleep in the doors: for my gown was raught + Off at the shoulder to shield from the wind and the rain + The wick I tended against the mysterious hour + When the Silent City of Being should ring with song, + As the Lord came in with Life to the marriage bower. + "Look!" laughed the elder Sisters; and crimson with shame + I hid my breast away from the rosy flame. + "Ah!" cried the leaning Sisters, pointing, doing me wrong, + "Do you see?" laughed the wanton Sisters, + "She will get her lover ere long!" + And it was but a little while till unto my need + He was given indeed, + And we walked where waxing world after world went by; + And I said to my lover, "Let us begone, + "Oh, let us begone, and try + "Which of them all the fairest to dwell in is, + "Which is the place for us, our desirable clime!" + But he said, "They are only the huts and the little villages, + Pleasant to go and lodge in rudely over the vintage-time!" + Scornfully spake he, being unwise, + Being flushed at heart because of our walking together. + But I was mute with passionate prophecies; + My heart went veiled and faint in the golden weather, + While universe drifted by after still universe. + Then I cried, "Alas, we must hasten and lodge therein, + One after one, and in every star that they shed! + A dark and a weary thing is come on our head-- + To search obedience out in the bosom of sin, + To listen deep for love when thunders the curse; + For O my love, behold where the Lord hath planted + In every star in the midst His dangerous Tree! + Still I must pluck thereof and bring unto thee, + Saying, "The coolness for which all night we have panted; + Taste of the goodly thing, I have tasted first!" + Bringing us noway coolness, but burning thirst, + Giving us noway peace, but implacable strife, + Loosing upon us the wounding joy and the wasting sorrow of life! + + I am the Woman, ark of the Law and sacred arm to upbear it, + Heathen trumpet to overthrow and idolatrous sword to shear it: + Yea, she whose arm was round the neck of the morning star at song, + Is she who kneeleth now in the dust and cries at the secret door, + "Open to me, O sleeping mother! The gate is heavy and strong. + "Open to me, I am come at last; be wroth with thy child no more. + "Let me lie down with thee there in the dark, and be slothful + with thee as before!" + + _William Vaughan Moody_ + + + + + TO WHISTLER, AMERICAN + + _On the loan exhibit of his paintings at the Tate Gallery._ + + You also, our first great, + Had tried all ways; + Tested and pried and worked in many fashions, + And this much gives me heart to play the game. + + Here is a part that's slight, and part gone wrong, + And much of little moment, and some few + Perfect as Dürer! + + "In the Studio" and these two portraits,[A] if I had my choice! + And then these sketches in the mood of Greece? + + You had your searches, your uncertainties, + And this is good to know--for us, I mean, + Who bear the brunt of our America + And try to wrench her impulse into art. + + You were not always sure, not always set + To hiding night or tuning "symphonies"; + Had not one style from birth, but tried and pried + And stretched and tampered with the media. + + You and Abe Lincoln from that mass of dolts + Show us there's chance at least of winning through. + + _Ezra Pound_ + +[Footnote A: + + "Brown and Gold--de Race." + "Grenat et Or--Le Petit Cardinal." + +] + + + + + MIDDLE-AGED + + A STUDY IN AN EMOTION + + "'Tis but a vague, invarious delight + As gold that rains about some buried king. + + As the fine flakes, + When tourists frolicking + Stamp on his roof or in the glazing light + Try photographs, wolf down their ale and cakes + And start to inspect some further pyramid; + + As the fine dust, in the hid cell beneath + Their transitory step and merriment, + Drifts through the air, and the sarcophagus + Gains yet another crust + Of useless riches for the occupant, + So I, the fires that lit once dreams + Now over and spent, + Lie dead within four walls + And so now love + Rains down and so enriches some stiff case, + And strews a mind with precious metaphors, + + And so the space + Of my still consciousness + Is full of gilded snow, + + The which, no cat has eyes enough + To see the brightness of." + + _Ezra Pound_ + + + + + FISH OF THE FLOOD + + Fish of the flood, on the bankèd billow + Thou layest thy head in dreams; + Sliding as slides thy shifting pillow, + One with the streams + Of the sea is thy spirit. + + Gean-tree, thou spreadest thy foaming flourish + Abroad in the sky so grey; + It not heeding if it thee nourish, + Thou dost obey, + Happy, its moving. + + So, God, thy love it not needeth me, + Only thy life, that I blessèd be. + + _Emilia Stuart Lorimer_ + + + + + TO ONE UNKNOWN + + I have seen the proudest stars + That wander on through space, + Even the sun and moon, + But not your face. + + I have heard the violin, + The winds and waves rejoice + In endless minstrelsy, + Yet not your voice. + + I have touched the trillium, + Pale flower of the land, + Coral, anemone, + And not your hand. + + I have kissed the shining feet + Of Twilight lover-wise, + Opened the gates of Dawn-- + Oh not your eyes! + + I have dreamed unwonted things, + Visions that witches brew, + Spoken with images, + Never with you. + + _Helen Dudley_ + + + + + SYMPHONY OF A MEXICAN GARDEN + + 1. THE GARDEN _Poco sostenuto_ in A major + The laving tide of inarticulate air. + + _Vivace_ in A major + The iris people dance. + + 2. THE POOL _Allegretto_ in A minor + Cool-hearted dim familiar of the doves. + + 3. THE BIRDS _Presto_ in F major + I keep a frequent tryst. + + _Presto meno assai_ + The blossom-powdered orange-tree. + + 4. TO THE MOON _Allegro con brio_ in A major + Moon that shone on Babylon. + + + TO MOZART + + _What junipers are these, inlaid + With flame of the pomegranate tree? + The god of gardens must have made + This still unrumored place for thee + To rest from immortality, + And dream within the splendid shade + Some more elusive symphony + Than orchestra has ever played._ + + + I In A major + _Poco sostenuto_ + + The laving tide of inarticulate air + Breaks here in flowers as the sea in foam, + But with no satin lisp of failing wave: + The odor-laden winds are very still. + An unimagined music here exhales + In upcurled petal, dreamy bud half-furled, + And variations of thin vivid leaf: + Symphonic beauty that some god forgot. + If form could waken into lyric sound, + This flock of irises like poising birds + Would feel song at their slender feathered throats, + And pour into a grey-winged aria + Their wrinkled silver fingermarked with pearl; + That flight of ivory roses high along + The airy azure of the larkspur spires + Would be a fugue to puzzle nightingales + With too-evasive rapture, phrase on phrase. + Where the hibiscus flares would cymbals clash, + And the black cypress like a deep bassoon + Would hum a clouded amber melody. + + But all across the trudging ragged chords + That are the tangled grasses in the heat, + The mariposa lilies fluttering + Like trills upon some archangelic flute, + The roses and carnations and divine + Small violets that voice the vanished god, + There is a lure of passion-poignant tone + Not flower-of-pomegranate--that finds the heart + As stubborn oboes do--can breathe in air, + Nor poppies, nor keen lime, nor orange-bloom. + + What zone of wonder in the ardent dusk + Of trees that yearn and cannot understand, + Vibrates as to the golden shepherd horn + That stirs some great adagio with its cry + And will not let it rest? + O tender trees, + Your orchid, like a shepherdess of dreams, + Calls home her whitest dream from following + Elusive laughter of the unmindful god! + + + _Vivace_ + + The iris people dance + Like any nimble faun: + To rhythmic radiance + They foot it in the dawn. + They dance and have no need + Of crystal-dripping flute + Or chuckling river-reed,-- + Their music hovers mute. + The dawn-lights flutter by + All noiseless, but they know! + Such children of the sky + Can hear the darkness go. + But does the morning play + Whatever they demand-- + Or amber-barred bourrée + Or silver saraband? + + + THE POOL + II. In A minor + _Allegretto_ + + Cool-hearted dim familiar of the doves, + Thou coiled sweet water where they come to tell + Their mellow legends and rehearse their loves, + As what in April or in June befell + And thou must hear of,--friend of Dryades + Who lean to see where flower should be set + To star the dusk of wreathed ivy braids, + They have not left thy trees, + Nor do tired fauns thy crystal kiss forget, + Nor forest-nymphs astray from distant glades. + + Thou feelest with delight their showery feet + Along thy mossy margin myrtle-starred, + And thine the heart of wildness quick to beat + At imprint of shy hoof upon thy sward: + Yet who could know thee wild who art so cool, + So heavenly-minded, templed in thy grove + Of plumy cedar, larch and juniper? + O strange ecstatic Pool, + What unknown country art thou dreaming of, + Or temple than this garden lovelier? + + Who made thy sky the silver side of leaves, + And poised its orchid like a swan-white moon + Whose disc of perfect pallor half deceives + The mirror of thy limpid green lagoon, + He loveth well thy ripple-feathered moods, + Thy whims at dusk, thy rainbow look at dawn! + Dream thou no more of vales Olympian: + Where pale Olympus broods + There were no orchid white as moon or swan, + No sky of leaves, no garden-haunting Pan! + + + THE BIRDS + III. In F major + _Presto_ + + I keep a frequent tryst + With whirr and shower of wings: + Some inward melodist + Interpreting all things + Appoints the place, the hours. + Dazzle and sense of flowers, + Though not the least leaf stir, + May mean a tanager: + How rich the silence is until he sings! + + The smoke-tree's cloudy white + Has fire within its breast. + What winged mere delight + There hides as in a nest + And fashions of its flame + Music without a name? + So might an opal sing + If given thrilling wing, + And voice for lyric wildness unexpressed. + + In grassy dimness thatched + With tangled growing things, + A troubadour rose-patched, + With velvet-shadowed wings, + Seeks a sustaining fly. + Who else unseen goes by + Quick-pattering through the hush? + Some twilight-footed thrush + Or finch intent on small adventurings? + + I have no time for gloom, + For gloom what time have I? + The orange is in bloom; + Emerald parrots fly + Out of the cypress-dusk; + Morning is strange with musk. + The wild canary now + Jewels the lemon-bough, + And mocking-birds laugh in the rose's room. + + + THE ORANGE TREE + In D Major + _Presto meno assai_ + + The blossom-powdered orange tree, + For all her royal speechlessness, + Out of a heart of ecstasy + Is singing, singing, none the less! + + Light as a springing fountain, she + Is spray above the wind-sleek turf: + Dream-daughter of the moon's white sea + And sister to its showered surf! + + + TO THE MOON + IV. In A major + _Allegro con brio_ + + Moon that shone on Babylon, + Searching out the gardens there, + Could you find a fairer one + Than this garden, anywhere? + Did Damascus at her best + Hide such beauty in her breast? + + When you flood with creamy light + Vines that net the sombre pine, + Turn the shadowed iris white, + Summon cactus stars to shine, + Do you free in silvered air + Wistful spirits everywhere? + + Here they linger, there they pass, + And forget their native heaven: + Flit along the dewy grass + Rare Vittoria, Sappho, even! + And the hushed magnolia burns + Incense in her gleaming urns. + + When the nightingale demands + Word with Keats who answers him, + Shakespeare listens--understands-- + Mindful of the cherubim; + And the South Wind dreads to know + Mozart gone as seraphs go. + + Moon of poets dead and gone, + Moon to gods of music dear, + Gardens they have looked upon + Let them re-discover here: + Rest--and dream a little space + Of some heart-remembered place! + + _Grace Hazard Conkling_ + + + + + EDITORIAL COMMENT + + AS IT WAS + +Once upon a time, when man was new in the woods of the world, when his +feet were scarred with jungle thorns and his hands were red with the +blood of beasts, a great king rose who gathered his neighbors together, +and subdued the wandering tribes. Strange cunning was his, for he ground +the stones to an edge together, and bound them with thongs to sticks; +and he taught his people to pry apart the forest, and beat back the +ravenous beasts. And he bade them honeycomb the mountainside with caves, +to dwell therein with their women. And the most beautiful women the king +took for his own, that his wisdom might not perish from the earth. And +he led the young men to war and conquered all the warring tribes from +the mountains to the sea. And when fire smote a great tree out of +heaven, and raged through the forest till the third sun, he seized a +burning brand and lit an altar to his god. And there, beside the +ever-burning fire, he sat and made laws and did justice. And his people +loved and feared him. + +And the king grew old. And for seven journeys of the sun from morn to +morn he moved not, neither uttered word. And the hearts of the people +were troubled, but none dared speak to the king's despair; neither wise +men nor warriors dared cry out unto him. + +Now the youngest son of the king was a lad still soft of flesh, who had +never run to battle not sat in council nor stood before the king. And +his heart yearned for his father, and he bowed before his mother and +said, "Give me thy blessing, for I have words within me for the king; +yea, as the sea sings to the night with waves will my words roll in +singing unto his grief." And his mother said, "Go, my son; for thou hast +words of power and soothing, and the king shall be healed." + +So the youth went forth and bowed him toward the king's seat. And the +wise men and warriors laid hands upon him, and said, "Who art thou, that +thou shouldst go in ahead of us to him who sitteth in darkness?" And the +king's son rose, and stretched forth his arms, and said, "Unhand me and +let me go, ye silent ones, who for seven sun-journeys have watched in +darkness and uttered no word of light! Unhand me, for as a fig-tree with +fruit, so my heart is rich with words for the king." + +Then he put forth his strength and strode on singing softly, and bowed +him before the king. And he spake the king's great deeds in cunning +words--his wars and city-carvings and wise laws, his dominion over men +and beasts and the thick woods of the earth; his greeting of the gods +with fire. + +And lo, the king lifted up his head and stretched forth his arms and +wept. "Yea, all these things have I done," he said, "and they shall +perish with me. My death is upon me, and I shall die, and the tribes I +have welded together shall be broken apart, and the beasts shall win +back their domain, and the green jungle shall overgrow my mansions. Lo, +the fire shall go out on the altar of the gods, and my glory shall be as +a crimson cloud that the night swallows up in darkness." + +Then the young man lifted up his voice and cried: "Oh, king, be +comforted! Thy deeds shall not pass as a cloud, neither shall thy laws +be strewn before the wind. For I will carve thy glory in rich and +rounded words--yea, I will string thy deeds together in jewelled beads +of perfect words that thy sons shall wear on their hearts forever." + +"Verily thy words are rich with song," said the king; "but thou shalt +die, and who will utter them? Like twinkling foam is the speech of man's +mouth; like foam from a curling wave that vanishes in the sun." + +"Nay, let thy heart believe me, oh king my father," said the youth. "For +the words of my mouth shall keep step with the ripple of waves and the +beating of wings; yea, they shall mount with the huge paces of the sun +in heaven, that cease not for my ceasing. Men shall sound them on +suckling tongues still soft with milk, they shall run into battle to the +tune of thy deeds, and kindle their fire with the breath of thy wisdom. +And thy glory shall be ever living, as a jewel of jasper from the +earth--yea, as the green jewel of jasper carven into a god for the rod +of thy power, oh king, and of the power of thy sons forever." + +The king sat silent till the going-down of the sun. Then lifted he his +head, and stroked his beard, and spake: "Verily the sun goes down, and +my beard shines whiter than his, and I shall die. Now therefore stand at +my right hand, O son of my wise years, child of my dreams. Stand at my +right hand, and fit thy speech to music, that men may hold in their +hearts thy rounded words. Forever shalt thou keep thy place, and utter +thy true tale in the ears of the race. And woe be unto them that hear +thee not! Verily that generation shall pass as a cloud, and its glory +shall be as a tree that withers. For thou alone shalt win the flying +hours to thee, and keep the beauty of them for the joy of men forever." + + _H. M._ + + + + + ON THE READING OF POETRY + +In the brilliant pages of his essay on Jean François Millet, Romain +Rolland says that Millet, as a boy, used to read the Bucolics and the +Georgics "with enchantment" and was "seized by emotion--when he came to +the line, 'It is the hour when the great shadows seek the plain.' + + Et jam summa procul villarum culmina fumant + Majoresque cadunt altis de montibus umbrae?" + +To the lover and student of poetry, this incident has an especial charm +and significance. There is something fine in the quick sympathy of an +artist in one kind, for beauty expressed by the master of another +medium. The glimpse M. Rolland gives us of one of the most passionate +art-students the world has ever known, implies with fresh grace a truth +Anglo-Saxons are always forgetting--that poetry is one of the great +humanities, that poetry is one of the great arts of expression. + +Many of our customs conspire to cause, almost to force, this forgetting. +Thousands of us have been educated to a dark and often permanent +ignorance of classic poetry, by being taught in childhood to regard it +as written for the purpose of illustrating Hadley's Latin, or Goodwin's +Greek grammar, and composed to follow the rules of versification at the +end of the book. It seems indeed one of fate's strangest ironies that +the efforts of these distinguished grammarians to unveil immortal +masterpieces are commonly used in schools and colleges to enshroud, not +to say swaddle up, the images of the gods "forever young," and turn them +into mummies. In our own country, far from perceiving in Vergil's quiet +music the magnificent gesture of nature that thrilled his Norman +reader--far from conceiving of epic poetry as the simplest universal +tongue, one early acquires a wary distrust of it as something one must +constantly labor over. + +Aside from gaining in childhood this strong, practical objection to +famous poetry, people achieve the deadly habit of reading metrical lines +unimaginatively. After forming--generally in preparation for entering +one of our great universities--the habit of blinding the inner eye, +deafening the inner ear, and dropping into a species of mental coma +before a page of short lines, it is difficult for educated persons to +read poetry with what is known as "ordinary human intelligence." + +It does not occur to them simply to listen to the nightingale. But +poetry, I believe, never speaks her beauty--certainly never her scope +and variety, except on the condition that in her presence one sits down +quietly with folded hands, and truly listens to her singing voice. + + "So for one the wet sail arching through the rainbow round the bow, + And for one the creak of snow-shoes on the crust." + +Many people do not like poetry, in this way, as a living art to be +enjoyed, but rather as an exact science to be approved. To them poetry +may concern herself only with a limited number of subjects to be +presented in a predetermined and conventional manner and form. To such +readers the word "form" means usually only a repeated literary effect: +and they do not understand that every "form" was in its first and best +use an originality, employed not for the purpose of following any rule, +but because it said truly what the artist wished to express. I suppose +much of the monotony of subject and treatment observable in modern verse +is due to this belief that poetry is merely a fixed way of repeating +certain meritorious though highly familiar concepts of existence--and +not in the least the infinite music of words meant to speak the little +and the great tongues of the earth. + +It is exhilarating to read the pages of Pope and of Byron, whether you +agree with them or not, because here poetry does speak the little and +the great tongues of the earth, and sings satires, pastorals and +lampoons, literary and dramatic criticism, all manner of fun and +sparkling prettiness, sweeping judgments, nice discriminations, +fashions, politics, the ways of gentle and simple--love and desire and +pain and sorrow, and anguish and death. + +The impulse which inspired, and the appreciation which endowed this +magazine, has been a generous sympathy with poetry as an art. The +existence of a gallery for poems and verse has an especially attractive +social value in its power of recalling or creating the beautiful and +clarifying pleasure of truly reading poetry in its broad scope and rich +variety. The hospitality of this hall will have been a genuine source of +happiness if somehow it tells the visitors, either while they are here, +or after they have gone to other places, what a delight it is to enjoy a +poem, to realize it, to live in the vivid dream it evokes, to hark to +its music, to listen to the special magic grace of its own style and +composition, and to know that this special grace will say as deeply as +some revealing hour with a friend one loves, something nothing else can +say--something which is life itself sung in free sympathy beyond the +bars of time and space. + + _E. W._ + + + + + THE MOTIVE OF THE MAGAZINE + +In the huge democracy of our age no interest is too slight to have an +organ. Every sport, every little industry requires its own corner, its +own voice, that it may find its friends, greet them, welcome them. + +The arts especially have need of each an entrenched place, a voice of +power, if they are to do their work and be heard. For as the world grows +greater day by day, as every member of it, through something he buys or +knows or loves, reaches out to the ends of the earth, things precious to +the race, things rare and delicate, may be overpowered, lost in the +criss-cross of modern currents, the confusion of modern immensities. + +Painting, sculpture, music are housed in palaces in the great cities of +the world; and every week or two a new periodical is born to speak for +one or the other of them, and tenderly nursed at some guardian's +expense. Architecture, responding to commercial and social demands, is +whipped into shape by the rough and tumble of life and fostered, +willy-nilly, by men's material needs. Poetry alone, of all the fine +arts, has been left to shift for herself in a world unaware of its +immediate and desperate need of her, a world whose great deeds, whose +triumphs over matter, over the wilderness, over racial enmities and +distances, require her ever-living voice to give them glory and +glamour. + +Poetry has been left to herself and blamed for inefficiency, a process +as unreasonable as blaming the desert for barrenness. This art, like +every other, is not a miracle of direct creation, but a reciprocal +relation between the artist and his public. The people must do their +part if the poet is to tell their story to the future; they must +cultivate and irrigate the soil if the desert is to blossom as the rose. + +The present venture is a modest effort to give to poetry her own place, +her own voice. The popular magazines can afford her but scant +courtesy--a Cinderella corner in the ashes--because they seek a large +public which is not hers, a public which buys them not for their verse +but for their stories, pictures, journalism, rarely for their +literature, even in prose. Most magazine editors say that there is no +public for poetry in America; one of them wrote to a young poet that the +verse his monthly accepted "must appeal to the barber's wife of the +Middle West," and others prove their distrust by printing less verse +from year to year, and that rarely beyond page-end length and +importance. + +We believe that there is a public for poetry, that it will grow, and +that as it becomes more numerous and appreciative the work produced in +this art will grow in power, in beauty, in significance. In this belief +we have been encouraged by the generous enthusiasm of many subscribers +to our fund, by the sympathy of other lovers of the art, and by the +quick response of many prominent poets, both American and English, who +have sent or promised contributions. + +We hope to publish in _Poetry_ some of the best work now being done in +English verse. Within space limitations set at present by the small size +of our monthly sheaf, we shall be able to print poems longer, and of +more intimate and serious character, than the popular magazines can +afford to use. The test, limited by ever-fallible human judgment, is to +be quality alone; all forms, whether narrative, dramatic or lyric, will +be acceptable. We hope to offer our subscribers a place of refuge, a +green isle in the sea, where Beauty may plant her gardens, and Truth, +austere revealer of joy and sorrow, of hidden delights and despairs, may +follow her brave quest unafraid. + + + + + NOTES AND ANNOUNCEMENTS + +In order that the experiment of a magazine of verse may have a fair +trial, over one hundred subscriptions of fifty dollars annually for five +years have been promised by the ladies and gentlemen listed below. In +addition, nearly twenty direct contributions of smaller sums have been +sent or promised. To all these lovers of the art the editors would +express their grateful appreciation. + + Mr. H. C. Chatfield-Taylor + Mr. Howard Shaw + Mr. Arthur T. Aldis + Mr. Edwin S. Fechheimer + Mrs. Charles H. Hamill + [B]Mr. D. H. Burnham + Mrs. Emmons Blaine (2) + Mr. Wm. S. Monroe + Mr. E. A. Bancroft + Mrs. Burton Hanson + Mr. John M. Ewen + Mr. C. L. Hutchinson + Mrs. Wm. Vaughan Moody + Hon. Wm. J. Calhoun + {Miss Anna Morgan + {Mrs. Edward A. Leicht + Mrs. Louis Betts + Mr. Ralph Cudney + Mrs. George Bullen + Mrs. P. A. Valentine + Mr. P. A. Valentine + Mr. Charles R. Crane + Mr. Frederick Sargent + Mrs. Frank G. Logan + Dr. F. W. Gunsaulus + Mrs. Emma B. Hodge + Mr. Wallace Heckman + Mr. Edward B. Butler (2) + Miss Elizabeth Ross + Mrs. Bryan Lathrop + Mr. Martin A. Ryerson + Mrs. La Verne Noyes + Mrs. E. Norman Scott (2) + Mr. Wm. O. Goodman + Mrs. Charles Hitchcock + Hon. John Barton Payne + Mr. Thomas D. Jones + Mr. H. H. Kohlsaat + Mr. Andrew M. Lawrence + Miss Juliet Goodrich + Mr. Henry H. Walker + Mr. Charles Deering + Mr. Jas. Harvey Peirce + Mr. Charles L. Freer + Mrs. W. F. Dummer + Mr. Jas. P. Whedon + Mr. Arthur Heun + Mr. Edward F. Carry + Mrs. George M. Pullman + Mr. Cyrus H. McCormick (2) + Mr. F. Stuyvesant Peabody + Mrs. F. S. Winston + Mr. J. J. Glessner + {Mr. C. C. Curtiss + {Mrs. Hermon B. Butler + Mr. Will H. Lyford + Mr. Horace S. Oakley + Mr. Eames Mac Veagh + Mrs. K. M. H. Besly + Mr. Charles G. Dawes + Mr. Clarence Buckingham + Mrs. Potter Palmer + Mr. Owen F. Aldis + Mr. Albert B. Dick + Mr. Albert H. Loeb + The Misses Skinner + Mr. Potter Palmer + Miss Mary Rozet Smith + Misses Alice E. and Margaret D. Moran + {Mrs. James B. Waller + {Mr. John Borden + Mr. Victor F. Lawson + {Mrs. H. M. Wilmarth + {Mrs. Norman F. Thompson + {Mrs. William Blair + {Mrs. Clarence I. Peck + Mr. Clarence M. Woolley + Mr. Edward P. Russell + Mrs. Frank O. Lowden + Mr. John S. Miller + Miss Helen Louise Birch + Nine members of the Fortnightly + Six members of the Friday Club + Seven members of the Chicago Woman's Club + Mr. William L. Brown + Mr. Rufus G. Dawes + Mr. Gilbert E. Porter + Mr. Alfred L. Baker + Mr. George A. McKinlock + Mr. John S. Field + Mrs. Samuel Insull + Mr. William T. Fenton + Mr. A. G. Becker + Mr. Honoré Palmer + Mr. John J. Mitchell + Mrs. F. A. Hardy + Mr. Morton D. Hull + Mr. E. F. Ripley + Mr. Ernest MacDonald Bowman + Mr. John A. Kruse + Mr. Frederic C. Bartlett + Mr. Franklin H. Head + Mrs. Wm. R. Linn + +[Footnote B: _Deceased._] + + * * * * * + +Through the generosity of five gentlemen, _Poetry_ will 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, _Poetry_ during 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 lamentable death 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 in _Poetry_. +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 of _Poetry_ will 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 London _Poetry Review_, in its +August number, introduced her with a group of lyrics which were +criticized with some asperity in the _New Age_ and 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. + + * * * * * + +_Poetry_ will 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 title _Poetry_, + 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 COMPANY + PRINTERS CHICAGO + + + + + Poetry VOL. I + A Magazine of Verse NO. 2 + + + NOVEMBER, 1912 + + + + + THE PIPER + + George Borrow in his _Lavengro_ + Tells us of a Welshman, who + By some excess of mother-wit + Framed a harp and played on it, + Built a ship and sailed to sea, + And steered it home to melody + Of his own making. I, indeed, + Might write for Everyman to read + A thaumalogue of wonderment + More wonderful, but rest content + With celebrating one I knew + Who 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 breath + Is 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 lament + For blood and spirit vainly spent; + And so on, thro' the varying scale + Of passion that the western Gael + Knows, and by miracle of art + Draws to the chanter from the heart + Like water from a hidden spring, + To leap or murmur, weep or sing. + + I see him now, a little man + In proper black, whey-bearded, wan, + With eyes that scan the eastern hills + Thro' thick, gold-rimmèd spectacles. + His hand is on the chanter. Lo, + The hidden spring begins to flow + In waves of magic. (He is dead + These seven years, but bend your head + And listen.) Rising from the clay + The Master plays _The Ring of Day_. + It mounts and falls and floats away + Over the sky-line ... then is gone + Into the silence of the dawn! + + _Joseph Campbell_ + + + + + 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 see + The April that his spirit bathed in! Birds + Are singing in the orchard, and the grass + That soon will cover him is growing green. + The daisies whiten on the emerald hills, + And the immortal magic that he loved + Wakens again--and he has fallen asleep." + Another said: "Last night I saw the moon + Like a tremendous lantern shine in heaven, + And I could only think of him--and sob. + For I remembered evenings wonderful + When he was faint with Life's sad loveliness, + And watched the silver ribbons wandering far + Along 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 rain + When he would sit and listen to the sound + As 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 bees + That boomed across the meadows. He was glad + At dawn or sundown; glad when Autumn came + With 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 blowing + With 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 known + What sunlight meant!... Yea, even as they grieved + For 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 being + Whom God had snatched from penury and pain + To 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 eternity + I 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 flower + For 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 sight + I 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_ + + + + + [Greek: CHORIKOS] + + The ancient songs + Pass deathward mournfully. + + Cold lips that sing no more, and withered wreaths, + Regretful eyes, and drooping breasts and wings-- + Symbols of ancient songs + Mournfully passing + Down to the great white surges, + Watched of none + Save the frail sea-birds + And the lithe pale girls, + Daughters of Okeanos. + + And the songs pass + From the green land + Which lies upon the waves as a leaf + On 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 lands + That she keeps for us all, + That she wrought for us all for sleep + In 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 old + And the hills that we loved and the meads, + And we turn from the fiery day, + And the lips that were over-sweet; + For silently + Brushing the fields with red-shod feet, + With purple robe + Searing the flowers as with a sudden flame, + Death, + Thou hast come upon us. + + And of all the ancient songs + Passing to the swallow-blue halls + By the dark streams of Persephone, + This only remains: + That in the end we turn to thee, + Death, + That we turn to thee, singing + One last song. + + O Death, + Thou art an healing wind + That blowest over white flowers + A-tremble with dew; + Thou art a wind flowing + Over 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 one + Satiate 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 poppies + Which in thy garden alone + Softly 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 us + Flowers from thy thin cold hands, + And, smiling as a chaste woman + Knowing love in her heart, + Thou sealest our eyes + And the illimitable quietude + Comes gently upon us. + + _Richard Aldington_ + + + + + TO A GREEK MARBLE + + [Greek: 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 solitudes + Of our loves in Phrygia, + The far ecstasy of burning noons + When the fragile pipes + Ceased in the cypress shade, + And the brown fingers of the shepherd + Moved over slim shoulders; + And only the cicada sang. + + I have told thee of the hills + And the lisp of reeds + And the sun upon thy breasts, + + And thou hearest me not, + [Greek: 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 reeds + And the dark clouds + Which the wind of the upper air + Tore like the green leafy boughs + Of the divers-hued trees of late summer; + But though I greatly delight + In these and the water-lilies, + That which sets me nighest to weeping + Is the rose and white color of the smooth flag-stones, + And the pale yellow grasses + Among them. + + _Richard Aldington_ + + + + + 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 five + sweet notes a bird, + And thrice my heart leaped up at the sound I thought + thou 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 more + Thy 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 up + From 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 PLACE + + Cold may lie the day, + And bare of grace; + At night I slip away + To the Singing Place. + + A border of mist and doubt + Before the gate, + And the Dancing Stars grow still + As hushed I wait. + Then faint and far away + I catch the beat + In broken rhythm and rhyme + Of joyous feet,-- + Lifting waves of sound + That will rise and swell + (If the prying eyes of thought + Break not the spell), + Rise and swell and retreat + And fall and flee, + As over the edge of sleep + They beckon me. + And I wait as the seaweed waits + For the lifting tide; + To ask would be to awake,-- + To be denied. + I cloud my eyes in the mist + That veils the hem,-- + And then with a rush I am past,-- + I am Theirs, and of Them! + And the pulsing chant swells up + To touch the sky, + And the song is joy, is life, + And the song am I! + The thunderous music peals + Around, o'erhead-- + The dead would awake to hear + If there were dead; + But the life of the throbbing Sun + Is in the song, + And we weave the world anew, + And the Singing Throng + Fill every corner of space-- + + Over the edge of sleep + I bring but a trace + Of the chants that pulse and sweep + In the Singing Place. + + _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 find + It is my breast I beat, O bond and blind! + + _Lily A. Long_ + + + + + NOGI + + Great soldier of the fighting clan, + Across Port Arthur's frowning face of stone + You drew the battle sword of old Japan, + And struck the White Tsar from his Asian throne. + + Once more the samurai sword + Struck to the carved hilt in your loyal hand, + That not alone your heaven-descended lord + Should meanly wander in the spirit land. + + Your own proud way, O eastern star, + Grandly at last you followed. Out it leads + To that high heaven where all the heroes are, + Lovers of death for causes and for creeds. + + _Harriet Monroe_ + + + + + THE JESTER + + I have known great gold Sorrows: + Majestic Griefs shall serve me watchfully + Through the slow-pacing morrows: + I have knelt hopeless where sea-echoing + Dim endless voices cried of suffering + Vibrant and far in broken litany: + Where white magnolia and tuberose hauntingly + Pulsed their regretful sweets along the air-- + All things most tragical, most fair, + Have still encompassed me ... + + I dance where in the screaming market-place + The 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 forget + That grief shall rise and set + With the unchanging, unforgetting suns + Of their relentless morrows? + + _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 curled + A 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 him + From the brief wealth of pay-night, and went in + To the cheap laughter and the tawdry thoughts + Thrown on the screen; in to the seeking hand + Covered by darkness, to the luring voice + Of Horror, boy-masked, whispering of rings, + Of silks, of feathers, bought--so cheap!--with just + Their slender starved child-bodies, palpitant + For 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, within + The 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 mask + That earned his comforts--and they gave to him! + + But ah, the little painted, wistful faces + Questioning Life for Joy! + + _Margaret Widdemer_ + + + [Illustration] + + + + + REVIEWS AND COMMENTS + + MOODY'S POEMS + +_The Poems and Plays of William Vaughn Moody_ will 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 his canvas. In his earlier poetry, both the symbolic +_Masque of Judgment_ and 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 the _Masque 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-- + +with all its passionate pageantry of life and love. Like his own angel +he is + + a truant still + While battle rages round the heart of God. + +The lamps are spent at the end of judgment day, + + and naked from their seats + The stars arise with lifted hands, and wait. + +This conflict between love and doubt is the motive also of _Gloucester +Moors_, _The Daguerreotype_, _Old Pourquoi_--those three noblest, +perhaps, of the present-day poems--also of _The Brute_ and _The +Menagerie_, and of that fine poem manqué, the _Ode in Time of +Hesitation_. _The Fie-Bringer_ is an effort at another +theme--redemption, light after darkness. But it is not so spontaneous as +the _Masque_; though simpler, clearer, more dramatic in form, it is +more deliberate and intellectual, and not so star-lit with memorable +lines. _The Fire-Bringer_ is 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-act _Death of +Eve_ and _The Fountain_, or the less perfectly achieved _I 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 Fountain_ is 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 of _The 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._ + + + BOHEMIAN POETRY + + _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's +_Songs of Silesia_ have the strength of a voice coming _de 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;-- + +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-- + +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. + +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. + +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_ + + + + + "THE MUSIC OF THE HUMAN HEART" + +This title-phrase has not been plucked from the spacious lawn of +_Bartlett'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's _Letters 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 several living, 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 of _Bereaved_ and _His Mother_. + + + + + 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 love + I have known nothing of. + + The little arms that slowly, slowly loosed + Their pressure round your neck; the hands you used + To kiss. Such arms, such hands I never knew. + May I not weep with you. + + Fain would I be of service, say something + Between the tears, that would be comforting; + But ah! so sadder than yourselves am I, + Who have no child to die. + + + + + HIS MOTHER + + Dead! my wayward boy--my own-- + Not _the Law's_, but mine; the good + God'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 hot + Blood upon your own! + + I come not with downward eyes, + To plead for him shamedly: + God did not apologize + When He gave the boy to me. + + Simply, I make ready now + For His verdict. You prepare-- + You have killed us both--and how + Will you face us There! + + _E. W._ + + + + + THE OPEN DOOR + +Fears have been expressed by a number of friendly critics that POETRY +may 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. + + + + + NOTES AND ANNOUNCEMENTS + +Mr. Ezra Pound has consented to act as foreign correspondent of POETRY, +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 +was _The Gilly of Christ_; a later volume including these is _The +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_, and _Youth 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 in +_vers 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 of POETRY accredited Mr. Ezra Pound's _Provenca_ to the +Houghton-Mifflin Co. This was an error; Small, Maynard & Co. are Mr. +Pound's American publishers. + + + + + BOOKS RECEIVED + + _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. + + + + + Poetry VOL. I + A Magazine of Verse NO. 3 + + + DECEMBER, 1912 + + + + 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 SHORE + + Dance there upon the shore; + What need have you to care + For wind or water's roar? + And tumble out your hair + That the salt drops have wet; + Being young you have not known + The fool's triumph, nor yet + Love lost as soon as won. + And he, the best warrior, dead + And all the sheaves to bind! + What need that you should dread + The monstrous crying of wind? + + _William Butler Yeats_ + + + + + FALLEN MAJESTY + + Although crowds gathered once if she but showed her face + And even old men's eyes grew dim, this hand alone, + Like some last courtier at a gipsy camping place + Babbling 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 crowd + Will gather and not know that through its very street + Once walked a thing that seemed, as it were, a burning cloud. + + _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 said + I 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 find + Nothing but darkness overhead. + + I sat as silent as a stone + And knew, though she'd not said a word, + That even the best of love must die, + And had been savagely undone + Were it not that love, upon the cry + Of a most ridiculous little bird, + Threw up in the air his marvellous moon. + + _William Butler Yeats_ + + + + + THE REALISTS + + Hope that you may understand. + What can books, of men that wive + In a dragon-guarded land; + Paintings of the dolphin drawn; + Sea nymphs, in their pearly waggons, + Do but wake the hope to live + That had gone + With the dragons. + + _William Butler Yeats_ + + + + + SANGAR + + TO LINCOLN STEFFENS + + Somewhere I read a strange, old, rusty tale + Smelling 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 unceasingly + Facets of cruel splendor. And the strong + Harried the weak ... + Long past, long past, praise God + In 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 morion + And his scarred glaive. + On the boy's helm a glove + Of the Duke's daughter-- + In his eyes splendor of love + And slaughter. + + Hideous the Hun advances + Like a sea-tide on sand; + Unyielding, the haughty lances + Make dauntless stand. + And ever amid the clangor, + Butchering Hun and Hun, + With sorrowful face rides Sangar + And his son.... + + Broken is the wild invader + (Sullied, the whole world's fountains); + They have penned the murderous raider + With his back to the mountains. + Yet tho' what had been mead + Is 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 surcease + In 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 hands + Has 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 died + And was lustful yet; + (On his bent helm a glove + Of the Duke's daughter, + In his eyes splendor of love + And 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 then + Screaming, red, the boy ran + Straight at the foe, and again + Hell 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 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 voice + Told not to Paradise a sorrow's tale: + As other birds rejoice + He sang, a brother to the nightingale. + + By twilight on her breast + He 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 death + That gave her heart to dust, his own to pain ... + + In Eden desolate + The seraph heard his lonely music swoon, + As now, reiterate; + "Ah gone! long gone! shall not I find thee soon?" + + _George Sterling_ + + + + + AT THE GRAND CAÑON + + Thou settest splendors in my sight, O Lord! + It seems as tho' a deep-hued sunset falls + Forever on these Cyclopean walls-- + These battlements where Titan hosts have warred, + And hewn the world with devastating sword, + And shook with trumpets the eternal halls + Where seraphim lay hid by bloody palls + And only Hell and Silence were adored. + + Lo! the abyss wherein great Satan's wings + Might gender tempests, and his dragons' breath + Fume up in pestilence. Beneath the sun + Or starry outposts on terrestrial things, + Is no such testimony unto Death + Nor altars builded to Oblivion. + + _George Sterling_ + + + + + KINDRED + + Musing, between the sunset and the dark, + As Twilight in unhesitating hands + Bore from the faint horizon's underlands, + Silvern and chill, the moon's phantasmal ark, + I heard the sea, and far away could mark + Where that unalterable waste expands + In 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 Naught + And watch our isolated sun decline-- + Sad for his evanescence, even as I? + + _George Sterling_ + + + + + 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 fell + May be washed away in one swifter hour of flame. + Thus it was that some slant of sunset + In 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 melted + With 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 wine + Above, 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 flight + Of 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 WINDS + + O winds that pass uncomforted + Through all the peacefulness of spring, + And tell the trees your sorrowing, + That they must moan till ye are fled! + + Think ye the Tyrian distance holds + The crystal of unquestioned sleep? + That those forgetful purples keep + No veiled, contentious greens and golds? + + Half with communicated grief, + Half that they are not free to pass + With you across the flickering grass, + Mourns each vibrating bough and leaf. + + And I, with soul disquieted, + Shall find within the haunted spring + No peace, till your strange sorrowing + Is down the Tyrian distance fled. + + _Clark Ashton Smith_ + + + + + AMERICA + + _I hear America singing_ ... + And the great prophet passed, + Serene, clear and untroubled + Into the silence vast. + + When will the master-poet + Rise, with vision strong, + To mold her manifold music + Into 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_ + + + + + 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 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_ + + + + + NODES + + The endless, foolish merriment of stars + Beside the pale cold sorrow of the moon, + Is like the wayward noises of the world + Beside my heart's uplifted silent tune. + + The little broken glitter of the waves + Beside the golden sun's intense white blaze, + Is like the idle chatter of the crowd + Beside my heart's unwearied song of praise. + + The sun and all the planets in the sky + Beside the sacred wonder of dim space, + Are notes upon a broken, tarnished lute + That God will someday mend and put in place. + + And space, beside the little secret joy + Of 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 stars + Beside the cold pale sorrow of the moon, + My little song, my little joy, my praise, + Beside God's ancient, everlasting rune. + + _Alice Corbin_ + + + + + POEMS + + + 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_ + + + + + EDITORIAL COMMENT + + A PERFECT RETURN + + +It 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 of _vers libre_ in +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 translated _Leaves of Grass_ +into 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 regard _La Nouvelle Revue Francaise_, +_La Renaissance Contemporaine_, and _L'Effort Libre_ have 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, with _Le Livre d'Amour_; Philéas +Lebesgue, the appearance in collected form of whose _Les Servitudes_ is +awaited with keen interest; and finally, Jean Richard Bloch, editor of +_L'Effort Libre_, whose prose, for example in his book of tales entitled +_Levy_, is said to be directly rooted in Whitmanism. + +"In Germany, too, the rolling intonations of the singer of democracy +have awakened echoes. The _Moderne Weltdichtung_ has announced itself, +with Whitman as guide, and such apostles as Wilhelm Schmidtbonn, in +_Lobegesang des Lebens_, and Ernst Lissauer in _Der Acker_ and _Der +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 +so original 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 modern _vers libre_ is 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._ + + + + + TAGORE'S POEMS + +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 in _vers 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 in _mens 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_ + + + + + REVIEWS + + _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 sheaf _Tares_, to _The 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 the _Last Fairy_ to William +Ernest Henley, and of everything, from _Death and Justice_ to the +_Orchard 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 is _The Adventures of +Young Maverick_, by Hervey White, who runs a printing press at +Woodstock, N. Y., and bravely publishes _The Wild Hawk_, his own little +magazine. The poem has as many moods as _Don 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: + + Young Maverick in the upland pastures lay + Woven as in the grass, while star-like flowers, + Shaking their petals down in sweet array + Dappled his flanks with gentle breathless showers. + The thread green stems, tangled in bending bowers, + Their pollen plumes of dust closed over him, + Enwoofing through the drowse of summer hours, + The pattern of his body, head and limb; + His color of pale gold glowed as with sunshine dim. + +The spirit of the West is in this poem, its freedom, spaciousness, +strong sunshine; also its careless good humor and half sardonic fun. The +race between the horse and the Mexican boy is as swift, vivid and +rhythmical as a mountain stream; and the Mexican family, even to the fat +old Gregorio, are characterized to the life, with a sympathy only too +rare among writers of the Anglo-Saxon race. + +Certain other characterizations are equally incisive, this for example: + + Sometimes I peep into a modern poet + Like Arthur Symons, vaguely beautiful, + Who loves but love, not caring who shall know it; + I wonder that he never finds it dull. + +Mr. White is so profoundly a democrat, and so wholeheartedly a poet of +the broad, level average American people, that both social and artistic +theories sit very lightly upon him. He achieves beauty as by chance now +and then, because he can not help it, but always he achieves a warm +vitality, the persuasive illusion of life. + + * * * * * + +_The Iscariot_, by Eden Phillpotts (John Lane), is the ingenious effort +of a theorist in human nature to unroll the convolutions of the immortal +traitor's soul. And it is as ineffectual as any such effort must be to +remould characters long fixed in literary or historic tradition. In the +art of the world Judas is Judas; anyone who tries to make him over into +a pattern of misguided loyalty has his labor for his pains. + +The blank verse in which the monologue is uttered is accurately measured +and sufficiently sonorous. + + _H. M._ + + + + +_Interpretations: A Book of First Poems_, by Zoë Akins (Mitchell +Kennerley). + +The poems in this volume are creditable in texture, revealing a +conscious sense of artistic workmanship which it is a pleasure to find +in a book of first poems by a young American. A certain rhythmic +monotony may be mentioned as an impression gained from a consecutive +reading, and a prevailing twilight mood, united, in the longer poems, +with a vein of the emotionally feminine. + +Two short lyrics, however, _I Am the Wind_ and _The Tragedienne_, stand +apart in isolated perfection, even as the two Greek columns in the +ruined theater at Arles; an impression recalled by the opening stanza of +_The Tragedienne_: + + Upon a hill in Thessaly + Stand broken columns in a line + About a cold forgotten shrine + Beneath a moon in Thessaly. + +This is the first of the monthly volumes of poetry to be issued by Mr. +Kennerley. It awakens pleasant anticipation of those to follow. + + +_Lyrical Poems_, By Lucy Lyttelton. (Thomas B. Mosher.) + +The twilight mood also prevails in the poems of Lucy Lyttelton, although +the crest of a fine modern impulse may be traced in _A Vision_, _The +Japanese Widow_, _The Black Madonna_, and _A Song of Revolution_. + + "Where is Owen Griffiths?" Broken and alone + Crushed he lies in darkness beneath Festiniog stone. + "Bring his broken body before me to the throne + For a crown. + + "Oftentimes in secret in prayer he came to me, + Now to men and angels I know him openly. + I that was beside him when he came to die + Fathoms down. + + "And, Evan Jones, stand forward, whose life was shut in gloom, + And a narrow grave they gave you 'twixt marble tomb and tomb. + But now the great that trod you shall give you elbow room + And renown." + +These poems unite delicacy and strength. They convince us of sincerity +and intensity of vision. + + _A. C. H._ + + + + + NOTES AND ANNOUNCEMENTS. + +It is hardly necessary to introduce to the lovers of lyric and dramatic +verse Mr. William Butler Yeats, who honors the Christmas number of +_Poetry_ by his presence. A score or more of years have passed since his +voice, perfect in quality, began to speak and sing in high loyalty to +the beauty of poetic art, especially the ancient poetic art of his own +Irish people. His influence, reinforced by the prompt allegiance of Lady +Gregory, Mr. Douglass Hyde, the late J. M. Synge, and many other Irish +men and women of letters, has sufficed to lift the beautiful old Gaelic +literature out of the obscurity of merely local recognition into a +position of international importance. This fact alone is a sufficient +acknowledgment of Mr. Yeats' genius, and of the enthusiasm which his +leadership has inspired among the thinkers and singers of his race. + +Mr. George Sterling, of Carmel-by-the-Sea, California, is well known to +American readers of poetry through his two books of verse, _Wine of +Wizardry_ and _The House of Orchids_. + +Mr. Clark Ashton Smith, also of California, is a youth whose talent has +been acclaimed quite recently by a few newspapers of his own state, and +recognized by one or two eastern publications. + +Mr. John Reed, of New York, and Alice Corbin, the wife of William P. +Henderson, the Chicago painter, are Americans. The latter has +contributed verse and prose to various magazines. The former is a young +journalist, born in 1887, who has published little verse as yet. + +Rabindranath Tagore, the poet of Bengal, is sufficiently introduced by +Mr. Pound's article. + + + + + BOOKS RECEIVED + + _The Vaunt of Man and Other Poems_, by William Ellery Leonard. + B. W. Huebsch. + _Romance, Vision and Satire_: English Alliterative Poems of + the XIV Century, Newly Rendered in the Original Metres, + by Jessie L. Weston. Houghton Mifflin Co. + _Etain The Beloved_, by James H. Cousins. Maunsel & Co. + _Uriel and Other Poems_, by Percy MacKaye. Houghton Mifflin Co. + _The Unconquered Air_, by Florence Earle Coates. + Houghton Mifflin Co. + _A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass_, by Amy Lowell. + Houghton Mifflin Co. + _The Lure of the Sea_, by J. E. Patterson. George H. Doran Co. + _The Roadside Fire_, by Amelia Josephine Burr. George H. Doran Co. + _By the Way._ Verses, Fragments and Notes, by William Allingham. + Arranged by Helen Allingham. Longmans, Green & Co. + _Gabriel_, A Pageant of Vigil, by Isabelle Howe Fiske. + Thomas B. Mosher. + _Pilgrimage to Haunts of Browning_, by Pauline Leavens. + The Bowrons, Chicago. + _The Wind on the Heath_, Ballads and Lyrics, by May Byron. + George H. Doran. + _Valley Song and Verse_, by William Hutcheson. + Fraser, Asher & Co. + _The Queen of Orplede_, by Charles Wharton Stork. Elkin Mathews. + _Pocahontas_, A Pageant, by Margaret Ullman. The Poet Lore Co. + _Poems_, by Robert Underwood Johnson. The Century Co. + _Songs Before Birth_, Isabelle Howe Fiske. Thomas B. Mosher. + _Book Titles From Shakespeare_, by Volney Streamer. + Thomas B. Mosher. + _A Bunch of Blossoms_, Little Verses for Little Children, + by E. Gordon Browne. Longmans, Green & Co. + _June on the Miami_, by William Henry Venable. Stewart & Kidd. + _The Tragedy of Etarre_, A Poem, by Rhys Carpenter. + Sturgis & Walton Co. + _In Other Words_, by Franklin P. Adams. Doubleday, Page & Co. + _Verses and Sonnets_, by Julia Stockton Dinsmore. + Doubleday, Page & Co. + _Anna Marcella's Book of Verses_, by Cyrenus Cole. + Printed for Personal Distribution. + _Atala_, An American Idyl, by Anna Olcott Commelin. + E. P. Dutton & Co. + _Spring in Tuscany_, an Authology. Thos. B. Mosher. + + + + + Poetry VOL. I + A Magazine of Verse NO. 4 + + + JANUARY, 1913 + + + + + GENERAL WILLIAM BOOTH ENTERS INTO HEAVEN + + (_To be sung to the tune of_ THE BLOOD OF THE LAMB _with indicated + instruments_.) + + [Sidenote: Bass drums] + + Booth led boldly with his big bass drum. + _Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?_ + The saints smiled gravely, and they said, "He's come," + _Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?_ + Walking lepers followed, rank on rank, + Lurching bravos from the ditches dank, + Drabs from the alleyways and drug-fiends pale-- + Minds still passion-ridden, soul-powers frail! + Vermin-eaten saints with mouldy breath, + Unwashed legions with the ways of death-- + _Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?_ + + Every slum had sent its half-a-score + The round world over--Booth had groaned for more. + Every banner that the wide world flies + + [Sidenote: Banjo] + + Bloomed with glory and transcendent dyes. + Big-voiced lasses made their banjos bang! + Tranced, fanatical, they shrieked and sang, + _Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?_ + Hallelujah! It was queer to see + Bull-necked convicts with that land make free! + Loons with bazoos blowing blare, blare, blare-- + On, on, upward through the golden air. + _Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?_ + + [Sidenote: Bass drums slower and softer] + + Booth died blind, and still by faith he trod, + Eyes still dazzled by the ways of God. + Booth led boldly and he looked the chief: + Eagle countenance in sharp relief, + Beard a-flying, air of high command + Unabated in that holy land. + + [Sidenote: Flutes] + + Jesus came from out the Court-House door, + Stretched his hands above the passing poor. + Booth saw not, but led his queer ones there + Round and round the mighty Court-House square. + Yet in an instant all that blear review + Marched on spotless, clad in raiment new. + The lame were straightened, withered limbs uncurled + And blind eyes opened on a new sweet world. + + [Sidenote: Bass drums louder and faster] + + Drabs and vixens in a flash made whole! + Gone was the weasel-head, the snout, the jowl; + Sages and sibyls now, and athletes clean. + Rulers of empires, and of forests green! + + [Sidenote: Grand Chorus--tambourines--all instruments in full blast] + + The hosts were sandalled and their wings were fire-- + _Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?_ + But their noise played havoc with the angel-choir. + _Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?_ + Oh, shout Salvation! it was good to see + Kings and princes by the Lamb set free. + The banjos rattled, and the tambourines + Jing-jing-jingled in the hands of queens! + + [Sidenote: Reverently sung--no instruments] + + And when Booth halted by the curb for prayer + He saw his Master through the flag-filled air. + Christ came gently with a robe and crown + For Booth the soldier while the throng knelt down. + He saw King Jesus--they were face to face, + And he knelt a-weeping in that holy place. + _Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?_ + + _Nicholas Vachel Lindsay_ + + + + + WASTE LAND + + Briar and fennel and chincapin, + And rue and ragweed everywhere; + The field seemed sick as a soul with sin, + Or dead of an old despair, + Born of an ancient care. + + The cricket's cry and the locust's whirr, + And the note of a bird's distress, + With the rasping sound of the grasshopper, + Clung to the loneliness + Like burrs to a trailing dress. + + So sad the field, so waste the ground, + So curst with an old despair, + A woodchuck's burrow, a blind mole's mound, + And a chipmunk's stony lair, + Seemed more than it could bear. + + So lonely, too, so more than sad, + So droning-lone with bees-- + I wondered what more could Nature add + To the sum of its miseries ... + And _then_--I saw the trees. + + Skeletons gaunt that gnarled the place, + Twisted and torn they rose-- + The tortured bones of a perished race + Of monsters no mortal knows, + They startled the mind's repose. + + And a man stood there, as still as moss, + A lichen form that stared; + With an old blind hound that, at a loss, + Forever around him fared + With a snarling fang half bared. + + I looked at the man; I saw him plain; + Like a dead weed, gray and wan, + Or a breath of dust. I looked again-- + And man and dog were gone, + Like wisps of the graying dawn.... + + Were they a part of the grim death there-- + Ragweed, fennel, and rue? + Or forms of the mind, an old despair, + That there into semblance grew + Out of the grief I knew? + + _Madison Cawein_ + + + + + MY LADY OF THE BEECHES + + Here among the beeches + Winds and wild perfume, + That the twilight pleaches + Into gleam and gloom, + Build for her a room. + + Her, whose Beauty cometh, + Misty as the morn, + When the wild bee hummeth, + At its honey-horn, + In the wayside thorn. + + As the wood grows dimmer, + With the drowsy night, + Like a moonbeam glimmer + Here she walks in white, + With a firefly-light. + + Moths around her flitting, + Like a moth she goes; + Here a moment sitting + By this wilding rose, + With my heart's repose. + + Every bough that dances + Has assumed the grace + Of her form: and Fancies, + Flashed from eye and face, + Brood about the place. + + And the water, shaken + In its plunge and poise, + To itself has taken + Quiet of her voice, + And restrains its joys. + + Would that these could tell me + What and whence she is; + She, who doth enspell me, + Fill my soul with bliss + Of her spirit kiss. + + Though the heart beseech her, + And the soul implore, + Who is it may reach her-- + Safe behind the door + Of all woodland lore? + + _Madison Cawein_ + + + + + THE WAYFARERS + + Earth, I dare not cling to thee + Lest I should lose my precious soul. + + _'Tis not more wondrous than the fluff + Within the milkweed's autumn boll._ + + Earth, shall my sacred essences + But sink into thy senseless dust? + + _The springtide takes its way with them-- + And blossoms blow as blossoms must._ + + Earth, I swear with solemn vow, + I feel a greatness in my breath! + + _The grass-seed hath its dream of God, + Its visioning of life and death._ + + _Anita Fitch_ + + + + + _LES CRUELS AMOUREUX_ + + Two lovers wakened in their tombs-- + They had been dead a hundred years-- + And in the _langue_ of old Provence + They spoke of ancient tears. + + "_M'amour_," she called, "I've pardoned you;" + (How sad her dreaming seemed to be!) + "When I had kissed your dead face once + Love's sweet returned to me." + + "_M'amour_," he called, "it was too late." + (How dreary seemed his ghostly sighs!) + "Blessed the soul that love forgives," + He whispered, "ere it dies." + + And then they turned again and slept + With must and mold in ancient way; + And so they'll sleep and wake, 'tis told, + Until the Judgment Day. + + ENVOI + + _O damoiseau et damoiselle_, + Guard ye your loving while ye live! + Sin not against love's sacred flame-- + While yet ye may, forgive. + + _Anita Fitch_ + + + + + LOVE-SONGS OF THE OPEN ROAD + + MORNING + + The morning wind is wooing me; her lips have swept my brow. + Was ever dawn so sweet before? the land so fair as now? + The wanderlust is luring to wherever roads may lead, + While yet the dew is on the hedge. So how can I but heed? + + The forest whispers of its shades; of haunts where we have been,-- + And where may friends be better made than under God's green inn? + Your mouth is warm and laughing and your voice is calling low, + While yet the dew is on the hedge. So how can I but go? + + NOON + + The bees are humming, humming in the clover; + The bobolink is singing in the rye; + The brook is purling, purling in the valley, + And the river's laughing, radiant, to the sky! + + The buttercups are nodding in the sunlight; + The winds are whispering, whispering to the pine; + The joy of June has found me; as an aureole it's crowned me + Because, oh best belovèd, you are mine! + + NIGHT + + In Arcady by moonlight, + (Where only lovers go), + There is a pool where only + The fairest roses grow. + + Why are the moonlit roses + So sweet beyond compare? + Among their purple shadows + My love is waiting there. + + * * * * * + + To Arcady by moonlight + The roads are open wide, + But only joy can enter + And only joy abide. + + There is the peace unending + That perfect faith can know-- + In Arcady by moonlight, + Where only lovers go. + + _Kendall Banning_ + + + + + SYMPATHY + + As one within a moated tower, + I lived my life alone; + And dreamed not other granges' dower, + Nor ways unlike mine own. + I thought I loved. But all alone + As one within a moated tower + I lived. Nor truly knew + One other mortal fortune's hour. + As one within a moated tower, + One fate alone I knew. + Who hears afar the break of day + Before the silvered air + Reveals her hooded presence gray, + And she, herself, is there? + I know not how, but now I see + The road, the plain, the pluming tree, + The carter on the wain. + On my horizon wakes a star. + The distant hillsides wrinkled far + Fold many hearts' domain. + On one the fire-worn forests sweep, + Above a purple mountain-keep + And soar to domes of snow. + One heart has swarded fountains deep + Where water-lilies blow: + And one, a cheerful house and yard, + With curtains at the pane, + Board-walks down lawns all clover-starred, + And full-fold fields of grain. + As one within a moated tower + I lived my life alone; + And dreamed not other granges' dower + Nor ways unlike mine own. + But now the salt-chased seas uncurled + And mountains trooped with pine + Are mine. I look on all the world + And all the world is mine. + + _Edith Wyatt_ + + + + + A SONG OF HAPPINESS + + Ah Happiness: + Who called you "Earandel"? + (Winter-star, I think, that is); + And who can tell the lovely curve + By which you seem to come, then swerve + Before you reach the middle-earth? + And who is there can hold your wing, + Or bind you in your mirth, + Or win you with a least caress, + Or tear, or kiss, or anything-- + Insensate happiness? + + Once I thought to have you + Fast there in a child: + All her heart she gave you, + Yet you would not stay. + Cruel, and careless, + Not half reconciled, + Pain you cannot bear; + When her yellow hair + Lay matted, every tress; + When those looks of hers, + Were no longer hers, + You went: in a day + She wept you all away. + + Once I thought to give + You, plighted, holily-- + No more fugitive, + Returning like the sea: + But they that share so well + Heaven must portion Hell + In their copartnery: + Care, ill fate, ill health, + Came we know not how + And broke our commonwealth. + Neither has you now. + + Some wait you on the road, + Some in an open door + Look for the face you show'd + Once there--no more. + You never wear the dress + You danced in yesterday; + Yet, seeming gone, you stay, + And come at no man's call: + Yet, laid for burial, + You lift up from the dead + Your laughing, spangled head. + + Yes, once I did pursue + You, unpursuable; + Loved, longed for, hoped for you-- + Blue-eyed and morning brow'd. + Ah, lovely happiness! + Now that I know you well, + I dare not speak aloud + Your fond name in a crowd; + Nor conjure you by night, + Nor pray at morning-light, + Nor count at all on you: + + But, at a stroke, a breath, + After the fear of death, + Or bent beneath a load; + Yes, ragged in the dress, + And houseless on the road, + I might surprise you there. + Yes: who of us shall say + When you will come, or where? + Ask children at their play, + The leaves upon the tree, + The ships upon the sea, + Or old men who survived, + And lived, and loved, and wived. + Ask sorrow to confess + Your sweet improvidence, + And prodigal expense + And cold economy, + Ah, lovely happiness! + + _Ernest Rhys_ + + + + + HELEN IS ILL + + When she is ill my laughter cowers; + An exile with a broken rhyme, + My head upon the breast of time, + I hear the heart-beat of the hours; + I close my eyes without a sigh; + The vision of her flutters by + As glints the light of Mary's eyes + Upon the lakes in Paradise. + + I seem to reach an olden town + And enter at the sunset gate; + And as the streets I hurry down, + I find the men are all elate, + As if an angel of the Lord + Had passed with dearest word and nod, + Remembered like a yearning chord + Of songs the people sing to God; + I come upon the sunrise gate-- + As silent as her listless room-- + There seven beggers sing and wait + And this the song that breaks the gloom: + + God a 'mercy is most kind; + She the fairest passed this way; + We the lowest were not blind; + God a 'mercy bless the day. + + _Roscoe W. Brink_ + + + + + VERSES, TRANSLATIONS, AND REFLECTIONS + FROM "THE ANTHOLOGY" + + + + + HERMES OF THE WAYS + + The hard sand breaks, + And the grains of it + Are clear as wine. + + Far off over the leagues of it, + The wind, + Playing on the wide shore, + Piles little ridges, + And the great waves + Break over it. + + But more than the many-foamed ways + Of the sea, + I know him + Of the triple path-ways, + Hermes, + Who awaiteth. + + Dubious, + Facing three ways, + Welcoming wayfarers, + He whom the sea-orchard + Shelters from the west, + From the east + Weathers sea-wind; + Fronts the great dunes. + + Wind rushes + Over the dunes, + And the coarse, salt-crusted grass + Answers. + + Heu, + It whips round my ankles! + + II + + Small is + This white stream, + Flowing below ground + From the poplar-shaded hill, + But the water is sweet. + + Apples on the small trees + Are hard, + Too small, + Too late ripened + By a desperate sun + That struggles through sea-mist. + + The boughs of the trees + Are twisted + By many bafflings; + Twisted are + The small-leafed boughs. + + But the shadow of them + Is not the shadow of the mast head + Nor of the torn sails. + + Hermes, Hermes, + The great sea foamed, + Gnashed its teeth about me; + But you have waited, + Where sea-grass tangles with + Shore-grass. + + _H. D._ + + + + + PRIAPUS + + _Keeper-of-Orchards_ + + I saw the first pear + As it fell. + The honey-seeking, golden-banded, + The yellow swarm + Was not more fleet than I, + (Spare us from loveliness!) + And I fell prostrate, + Crying, + Thou hast flayed us with thy blossoms; + Spare us the beauty + Of fruit-trees! + + The honey-seeking + Paused not, + The air thundered their song, + And I alone was prostrate. + + O rough-hewn + God of the orchard, + I bring thee an offering; + Do thou, alone unbeautiful + (Son of the god), + Spare us from loveliness. + + The fallen hazel-nuts, + Stripped late of their green sheaths, + The grapes, red-purple, + Their berries + Dripping with wine, + Pomegranates already broken, + And shrunken fig, + And quinces untouched, + I bring thee as offering. + + _H. D._ + + + + + EPIGRAM + + (_After the Greek_) + + The golden one is gone from the banquets; + She, beloved of Atimetus, + The swallow, the bright Homonoea: + Gone the dear chatterer; + Death succeeds Atimetus. + + _H. D._, + "_Imagiste_." + + + + + EDITORIAL COMMENT + + STATUS RERUM + + _London, December 10, 1912_ + +The state of things here in London is, as I see it, as follows: + +I find Mr. Yeats the only poet worthy of serious study. Mr. Yeats' work +is already a recognized classic and is part of the required reading in +the Sorbonne. There is no need of proclaiming him to the American +public. + +As to his English contemporaries, they are food, sometimes very good +food, for anthologies. There are a number of men who have written a +poem, or several poems, worth knowing and remembering, but they do not +much concern the young artist studying the art of poetry. + +The important work of the last twenty-five years has been done in Paris. +This work is little likely to gain a large audience in either America or +England, because of its tone and content. There has been no "man with a +message," but the work has been excellent and the method worthy of our +emulation. No other body of poets having so little necessity to speak +could have spoken so well as these modern Parisians and Flemings. + +There has been some imitation here of their manner and content. Any +donkey can imitate a man's manner. There has been little serious +consideration of their _method_. It requires an artist to analyze and +apply a method. + +Among the men of thirty here, Padraic Colum is the one whom we call most +certainly a poet, albeit he has written very little verse--and but a +small part of that is worthy of notice. He is fairly unconscious of such +words as "aesthetics," "technique" and "method." He is at his best in +_Garadh_, a translation from the Gaelic, beginning: + + O woman, shapely as a swan, + On your account I shall not die. + The men you've slain--a trivial clan-- + Were less than I: + +and in _A Drover_. He is bad whenever he shows a trace of reading. I +quote the opening of _A Drover_, as I think it shows "all Colum" better +than any passage he has written. I think no English-speaking writer now +living has had the luck to get so much of himself into twelve lines. + + To Meath of the pastures, + From wet hills by the sea, + Through Leitrim and Longford + Go my cattle and me. + + I hear in the darkness + Their slipping and breathing. + I name them the bye-ways + They're to pass without heeding. + + Then the wet, winding roads, + Brown bogs with black water; + And my thoughts on white ships + And the King o' Spain's daughter. + +I would rather talk about poetry with Ford Madox Hueffer than with any +man in London. Mr. Hueffer's beliefs about the art may be best explained +by saying that they are in diametric opposition to those of Mr. Yeats. + +Mr. Yeats has been subjective; believes in the glamour and associations +which hang near the words. "Works of art beget works of art." He has +much in common with the French symbolists. Mr. Hueffer believes in an +exact rendering of things. He would strip words of all "association" for +the sake of getting a precise meaning. He professes to prefer prose to +verse. You would find his origins in Gautier or in Flaubert. He is +objective. This school tends to lapse into description. The other tends +to lapse into sentiment. + +Mr. Yeats' method is, to my way of thinking, very dangerous, for +although he is the greatest of living poets who use English, and though +he has sung some of the moods of life immortally, his art has not +broadened much in scope during the past decade. His gifts to English art +are mostly negative; i. e., he has stripped English poetry of many of +its faults. His "followers" have come to nothing. Neither Synge, Lady +Gregory nor Colum can be called his followers, though he had much to do +with bringing them forth, yet nearly every man who writes English verse +seriously is in some way indebted to him. + +Mr. Hueffer has rarely "come off." His touch is so light and his +attitude so easy that there seems little likelihood of his ever being +taken seriously by anyone save a few specialists and a few of his +intimates. His last leaflet, _High Germany_, contains, however, three +poems from which one may learn his quality. They are not Victorian. I do +not expect many people to understand why I praise them. They are _The +Starling_, _In the Little Old Market-Place_ and _To All the Dead_. + +The youngest school here that has the nerve to call itself a school is +that of the _Imagistes_. To belong to a school does not in the least +mean that one writes poetry to a theory. One writes poetry when, where, +because, and as one feels like writing it. A school exists when two or +three young men agree, more or less, to call certain things good; when +they prefer such of their verses as have certain qualities to such of +their verses as do not have them. + +Space forbids me to set forth the program of the _Imagistes_ at length, +but one of their watchwords is Precision, and they are in opposition to +the numerous and unassembled writers who busy themselves with dull and +interminable effusions, and who seem to think that a man can write a +good long poem before he learns to write a good short one, or even +before he learns to produce a good single line. + +Among the very young men, there seems to be a gleam of hope in the work +of Richard Aldington, but it is too early to make predictions. + +There are a number of men whose names are too well known for it to seem +necessary to tell them over. America has already found their work in +volumes or anthologies. Hardy, Kipling, Maurice Hewlett, Binyon, Robert +Bridges, Sturge Moore, Henry Newbolt, McKail, Masefield, who has had the +latest cry; Abercrombie, with passionate defenders, and Rupert Brooke, +recently come down from Cambridge. + +There are men also, who are little known to the general public, but who +contribute liberally to the "charm" or the "atmosphere" of London: +Wilfred Scawen Blunt, the grandest of old men, the last of the great +Victorians; great by reason of his double sonnet, beginning-- + + He who has once been happy is for aye + Out of destruction's reach; + +Ernest Rhys, weary with much editing and hack work, to whom we owe gold +digged in Wales, translations, transcripts, and poems of his own, among +them the fine one to Dagonet; Victor Plarr, one of the "old" Rhymers' +Club, a friend of Dowson and of Lionel Johnson. His volume, _In The +Dorian Mood_, has been half forgotten, but not his verses _Epitaphium +Citharistriae_. One would also name the Provost of Oriel, not for +original work, but for his very beautiful translations from Dante. + +In fact one might name nearly a hundred writers who have given pleasure +with this or that matter in rhyme. But it is one thing to take pleasure +in a man's work and another to respect him as a great artist. + + _Ezra Pound_ + + + + + REVIEWS + +_The Lyric Year_, Mr. Kennerley's new annual, contains among its hundred +contributions nearly a score of live poems, among which a few excite the +kind of keen emotion which only art of real distinction can arouse. + +Among the live poems the present reviewer would count none of the +prize-winners, not even Mr. Sterling's, the best of the three, whose +rather stiff formalities in praise of Browning are, however, lit now and +then by shining lines, as-- + + Drew as a bubble from old infamies.... + The shy and many-colored soul of man. + +The other two prize-poems must have been measured by some academic +foot-rule dug up from the eighteenth century. Orrick Johns' _Second +Avenue_ is a _Grays Elegy_ essay of prosy moralizing, without a finely +poetic line in it, or any originality of meaning or cadence. And the +second prize went to an ode still more hopelessly academic. Indeed, _To +a Thrush_, by Thomas Augustine Daly, is one of the most stilted poems in +the volume, a far-away echo of echoes, full of the approved "poetic" +words--_throstle_, _pregnant_, _vernal_, _cerulean_, _teen_, _chrysmal_, +even _paraclete_--and quite guiltless of inspiration. + +But one need not linger with these. As we face the other way one poem +outranks the rest and ennobles the book. This is _The Renascence_, said +to be by Edna St. Vincent Millay, who, according to the editor, is only +twenty years old. This poem is the daring flight of a wide-winged +imagination, and the art of it, though not faultless, is strong enough +to carry us through keen emotions of joy and agony to a climax of +spiritual serenity. Though marred by the last twelve lines, which should +be struck out for stating the thesis too explicitly, this poem arouses +high hopes of its youthful author. + +Among the other live poems--trees, saplings or flowers--are various +species. _Kisa-Gotami_, by Arthur Davison Ficke, tells its familiar +story of the Buddha in stately cadences which sustain the beauty of the +tale. _Jetsam_, a "_Titanic_" elegy by Herman Montagu Donner, carries +the dread and dangerous subject without violating its terrors and +sanctities with false sentiment or light rhythm. Ridgeley Torrence's +_Ritual for a Funeral_ is less sure of its ground, sometimes escaping +into vapors, but on the whole noble in feeling and flute-like in +cadence. Mrs. Conkling's bird ode has now and then an airy delicacy, and +Edith Wyatt's _City Swallow_ gives the emotion of flight above the roofs +and smoke of a modern town. + +Of the shorter poems who could ignore Harry Kemp's noble lyric dialogue, +_I Sing the Battle_; _The Forgotten Soul_ by Margaret Widdemer, _Selma_, +by Willard H. Wright; _Comrades_ by Fannie Stearns Davis, or Nicholas +Vachel Lindsay's tribute to O. Henry, a more vital elegy than Mr. +Sterling's? These are all simple and sincere--straight modern talk +which rises into song without the aid of worn-out phrases. _Paternity_, +by William Rose Benét, _To My Vagrant Love_, by Elouise Briton, and +_Dedication_, by Pauline Florence Brower, are delicate expressions of +intimate emotion; and _Martin_, by Joyce Kilmer, touches with grace a +lighter subject. + +To have gathered such as these together is perhaps enough, but more may +be reasonably demanded. As a whole the collection, like the prizes, is +too academic; Georgian and Victorian standards are too much in evidence. +The ambition of _The Lyric Year_ is to be "an annual Salon of American +poetry;" to this end poets and their publishers are invited to +contribute gratis the best poems of the year, without hope of reward +other than the three prizes. That so many responded to the call, freely +submitting their works to anonymous judges, shows how eager is the +hitherto unfriended American muse to seize any helping hand. + +However, if this annual is to speak with any authority as a Salon, it +should take a few lessons from art exhibitions. Mr. Earle's position as +donor, editor and judge, is as if Mr. Carnegie should act as hanging +committee at the Pittsburg show, and help select the prize-winners. And +Messrs. Earle, Braithwaite and Wheeler, this year's jury of awards, are +not, even though all have written verse, poets of recognized distinction +in the sense that Messrs. Chase, Alexander, Hassam, Duveneck, and other +jurymen in our various American Salons, are distinguished painters. + +In these facts lie the present weaknesses of _The Lyric Year_. However, +the remedy for them is easy and may be applied in future issues. +Meantime the venture is to be welcomed; at last someone, somewhere, is +trying to do something for the encouragement of the art in America. +_Poetry_, which is embarked in the same adventure, rejoices in +companionship. + + _H. M._ + + * * * * * + +Already many books of verses come to us, of which a few are poetry. +Sometimes the poetry is an aspiration rather than an achievement; but in +spite of crude materials and imperfect artistry one may feel the beat of +wings and hear the song. Again one searches in vain for the magic touch, +even though the author has interesting things to say in creditable and +more or less persuasive rhymed eloquence. + +Of recent arrivals Mr. John Hall Wheelock has the most searching vision +and appealing voice. In _The Human Fantasy_ (Sherman, French & Co.) his +subject is New York, typified in the pathetic little love-affair of two +young starvelings, which takes its course through a stirring, exacting +milieu to a renunciation that leaves the essential sanctities intact. +The poet looks through the slang and shoddy of the lovers, and the dust +and glare of the city, to the divine power of passion in both. In _The +Beloved Adventure_ the emotion is less poignant; or, rather, the poet +has included many indifferent pieces which obscure the quality of finer +lyrics. More rigorous technique and resolute use of the waste-basket +would make more apparent the fact that we have here a true poet, one +with a singing voice, and a heart deeply moved by essential spiritual +beauty in the common manifestations of human character. At his best he +writes with immense concentration and unflagging vigor; and his hearty +young appetite for life in all its manifestations helps him to transmute +the repellant discords of the modern town into harmony. The fantasy of +_Love in a City_ is a "true thing" and a vital. + +Mr. Hermann Hagedorn is also a true poet, capable of lyric rapture, but +sometimes, when he seems least aware, his muse escapes him. _The +Infidel_, the initial poem of his _Poems and Ballads_ (Houghton Mifflin +Co.), recalls his _Woman of Corinth_, and others in this book remind one +of this and of his Harvard class poem, _The Troop of the Guard_, in that +the words do not, like colored sands, dance inevitably into the absolute +shape determined by the wizardry of sound. He is still somewhat hampered +by the New England manner, a trend toward an external formalism not +dependent on interior necessity. This influence makes for academic and +lifeless work, and it must be deeply rooted since it casts its chill +also over the Boston school of painters. + +But now and then Mr. Hagedorn frees himself; perhaps in the end he may +escape altogether. In such poems as _Song_, _Doors_, _Broadway_, +_Discovery_, _The Wood-Gatherer_, _The Crier in the Night_ and _A Chant +on the Terrible Highway_, we feel that he begins to speak for himself, +to sing with his own voice. Such poems are a challenging note that +should arrest the attention of all seekers after sincere poetic +expression. + +Mr. Percy MacKaye, in _Uriel and Other Poems_ (Houghton Mifflin Co.), +shows also the Boston influence, but perhaps it is difficult to escape +the academic note in such poems for occasions as these. With fluent +eloquence and a ready command of verse forms he celebrates dead poets, +addresses noted living persons, and contributes to a number of +ceremonial observances. The poems in which he is most freely lyric are +perhaps _In the Bohemian Redwoods_ and _To the Fire-Bringer_, the +shorter of his elegies in honor of Moody, his friend. + +In two dramatic poems, _The Tragedy of Etarre_, by Rhys Carpenter +(Sturgis & Walton Co.), and _Gabriel, a Pageant of Vigil_, by Mrs. +Isabelle Howe Fiske (Mosher), the academic note is confidently insisted +on. The former shows the more promise of ultimate freedom. It is an +Arthurian venture of which the prologue is the strongest part. In +firm-knit iambics Mr. Carpenter strikes out many effective lines and +telling situations. Indeed, they almost prompt the profane suggestion +that, simplified and compressed, they might yield a psychological +libretto for some "advanced" composer. + +Mrs. Fiske's venture is toward heaven itself; but her numerous +archangels are of the earth earthy. + +In _The Unconquered Air and Other Poems_ (Houghton Mifflin Co.), Mrs. +Florence Earle Coates shows not inspiration but wide and humane +sympathies. Her verse is typical of much which has enough popular appeal +and educative value to be printed extensively in the magazines; verse in +which subjects of modern interest and human sentiment are expressed in +the kind of rhymed eloquence which passes for poetry with the great +majority. + +These poets may claim the justification of illustrious precedent. The +typical poem of this class in America, the most famous verse rhapsody +which stops short of lyric rapture, is Lowell's _Commemoration Ode_. + + + + + NOTES + +Our poets this month play divers instruments. The audience may listen to +H. D.'s flute, the 'cello of Mr. Rhys, the big bass drum of Mr. Lindsay, +and so on through the orchestra, fitting each poet to his special +strain. Some of these performers are well known, others perhaps will be. + +Mr. Ernest Rhys is of Welsh descent. In 1888-9 he lectured in America, +and afterward returned to London, where he has published _A London +Rose_, Arthurian plays and poems, and Welsh ballads, and edited +_Everyman's Library_. + +Mr. Madison Cawein, the well-known Kentucky poet resident in Louisville, +scarcely needs an introductory word. His is landscape poetry chiefly, +but sometimes, as in Wordsworth, figures blend with the scene and +become a part of nature. A volume of his own selections from his +various books has recently been published by The MacMillan Company. + +Mr. Nicholas Vachel Lindsay is the vagabond poet who loves to tramp +through untravelled country districts without a cent in his pocket, +exchanging "rhymes for bread" at farmers' hearths. The magazines have +published engaging articles by him, but in verse he has been usually his +own publisher as yet. + +"H. D., _Imagiste_," is an American lady resident abroad, whose identity +is unknown to the editor. Her sketches from the Greek are not offered as +exact translations, or as in any sense finalities, but as experiments in +delicate and elusive cadences, which attain sometimes a haunting beauty. + +Mr. Kendall Banning is an editor and writer of songs. "The Love Songs of +the Open Road," with music by Lena Branscord, will soon be published by +Arthur Schmidt of Boston. + +Mrs. Anita Fitch of New York has contributed poems to various magazines. + +The February number of POETRY will be devoted to the work of two poets, +Messrs. Arthur Davison Ficke and Witter Bynner. + + + + + BOOKS RECEIVED + + _The Lyric Year._ Mitchell Kennerley. + _Poems and Ballads_, by Hermann Hagedorn. Houghton Mifflin Co. + _Shadows of the Flowers_, by T. B. Aldrich. Houghton Mifflin Co. + _Poems and Plays_, by William Vaughn Moody. Houghton Mifflin Co. + _Nimrod_, by Francis Rolt-Wheeler. Lothrop, Lee and Shepard. + _The Shadow Garden and Other Plays_, by Madison Cawein. + G. P. Putman's Sons. + _Via Lucis_, by Alice Harper. M. E. Church South, + Nashville, Tenn. + _Songs of Courage and Other Poems_, by Bertha F. Gordon. + The Baker & Taylor Co. + _Narrative Lyrics_, by Edward Lucas White. G. P. Putnam's Sons. + _The Dance of Dinwiddie_, by Marshall Moreton. Stewart & Kidd Co. + _The Three Visions and Other Poems_, by John A. Johnson. + Stewart & Kidd Co. + _Hands Across The Equator_, by Alfred Ernest Keet. + Privately printed. + _Songs Under Open Skies_, by M. Jay Flannery. Stewart & Kidd Co. + _Denys Of Auxerre_, by James Barton. Christophers, London. + + _Songs in Many Moods_, by Charles Washburn Nichols. + L. H. Blackmer Press. + _The Lord's Prayer._ A Sonnet Sequence by Francis Howard Williams. + George W. Jacobs & Co. + _The Buccaneers_, by Don C. Seitz. Harper & Bros. + _The Tale of a Round-House_, by John Masefield. The MacMillan Co. + _XXXIII Love Sonnets_, by Florence Brooks. John Marone. + _The Poems of Ida Ahlborn Weeks._ Published By Her Friends, + Sabula, Iowa. + _The Poems of LeRoy Titus Weeks._ Published by the author. + _Ripostes_, by Ezra Pound. Stephen Swift. + _The Spinning Woman of the Sky_, by Alice Corbin. + The Ralph Fletcher Seymour Co. + _The Irish Poems of Alfred Perceval Graves._ Maunsel & Co. + _Welsh Poetry Old and New, in English Verse_, + by Alfred Perceval Graves. Longmans, Green & Co. + + + + + Poetry VOL. I + A Magazine of Verse NO. 5 + + + FEBRUARY, 1913 + + + POEMS + BY + ARTHUR DAVISON FICKE + + + + + SWINBURNE, AN ELEGY + + I + + The autumn dusk, not yearly but eternal, + Is haunted by thy voice. + Who turns his way far from the valleys vernal + And by dark choice + Disturbs those heights which from the low-lying land + Rise sheerly toward the heavens, with thee may stand + And hear thy thunders down the mountains strown. + But none save him who shares thy prophet-sight + Shall thence behold what cosmic dawning-light + Met thy soul's own. + + II + + Master of music! unmelodious singing + Must build thy praises now. + Master of vision! vainly come we, bringing + Words to endow + Thy silence,--where, beyond our clouded powers, + The sun-shot glory of resplendent hours + Invests thee of the Dionysiac flame. + Yet undissuaded come we, here to make + Not thine enrichment but our own who wake + Thy echoing fame. + + III + + Not o'er thy dust we brood,--we who have never + Looked in thy living eyes. + Nor wintry blossom shall we come to sever + Where thy grave lies. + Let witlings dream, with shallow pride elate, + That they approach the presence of the great + When at the spot of birth or death they stand. + But hearts in whom thy heart lives, though they be + By oceans sundered, walk the night with thee + In alien land. + + IV + + For them, grief speaks not with the tidings spoken + That thou art of the dead. + No lamp extinguished when the bowl is broken, + No music fled + When the lute crumbles, art thou nor shalt be; + But as a great wave, lifted on the sea, + Surges triumphant toward the sleeping shore, + Thou fallest, in splendor of irradiant rain, + To sweep resurgent all the ocean plain + Forevermore. + + V + + The seas of earth with flood tides filled thy bosom; + The sea-winds to thy voice + Lent power; the Grecian with the English blossom + Twined, to rejoice + Upon thy brow in chaplets of new bloom; + And over thee the Celtic mists of doom + Hovered to give their magics to thy hand; + And past the moon, where Music dwells alone, + She woke, and loved, and left her starry zone + At thy command. + + VI + + For thee spake Beauty from the shadowy waters; + For thee Earth garlanded + With loveliness and light her mortal daughters; + Toward thee was sped + The arrow of swift longing, keen delight, + Wonder that pierces, cruel needs that smite, + Madness and melody and hope and tears. + And these with lights and loveliness illume + Thy pages, where rich Summer's faint perfume + Outlasts the years. + + VII + + Outlasts, too well! For of the hearts that know thee + Few know or dare to stand + On thy keen chilling heights; but where below thee + Thy lavish hand + Has scattered brilliant jewels of summer song + And flowers of passionate speech, there grope the throng + Crying--"Behold! this bauble, this is he!" + And of their love or hate, the foolish wars + Echo up faintly where amid lone stars + Thy soul may be. + + VIII + + But some, who find in thee a word exceeding + Even thy power of speech-- + To whom each song,--like an oak-leaf crimson, bleeding, + Fallen,--can teach + Tidings of that high forest whence it came + Where the wooded mountain-slope in one vast flame + Burns as the Autumn kindles on its quest-- + These rapt diviners gather close to thee:-- + Whom now the Winter holds in dateless fee + Sealèd of rest. + + IX + + Strings never touched before,--strange accents chanting,-- + Strange quivering lambent words,-- + A far exalted hope serene or panting + Mastering the chords,-- + A sweetness fierce and tragic,--these were thine, + O singing lover of dark Proserpine! + O spirit who lit the Maenad hills with song! + O Augur bearing aloft thy torch divine, + Whose flickering lights bewilder as they shine + Down on the throng. + + X + + Not thy deep glooms, but thine exceeding glory + Maketh men blind to thee. + For them thou hast no evening fireside story. + But to be free-- + But to arise, spurning all bonds that fold + The spirit of man in fetters forged of old-- + This was the mighty trend of thy desire; + Shattering the Gods, teaching the heart to mould + No longer idols, but aloft to hold + The soul's own fire. + + XI + + Yea, thou didst burst the final gates of capture; + And thy strong heart has passed + From youth, half-blinded by its golden rapture, + Into the vast + Desolate bleakness of life's iron spaces; + And there found solace, not in faiths, or faces, + Or aught that must endure Time's harsh control. + In the wilderness, alone, when skies were cloven, + Thou hast thy garment and thy refuge woven + From thine own soul. + + XII + + The faiths and forms of yesteryear are waning, + Dropping, like leaves. + Through the wood sweeps a great wind of complaining + As Time bereaves + Pitiful hearts of all that they thought holy. + The icy stars look down on melancholy + Shelterless creatures of a pillaged day: + A day of disillusionment and terror, + A day that yields no solace for the error + It takes away. + + XIII + + Thee with no solace, but with bolder passion + The bitter day endowed. + As battling seas from the frail swimmer fashion + At last the proud + Indomitable master of their tides, + Who with exultant power splendidly rides + The terrible summit of each whelming wave,-- + So didst thou reap, from fields of wreckage, gain; + Harvesting the wild fruit of the bitter main, + Strength that shall save. + + XIV + + Here where old barks upon new headlands shatter, + And worlds seem torn apart, + Amid the creeds now vain to shield or flatter + The mortal heart, + Where the wild welter of strange knowledge won + From grave and engine and the chemic sun + Subdues the age to faith in dust and gold: + The bardic laurel thou hast dowered with youth, + In living witness of the spirit's truth, + Like prophets old. + + XV + + Thee shall the future time with joy inherit. + Hast thou not sung and said: + "Save its own light, none leads the mortal spirit, + None ever led"? + Time shall bring many, even as thy steps have trod, + Where the soul speaks authentically of God, + Sustained by glories strange and strong and new. + Yet these most Orphic mysteries of thy heart + Only to kindred can thy speech impart; + And they are few. + + XVI + + Few men shall love thee, whom fierce powers have lifted + High beyond meed of praise. + But as some bark whose seeking sail has drifted + Through storm of days, + We hail thee, bearing back thy golden flowers + Gathered beyond the Western Isles, in bowers + That had not seen, till thine, a vessel's wake. + And looking on thee from our land-built towers + Know that such sea-dawn never can be ours + As thou sawest break. + + XVII + + Now sailest thou dim-lighted, lonelier water. + By shores of bitter seas + Low is thy speech with Ceres' ghostly daughter, + Whose twined lilies + Are not more pale than thou, O bard most sweet, + Most bitter;--for whose brow sedge-crowns were mete + And crowns of splendid holly green and red; + Who passest from the dust of careless feet + To lands where sunrise thou hast sought shall greet + Thy holy head. + + XVIII + + Thou hast followed after him whose hopes were greatest,-- + That meteor-soul divine; + Near whom divine we hail thee: thou the latest + Of that bright line + Of flame-lipped masters of the spell of song, + Enduring in succession proud and long, + The banner-bearers in triumphant wars: + Latest; and first of that bright line to be, + For whom thou also, flame-lipped, spirit-free, + Art of the stars. + + + + + TO A CHILD--TWENTY YEARS HENCE + + You shall remember dimly, + Through mists of far-away, + Her whom, our lips set grimly, + We carried forth today. + + But when, in days hereafter, + Unfolding time shall bring + Knowledge of love and laughter + And trust and triumphing,-- + + Then from some face the fairest, + From some most joyous breast, + Garner what there is rarest + And happiest and best,-- + + The youth, the light the rapture + Of eager April grace,-- + And in that sweetness, capture + Your mother's far-off face. + + And all the mists shall perish + That have between you moved. + You shall see her you cherish; + And love, as we have loved. + + + + + PORTRAIT OF AN OLD WOMAN + + She limps with halting painful pace, + Stops, wavers, and creeps on again; + Peers up with dim and questioning face + Void of desire or doubt or pain. + + Her cheeks hang gray in waxen folds + Wherein there stirs no blood at all. + A hand like bundled cornstalks holds + The tatters of a faded shawl. + + Where was a breast, sunk bones she clasps; + A knot jerks where were woman-hips; + A ropy throat sends writhing gasps + Up to the tight line of her lips. + + Here strong the city's pomp is poured ... + She stands, unhuman, bleak, aghast: + An empty temple of the Lord + From which the jocund Lord has passed. + + He has builded him another house, + Whenceforth his flame, renewed and bright, + Shines stark upon these weathered brows + Abandoned to the final night. + + + + + THE THREE SISTERS + + Gone are the three, those sisters rare + With wonder-lips and eyes ashine. + One was wise and one was fair, + And one was mine. + + Ye mourners, weave for the sleeping hair + Of only two your ivy vine. + For one was wise and one was fair, + But one was mine. + + + + + AMONG SHADOWS + + In halls of sleep you wandered by, + This time so indistinguishably + I cannot remember aught of it, + Save that I know last night we met. + I know it by the cloudy thrill + That in my heart is quivering still; + And sense of loveliness forgot + Teases my fancy out of thought. + Though with the night the vision wanes + Its haunting presence still may last-- + As odour of flowers faint remains + In halls where late a queen has passed. + + + + + A WATTEAU MELODY + + Oh, let me take your lily hand, + And where the secret star-beams shine + Draw near, to see and understand + Pierrot and Columbine. + + Around the fountains, in the dew, + Where afternoon melts into night, + With gracious mirth their gracious crew + Entice the shy birds of delight. + + Of motley dress and maskèd face, + Of sparkling unrevealing eyes, + They track in gentle aimless chase + The moment as it flies. + + Their delicate beribboned rout, + Gallant and fair, of light intent, + Weaves through the shadows in and out + With infinite artful merriment. + + * * * * * + + Dear Lady of the lily hand, + Do then our stars so clearly shine + That we, who do not understand, + May mock Pierrot and Columbine? + + Beyond this garden-grove I see + The wise, the noble and the brave + In ultimate futility + Go down into the grave. + + And all they dreamed and all they sought, + Crumbled and ashen grown, departs; + And is as if they had not wrought + These works with blood from out their hearts. + + The nations fall, the faiths decay, + The great philosophies go by,-- + And life lies bare, some bitter day, + A charnel that affronts the sky. + + The wise, the noble and the brave,-- + They saw and solved, as we must see + And solve, the universal grave, + The ultimate futility. + + * * * * * + + Look, where beside the garden-pool + A Venus rises in the grove, + More suave, more debonair, more cool + Than ever burned with Paphian love. + + 'Twas here the delicate ribboned rout + Of gallants and the fair ones went + Among the shadows in and out + With infinite artful merriment. + + Then let me take your lily hand, + And let us tread, where starbeams shine, + A dance; and be, and understand + Pierrot and Columbine. + + _Arthur Davison Ficke_ + + + + + POEMS + BY + WITTER BYNNER + + + + + APOLLO TROUBADOUR + + When a wandering Italian + Yesterday at noon + Played upon his hurdy-gurdy + Suddenly a tune, + There was magic in my ear-drums: + Like a baby's cup and spoon + Tinkling time for many sleigh-bells, + Many no-school, rainy-day-bells, + Cow-bells, frog-bells, run-away-bells, + Mingling with an ocean medley + As of elemental people + More emotional than wordy,-- + Mermaids laughing off their tantrums, + Mermen singing loud and sturdy,-- + Silver scales and fluting shells, + Popping weeds and gurgles deadly, + Coral chime from coral steeple, + Intermittent deep-sea bells + Ringing over floating knuckles, + Buried gold and swords and buckles, + And a thousand bubbling chuckles, + Yesterday at noon,-- + Such a melody as star-fish, + And all fish that really are fish, + In a gay, remote battalion + Play at midnight to the moon! + + Could any playmate on our planet, + Hid in a house of earth's own granite, + Be so devoid of primal fire + That a wind from this wild crated lyre + Should find no spark and fan it? + Would any lady half in tears, + Whose fashion, on a recent day + Over the sea, had been to pay + Vociferous gondoliers, + Beg that the din be sent away + And ask a gentleman, gravely treading + As down the aisle at his own wedding, + To toss the foreigner a quarter + Bribing him to leave the street; + That motor-horns and servants' feet + Familiar might resume, and sweet + To her offended ears, + The money-music of her peers! + + Apollo listened, took the quarter + With his hat off to the buyer, + Shrugged his shoulder small and sturdy, + Led away his hurdy-gurdy + Street by street, then turned at last + Toward a likelier piece of earth + Where a stream of chatter passed, + Yesterday at noon; + By a school he stopped and played + Suddenly a tune.... + What a melody he made! + Made in all those eager faces, + Feet and hands and fingers! + How they gathered, how they stayed + With smiles and quick grimaces, + Little man and little maid!-- + How they took their places, + Hopping, skipping, unafraid, + Darting, rioting about, + Squealing, laughing, shouting out! + How, beyond a single doubt, + In my own feet sprang the ardour + (Even now the motion lingers) + To be joining in their paces! + Round and round the handle went,-- + Round their hearts went harder;-- + Apollo urged the happy rout + And beamed, ten times as well content + With every son and daughter + As though their little hands had lent + The gentleman his quarter.-- + (You would not guess--nor I deny-- + That that same gentleman was I!) + No gentleman may watch a god + With proper happiness therefrom; + So street by street again I trod + The way that we had come. + He had not seen me following + And yet I think he knew; + For still, the less I heard of it, + The more his music grew: + As if he made a bird of it + To sing the distance through.... + And, O Apollo, how I thrilled, + You liquid-eyed rapscallion, + With every twig and twist of Spring, + Because your music rose and filled + Each leafy vein with dew,-- + With melody of olden sleigh-bells, + Over-the-sea-and-far-away-bells, + And the heart of an Italian, + And the tinkling cup and spoon,-- + Such a melody as star-fish, + And all fish that really are fish, + In a gay remote battalion + Play at midnight to the moon! + + + + + ONE OF THE CROWD + + Oh I longed, when I went in the woods today, + To see the fauns come out and play, + To see a satyr try to seize + A dryad's waist--and bark his knees, + To see a river-nymph waylay + And shock him with a dash of spray!-- + And I teased, like a child, by brooks and trees: + "Come back again! We need you! _Please!_ + Come back and teach us how to play!" + But nowhere in the woods were they. + + I found, when I went in the town today, + A thousand people on their way + To offices and factories-- + And never a single soul at ease; + And how could I help but sigh and say: + "What can it profit them, how can it pay + To strain the eye with rivalries + Until the dark is all it sees?-- + Or to manage, more than others may, + To store the wasted gain away?" + + But one of the crowd looked up today, + With pointed brows. I heard him say: + "Out of the meadows and rivers and trees + We fauns and many companies + Of nymphs have come. And we are these, + These people, each upon his way, + Looking for work, working for pay-- + And paying all our energies + To earn true love ... For, seeming gay, + "Once we were sad," I heard him say. + + + + + NEIGHBORS + + Neighbors are not neighborly + Who close the windows tight,-- + Nor those who fix a peeping eye + For finding things not right. + + Let me have faith, is what I pray, + And let my faith be strong!-- + But who am I, is what I say, + To think my neighbor wrong? + + And though my neighbor may deny + That faith could be so slight, + May call me wrong, yet who am I + To think my neighbor right? + + Perhaps we wisely by and by + May learn it of each other, + That he is right and so am I-- + And save a lot of bother. + + + + + THE HILLS OF SAN JOSÉ + + I look at the long low hills of golden brown + With their little wooded canyons + And at the haze hanging its beauty in the air-- + And I am caught and held, as a ball is caught and held by a player + Who leaps for it in the field. + And as the heart in the breast of the player beats toward the ball, + And as the heart beats in the breast of him who shouts + toward the player, + So my heart beats toward the hills that are playing ball with the sun, + That leap to catch the sun + And to throw it to other hills-- + Or to me! + + + + + GRIEVE NOT FOR BEAUTY + + Grieve not for the invisible, transported brow + On which like leaves the dark hair grew, + Nor for the lips of laughter that are now + Laughing inaudibly in sun and dew, + Nor for those limbs that, fallen low + And seeming faint and slow, + Shall yet pursue + More ways of swiftness than the swallow dips + Among ... and find more winds than ever blew + The straining sails of unimpeded ships! + Mourn not!--yield only happy tears + To deeper beauty than appears! + + + + + THE MYSTIC + + By seven vineyards on one hill + We walked. The native wine + In clusters grew beside us two, + For your lips and for mine, + + When, "Hark!" you said,--"Was that a bell + Or a bubbling spring we heard?" + But I was wise and closed my eyes + And listened to a bird; + + For as summer leaves are bent and shake + With singers passing through, + So moves in me continually + The wingèd breath of you. + + You tasted from a single vine + And took from that your fill-- + But I inclined to every kind, + All seven on one hill. + + + + + PASSING NEAR + + I had not till today been sure, + But now I know: + Dead men and women come and go + Under the pure + Sequestering snow. + + And under the autumnal fern + And carmine bush, + Under the shadow of a thrush, + They move and learn; + And in the rush + + Of all the mountain-brooks that wake + With upward fling + To brush and break the loosening cling + Of ice, they shake + The air with Spring! + + I had not till today been sure, + But now I know: + Dead youths and maidens come and go + Below the lure + And undertow + + Of cities, under every street + Of empty stress, + Or heart of an adulteress: + Each loud retreat + Of lovelessness. + + For only by the stir we make + In passing near + Are we confused, and cannot hear + The ways they take + Certain and clear. + + Today I happened in a place + Where all around + Was silence; until, underground, + I heard a pace, + A happy sound. + + And people whom I there could see + Tenderly smiled, + While under a wood of silent, wild + Antiquity + Wandered a child, + + Leading his mother by the hand, + Happy and slow, + Teaching his mother where to go + Under the snow. + Not even now I understand-- + I only know. + + _Witter Bynner_ + + + + + REVIEWS AND COMMENTS + + _The Story of a Round House and other Poems_, + + by JOHN MASEFIELD (Macmillan) + +Not long ago I chanced to see upon a well-known page, reflective and +sincere, these words: "The invisible root out of which the poetry +deepest in and dearest to humanity grows is Friendship." + +A recent volume may well serve as a distinguished illustration of the +saying's truth. Few persons, I think, will read _The Story of a Round +House and other Poems_ without a sense that the invisible root of its +deep poetry is that fine power which Whitman called Friendship, the +genius of sympathetic imagination. + +This is the force that knits the sinews of the chief, the life-size +figure of the book. _Dauber_ is the tale of a man and his work. It is +the story of an artist in the making. The heroic struggles of an English +farmer's son of twenty-one to become a painter of ships and the ocean, +form the drama of the poem. The scene is a voyage around the Horn, the +ship-board and round-house of a clipper where Dauber spends cruel, +grinding months of effort to become an able seaman on the road of his +further purpose-- + + Of beating thought into the perfect line. + + +His fall from the yard-arm toward the close of the conquered horrors of +his testing voyage; the catastrophe of his death after + + He had emerged out of the iron time + And knew that he could compass his life's scheme-- + +these make the end of the tragedy. + +Tragedy? Yes. But a tragedy of the same temper as that of the great +Dane, where the pursuit of a mortal soul's intention is more, far more, +than his mortality. Unseen forever by the world, part of its unheard +melodies, are all the lines and colors of the Dauber's dreaming. At +Elsinore rules Fortinbras, the foe: the fight is lost; the fighter has +been slain. These are great issues, hard, unjust and wrong. But the +greatest issue of all is that men should be made of the stuff of +magnificence. You close the poem, you listen to the last speech of its +deep sea-music, thinking: Here is death, the real death we all must die; +here is futility, and who knows what we all are here for? But here is +glory. + +Only less powerful than the impression of the strain of Dauber's +endeavor, is the impression of its loneliness. The sneers of the +reefers, their practical jokes, the dulness, the arrogance, the smugness +and endless misunderstanding, the meanness of man on the apprentice +journey, has a keener tooth than the storm-wind. + +The verities of _Dauber_ are built out of veracities. The reader must +face the hardship of labor at sea. He must face the squalors, the +miseries. If he cannot find poetry in a presentment of the cruel, +dizzying reality of a sailor's night on a yard-arm in the icy gale off +Cape Horn, then he will not perhaps feel in the poem the uncompromising +raciness inherent in romances that are true. For the whole manner of +this sea-piece is that of bold, free-hand drawing of things as they are. +Its final event presents a genuinely epic subject from our contemporary +history--the catastrophic character of common labor, and one of its +multitudinous fatalities. + +Epic rather than lyric, the verse of _Dauber_ has an admirable and +refreshing variety in its movement. It speaks the high, wild cry of an +eagle: + + --the eagle's song + Screamed from her desolate screes and splintered scars. + +It speaks thick-crowding discomforts on the mast with a slapping, frozen +sail: + + His sheath-knife flashed, + His numb hand hacked with it to clear the strips; + The flying ice was salt upon his lips. + The ice was caking on his oil-skins; cold + Struck to his marrow, beat upon him strong, + The chill palsied his blood, it made him old; + The frosty scatter of death was being flung. + +Some of the lines, such as-- + + The blackness crunched all memory of the sun-- + +have the hard ring, the thick-packed consonantal beauty of stirring +Greek. + +_Dauber_ will have value to American poetry-readers if only from its +mere power of revealing that poetry is not alone the mellow lin-lan-lone +of evening bells, though it be that also, but may have music of +innumerable kinds. + +_Biography_, the next poem in the book, sings with a different voice and +sees from a different point of view, the difficulty of re-creating in +expression--here expression through words, not through colors-- + + This many-pictured world of many passions. + +_Biography_, too, rises from the invisible root of friendship and bears +with wonderfully vivid arborescence an appreciative tale of the fine +contribution of different companionships to a life. + +Among the two-score shorter lyrics of the collection are songs of the +sea or of the country-side; chants of coast-town bells and ports, marine +ballads, and love-poems. This is, however, the loosest entitling of +their kinds; nothing but the work itself in its entirety, can ever tell +the actual subject of any true poem. Of these kinds it is not to the +marine ballads that one turns back again and again, not to the story of +"Spanish Waters" nor to any of the jingling-gold, the clinking-glass, +the treasure-wreck verses of the book. Their tunes are spirited, but not +a tenth as spirited as those of "The Pirates of Penzance." Indeed, to +the conventionally villainous among fictive sea-faring persons of song, +Gilbert and Sullivan seem to have done something that cannot now ever be +undone. + +The poems in the volume one does turn back to again and again are those +with the great singing tones, that pour forth with originality, with +inexpressible free grace and native power. Again and again you will read +_A Creed_, _C. L. M._, _Born for Nought Else_, _Roadways_, _Truth_, _The +Wild Duck_, _Her Heart_, and-- + + But at the falling of the tide + The golden birds still sing and gleam. + The Atlanteans have not died, + Immortal things still give us dream. + + The dream that fires man's heart to make, + To build, to do, to sing or say + A beauty Death can never take, + An Adam from the crumbled clay. + +Wonderful, wonderful it is that in the hearing of our own generation, +one great voice after another has called and sung to the world from the +midst of the sea-mists of England. From the poetry of Swinburne, of +Rudyard Kipling, of John Masefield immortal things still give us dream. + +Among the poems of this new book, more than one appear as incarnations +of the beauty Death can never take. Of these, perhaps, none is more +characteristic of the poet, nor will any more fittingly evince his +volume's quality than _Truth_. + + Man with his burning soul + Has but an hour of breath + To build a ship of Truth + In which his soul may sail, + Sail on the sea of death. + For death takes toll + Of beauty, courage, youth, + Of all but Truth. + + Life's city ways are dark, + Men mutter by, the wells + Of the great waters moan. + O death, O sea, O tide, + The waters moan like bells. + No light, no mark, + The soul goes out alone + On seas unknown. + + Stripped of all purple robes, + Stripped of all golden lies, + I will not be afraid. + Truth will preserve through death; + Perhaps the stars will rise, + The stars like globes. + The ship my striving made + May see night fade. + + _Edith Wyatt_ + + _Présences_, par P. J. Jouve: Georges Crès, Paris. + +I take pleasure in welcoming, in Monsieur Jouve, a contemporary. He +writes the new jargon and I have not the slightest doubt that he is a +poet. + +Whatever may be said against automobiles and aeroplanes and the +modernist way of speaking of them, and however much one may argue that +this new sort of work is mannered, and that its style will pass, still +it is indisputable that the vitality of the time exists in such work. + +Here is a book that you can read without being dead sure of what you +will find on the next page, or at the end of the next couplet. There is +no doubt that M. Jouve sees with his own eyes and feels with his own +nerves. Nothing is more boresome than an author who pretends to know +less about things than he really does know. It is this silly sort of +false naïveté that rots the weaker productions of Maeterlinck. Thank +heaven the advance guard is in process of escaping it. + +It is possible that the new style will grow as weak in the future in the +hands of imitators as has, by now, the Victorian manner, but for the +nonce it is refreshing. Work of this sort can not be produced by the +yard in stolid imitation of dead authors. + +I defy anyone to read it without being forced to think, immediately, +about life and the nature of things. I have perused this volume twice, +and I have enjoyed it. + + _E. P._ + + + + + THE POETRY SOCIETY OF AMERICA + +The Poetry Society of America, organized in 1910, was a natural +response, perhaps at the time unconscious, to the reawakened interest in +poetry, now so widely apparent. + +There seemed no reason why poetry, one of the noblest of the arts, +should not take to itself visible organization as well as its sister +arts of music and painting, since it was certain that such organization +contributed much to their advancement and appreciation. Poetry alone +remained an isolated art, save through the doubtful value of coteries +dedicated to the study of some particular poet. In the sense of +fellowship, of the creative sympathy of contact, of the keener +appreciation which must follow the wider knowledge of an art, poetry +stood alone, detached from these avenues open from the beginning to +other arts. + +The Society was therefore founded, with a charter membership of about +fifty persons, which included many of the poets doing significant work +to-day, together with critics and representatives of other arts, the +purpose from the outset being to include the appreciators of poetry as +well as its producers. It has grown to nearly two hundred members, +distributed from coast to coast, and eventually it will probably resolve +itself into branch societies, with the chief organization, as now, in +New York. Such societies should have a wide influence upon their +respective communities in stimulating interest in the work of living +poets, to which the Poetry Society as an organization is chiefly +addressed. + +Since the passing of the nineteenth-century poets, the art of poetry, +like the art of painting, has taken on new forms and become the vehicle +of a new message. The poet of to-day speaks through so different a +medium, his themes are so diverse from those of the elder generation, +that he cannot hope to find his public in their lingering audience. He +must look to his contemporaries, to those touched by the same issues and +responsive to the same ideals. To aid in creating this atmosphere for +the poet, to be the nucleus of a movement for the wider knowledge of +contemporaneous verse, the Poetry Society of America took form and in +its brief period has, I think, justified the idea of its promoters. + +Its meetings are held once a month at the National Arts Club in New +York, with which it is affiliated, and are given chiefly to the reading +and discussion of poetry, both of recently published volumes and of +poems submitted anonymously. This feature has proved perhaps the most +attractive, and while criticism based upon one hearing of a poem cannot +be taken as authoritative, it is often constructive and valuable. + +The Society is assembling an interesting collection of books, a +twentieth century library of American poetry. Aside from its own +collection, it is taking steps to promote a wider representation of +modern poets in public libraries. + + _Jessie B. Rittenhouse._ + + + + + NOTES + + "THAT MASS OF DOLTS" + +Mr. Pound's phrase in his poem _To Whistler, American_, has aroused more +or less resentment, some of it quite emphatic. Apparently we of "these +states" have no longing for an Ezekiel; our prophets must give us, not +the bitter medicine which possibly we need, but the sugar-and-water of +compliment which we can always swallow with a smile. + +Perhaps we should examine our consciences a little, or at least step +down from our self-erected pedestals long enough to listen to this +accusation. What has become of our boasted sense of humor if we cannot +let our young poets rail, or our sense of justice if we cannot cease +smiling and weigh their words? In certain respects we Americans are a +"mass of dolts," and in none more than our huge stolid, fundamental +indifference to our own art. Mr. Pound is not the first American poet +who has stood with his back to the wall, and struck out blindly with +clenched fists in a fierce impulse to fight. Nor is he the first whom +we, by this same stolid and indifferent rejection, have forced into +exile and rebellion. + +After a young poet has applied in vain to the whole list of American +publishers and editors, and learned that even though he were a genius of +the first magnitude they could not risk money or space on his poetry +because the public would not buy it--after a series of such rebuffs our +young aspirant goes abroad and succeeds in interesting some London +publisher. The English critics, let us say, praise his book, and echoes +of their praises reach our astonished ears. Thereupon the poet in exile +finds that he has thus gained a public, and editorial suffrages, in +America, and that the most effective way of increasing that public and +those suffrages is, to remain in exile and guard his foreign reputation. + +Meantime it is quite probable that a serious poet will have grown weary +of such open and unashamed colonialism, that he will prefer to stay +among people who are seriously interested in aesthetics and who know +their own minds. For nothing is so hard to meet as indifference; blows +are easier for a live man to endure than neglect. The poet who cries out +his message against a stone wall will be silenced in the end, even +though he bear a seraph's wand and speak with the tongues of angels. + + * * * * * + +One phase of our colonialism in art, the singing of opera in foreign +languages, has been persistently opposed by Eleanor E. Freer, who has +set to music of rare distinction many of the finest English lyrics, old +and new. She writes: + + In the Basilikon Doron, King James I of + England writes to his son: "And I would, also, + advise you to write in your own language; for + there is nothing left to be said in Greek and + Latin already--and besides that, it best becometh + a King to purify and make famous his own tongue." + Might we add, it best becometh the kings of art + in America and England to sing their own language + and thus aid in the progress of their national + music and poetry? + + * * * * * + +Messrs. Arthur Davison Ficke and Witter Bynner belong to the younger +group of American poets, both having been born since 1880, the former in +Davenport, Iowa, and the latter in Brooklyn. Both were graduated from +Harvard early in this century, after which Mr. Ficke was admitted to the +bar, and Mr. Bynner became assistant editor of McClure's. + +Mr. Ficke has published _From the Isles_, _The Happy Princess_, _The +Earth Passion_ and _The Breaking of Bonds_; also _Mr. Faust_, a dramatic +poem, and a series of poems called _Twelve Japanese Painters_, will be +published this year. Mr. Bynner has published _An Ode to Harvard and +Other Poems_, and _An Immigrant_. His play, _His Father's House_, was +recently produced in California. + +The March number of _Poetry_ will contain _The Silent House_, a one-act +play, by Agnes Lee, and poems by Alice Meynell, Alfred Noyes, Fannie +Stearns Davis and others. + + + + + BOOKS RECEIVED + + _Bugle Notes of Courage and Love_, by Althea A. Ogden. + Unity Publishing Co. + _Altar-Side Messages_, by Evelyn H. Walker. Unity Publishing Co. + _Dream Harbor_, by J. W. Vallandingham. Privately printed. + _Hopeful Thoughts_, by Eleanor Hope. Franklin Hudson Publishing Co. + _The Youth Replies_, by Louis How. Sherman, French & Co. + _Songs of the Love Unending_, A Sonnet Sequence, + by Kendall Banning. Brothers of the Book. + _William Allingham_, The Golden Treasury Series. The Macmillan Co. + _Idylls Beside the Strand_, by Franklin F. Phillips. + Sherman, French & Co. + _The Minstrel with the Self-Same Song_, by Charles A. Fisher. + The Eichelberger Book Co. + _The Wife of Potiphar_, with Other Poems, by Harvey M. Watts. + The John C. Winston Co. + _A Scroll of Seers_, A Wall Anthology. Peter Paul & Son. + + + + + Poetry VOL. I + A Magazine of Verse NO. 6 + + + MARCH, 1913 + + + + + THE SILENT HOUSE + + _David._ [_Re-reading a letter._] How may a letter bring + such darkness down-- + With this: "She dallied with your love too long!" + And this: "It is the word of all the town: + "Corinna has no soul, for all her song!" + + _Martha._ [_Entering with flowers._] O sir, I bring you + flaming bergamot, + And early asters, for your window-sill. + And where I found them? Now you'll guess it not. + I visited the garden on the hill, + And gathered till my arms could hold no more. + + _David._ The garden of the little silent house! + + _Martha._ The city lured her from her viny door. + But see, the flowers have stayed! + + _David._ They seem to drowse + And dream of one they lost, a paler-blown. + How fares the house upon the hill? + + _Martha._ The blinds + Are fast of late, and all are intergrown + With weedy havoc tossed by searching winds. + + _David._ How somber suddenly the sky! A shower + Is in the air. + + _Martha._ I'll light the lamps. + + _David._ Not yet. + Leave me the beauty of the twilit hour. + + _Martha._ Hear the wind rising! How the moorings fret! + More than a shower is on its way through space. + I would not be aboard of yonder barque. + [_She goes out._] + _David._ Corinna! Now may I recall her face. + It is my light to think by in the dark. + Yes, all my years of study, all the will + Tenacious to achieve, the tempered strife, + The victories attained through patient skill, + Lie at the door of one dear human life. + And yet ... the letter ... + Often have I read + How love relumes the flowers and the trees. + True! For my world is newly garmented: + Rewards seem slight, and slighter penalties. + Daily companionship is more and more. + To make one little good more viable, + To lift one load, is worth the heart's outpour. + And she--she has made all things wonderful. + And yet ... the letter ... + O to break a spell + Wherein the stars are crumbling unto dust! + There never was a hope--I know it well, + And struggle on, and love because I must. + Never a hope? Shall ever any scheme, + Her silence, or alarm of written word, + Or voiced asseveration, shake my dream? + She loves me! By love's anguish, I have heard! + We two from our soul-towers across a vale + Are calling each to each, alert, aware. + Shall one of us one day the other hail, + And no reply be borne upon the air? + Corinna, come to light my heart's dim place! + O come to me, Belovèd and Besought, + O'er grief, o'er gladness,--even o'er death apace,-- + For I could greet your phantom, so it brought + Love's own reality!... + A song of hers + Seems striving hither, a faint villanelle + Half smothered by the gale's mad roisterers. + She used to sing it in the bracken dell. + Here is the rain against the window beating + In heavy drops that presage wilder storm. + The lake is lost within a lurid sheeting; + The house upon the hill has changed its form. + The melancholy pine-trees weep in rocking. + And what's that clamor at the outer door? + Martha! O Martha! Somebody is knocking! [_Calling._] + + _Martha._ [_Re-entering._] You hear the rills that down + the gutters roar. + + _David._ And are you deaf? The door--go open it! + This is no night to leave a man outside! + + _Martha._ [_Muttering and going toward the door._] And + is it I am growing deaf a bit, + And blind a bit, with other ill-betide! + Well, I can see to thread a needle still, + And I can hear the ticking of the clock, + And I can fetch a basket from the mill. + But hallow me if ever I heard knock! + [_She throws the door open. David starts up and rushes + forward with outstretched arms._] + _David._ Corinna! You, Corinna! Drenched and cold! + At last, at last! But how in all the rain! + Martha! + [_Martha stands motionless, unseeing._] + Good Martha, you are growing old! + Draw fast the shades--shut out the hurricane. + Here, take the dripping cloak from out the room; + Bring cordial from the purple damson pressed, + And light the lamps, the candles--fire the gloom. + Why stand you gaping? See you not the guest? + + _Martha._ I opened wide the door unto the storm. + But never heard I step upon the sill. + All the black night let in no living form. + I see no guest. Look hard as e'er I will, + I see none here but you and my poor self. + + _David._ The room that was my mother's room prepare. + Spread out warm garments on the oaken shelf-- + Her gown, the little shawl she used to wear. + [_Martha, wide-eyed, bewildered, lights the lamps and + candles and goes out, raising her hands._] + _Corinna._ The moments I may tarry fade and press. + Something impelled me hither, some clear flame. + They said I had no soul! O David, yes, + They said I had no soul! And so I came. + I have been singing, singing, all the way, + O, singing ever since the darkness grew + And I grew chill and followed the small ray. + Lean close, and let my longing rest in you! + + _David._ Dear balm of light, I never thought to win + From out the pallid hours for ever throbbing! + How did you know the sorrow I was in? + + _Corinna._ A flock of leaves came sobbing, sobbing, sobbing. + + _David._ O, now I hold you fast, my love, my own, + My festival upleaping from an ember! + But, timid child, how could you come alone + Across the pathless woods? + + _Corinna._ Do you remember?-- + Over the summer lake one starry, stilly, + Sweet night, when you and I were drifting, dear, + I frighted at the shadow of a lily! + It is all strange, but now I have no fear. + + _David._ Your eyes are weary, drooping. Sleep, then, sleep. + + _Corinna._ I must go over to the silent house. + + _David._ The dwelling stands forsaken up the steep, + With never beast nor human to arouse! + + _Corinna._ Soon will the windows gleam with many lamps. + Hark!--heavy wheels are toiling to the north. + + _David._ I will go with you where the darkness ramps. + + _Corinna._ Strong arms are in the storm to bear me forth. + + _David._ Not in these garments dripping as the trees! + Not in these clinging shadows! + + _Corinna._ Ah, good-night! + Dear love, dear love, I must go forth in these. + Tomorrow you shall see me all in white. + + _Agnes Lee_ + + + + + THE ORACLE + + (_To the New Telescope on Mt. Wilson_) + + Of old sat one at Delphi brooding o'er + The fretful earth;--ironically wise, + Veiling her prescience in dark replies, + She shaped the fates of men with mystic lore. + The oracle is silent now. No more + Fate parts the cloud that round omniscience lies. + But thou, O Seer, dost tease our wild surmise + With portents passing all the wealth of yore. + For thou shalt spell the very thoughts of God! + Before thy boundless vision, world on world + Shall multiply in glit'ring sequence far; + And all the little ways which men have trod + Shall be as nothing by His star-dust whirled + Into the making of a single star. + + + + + A GARGOYLE ON NOTRE DAME + + With angel's wings and brutish-human form, + Weathered with centuries of sun and storm, + He crouches yonder on the gallery wall, + Monstrous, superb, indifferent, cynical: + And all the pulse of Paris cannot stir + Her one immutable philosopher. + + _Edmund Kemper Broadus_ + + + + + SANTA BARBARA BEACH + + Now while the sunset offers, + Shall we not take our own: + The gems, the blazing coffers, + The seas, the shores, the throne? + + The sky-ships, radiant-masted, + Move out, bear low our way. + Oh, Life was dark while it lasted, + Now for enduring day. + + Now with the world far under, + To draw up drowning men + And show them lands of wonder + Where they may build again. + + There earthly sorrow falters, + There longing has its wage; + There gleam the ivory altars + Of our lost pilgrimage. + + --Swift flame--then shipwrecks only + Beach in the ruined light; + Above them reach up lonely + The headlands of the night. + + A hurt bird cries and flutters + Her dabbled breast of brown; + The western wall unshutters + To fling one last rose down. + + A rose, a wild light after-- + And life calls through the years, + "Who dreams my fountains' laughter + Shall feed my wells with tears." + + _Ridgely Torrence_ + + + + + MATERNITY + + One wept, whose only babe was dead, + New-born ten years ago. + "Weep not; he is in bliss," they said. + She answered, "Even so. + + "Ten years ago was born in pain + A child, not now forlorn; + But oh, ten years ago in vain + A mother, a mother was born." + + _Alice Meynell_ + + + + + PROFITS + + Yes, stars were with me formerly. + (I also knew the wind and sea; + And hill-tops had my feet by heart. + Their shaggéd heights would sting and start + When I came leaping on their backs. + I knew the earth's queer crooked cracks, + Where hidden waters weave a low + And druid chant of joy and woe.) + + But stars were with me most of all. + I heard them flame and break and fall. + Their excellent array, their free + Encounter with Eternity, + I learned. And it was good to know + That where God walked, I too might go. + + Now, all these things are passed. For I + Grow very old and glad to die. + What did they profit me, say you, + These distant bloodless things I knew? + Profit? What profit hath the sea + Of her deep-throated threnody? + What profit hath the sun, who stands + Staring on space with idle hands? + And what should God Himself acquire + From all the aeons' blood and fire? + + My profit is as theirs: to be + Made proof against mortality: + To know that I have companied + With all that shines and lives, amid + So much the years sift through their hands, + Most mortal, windy, worthless sands. + + This day I have great peace. With me + Shall stars abide eternally! + + + + + TWO SONGS OF CONN THE FOOL + + MOON FOLLY + + I will go up the mountain after the Moon: + She is caught in a dead fir-tree. + Like a great pale apple of silver and pearl, + Like a great pale apple is she. + + I will leap and will clasp her in quick cold hands + And carry her home in my sack. + I will set her down safe on the oaken bench + That stands at the chimney-back. + And then I will sit by the fire all night, + And sit by the fire all day. + I will gnaw at the Moon to my heart's delight, + Till I gnaw her slowly away. + + And while I grow mad with the Moon's cold taste, + The World may beat on my door, + Crying "Come out!" and crying "Make haste! + And give us the Moon once more!" + But I will not answer them ever at all; + I will laugh, as I count and hide + The great black beautiful seeds of the Moon + In a flower-pot deep and wide. + Then I will lie down and go fast asleep, + Drunken with flame and aswoon. + But the seeds will sprout, and the seeds will leap: + The subtle swift seeds of the Moon. + + And some day, all of the world that beats + And cries at my door, shall see + A thousand moon-leaves sprout from my thatch + On a marvellous white Moon-tree! + Then each shall have moons to his heart's desire: + Apples of silver and pearl: + Apples of orange and copper fire, + Setting his five wits aswirl. + And then they will thank me, who mock me now: + "Wanting the Moon is he!" + Oh, I'm off to the mountain after the Moon, + Ere she falls from the dead fir-tree! + + + + + WARNING + + You must do nothing false + Or cruel-lipped or low; + For I am Conn the Fool, + And Conn the Fool will know. + + I went by the door + When Patrick Joyce looked out. + He did not wish for me + Or any one about. + + He thought I did not see + The fat bag in his hand. + But Conn heard clinking gold, + And Conn could understand. + + I went by the door + Where Michael Kane lay dead. + I saw his Mary tie + A red shawl round her head. + + I saw a dark man lean + Across her garden-wall. + They did not know that Conn + Walked by at late dusk-fall. + + You must not scold or lie, + Or hate or steal or kill, + For I shall tell the wind + That leaps along the hill; + + And he will tell the stars + That sing and never lie; + And they will shout your sin + In God's face, bye and bye. + + And God will not forget, + For all He loves you so.-- + He made me Conn the Fool, + And bade me always know! + + + + + STORM DANCE + + The water came up with a roar, + The water came up to me. + There was a wave with tusks of a boar, + And he gnashed his tusks on me. + I leaned, I leapt, and was free. + He snarled and struggled and fled. + Foaming and blind he turned to the sea, + And his brothers trampled him dead. + + The water came up with a shriek, + The water came up to me. + There was a wave with a woman's cheek, + And she shuddered and clung to me. + I crouched, I cast her away. + She cursed me and swooned and died. + Her green hair tangled like sea-weed lay + Tossed out on the tearing tide. + + Challenge and chase me, Storm! + Harry and hate me, Wave! + Wild as the wind is my heart, but warm, + Sudden and merry and brave. + For the water comes up with a shout, + The water comes up to me. + And oh, but I laugh, laugh out! + And the great gulls laugh, and the sea! + + _Fannie Stearns Davis_ + + + + + DIRGE FOR A DEAD ADMIRAL + + What woman but would be + Rid of thy mastery, + Thou bully of the sea? + + No more the gray sea's breast + Need answer thy behest; + No more thy sullen gun + Shall greet the risen sun, + Where the great dreadnaughts ride + The breast of thy cold bride; + Thou hast fulfilled thy fate: + Need trade no more with hate! + + Nay, but I celebrate + Thy long-to-be-lorn mate, + Thy mistress and her state, + Thy lady sea's lorn state. + She hath her empery + Not only over thee + But o'er _our_ misery. + + Hark, doth she mourn for thee? + + Nay, what hath she of grief? + She knoweth not the leaf + That on her bosom falls, + Thou last of admirals! + + Under the winter moon + She singeth that fierce tune, + Her immemorial rune; + Knoweth not, late or soon, + Careth not + Any jot + For her withholden boon + To all thy spirit's pleas + For infinite surcease! + + If, on this winter night, + O thou great admiral + That in thy sombre pall + Liest upon the land, + Thy soul should take his flight + And leave the frozen sand, + And yearn above the surge, + Think'st thou that any dirge, + Grief inarticulate + From thy bereaved mate, + Would answer to thy soul + Where the waste waters roll? + + Nay, thou hast need of none! + Thy long love-watch is done! + + + + + SPRING-SONG + + Early some morning in May-time + I shall awaken + When the breeze blowing in at the window + Shall bathe me + With the delicate scents + Of the blossoms of apples, + Filling my room with their coolness + And beauty and fragrance-- + As of old, as of old, + When your spirit dwelt with me, + My heart shall be pure + As the heart that you gave me. + + + + + A SWEETHEART: THOMPSON STREET + + Queen of all streets, Fifth Avenue + Stretches her slender limbs + From the great Arch of Triumph, on,-- + On, where the distance dims + + The splendors of her jewelled robes, + Her granite draperies; + The magic, sunset-smitten walls + That veil her marble knees; + + For ninety squares she lies a queen, + Superb, bare, unashamed, + Yielding her beauty scornfully + To worshippers unnamed. + + But at her feet her sister glows, + A daughter of the South: + Squalid, immeasurably mean,-- + But oh! her hot, sweet mouth! + + My Thompson Street! a Tuscan girl, + Hot with life's wildest blood; + Her black shawl on her black, black hair, + Her brown feet stained with mud; + + A scarlet blossom at her lips, + A new babe at her breast; + A singer at a wine-shop door, + (Her lover unconfessed). + + Listen! a hurdy-gurdy plays-- + Now alien melodies: + She smiles, she cannot quite forget + The mother over-seas. + + But she no less is mine alone, + Mine, mine!... Who may I be? + Have _I_ betrayed her from her home? + I am called Liberty! + + + + + THE OFF-SHORE WIND + + The skies are sown with stars tonight, + The sea is sown with light, + The hollows of the heaving floor + Gleam deep with light once more, + The racing ebb-tide flashes past + And seeks the vacant vast, + A wind steals from a world asleep + And walks the restless deep. + + It walks the deep in ecstasy, + It lives! and loves to free + Its spirit to the silent night, + And breathes deep in delight; + Above the sea that knows no coast, + Beneath the starry host, + The wind walks like the souls of men + Who walk with God again. + + The souls of men who walk with God! + With faith's firm sandals shod, + A lambent passion, body-free, + Fain for eternity! + O spirit born of human sighs, + Set loose 'twixt sea and skies, + Be thou an Angel of mankind, + Thou night-unfettered wind! + + Bear thou the dreams of weary earth, + Bear thou Tomorrow's birth, + Take all our longings up to Him + Until His stars grow dim; + A moving anchorage of prayer, + Thou cool and healing air, + Heading off-shore till shoreless dawn + Breaks fair and night is gone. + + _Samuel McCoy_ + + + + + "THE HILL-FLOWERS" + + "_I will lift up mine eyes to the hills._" + + I + + _Moving through the dew, moving through the dew, + Ere I waken in the city--Life, thy dawn makes all things new! + And up a fir-clad glen, far from all the haunts of men, + Up a glen among the mountains, oh my feet are wings again!_ + + Moving through the dew, moving through the dew, + O mountains of my boyhood, I come again to you, + By the little path I know, with the sea far below, + And above, the great cloud-galleons with their sails of rose and snow; + + As of old, when all was young, and the earth a song unsung + And the heather through the crimson dawn its Eden incense flung + From the mountain-heights of joy, for a careless-hearted boy, + And the lavrocks rose like fountain sprays of bliss + that ne'er could cloy, + + From their little beds of bloom, from the golden gorse and broom, + With a song to God the Giver, o'er that waste of wild perfume; + Blowing from height to height, in a glory of great light, + While the cottage-clustered valleys held the lilac last of night, + + So, when dawn is in the skies, in a dream, a dream, I rise, + And I follow my lost boyhood to the heights of Paradise. + Life, thy dawn makes all things new! Hills of Youth, I come to you, + Moving through the dew, moving through the dew. + + II + + Moving through the dew, moving through the dew, + Floats a brother's face to meet me! Is it you? Is it you? + For the night I leave behind keeps these dazzled eyes still blind! + But oh, the little hill-flowers, their scent is wise and kind; + + And I shall not lose the way from the darkness to the day, + While dust can cling as their scent clings to memory for aye; + And the least link in the chain can recall the whole again, + And heaven at last resume its far-flung harvests, grain by grain. + + To the hill-flowers clings my dust, and tho' eyeless Death may thrust + All else into the darkness, in their heaven I put my trust; + And a dawn shall bid me climb to the little spread of thyme + Where first I heard the ripple of the fountain-heads of rhyme. + + And a fir-wood that I know, from dawn to sunset-glow, + Shall whisper to a lonely sea, that swings far, far below. + Death, thy dawn makes all things new. Hills of Youth, I come to you, + Moving through the dew, moving through the dew. + + _Alfred Noyes_ + + + + + EDITORIAL COMMENT + + THE SERVIAN EPIC + +Poetry as the inspiration of the Balkan war was the theme of a recent +talk given by Madame Slavko Grouitch before the Friday Club in Chicago, +and elsewhere, during her brief sojourn in her native country. Madame +Grouitch was a student at the American School of Archaeology in Athens +when she married the young Servian diplomat who now represents his +nation in London. + +According to the speaker, the Servian national songs have kept alive the +heroic spirit of the people during more than four centuries of Turkish +oppression. Through them each generation of the illiterate peasantry has +fought once more the ancient wars, and followed once more the ancient +leaders even to the final tragedy of the battle of Kossovo, where in +1377 they made their last brave stand against the Mohammedan invader. +Whenever a few people assemble for a festival, some local bard, perhaps +an old shepherd or soldier, a blind beggar or reformed brigand, will +chant the old songs to the monotonous music of the _gusle_, while the +people dance the _Kolo_. + +"There are thousands of songs in the Servian epic," says Mme. Grouitch, +"and each has many variants according to whether it is sung in Bosnia, +Herzegovina, Montenegro, Dalmatia, Servia, Bulgaria or Macedonia; for +all these political divisions are peopled by the Servian race descended +from the heroes whose deeds are the theme of such unwearied narration. +The bard is called the Guslar from his one-stringed instrument, whose +melancholy cadence--a sighing-forth of sound--affects the emotions and +increases the pathos of the words. For the story is usually sad, even +when it proclaims the triumph of great deeds." + +These songs invariably begin: + + Once it was so; now it is told. + +And they as invariably end: + + From me the song; from God health to you. + +A number of poems were read from Mme. Mijatovich's rather uninspired +translation of the Kossovo series, published in London in 1881. Extreme +simplicity and vividness characterize the old epic, which follows the +hopeless struggle of the noble Czar Lazar against the foe without, and +suspicions, dissensions, blunders, even treacheries, within. Certain +characters stand out with the uncompromising exactness of some biblical +story: the Czar himself; his over-zealous Vojvode; Milosh Obilich, whose +murder of Sultan Murad precipitated the disaster; and certain haughty +and passionate women, like the Empress Militza and her two daughters. +Also "Marko, the King's son," whose half-mythical figure is of the race +of Achilles. + +"There was one thing," said Mme. Grouitch, "which the Turk could not +take away from the Serb--the heavenly gift of poetry; that continued to +dwell hidden in the breast of the southern Slav. His body was enslaved, +but his soul was not; his physical life was oppressed, but his spiritual +being remained free. In the eighteenth century Europe re-discovered the +Servian national poetry, and became conscious that the race survived as +well as its ideals. Then Serb and Bulgar again appeared in current +history, and began to retrace the ancient boundaries. + +"All the conferences of all the powers can never diminish the hopes, nor +eclipse the glory of the Serb race in the minds of the Balkan peoples; +because the Guslar, who is their supreme national leader, is forever +telling them of that glory, and urging them to concerted action against +all outside foes. It was the Guslar who led the Montenegrin Serbs from +one heroic victory to another, so that 'their war annals,' as Gladstone +said, 'are more glorious than those of all the rest of the world.' It +was the Guslar who inspired Kara George and his heroic band of Servian +peasants to keep up their battle until free Servia was born. + +"Amid the roar of cannon at Lule Burgas and Monastir, I could hear the +mighty voice of the Guslar reminding Serb and Bulgar that their fight +was for 'the honored cross and golden liberty.' And they obeyed because +it was the voice of their nation. It is this irresistible national +spirit which leads their armies, and beside it the spirit of German +training behind the Turk is a lifeless shadow. The Ottoman power in +Europe is in ruins now, a wreck in the path of a national earthquake +which the Guslar has prophesied for five hundred years. The Guslar has +done his duty, and he stands today in a blaze of glory at the head of +the united and victorious nations of the Balkans." + +The speaker told of an impressive ceremony at the Servian legation in +London. Young Servians, recalled home for military service last autumn, +met there on the eve of departure. Wine being served, the minister and +his young patriots rose with lifted glasses, and chanted the ancient +summons of Czar Lazar to his people: + + Whoever born of Serbian blood or kin + Comes not to fight the Turk on Kossovo, + To him be never son or daughter born, + No child to heir his lands or bear his name! + For him no grape grow red, no corn grow white; + In his hands nothing prosper! + May he live + Alone, unloved! and die unmourned, alone! + + _H. M._ + + + + + IMAGISME[C] + +Some curiosity has been aroused concerning _Imagisme_, and as I was +unable to find anything definite about it in print, I sought out an +_imagiste_, with intent to discover whether the group itself knew +anything about the "movement." I gleaned these facts. + +[Footnote C: Editor's Note--In response to many requests for information +regarding _Imagism_ and the _Imagistes_, we publish this note by Mr. +Flint, supplementing it with further exemplification by Mr. Pound. It +will be seen from these that _Imagism_ is not necessarily associated +with Hellenic subjects, or with _vers libre_ as a prescribed form.] + +The _imagistes_ admitted that they were contemporaries of the Post +Impressionists and the Futurists; but they had nothing in common with +these schools. They had not published a manifesto. They were not a +revolutionary school; their only endeavor was to write in accordance +with the best tradition, as they found it in the best writers of all +time,--in Sappho, Catullus, Villon. They seemed to be absolutely +intolerant of all poetry that was not written in such endeavor, +ignorance of the best tradition forming no excuse. They had a few rules, +drawn up for their own satisfaction only, and they had not published +them. They were: + + 1. Direct treatment of the "thing," whether subjective + or objective. + 2. To use absolutely no word that did not contribute + to the presentation. + 3. As regarding rhythm: to compose in sequence of + the musical phrase, not in sequence of a metronome. + +By these standards they judged all poetry, and found most of it wanting. +They held also a certain 'Doctrine of the Image,' which they had not +committed to writing; they said that it did not concern the public, and +would provoke useless discussion. + +The devices whereby they persuaded approaching poetasters to attend +their instruction were: + + 1. They showed him his own thought already + splendidly expressed in some classic (and the school + musters altogether a most formidable erudition). + 2. They re-wrote his verses before his eyes, using + about ten words to his fifty. + +Even their opponents admit of them--ruefully--"At least they do keep bad +poets from writing!" + +I found among them an earnestness that is amazing to one accustomed to +the usual London air of poetic dilettantism. They consider that Art is +all science, all religion, philosophy and metaphysic. It is true that +_snobisme_ may be urged against them; but it is at least _snobisme_ in +its most dynamic form, with a great deal of sound sense and energy +behind it; and they are stricter with themselves than with any outsider. + + _F. S. Flint_ + + + + + A FEW DONT'S BY AN IMAGISTE + +An "Image" is that which presents an intellectual and emotional complex +in an instant of time. I use the term "complex" rather in the technical +sense employed by the newer psychologists, such as Hart, though we might +not agree absolutely in our application. + +It is the presentation of such a "complex" instantaneously which gives +that sense of sudden liberation; that sense of freedom from time limits +and space limits; that sense of sudden growth, which we experience in +the presence of the greatest works of art. + +It is better to present one Image in a lifetime than to produce +voluminous works. + +All this, however, some may consider open to debate. The immediate +necessity is to tabulate A LIST OF DONT'S for those beginning to write +verses. But I can not put all of them into Mosaic negative. + +To begin with, consider the three rules recorded by Mr. Flint, not as +dogma--never consider anything as dogma--but as the result of long +contemplation, which, even if it is some one else's contemplation, may +be worth consideration. + +Pay no attention to the criticism of men who have never themselves +written a notable work. Consider the discrepancies between the actual +writing of the Greek poets and dramatists, and the theories of the +Graeco-Roman grammarians, concocted to explain their metres. + + + + + LANGUAGE + +Use no superfluous word, no adjective, which does not reveal something. + +Don't use such an expression as "dim lands _of peace_." It dulls the +image. It mixes an abstraction with the concrete. It comes from the +writer's not realizing that the natural object is always the _adequate_ +symbol. + +Go in fear of abstractions. Don't retell in mediocre verse what has +already been done in good prose. Don't think any intelligent person is +going to be deceived when you try to shirk all the difficulties of the +unspeakably difficult art of good prose by chopping your composition +into line lengths. + +What the expert is tired of today the public will be tired of tomorrow. + +Don't imagine that the art of poetry is any simpler than the art of +music, or that you can please the expert before you have spent at least +as much effort on the art of verse as the average piano teacher spends +on the art of music. + +Be influenced by as many great artists as you can, but have the decency +either to acknowledge the debt outright, or to try to conceal it. + +Don't allow "influence" to mean merely that you mop up the particular +decorative vocabulary of some one or two poets whom you happen to +admire. A Turkish war correspondent was recently caught red-handed +babbling in his dispatches of "dove-gray" hills, or else it was +"pearl-pale," I can not remember. + +Use either no ornament or good ornament. + + + + + RHYTHM AND RHYME + +Let the candidate fill his mind with the finest cadences he can +discover, preferably in a foreign language so that the meaning of the +words may be less likely to divert his attention from the movement; +e.g., Saxon charms, Hebridean Folk Songs, the verse of Dante, and the +lyrics of Shakespeare--if he can dissociate the vocabulary from the +cadence. Let him dissect the lyrics of Goethe coldly into their +component sound values, syllables long and short, stressed and +unstressed, into vowels and consonants. + +It is not necessary that a poem should rely on its music, but if it does +rely on its music that music must be such as will delight the expert. + +Let the neophyte know assonance and alliteration, rhyme immediate and +delayed, simple and polyphonic, as a musician would expect to know +harmony and counterpoint and all the minutiae of his craft. No time is +too great to give to these matters or to any one of them, even if the +artist seldom have need of them. + +Don't imagine that a thing will "go" in verse just because it's too dull +to go in prose. + +Don't be "viewy"--leave that to the writers of pretty little philosophic +essays. Don't be descriptive; remember that the painter can describe a +landscape much better than you can, and that he has to know a deal more +about it. + +When Shakespeare talks of the "Dawn in russet mantle clad" he presents +something which the painter does not present. There is in this line of +his nothing that one can call description; he presents. + +Consider the way of the scientists rather than the way of an advertising +agent for a new soap. + +The scientist does not expect to be acclaimed as a great scientist until +he has _discovered_ something. He begins by learning what has been +discovered already. He goes from that point onward. He does not bank on +being a charming fellow personally. He does not expect his friends to +applaud the results of his freshman class work. Freshmen in poetry are +unfortunately not confined to a definite and recognizable class room. +They are "all over the shop." Is it any wonder "the public is +indifferent to poetry?" + +Don't chop your stuff into separate _iambs_. Don't make each line stop +dead at the end, and then begin every next line with a heave. Let the +beginning of the next line catch the rise of the rhythm wave, unless you +want a definite longish pause. + +In short, behave as a musician, a good musician, when dealing with that +phase of your art which has exact parallels in music. The same laws +govern, and you are bound by no others. + +Naturally, your rhythmic structure should not destroy the shape of your +words, or their natural sound, or their meaning. It is improbable that, +at the start, you will be able to get a rhythm-structure strong enough +to affect them very much, though you may fall a victim to all sorts of +false stopping due to line ends and caesurae. + +The musician can rely on pitch and the volume of the orchestra. You can +not. The term harmony is misapplied to poetry; it refers to simultaneous +sounds of different pitch. There is, however, in the best verse a sort +of residue of sound which remains in the ear of the hearer and acts more +or less as an organ-base. A rhyme must have in it some slight element of +surprise if it is to give pleasure; it need not be bizarre or curious, +but it must be well used if used at all. + +Vide further Vildrac and Duhamel's notes on rhyme in "_Technique +Poetique_." + +That part of your poetry which strikes upon the imaginative _eye_ of the +reader will lose nothing by translation into a foreign tongue; that +which appeals to the ear can reach only those who take it in the +original. + +Consider the definiteness of Dante's presentation, as compared with +Milton's rhetoric. Read as much of Wordsworth as does not seem too +unutterably dull. + +If you want the gist of the matter go to Sappho, Catullus, Villon, Heine +when he is in the vein, Gautier when he is not too frigid; or, if you +have not the tongues, seek out the leisurely Chaucer. Good prose will do +you no harm, and there is good discipline to be had by trying to write +it. + +Translation is likewise good training, if you find that your original +matter "wobbles" when you try to rewrite it. The meaning of the poem to +be translated can not "wobble." + +If you are using a symmetrical form, don't put in what you want to say +and then fill up the remaining vacuums with slush. + +Don't mess up the perception of one sense by trying to define it in +terms of another. This is usually only the result of being too lazy to +find the exact word. To this clause there are possibly exceptions. + +The first three simple proscriptions[D] will throw out nine-tenths of +all the bad poetry now accepted as standard and classic; and will +prevent you from many a crime of production. + +" ... _Mais d'abord il faut etre un poete_," as MM. Duhamel and Vildrac +have said at the end of their little book, "_Notes sur la Technique +Poetique_"; but in an American one takes that at least for granted, +otherwise why does one get born upon that august continent! + + _Ezra Pound_ + +[Footnote D: Noted by Mr. Flint.] + + + + + NOTES + +Agnes Lee (Mrs. Otto Freer) who has lived much in Boston, but is now a +resident of Chicago, is known as the author of various books of poetry, +the most representative, perhaps, being _The Border of the Lake_, +published about two years ago by Sherman, French & Co. She has +translated Gautier's _Emaux et Camees_ into English poetry; and has +contributed to the magazines. Her long poem, _The Asphodel_, which +appeared in _The North American Review_ several years ago, attracted +wide attention. + +Mr. Edmund Kemper Broadus is a member of the faculty of the University +of Alberta, Canada. + +Miss Fannie Stearns Davis is a young American who has written many songs +and lyrics, a collection of which is to be published this spring. She +was born in Cleveland, Ohio, but now lives in the East. + +Mrs. Meynell, who is the wife of Mr. Wilfrid Meynell, editor of one of +the leading English Catholic reviews, hardly needs an introduction in +America, where her exquisite art is well known. Her small volumes of +essays--_The Rhythm of Life_, _The Color of Life_, _The Children_, etc., +and her _Poems_ are published by The John Lane Company. + +Mr. Ridgely Torrence is the author of _El Dorado_, _A Tragedy_, _Abelard +and Eloise_, a poetic drama, and _Rituals for The Events of Life_. He +contributes infrequently to the magazines, several of his longer poems +having never been republished. He lives in New York. + +Mr. Samuel McCoy was born, thirty-one years ago, at Burlington, Iowa. He +now lives at Indianapolis, and devotes himself wholly to literary work. +He was educated at Princeton, and from 1906 to 1908 was associate editor +of _The Reader_. A collection of Mr. McCoy's poems will be issued in +book form this year by the Bobbs-Merrill Company. + +Mr. Alfred Noyes, a young English poet, is a well known contributor to +English and American magazines, and has published many books of poetry. +_The Loom of Years_; _The Flower of Old Japan_; _Poems_; _The Forest +of Wild Thyme_; _Drake, English An Epic_; _Forty Singing Seamen_, and +_The Enchanted Island_ are among the titles of his published works; and +a new volume, _The Tales of the Mermaid Tavern_, is to be published this +spring by the Frederick A. Stokes Co. + +Early numbers of Poetry will contain poems by John G. Neihardt, Ezra +Pound, Harriet Monroe, William Carlos Williams, Allen Upward, and +others. + + + + + BOOKS RECEIVED + + _Songs of a Syrian Lover_, by Clinton Scollard. Elkin Mathews. + _Annatese of Song_, by George M. P. Baird. Privately Printed. + _Pearls of Thought, A Collection of Original Poems_, + by Samuel M. Fleishman. Privately Printed. + _The Summons of the King, A Play_, by Philip Becker Goetz. + The MacDowell Press. + _Drake, An English Epic_, by Alfred Noyes. Frederick A. Stokes Co. + _Sherwood, or Robin Hood and the Three Kings, A Play in Five Acts_, + by Alfred Noyes. Frederick A. Stokes Co. + _The Enchanted Island and Other Poems_, by Alfred Noyes. + Frederick A Stokes Co. + _Songs of the City_, by DeCamp Leland. The Westende Publishing Co. + _In Vivid Gardens_, by Marguerite Wilkinson. Sherman, French & Co. + _A Book of Verse_, by Alice Hathaway Cunningham. + Cochrane Publishing Co. + _Chilhowee, A Legend of the Great Smoky Mountains_, + by Henry V. Maxwell. Knoxville Printing Co. + _Sappho, And the Island of Lesbos_, by Mary Mills Patrick. + Houghton Mifflin Co. + _Harp of Milan_, by Sister M. Fidés Shepperson. + J. H. Yewdale & Sons. + _Two Legends, A Souvenir of Sodus Bay_, by Mrs. B. C. Rude. + Privately Printed. + _Moods_, by David M. Cory. The Poet Lore Co. + _Poems_, by Charles D. Platt. Charles D. Platt, Dover. New Jersey. + _Poems, Old and New_, by A. H. Beesly. Longmans, Green & Co. + _Paroles devant la Vie_, par Alexandre Mercereau. E. Figuière + _Alexandre Mercereau_, par Jean Metzinger. E. Figuiére, Paris. + _Anthologie-Critique_, par Florian-Parmentier. + Gastien-Serge, Paris. + + + + + PERIODICALS + + _The Wild Hawk_, Hervey White. The Maverick Press, + Woodstock, N. Y. + _The Bibelot_, Thos. B. Mosher, Portland, Maine. + _The Idler_, Robert J. Shores, New York City. + _The Century_, New York City. + _The Forum_, New York City. + _The Conservator_, Horace Traubel, Philadelphia. + _The Nation_, New York City. + _The Poetry Review_, Harold Munro, London. + _The Poetry Review_ (New Series), Stephen Phillips, London. + _The Literary Digest_, New York City. + _Current Opinion_, New York City. + _The International_, New York City. + _The Dial_, Chicago. + _The Survey_, New York City. + _The Nation_, New York City. + _The Music News_, Chicago. + _Mercure de France_, 26 Rue de Condé, Paris. + _L'Effort Libre_, Galerie Vildrac, 11 Rue de Seine, Paris. + _Les Poétes_, E. Basset, 3 Rue Dante, Paris. + (This number devoted to poems selected from the work of + Nicolas Beauduin, _Paroxyste_.) + _L'Ile Sonnante_, 21 Rue Rousselet, Paris. + + + + + CONTENTS OF VOL. I + + VERSE + PAGE + + _Aldington, Richard_: + CHORIKOS 39 + To a Greek Marble 42 + Au Vieux Jardin 43 + + _Banning, Kendall_: + Love Songs of the Open Road 110 + + _Brink, Roscoe W._: + Helen Is Ill 117 + + _Broadus, Edmund Kemper_: + The Oracle 179 + A Gargoyle on Notre Dame 179 + + _Bynner, Witter_: + Apollo Troubadour 150 + One of the Crowd 153 + Neighbors 155 + The Hills of San José 156 + Grieve Not for Beauty 156 + The Mystic 157 + Passing Near 158 + + _Campbell, Joseph_: + The Piper 33 + + _Conkling, Grace Hazard_: + Symphony of a Mexican Garden 11 + + _Cawein, Madison_: + Waste Land 104 + My Lady of the Beeches 106 + + _Corbin, Alice_: + America 81 + Symbols 82 + The Star 82 + Nodes 87 + + _Davis, Fannie Stearns_: + Profits 182 + Two Songs of Conn the Fool 183 + Storm Dance 186 + + _Dudley, Helen_: + To One Unknown 10 + + _Ficke, Arthur Davison_: + Poetry 1 + Swinburne, An Elegy 137 + To a Child--Twenty Years Hence 144 + Portrait of an Old Woman 145 + The Three Sisters 146 + Among Shadows 147 + A Watteau Melody 147 + + _Fitch, Anita_: + The Wayfarers 108 + Les Cruels Amoureux 109 + + _H. D. "Imagiste"_: + Verses, Translations and Reflections from + "The Anthology" 118 + + _Lee, Agnes_: + The Silent House 173 + + _Lindsay, Nicholas Vachel_: + General Booth Enters into Heaven 101 + + _Long, Lily A._: + The Singing Place 47 + Immured 49 + + _Lorimer, Emilia Stuart_: + Fish of the Flood 9 + + _McCoy, Samuel_: + Dirge for a Dead Admiral 187 + Spring Song 189 + A Sweetheart: Thompson Street 189 + Off-shore Wind 190 + + _Meynell, Alice_: + Maternity 181 + + _Monroe, Harriet_: + Nogi 50 + + _Moody, William Vaughn_: + I Am the Woman 3 + + _Noyes, Alfred_: + The Hill Flowers 192 + + _Pound, Ezra_: + To Whistler, American 7 + Middle-aged 8 + + _Reed, John_: + Sangar 71 + + _Rensselaer, Mrs. Schuyler Van_: + Under Two Windows 44 + + _Rhys, Ernest_: + A Song of Happiness 114 + + _Smith, Clark Ashton_: + Remembered Light 77 + Sorrowing of Winds 78 + + _Sterling, George_: + A Legend of the Dove 75 + At the Grand Cañon 76 + Kindred 77 + + _Tagore, Rabindranath_: + Poems 84 + + _Torrence, Ridgely_: + Santa Barbara Beach 180 + + _Towne, Charles Hanson_: + Beyond the Stars 35 + + _Widdemer, Margaret_: + The Jester 51 + The Beggars 52 + + _Wyatt, Edith_: + Sympathy 112 + + _Yeats, William Butler_: + The Mountain Tomb 67 + To a Child Dancing upon the Shore 68 + Fallen Majesty 68 + Love and the Bird 69 + The Realists 70 + + + + + PROSE ARTICLES + + As It Was, _H. M._, 19 + On the Reading of Poetry, _E. W._, 22 + The Motive of the Magazine, _H. M._, 26 + Moody's Poems, _H. M._, 54 + Bohemian Poetry, _Ezra Pound_, 57 + "The Music of the Human Heart," _E. W._, 59 + The Open Door, 62 + A Perfect Return, _A. C. H._, 87 + Tagore's Poems, _Ezra Pound_, 92 + + Reviews: + _The Poems of Rosamund Marriott Watson_, 94 + _The Adventures of Young Maverick_, by Hervey White, 95 + _The Iscariot_, by Eden Phillpotts, 96 + _Interpretations_, by Zoë Akins, 97 + _Lyrical Poems_, by Lucy Lyttelton, 97 + Status Rerum, _Ezra Pound_, 123 + + Reviews: + _The Lyric Year_, 128 + _The Human Fantasy_, and + _The Beloved Adventure_, by John Hall Wheelock, 131 + _Poems and Ballads_, by Hermann Hagedorn, 132 + _Uriel and Other Poems_, by Percy MacKaye, 133 + _The Tragedy of Etarre_, by Rhys Carpenter, 133 + _Gabriel_, by Isabelle Howe Fiske, 133 + _The Unconquered Air_, by Florence Earle Coates, 133 + _The Story of a Round House and Other Poems_, + by John Masefield, 160 + _Présences_, by P. J. Jouve, 165 + + The Poetry Society of America, + _Jessie B. Rittenhouse_, 166 + "That Mass of Dolts", 168 + The Servian Epic, _H. M._, 195 + Imagisme, _F. S. Flint_, 199 + A Few Don'ts by an Imagiste, _Ezra Pound_, 202 + Notes, 29,64,99,134,168,206 + + + + + _Editor_ HARRIET MONROE + + _Advisory Committee_ HENRY B. FULLER + EDITH WYATT + H. C. CHATFIELD-TAYLOR + + _Foreign Correspondent_ EZRA POUND + + _Administration Committee_ WILLIAM T. ABBOTT + CHARLES H. HAMIL + + + + + + TO HAVE GREAT POETS THERE MUST + BE GREAT AUDIENCES TOO + + _Whitman_ + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Poetry: A Magazine of Verse, Volume I, by Various + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 43224 *** |