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
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.
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.
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.
|
Vol. I
No. 5 |
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| FEBRUARY, 1913 |
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| ———— |
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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
