  The Story of a Round House and other Poems, N 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. 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. THE POETRY SOCIETY OF AMERICAThe 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. 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 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 RECEIVEDBugle 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.
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? 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 ... 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, 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. 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. 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? 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 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. 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! 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! 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. 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. 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, 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. 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 |
|
