*The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Second Book of Modern Verse*
Ed. Jessie B. Rittenhouse
#2 in our series by Jessie B. Rittenhouse
Copyright laws are changing all over the world, be sure to check the copyright laws for your country before posting these files!!
Please take a look at the important information in this header. We encourage you to keep this file on your own disk, keeping an electronic path open for the next readers. Do not remove this.
**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts**
**Etexts Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971**
*These Etexts Prepared By Hundreds of Volunteers and Donations*
Information on contacting Project Gutenberg to get Etexts, and further information is included below. We need your donations.
The Second Book of Modern Verse
Edited by Jessie B. Rittenhouse
January, 1998 [Etext #1166]
*The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Second Book of Modern Verse* ******This file should be named sbkmv10.txt or sbkmv10.zip******
Corrected EDITIONS of our etexts get a new NUMBER, sbkmv11.txt. VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, sbkmv10a.txt.
This etext was prepared by Alan R. Light (alight@vnet.net, formerly alight@mercury.interpath.net, etc.). To assure a high quality text, the original was typed in (manually) twice and electronically compared.
Project Gutenberg Etexts are usually created from multiple editions, all of which are in the Public Domain in the United States, unless a copyright notice is included. Therefore, we do NOT keep these books in compliance with any particular paper edition, usually otherwise.
We are now trying to release all our books one month in advance of the official release dates, for time for better editing.
Please note: neither this list nor its contents are final till midnight of the last day of the month of any such announcement. The official release date of all Project Gutenberg Etexts is at Midnight, Central Time, of the last day of the stated month. A preliminary version may often be posted for suggestion, comment and editing by those who wish to do so. To be sure you have an up to date first edition [xxxxx10x.xxx] please check file sizes in the first week of the next month. Since our ftp program has a bug in it that scrambles the date [tried to fix and failed] a look at the file size will have to do, but we will try to see a new copy has at least one byte more or less.
Information about Project Gutenberg (one page)
We produce about two million dollars for each hour we work. The fifty hours is one conservative estimate for how long it we take to get any etext selected, entered, proofread, edited, copyright searched and analyzed, the copyright letters written, etc. This projected audience is one hundred million readers. If our value per text is nominally estimated at one dollar then we produce $2 million dollars per hour this year as we release thirty-two text files per month, or 384 more Etexts in 1997 for a total of 1000+ If these reach just 10% of the computerized population, then the total should reach 80 billion Etexts.
The Goal of Project Gutenberg is to Give Away One Trillion Etext Files by the December 31, 2001. [10,000 x 100,000,000=Trillion] This is ten thousand titles each to one hundred million readers, which is only 10% of the present number of computer users. 2001 should have at least twice as many computer users as that, so it will require us reaching less than 5% of the users in 2001.
We need your donations more than ever!
All donations should be made to "Project Gutenberg/CMU": and are tax deductible to the extent allowable by law. (CMU = CarnegieMellon University).
For these and other matters, please mail to:
Project Gutenberg
P. O. Box 2782
Champaign, IL 61825
When all other email fails try our Executive Director: Michael S. Hart <hart@pobox.com>
We would prefer to send you this information by email (Internet, Bitnet, Compuserve, ATTMAIL or MCImail).
If you have an FTP program (or emulator), please FTP directly to the Project Gutenberg archives: [Mac users, do NOT point and click. . .type]
ftp uiarchive.cso.uiuc.edu
login: anonymous
password: your@login
cd etext/etext90 through /etext96
or cd etext/articles [get suggest gut for more information]
dir [to see files]
get or mget [to get files. . .set bin for zip files]
GET INDEX?00.GUT
for a list of books
and
GET NEW GUT for general information
and
MGET GUT* for newsletters.
**Information prepared by the Project Gutenberg legal advisor** (Three Pages)
***START**THE SMALL PRINT!**FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS**START*** Why is this "Small Print!" statement here? You know: lawyers. They tell us you might sue us if there is something wrong with your copy of this etext, even if you got it for free from someone other than us, and even if what's wrong is not our fault. So, among other things, this "Small Print!" statement disclaims most of our liability to you. It also tells you how you can distribute copies of this etext if you want to.
*BEFORE!* YOU USE OR READ THIS ETEXT
By using or reading any part of this PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm
etext, you indicate that you understand, agree to and accept
this "Small Print!" statement. If you do not, you can receive
a refund of the money (if any) you paid for this etext by
sending a request within 30 days of receiving it to the person
you got it from. If you received this etext on a physical
medium (such as a disk), you must return it with your request.
ABOUT PROJECT GUTENBERG-TM ETEXTS
This PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etext, like most PROJECT GUTENBERGtm
etexts, is a "public domain" work distributed by Professor
Michael S. Hart through the Project Gutenberg Association at
Carnegie-Mellon University (the "Project"). Among other
things, this means that no one owns a United States copyright
on or for this work, so the Project (and you!) can copy and
distribute it in the United States without permission and
without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, set forth
below, apply if you wish to copy and distribute this etext
under the Project's "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark.
To create these etexts, the Project expends considerable efforts to identify, transcribe and proofread public domain works. Despite these efforts, the Project's etexts and any medium they may be on may contain "Defects". Among other things, Defects may take the form of incomplete, inaccurate or corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other etext medium, a computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by your equipment.
LIMITED WARRANTY; DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES But for the "Right of Replacement or Refund" described below, [1] the Project (and any other party you may receive this etext from as a PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etext) disclaims all liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal fees, and [2] YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE OR UNDER STRICT LIABILITY, OR FOR BREACH OF WARRANTY OR CONTRACT, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES, EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.
If you discover a Defect in this etext within 90 days of receiving it, you can receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending an explanatory note within that time to the person you received it from. If you received it on a physical medium, you must return it with your note, and such person may choose to alternatively give you a replacement copy. If you received it electronically, such person may choose to alternatively give you a second opportunity to receive it electronically.
THIS ETEXT IS OTHERWISE PROVIDED TO YOU "AS-IS". NO OTHER WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, ARE MADE TO YOU AS TO THE ETEXT OR ANY MEDIUM IT MAY BE ON, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
Some states do not allow disclaimers of implied warranties or the exclusion or limitation of consequential damages, so the above disclaimers and exclusions may not apply to you, and you may have other legal rights.
INDEMNITY
You will indemnify and hold the Project, its directors,
officers, members and agents harmless from all liability, cost
and expense, including legal fees, that arise directly or
indirectly from any of the following that you do or cause:
[1] distribution of this etext, [2] alteration, modification,
or addition to the etext, or [3] any Defect.
DISTRIBUTION UNDER "PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm" You may distribute copies of this etext electronically, or by disk, book or any other medium if you either delete this "Small Print!" and all other references to Project Gutenberg, or:
[1] Only give exact copies of it. Among other things, this
requires that you do not remove, alter or modify the
etext or this "small print!" statement. You may however,
if you wish, distribute this etext in machine readable
binary, compressed, mark-up, or proprietary form,
including any form resulting from conversion by word pro-
cessing or hypertext software, but only so long as
*EITHER*:
[*] The etext, when displayed, is clearly readable, and
does *not* contain characters other than those
intended by the author of the work, although tilde
(~), asterisk (*) and underline (_) characters may
be used to convey punctuation intended by the
author, and additional characters may be used to
indicate hypertext links; OR
[*] The etext may be readily converted by the reader at
no expense into plain ASCII, EBCDIC or equivalent
form by the program that displays the etext (as is
the case, for instance, with most word processors);
OR
[*] You provide, or agree to also provide on request at
no additional cost, fee or expense, a copy of the
etext in its original plain ASCII form (or in EBCDIC
or other equivalent proprietary form).
[2] Honor the etext refund and replacement provisions of this
"Small Print!" statement.
[3] Pay a trademark license fee to the Project of 20% of the
net profits you derive calculated using the method you
already use to calculate your applicable taxes. If you
don't derive profits, no royalty is due. Royalties are
payable to "Project Gutenberg Association/Carnegie-Mellon
University" within the 60 days following each
date you prepare (or were legally required to prepare)
your annual (or equivalent periodic) tax return.
WHAT IF YOU *WANT* TO SEND MONEY EVEN IF YOU DON'T HAVE TO? The Project gratefully accepts contributions in money, time, scanning machines, OCR software, public domain etexts, royalty free copyright licenses, and every other sort of contribution you can think of. Money should be paid to "Project Gutenberg Association / Carnegie-Mellon University".
*END*THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END*
This etext was prepared by Alan R. Light (alight@vnet.net, formerly alight@mercury.interpath.net, etc.). To assure a high quality text, the original was typed in (manually) twice and electronically compared.
The Second Book of Modern Verse
Ed. Jessie B. Rittenhouse
[Note on text: Italicized lines or stanzas are marked by tildes (~). Other italicized words are capitalized. Lines longer than 78 characters are broken and the continuation is indented two spaces. Some obvious errors may have been corrected.]
The Second Book of Modern Verse
A Selection from the work of contemporaneous American poets
Edited by Jessie B. Rittenhouse
Editor of The Little Book of Modern Verse
[Selections made in 1919.]
Foreword
It was my intention, when preparing `The Little Book of Modern Verse', published in 1913, to continue the series by a volume once in five years, but as it seemed inadvisable to issue one during the war, it is now six years since the publication of the first volume.
In the meantime, that the series might cover the period of American poetry from the beginning, `The Little Book of American Poets' was edited, confined chiefly to work of the nineteenth century, but ending with a group of living poets whose work has fallen equally within our own period. This group, including Edwin Markham, Bliss Carman, Edith Thomas, Louise Imogen Guiney, Lizette Woodworth Reese, and many others whose work has enriched both periods, was fully represented also in `The Little Book of Modern Verse'; and it has seemed necessary, therefore keenly as I regret the necessity, which limits of space impose, to omit the work of all poets who have been represented in both of my former collections.
Indeed the period covered by the present volume has been so prolific that it became necessary, if one would represent it with even approximate adequacy, to forego including many poets from `The Little Book of Modern Verse' itself, and but twenty-eight are repeated from that collection.
Even with these necessary eliminations in the interest of space for newer poets, the general scheme of the series -- that of small, intimate volumes that shall be typical of the period, rather than exhaustive -- has made it impossible to include all whose work I should otherwise have been glad to represent.
While I have not hesitated, where a poet's earlier work seemed finer and more characteristic than his later, to draw upon such earlier work, in the main `The Second Book of Modern Verse' has been selected from poetry published since 1913, the date of my first anthology.
Jessie B. Rittenhouse
New York
September 23, 1919
Contents
Abraham Lincoln walks at Midnight. [Vachel Lindsay]
Acceptance. [Willard Wattles]
Ad Matrem Amantissimam et Carissimam Filii in Aeternum Fidelitas.
[John Myers O'Hara]
After Apple-Picking. [Robert Frost]
After Sunset. [Grace Hazard Conkling]
Afternoon on a Hill. [Edna St. Vincent Millay]
Afterwards. [Mahlon Leonard Fisher]
Ambition. [Aline Kilmer]
The Ancient Beautiful Things. [Fannie Stearns Davis]
Apology. [Amy Lowell]
April on the Battlefields. [Leonora Speyer]
April -- North Carolina. [Harriet Monroe]
Atropos. [John Myers O'Hara]
Autumn. [Jean Starr Untermeyer]
Autumn Movement. [Carl Sandburg]
Ballad of a Child. [John G. Neihardt]
Behind the House is the Millet Plot. [Muna Lee]
Berkshires in April. [Clement Wood]
Beyond Rathkelly. [Francis Carlin]
Birches. [Robert Frost]
The Bitter Herb. [Jeanne Robert Foster]
Blind. [Harry Kemp]
Blue Squills. [Sara Teasdale]
The Breaking. [Margaret Steele Anderson]
Chanson of the Bells of Oseney. [Cale Young Rice]
The Chant of the Colorado. [Cale Young Rice]
The Child in Me. [May Riley Smith]
The Chinese Nightingale. [Vachel Lindsay]
Choice. [Angela Morgan]
Cinquains. [Adelaide Crapsey]
The City. [Charles Hanson Towne]
City Roofs. [Charles Hanson Towne]
Compensation. [William Ellery Leonard]
Convention. [Agnes Lee]
Cradle Song. [Josephine Preston Peabody]
The Dark Cavalier. [Margaret Widdemer]
The Day before April. [Mary Carolyn Davies]
Days. [Karle Wilson Baker]
Death -- Divination. [Charles Wharton Stork]
Dialogue. [Walter Conrad Arensberg]
Dilemma. [Orrick Johns]
Doors. [Hermann Hagedorn]
Dream. [Anna Hempstead Branch]
The Dream of Aengus Og. [Eleanor Rogers Cox]
Dusk at Sea. [Thomas S. Jones, Jr.]
Earth. [John Hall Wheelock]
Earth's Easter. [Robert Haven Schauffler]
Ellis Park. [Helen Hoyt]
The Enchanted Sheepfold. [Josephine Preston Peabody]
Envoi. [Josephine Preston Peabody]
Evening Song of Senlin. [Conrad Aiken]
Exile from God. [John Hall Wheelock]
Eye-Witness. [Ridgely Torrence]
The Falconer of God. [William Rose Benet]
"Feuerzauber". [Louis Untermeyer]
The Fields. [Witter Bynner]
Fifty Years Spent. [Maxwell Struthers Burt]
The First Food. [George Sterling]
Flammonde. [Edwin Arlington Robinson]
The Flower of Mending. [Vachel Lindsay]
Four Sonnets. [Thomas S. Jones, Jr.]
Francis Ledwidge. [Grace Hazard Conkling]
General William Booth Enters into Heaven. [Vachel Lindsay]
The Gift. [Louis V. Ledoux]
A Girl's Songs. [Mary Carolyn Davies]
God's Acre. [Witter Bynner]
God's World. [Edna St. Vincent Millay]
Good-Bye. [Norreys Jephson O'Conor]
Good Company. [Karle Wilson Baker]
The Great Hunt. [Carl Sandburg]
Harbury. [Louise Driscoll]
Have you an Eye. [Edwin Ford Piper]
Heat. [H. D.]
The Hill Wife. [Robert Frost]
Hills of Home. [Witter Bynner]
The Homeland. [Dana Burnet]
How much of Godhood. [Louis Untermeyer]
Hrolf's Thrall, His Song. [Willard Wattles]
"I am in Love with High Far-Seeing Places". [Arthur Davison Ficke]
I have a Rendezvous with Death. [Alan Seeger]
"I Pass a Lighted Window". [Clement Wood]
Idealists. [Alfred Kreymborg]
The Idol-Maker prays. [Arthur Guiterman]
"If you should tire of loving me". [Margaret Widdemer]
In Excelsis. [Thomas S. Jones, Jr.]
In Patris Mei Memoriam. [John Myers O'Hara]
In Spite of War. [Angela Morgan]
In the Hospital. [Arthur Guiterman]
In the Monastery. [Norreys Jephson O'Conor]
In the Mushroom Meadows. [Thomas Walsh]
Indian Summer. [William Ellery Leonard]
Interlude. [Scudder Middleton]
The Interpreter. [Orrick Johns]
Invocation. [Clara Shanafelt]
Irish Love Song. [Margaret Widdemer]
Jerico. [Willard Wattles]
The Kings are passing Deathward. [David Morton]
A Lady. [Amy Lowell]
The Last Piper. [Edward J. O'Brien]
Lincoln. [John Gould Fletcher]
Little Things. [Orrick Johns]
Loam. [Carl Sandburg]
Lonely Burial. [Stephen Vincent Benet]
The Lonely Death. [Adelaide Crapsey]
Love is a Terrible Thing. [Grace Fallow Norton]
A Love Song. [Theodosia Garrison]
Love Songs. [Sara Teasdale]
The Lover envies an Old Man. [Shaemas O Sheel]
A Lynmouth Widow. [Amelia Josephine Burr]
Mad Blake. [William Rose Benet]
Madonna of the Evening Flowers. [Amy Lowell]
Mater Dolorosa. [Louis V. Ledoux]
Men of Harlan. [William Aspinwall Bradley]
The Monk in the Kitchen. [Anna Hempstead Branch]
Morning Song of Senlin. [Conrad Aiken]
The Most-Sacred Mountain. [Eunice Tietjens]
Moth-Terror. [Benjamin De Casseres]
The Mould. [Gladys Cromwell]
Music I heard. [Conrad Aiken]
Muy Vieja Mexicana. [Alice Corbin]
The Name. [Anna Hempstead Branch]
The Narrow Doors. [Fannie Stearns Davis]
New Dreams for Old. [Cale Young Rice]
The New God. [James Oppenheim]
Nirvana. [John Hall Wheelock]
A Note from the Pipes. [Leonora Speyer]
A Nun. [Odell Shepard]
Of One Self-Slain. [Charles Hanson Towne]
Old Age. [Cale Young Rice]
Old Amaze. [Mahlon Leonard Fisher]
Old King Cole. [Edwin Arlington Robinson]
Old Manuscript. [Alfred Kreymborg]
Old Ships. [David Morton]
Omnium Exeunt in Mysterium. [George Sterling]
Open Windows. [Sara Teasdale]
Orchard. [H. D.]
Our Little House. [Thomas Walsh]
Overnight, a Rose. [Caroline Giltinan]
Overtones. [William Alexander Percy]
Path Flower. [Olive Tilford Dargan]
The Path that leads to Nowhere. [Corinne Roosevelt Robinson]
Patterns. [Amy Lowell]
Peace. [Agnes Lee]
Pierrette in Memory. [William Griffith]
Poets. [Joyce Kilmer]
Prayer during Battle. [Hermann Hagedorn]
Prayer of a Soldier in France. [Joyce Kilmer]
Prevision. [Aline Kilmer]
The Provinces. [Francis Carlin]
Reveille. [Louis Untermeyer]
Richard Cory. [Edwin Arlington Robinson]
The Road not taken. [Robert Frost]
Romance. [Scudder Middleton]
Rouge Bouquet. [Joyce Kilmer]
The Runner in the Skies. [James Oppenheim]
A Saint's Hours. [Sarah N. Cleghorn]
Silence. [Edgar Lee Masters]
The Silent Folk. [Charles Wharton Stork]
Slumber Song. [Louis V. Ledoux]
Smith, of the Third Oregon, dies. [Mary Carolyn Davies]
The Son. [Ridgely Torrence]
Song. [Margaret Steele Anderson]
Song. [Adelaide Crapsey]
Song. [Edward J. O'Brien]
Song. [Margaret Widdemer]
A Song of Two Wanderers. [Marguerite Wilkinson]
Songs of an Empty House. [Marguerite Wilkinson]
Spoon River Anthology. [Edgar Lee Masters]
Spring. [John Gould Fletcher]
Spring in Carmel. [George Sterling]
Spring Song. [William Griffith]
Students. [Florence Wilkinson]
Symbol. [David Morton]
Tampico. [Grace Hazard Conkling]
"There will come Soft Rain". [Sara Teasdale]
The Three Sisters. [Arthur Davison Ficke]
A Thrush in the Moonlight. [Witter Bynner]
To a Portrait of Whistler in the Brooklyn Art Museum. [Eleanor Rogers Cox]
To Any one. [Witter Bynner]
Trees. [Joyce Kilmer]
The Unknown Beloved. [John Hall Wheelock]
Valley Song. [Carl Sandburg]
Venus Transiens. [Amy Lowell]
Voyage a l'Infini. [Walter Conrad Arensberg]
The Wanderer. [Zoe Akins]
The Water Ouzel. [Harriet Monroe]
When the Year grows Old. [Edna St. Vincent Millay]
Where Love is. [Amelia Josephine Burr]
Where Love once was. [James Oppenheim]
Which. [Corinne Roosevelt Robinson]
The White Comrade. [Robert Haven Schauffler]
Wide Haven. [Clement Wood]
"A Wind Rose in the Night". [Aline Kilmer]
Yellow Warblers. [Katharine Lee Bates] You. [Ruth Guthrie Harding]
Biographical Notes
The Second Book of Modern Verse
The Road not taken. [Robert Frost]
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I --
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Symbol. [David Morton]
My faith is all a doubtful thing,
Wove on a doubtful loom, --
Until there comes, each showery spring,
A cherry-tree in bloom;
And Christ who died upon a tree
That death had stricken bare,
Comes beautifully back to me,
In blossoms, everywhere.
Spring. [John Gould Fletcher]
At the first hour, it was as if one said, "Arise." At the second hour, it was as if one said, "Go forth." And the winter constellations that are like patient ox-eyes Sank below the white horizon at the north.
At the third hour, it was as if one said, "I thirst"; At the fourth hour, all the earth was still: Then the clouds suddenly swung over, stooped, and burst; And the rain flooded valley, plain and hill.
At the fifth hour, darkness took the throne; At the sixth hour, the earth shook and the wind cried; At the seventh hour, the hidden seed was sown; At the eighth hour, it gave up the ghost and died.
At the ninth hour, they sealed up the tomb; And the earth was then silent for the space of three hours. But at the twelfth hour, a single lily from the gloom Shot forth, and was followed by a whole host of flowers.
"There will come Soft Rain". [Sara Teasdale]
There will come soft rain and the smell of the ground, And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;
And frogs in the pools singing at night, And wild plum-trees in tremulous white;
Robins will wear their feathery fire
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire.
And not one will know of the war, not one Will care at last when it is done.
Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree, If mankind perished utterly.
And Spring herself when she woke at dawn, Would scarcely know that we were gone.
Spring Song. [William Griffith]
Softly at dawn a whisper stole
Down from the Green House on the Hill,
Enchanting many a ghostly bole
And wood-song with the ancient thrill.
Gossiping on the country-side,
Spring and the wandering breezes say,
God has thrown Heaven open wide
And let the thrushes out to-day.
The Day before April. [Mary Carolyn Davies]
The day before April
Alone, alone,
I walked in the woods
And I sat on a stone.
I sat on a broad stone
And sang to the birds.
The tune was God's making
But I made the words.
Berkshires in April. [Clement Wood]
It is not Spring -- not yet --
But at East Schaghticoke I saw an ivory birch
Lifting a filmy red mantle of knotted buds
Above the rain-washed whiteness of her arms.
It is not Spring -- not yet --
But at Hoosick Falls I saw a robin strutting,
Thin, still, and fidgety,
Not like the puffed, complacent ball of feathers
That dawdles over the cidery Autumn loam.
It is not Spring -- not yet --
But up the stocky Pownal hills
Some springy shrub, a scarlet gash on the grayness,
Climbs, flaming, over the melting snows.
It is not Spring -- not yet --
But at Williamstown the willows are young and golden,
Their tall tips flinging the sun's rays back at him;
And as the sun drags over the Berkshire crests,
The willows glow, the scarlet bushes burn,
The high hill birches shine like purple plumes,
A royal headdress for the brow of Spring.
It is the doubtful, unquiet end of Winter,
And Spring is pulsing out of the wakening soil.
In Excelsis. [Thomas S. Jones, Jr.]
Spring!
And all our valleys turning into green,
Remembering --
As I remember! So my heart turns glad
For so much youth and joy -- this to have had
When in my veins the tide of living fire
Was at its flow;
This to know,
When now the miracle of young desire
Burns on the hills, and Spring's sweet choristers again
Chant from each tree and every bush aflame
Love's wondrous name;
This under youth's glad reign,
With all the valleys turning into green --
This to have heard and seen!
And Song!
Once to have known what every wakened bird
Has heard;
Once to have entered into that great harmony
Of love's creation, and to feel
The pulsing waves of wonder steal
Through all my being; once to be
In that same sea
Of wakened joy that stirs in every tree
And every bird; and then to sing --
To sing aloud the endless Song of Spring!
Waiting, I turn to Thee,
Expectant, humble, and on bended knee;
Youth's radiant fire
Only to burn at Thy unknown desire --
For this alone has Song been granted me.
Upon Thy altar burn me at Thy will;
All wonders fill
My cup, and it is Thine;
Life's precious wine
For this alone: for Thee.
Yet never can be paid
The debt long laid
Upon my heart, because my lips did press
In youth's glad Spring the Cup of Loveliness!
Blue Squills. [Sara Teasdale]
How many million Aprils came
Before I ever knew
How white a cherry bough could be,
A bed of squills, how blue.
And many a dancing April
When life is done with me,
Will lift the blue flame of the flower
And the white flame of the tree.
Oh, burn me with your beauty, then,
Oh, hurt me, tree and flower,
Lest in the end death try to take
Even this glistening hour.
O shaken flowers, O shimmering trees,
O sunlit white and blue,
Wound me, that I through endless sleep
May bear the scar of you.
Earth. [John Hall Wheelock]
Grasshopper, your fairy song
And my poem alike belong
To the dark and silent earth
From which all poetry has birth;
All we say and all we sing
Is but as the murmuring
Of that drowsy heart of hers
When from her deep dream she stirs:
If we sorrow, or rejoice,
You and I are but her voice.
Deftly does the dust express
In mind her hidden loveliness,
And from her cool silence stream
The cricket's cry and Dante's dream;
For the earth that breeds the trees
Breeds cities too, and symphonies.
Equally her beauty flows
Into a savior, or a rose --
Looks down in dream, and from above
Smiles at herself in Jesus' love.
Christ's love and Homer's art
Are but the workings of her heart;
Through Leonardo's hand she seeks
Herself, and through Beethoven speaks
In holy thunderings around
The awful message of the ground.
The serene and humble mold
Does in herself all selves enfold --
Kingdoms, destinies, and creeds,
Great dreams, and dauntless deeds,
Science that metes the firmament,
The high, inflexible intent
Of one for many sacrificed --
Plato's brain, the heart of Christ:
All love, all legend, and all lore
Are in the dust forevermore.
Even as the growing grass
Up from the soil religions pass,
And the field that bears the rye
Bears parables and prophecy.
Out of the earth the poem grows
Like the lily, or the rose;
And all man is, or yet may be,
Is but herself in agony
Toiling up the steep ascent
Toward the complete accomplishment
When all dust shall be, the whole
Universe, one conscious soul.
Yea, the quiet and cool sod
Bears in her breast the dream of God.
If you would know what earth is, scan
The intricate, proud heart of man,
Which is the earth articulate,
And learn how holy and how great,
How limitless and how profound
Is the nature of the ground --
How without terror or demur
We may entrust ourselves to her
When we are wearied out, and lay
Our faces in the common clay.
For she is pity, she is love,
All wisdom she, all thoughts that move
About her everlasting breast
Till she gathers them to rest:
All tenderness of all the ages,
Seraphic secrets of the sages,
Vision and hope of all the seers,
All prayer, all anguish, and all tears
Are but the dust, that from her dream
Awakes, and knows herself supreme --
Are but earth when she reveals
All that her secret heart conceals
Down in the dark and silent loam,
Which is ourselves, asleep, at home.
Yea, and this, my poem, too,
Is part of her as dust and dew,
Wherein herself she doth declare
Through my lips, and say her prayer.
Trees. [Joyce Kilmer]
I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.
A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth's sweet flowing breast;
A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;
A tree that may in summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;
Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.
Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.
Idealists. [Alfred Kreymborg]
Brother Tree:
Why do you reach and reach?
Do you dream some day to touch the sky?
Brother Stream:
Why do you run and run?
Do you dream some day to fill the sea?
Brother Bird:
Why do you sing and sing?
Do you dream --
~Young Man:
Why do you talk and talk and talk?~
Blind. [Harry Kemp]
The Spring blew trumpets of color;
Her Green sang in my brain --
I heard a blind man groping
"Tap -- tap" with his cane;
I pitied him in his blindness;
But can I boast, "I see"?
Perhaps there walks a spirit
Close by, who pities me, --
A spirit who hears me tapping
The five-sensed cane of mind
Amid such unguessed glories --
That I am worse than blind.
Yellow Warblers. [Katharine Lee Bates]
The first faint dawn was flushing up the skies When, dreamland still bewildering mine eyes, I looked out to the oak that, winter-long, -- a winter wild with war and woe and wrong -- Beyond my casement had been void of song.
And lo! with golden buds the twigs were set,
Live buds that warbled like a rivulet
Beneath a veil of willows. Then I knew
Those tiny voices, clear as drops of dew,
Those flying daffodils that fleck the blue,
Those sparkling visitants from myrtle isles,
Wee pilgrims of the sun, that measure miles
Innumerable over land and sea
With wings of shining inches. Flakes of glee,
They filled that dark old oak with jubilee,
Foretelling in delicious roundelays
Their dainty courtships on the dipping sprays,
How they should fashion nests, mate helping mate,
Of milkweed flax and fern-down delicate
To keep sky-tinted eggs inviolate.
Listening to those blithe notes, I slipped once more From lyric dawn through dreamland's open door, And there was God, Eternal Life that sings, Eternal joy, brooding all mortal things, A nest of stars, beneath untroubled wings.
April -- North Carolina. [Harriet Monroe]
Would you not be in Tryon
Now that the spring is here,
When mocking-birds are praising
The fresh, the blossomy year?
Look -- on the leafy carpet
Woven of winter's browns
Iris and pink azaleas
Flutter their gaudy gowns.
The dogwood spreads white meshes --
So white and light and high --
To catch the drifting sunlight
Out of the cobalt sky.
The pointed beech and maple,
The pines, dark-tufted, tall,
Pattern with many colors
The mountain's purple wall.
Hark -- what a rushing torrent
Of crystal song falls sheer!
Would you not be in Tryon
Now that the spring is here?
Path Flower. [Olive Tilford Dargan]
A red-cap sang in Bishop's wood,
A lark o'er Golder's lane,
As I the April pathway trod
Bound west for Willesden.
At foot each tiny blade grew big
And taller stood to hear,
And every leaf on every twig
Was like a little ear.
As I too paused, and both ways tried
To catch the rippling rain, --
So still, a hare kept at my side
His tussock of disdain, --
Behind me close I heard a step,
A soft pit-pat surprise,
And looking round my eyes fell deep
Into sweet other eyes;
The eyes like wells, where sun lies too,
So clear and trustful brown,
Without a bubble warning you
That here's a place to drown.
"How many miles?" Her broken shoes
Had told of more than one.
She answered like a dreaming Muse,
"I came from Islington."
"So long a tramp?" Two gentle nods,
Then seemed to lift a wing,
And words fell soft as willow-buds,
"I came to find the Spring."
A timid voice, yet not afraid
In ways so sweet to roam,
As it with honey bees had played
And could no more go home.
Her home! I saw the human lair,
I heard the huckster's bawl,
I stifled with the thickened air
Of bickering mart and stall.
Without a tuppence for a ride,
Her feet had set her free.
Her rags, that decency defied,
Seemed new with liberty.
But she was frail. Who would might note
The trail of hungering
That for an hour she had forgot
In wonder of the Spring.
So shriven by her joy she glowed
It seemed a sin to chat.
(A tea-shop snuggled off the road;
Why did I think of that?)
Oh, frail, so frail! I could have wept, --
But she was passing on,
And I but muddled, "You'll accept
A penny for a bun?"
Then up her little throat a spray
Of rose climbed for it must;
A wilding lost till safe it lay
Hid by her curls of rust;
And I saw modesties at fence
With pride that bore no name;
So old it was she knew not whence
It sudden woke and came;
But that which shone of all most clear
Was startled, sadder thought
That I should give her back the fear
Of life she had forgot.
And I blushed for the world we'd made,
Putting God's hand aside,
Till for the want of sun and shade
His little children died;
And blushed that I who every year
With Spring went up and down,
Must greet a soul that ached for her
With "penny for a bun!"
Struck as a thief in holy place
Whose sin upon him cries,
I watched the flowers leave her face,
The song go from her eyes.
Then she, sweet heart, she saw my rout,
And of her charity
A hand of grace put softly out
And took the coin from me.
A red-cap sang in Bishop's wood,
A lark o'er Golder's lane;
But I, alone, still glooming stood,
And April plucked in vain;
Till living words rang in my ears
And sudden music played:
~Out of such sacred thirst as hers
The world shall be remade.~
Afar she turned her head and smiled
As might have smiled the Spring,
And humble as a wondering child
I watched her vanishing.
Little Things. [Orrick Johns]
There's nothing very beautiful and nothing very gay About the rush of faces in the town by day, But a light tan cow in a pale green mead, That is very beautiful, beautiful indeed . . . And the soft March wind and the low March mist Are better than kisses in a dark street kissed . . . The fragrance of the forest when it wakes at dawn, The fragrance of a trim green village lawn, The hearing of the murmur of the rain at play -- These things are beautiful, beautiful as day! And I shan't stand waiting for love or scorn When the feast is laid for a day new-born . . . Oh, better let the little things I loved when little Return when the heart finds the great things brittle; And better is a temple made of bark and thong Than a tall stone temple that may stand too long.
New Dreams for Old. [Cale Young Rice]
Is there no voice in the world to come crying,
"New dreams for old!
New for old!"?
Many have long in my heart been lying,
Faded, weary, and cold.
All of them, all, would I give for a new one.
(Is there no seeker
Of dreams that were?)
Nor would I ask if the new were a true one:
Only for new dreams!
New for old!
For I am here, half way of my journey,
Here with the old!
All so old!
And the best heart with death is at tourney,
If naught new it is told.
Will there no voice, then, come -- or a vision --
Come with the beauty
That ever blows
Out of the lands that are called Elysian?
I must have new dreams!
New for old!
Invocation. [Clara Shanafelt]
O Glass-Blower of time,
Hast blown all shapes at thy fire?
Canst thou no lovelier bell,
No clearer bubble, clear as delight, inflate me --
Worthy to hold such wine
As was never yet trod from the grape,
Since the stars shed their light, since the moon
Troubled the night with her beauty?
Dream. [Anna Hempstead Branch]
But now the Dream has come again, the world is as of old. Once more I feel about my breast the heartening splendors fold. Now I am back in that good place from which my footsteps came, And I am hushed of any grief and have laid by my shame.
I know not by what road I came -- oh wonderful and fair! Only I know I ailed for thee and that thou wert not there. Then suddenly Time's stalwart wall before thee did divide, Its solid bastions dreamed and swayed and there was I inside.
It is thy nearness makes thee seem so wonderful and far. In that deep sky thou art obscured as in the noon, a star. But when the darkness of my grief swings up the mid-day sky, My need begets a shining world. Lo, in thy light am I.
All that I used to be is there and all I yet shall be. My laughter deepens in the air, my quiet in the tree. My utter tremblings of delight are manna from the sky, And shining flower-like in the grass my innocencies lie.
And here I run and sleep and laugh and have no name at all. Only if God should speak to me then I would heed the call. And I forget the curious ways, the alien looks of men, For even as it was of old, so is it now again.
Still every angel looks the same and all the folks are there That are so bounteous and mild and have not any care. But kindest to me is the one I would most choose to be. She is so beautiful and sheds such loving looks on me.
She is so beautiful -- and lays her cheek against my own. Back -- in the world -- they all will say, "How happy you have grown." Her breath is sweet about my eyes and she has healed me now, Though I be scarred with grief, I keep her kiss upon my brow.
All day, sweet land, I fight for thee outside the goodly wall, And 'twixt my breathless wounds I have no sight of thee at all! And sometimes I forget thy looks and what thy ways may be! I have denied thou wert at all -- yet still I fight for thee.
Four Sonnets. [Thomas S. Jones, Jr.]
I
Sanctuary
How may one hold these days of wonderment And bind them into stillness with a thong, Ere as a fleeting dream they pass along Into the waste of lovely things forspent; How may one keep what the Great Powers have sent, The prayers fulfilled more beautiful and strong Than any thought could fashion into song Of all the rarest harmonies inblent?
There is an Altar where they may be laid And sealed in Faith within Its sacred care, -- Here they are safe unto the very end; For these are of the things that never fade, Brought from the City that is built four-square, The gifts of Him who is the Perfect Friend.
II
The Last Spring
The first glad token of the Spring is here
That bears each time one miracle the more,
For in the sunlight is the golden ore,
The joyous promise of a waking year;
And in that promise all clouds disappear
And youth itself comes back as once before,
For only dreams are real in April's store
When buds are bursting and the skies are clear.
Fair Season! at your touch the sleeping land
Quickens to rapture, and a rosy flame
Is the old signal of awakening;
Thus in a mystery I understand
The deepest meaning of your lovely name --
How it will be in that perpetual Spring!
III
The Garden
Behind the pinions of the Seraphim,
Whose wings flame out upon the swinging spheres,
There is a Voice that speaks the numbered years
Until that Day when all comes back to Him;
Behind the faces of the Cherubim,
Whose smiles of love are seen through broken tears,
There is a Face that every creature fears,
The Face of Love no veil may ever dim.
O Angels of Glad Laughter and of Song,
Your voices sound so near, the little wall
Can scarcely hide the trees that bend and nod;
Unbar the gate, for you have waited long
To show the Garden that was made for all, --
Where all is safe beneath the Smile of God.
IV
The Path of the Stars
Down through the spheres that chant the Name of One
Who is the Law of Beauty and of Light
He came, and as He came the waiting Night
Shook with the gladness of a Day begun;
And as He came, He said: Thy Will Be Done
On Earth; and all His vibrant Words were white
And glistering with silver, and their might
Was of the glory of a rising sun.
Unto the Stars sang out His Living Words
White and with silver, and their rhythmic sound
Was as a mighty symphony unfurled;
And back from out the Stars like homing birds
They fell in love upon the sleeping ground
And were forever in a wakened world.
Chanson of the Bells of Oseney. [Cale Young Rice]
Thirteenth Century
The bells of Oseney
(Hautclere, Doucement, Austyn)
Chant sweetly every day,
And sadly, for our sin.
The bells of Oseney
(John, Gabriel, Marie)
Chant lowly,
Chant slowly,
Chant wistfully and holy
Of Christ, our Paladin.
Hautclere chants to the East
(His tongue is silvery high),
And Austyn like a priest
Sends west a weighty cry.
But Doucement set between
(Like an appeasive nun)
Chants cheerly,
Chants clearly,
As if Christ heard her nearly,
A plea to every sky.
A plea that John takes up
(He is the evangelist)
Till Gabriel's angel cup
Pours sound to sun or mist.
And last of all Marie
(The virgin-voice of God)
Peals purely,
Demurely,
And with a tone so surely
Divine, that all must hear.
The bells of Oseney
(Doucement, Austyn, Hautclere)
Pour ever day by day
Their peals on the rapt air;
And with their mellow mates
(John, Gabriel, Marie)
Tell slowly,
Tell lowly,
Of Christ the High and Holy,
Who makes the whole world fair.
Poets. [Joyce Kilmer]
Vain is the chiming of forgotten bells
That the wind sways above a ruined shrine.
Vainer his voice in whom no longer dwells
Hunger that craves immortal Bread and Wine.
Light songs we breathe that perish with our breath Out of our lips that have not kissed the rod. They shall not live who have not tasted death. They only sing who are struck dumb by God.
Acceptance. [Willard Wattles]
I cannot think nor reason,
I only know he came
With hands and feet of healing
And wild heart all aflame.
With eyes that dimmed and softened
At all the things he saw,
And in his pillared singing
I read the marching Law.
I only know he loves me,
Enfolds and understands --
And oh, his heart that holds me,
And oh, his certain hands!
In the Hospital. [Arthur Guiterman]
Because on the branch that is tapping my pane
A sun-wakened leaf-bud, uncurled,
Is bursting its rusty brown sheathing in twain,
I know there is Spring in the world.
Because through the sky-patch whose azure and white
My window frames all the day long,
A yellow-bird dips for an instant of flight,
I know there is Song.
Because even here in this Mansion of Woe Where creep the dull hours, leaden-shod, Compassion and Tenderness aid me, I know There is God.
Overnight, a Rose. [Caroline Giltinan]
That overnight a rose could come
I one time did believe,
For when the fairies live with one,
They wilfully deceive.
But now I know this perfect thing
Under the frozen sod
In cold and storm grew patiently
Obedient to God.
My wonder grows, since knowledge came
Old fancies to dismiss;
And courage comes. Was not the rose
A winter doing this?
Nor did it know, the weary while,
What color and perfume
With this completed loveliness
Lay in that earthly tomb.
So maybe I, who cannot see
What God wills not to show,
May, some day, bear a rose for Him
It took my life to grow.
The Idol-Maker prays. [Arthur Guiterman]
Great god whom I shall carve from this gray stone
Wherein thou liest, hid to all but me, Grant thou that when my art hath made thee known
And others bow, I shall not worship thee. But, as I pray thee now, then let me pray
Some greater god, -- like thee to be conceived Within my soul, -- for strength to turn away
From his new altar, when, that task achieved, He, too, stands manifest. Yea, let me yearn
From dream to grander dream! Let me not rest Content at any goal! Still bid me spurn
Each transient triumph on the Eternal Quest, Abjuring godlings whom my hand hath made For Deity, revealed, but unportrayed!
Reveille. [Louis Untermeyer]
What sudden bugle calls us in the night
And wakes us from a dream that we had shaped;
Flinging us sharply up against a fight
We thought we had escaped.
It is no easy waking, and we win
No final peace; our victories are few.
But still imperative forces pull us in
And sweep us somehow through.
Summoned by a supreme and confident power That wakes our sleeping courage like a blow, We rise, half-shaken, to the challenging hour, And answer it -- and go.
The Breaking. [Margaret Steele Anderson]
(The Lord God speaks to a youth)
Bend now thy body to the common weight! (But oh, that vine-clad head, those limbs of morn! Those proud young shoulders I myself made straight! How shall ye wear the yoke that must be worn?)
Look thou, my son, what wisdom comes to thee! (But oh, that singing mouth, those radiant eyes! Those dancing feet -- that I myself made free! How shall I sadden them to make them wise?)
Nay then, thou shalt! Resist not, have a care! (Yea, I must work my plans who sovereign sit! Yet do not tremble so! I cannot bear -- Though I am God -- to see thee so submit!)
The Falconer of God. [William Rose Benet]
I flung my soul to the air like a falcon flying. I said, "Wait on, wait on, while I ride below!
I shall start a heron soon
In the marsh beneath the moon --
A strange white heron rising with silver on its wings,
Rising and crying
Wordless, wondrous things;
The secret of the stars, of the world's heart-strings,
The answer to their woe.
Then stoop thou upon him, and grip and hold him so!"
My wild soul waited on as falcons hover.
I beat the reedy fens as I trampled past.
I heard the mournful loon
In the marsh beneath the moon.
And then -- with feathery thunder -- the bird of my desire
Broke from the cover
Flashing silver fire.
High up among the stars I saw his pinions spire.
The pale clouds gazed aghast
As my falcon stoopt upon him, and gript and held him fast.
My soul dropt through the air -- with heavenly plunder? -- Gripping the dazzling bird my dreaming knew?
Nay! but a piteous freight,
A dark and heavy weight
Despoiled of silver plumage, its voice forever stilled, --
All of the wonder
Gone that ever filled
Its guise with glory. Oh, bird that I have killed,
How brilliantly you flew
Across my rapturous vision when first I dreamed of you!
Yet I fling my soul on high with new endeavor,
And I ride the world below with a joyful mind.
~I shall start a heron soon
In the marsh beneath the moon --
A wondrous silver heron its inner darkness fledges!~
I beat forever
The fens and the sedges.
The pledge is still the same -- for all disastrous pledges,
All hopes resigned!
My soul still flies above me for the quarry it shall find.
Dilemma. [Orrick Johns]
What though the moon should come
With a blinding glow,
And the stars have a game
On the wood's edge,
A man would have to still
Cut and weed and sow,
And lay a white line
When he plants a hedge.
What though God
With a great sound of rain
Came to talk of violets
And things people do,
I would have to labor
And dig with my brain
Still to get a truth
Out of all words new.
To a Portrait of Whistler in the Brooklyn Art Museum. [Eleanor Rogers Cox]
What waspish whim of Fate
Was this that bade you here
Hold dim, unhonored state,
No single courtier near?
Is there, of all who pass,
No choice, discerning few
To poise the ribboned glass
And gaze enwrapt on you?
Sword-soul that from its sheath
Laughed leaping to the fray,
How calmly underneath
Goes Brooklyn on her way!
Quite heedless of that smile --
Half-devil and half-god,
Your quite unequalled style,
The airy heights you trod.
Ah, could you from earth's breast
Come back to take the air,
What matter here for jest
Most exquisite and rare!
But since you may not come,
Since silence holds you fast,
Since all your quips are dumb
And all your laughter past --
I give you mine instead,
And something with it too
That Brooklyn leaves unsaid --
The world's fine homage due.
Ah, Prince, you smile again --
"My faith, the court is small!"
I know, dear James -- but then
It's I or none at all!
Flammonde. [Edwin Arlington Robinson]
The man Flammonde, from God knows where,
With firm address and foreign air,
With news of nations in his talk
And something royal in his walk,
With glint of iron in his eyes,
But never doubt, nor yet surprise,
Appeared, and stayed, and held his head
As one by kings accredited.
Erect, with his alert repose
About him, and about his clothes,
He pictured all tradition hears
Of what we owe to fifty years.
His cleansing heritage of taste
Paraded neither want nor waste;
And what he needed for his fee
To live, he borrowed graciously.
He never told us what he was,
Or what mischance, or other cause,
Had banished him from better days
To play the Prince of Castaways.
Meanwhile he played surpassing well
A part, for most, unplayable;
In fine, one pauses, half afraid
To say for certain that he played.
For that, one may as well forego
Conviction as to yes or no;
Nor can I say just how intense
Would then have been the difference
To several, who, having striven
In vain to get what he was given,
Would see the stranger taken on
By friends not easy to be won.
Moreover, many a malcontent
He soothed and found munificent;
His courtesy beguiled and foiled
Suspicion that his years were soiled;
His mien distinguished any crowd,
His credit strengthened when he bowed;
And women, young and old, were fond
Of looking at the man Flammonde.
There was a woman in our town
On whom the fashion was to frown;
But while our talk renewed the tinge
Of a long-faded scarlet fringe,
The man Flammonde saw none of that,
And what he saw we wondered at --
That none of us, in her distress,
Could hide or find our littleness.
There was a boy that all agreed
Had shut within him the rare seed
Of learning. We could understand,
But none of us could lift a hand.
The man Flammonde appraised the youth,
And told a few of us the truth;
And thereby, for a little gold,
A flowered future was unrolled.
There were two citizens who fought
For years and years, and over nought;
They made life awkward for their friends,
And shortened their own dividends.
The man Flammonde said what was wrong
Should be made right, nor was it long
Before they were again in line,
And had each other in to dine.
And these I mention are but four
Of many out of many more.
So much for them. But what of him --
So firm in every look and limb?
What small satanic sort of kink
Was in his brain? What broken link
Withheld him from the destinies
That came so near to being his?
What was he, when we came to sift
His meaning, and to note the drift
Of incommunicable ways
That make us ponder while we praise?
Why was it that his charm revealed
Somehow the surface of a shield?
What was it that we never caught?
What was he, and what was he not?
How much it was of him we met
We cannot ever know; nor yet
Shall all he gave us quite atone
For what was his, and his alone;
Nor need we now, since he knew best,
Nourish an ethical unrest:
Rarely at once will nature give
The power to be Flammonde and live.
We cannot know how much we learn
From those who never will return,
Until a flash of unforeseen
Remembrance falls on what has been.
We've each a darkening hill to climb;
And this is why, from time to time
In Tilbury Town, we look beyond
Horizons for the man Flammonde.
The Chinese Nightingale. [Vachel Lindsay]
"How, how," he said. "Friend Chang," I said,
"San Francisco sleeps as the dead --
Ended license, lust and play:
Why do you iron the night away?
Your big clock speaks with a deadly sound,
With a tick and a wail till dawn comes round.
While the monster shadows glower and creep,
What can be better for man than sleep?"
"I will tell you a secret," Chang replied;
"My breast with vision is satisfied,
And I see green trees and fluttering wings,
And my deathless bird from Shanghai sings."
Then he lit five fire-crackers in a pan.
"Pop, pop," said the fire-crackers, "cra-cra-crack."
He lit a joss stick long and black.
Then the proud gray joss in the corner stirred;
On his wrist appeared a gray small bird,
And this was the song of the gray small bird:
"Where is the princess, loved forever,
Who made Chang first of the kings of men?"
And the joss in the corner stirred again;
And the carved dog, curled in his arms, awoke,
Barked forth a smoke-cloud that whirled and broke.
It piled in a maze round the ironing-place,
And there on the snowy table wide
Stood a Chinese lady of high degree,
With a scornful, witching, tea-rose face . . .
Yet she put away all form and pride,
And laid her glimmering veil aside
With a childlike smile for Chang and for me.
The walls fell back, night was aflower,
The table gleamed in a moonlit bower,
While Chang, with a countenance carved of stone,
Ironed and ironed, all alone.
And thus she sang to the busy man Chang:
"Have you forgotten . . .
Deep in the ages, long, long ago,
I was your sweetheart, there on the sand --
Storm-worn beach of the Chinese land?
We sold our grain in the peacock town
Built on the edge of the sea-sands brown --
Built on the edge of the sea-sands brown . . .
"When all the world was drinking blood
From the skulls of men and bulls
And all the world had swords and clubs of stone,
We drank our tea in China beneath the sacred spice-trees,
And heard the curled waves of the harbor moan.
And this gray bird, in Love's first spring,
With a bright-bronze breast and a bronze-brown wing,
Captured the world with his carolling.
Do you remember, ages after,
At last the world we were born to own?
You were the heir of the yellow throne --
The world was the field of the Chinese man
And we were the pride of the Sons of Han?
We copied deep books and we carved in jade,
And wove blue silks in the mulberry shade . . ."
"I remember, I remember
That Spring came on forever,
That Spring came on forever,"
Said the Chinese nightingale.
My heart was filled with marvel and dream,
Though I saw the western street-lamps gleam,
Though dawn was bringing the western day,
Though Chang was a laundryman ironing away . . .
Mingled there with the streets and alleys,
The railroad-yard and the clock-tower bright,
Demon clouds crossed ancient valleys;
Across wide lotus-ponds of light
I marked a giant firefly's flight.
And the lady, rosy-red,
Flourished her fan, her shimmering fan,
Stretched her hand toward Chang, and said:
"Do you remember,
Ages after,
Our palace of heart-red stone?
Do you remember
The little doll-faced children
With their lanterns full of moon-fire,
That came from all the empire
Honoring the throne? --
The loveliest fete and carnival
Our world had ever known?
The sages sat about us
With their heads bowed in their beards,
With proper meditation on the sight.
Confucius was not born;
We lived in those great days
Confucius later said were lived aright . . .
And this gray bird, on that day of spring,
With a bright-bronze breast, and a bronze-brown wing,
Captured the world with his carolling.
Late at night his tune was spent.
Peasants,
Sages,
Children,
Homeward went,
And then the bronze bird sang for you and me.
We walked alone. Our hearts were high and free.
I had a silvery name, I had a silvery name,
I had a silvery name -- do you remember
The name you cried beside the tumbling sea?"
Chang turned not to the lady slim --
He bent to his work, ironing away;
But she was arch, and knowing and glowing,
And the bird on his shoulder spoke for him.
"Darling . . . darling . . . darling . . . darling . . ." Said the Chinese nightingale.
The great gray joss on a rustic shelf,
Rakish and shrewd, with his collar awry,
Sang impolitely, as though by himself,
Drowning with his bellowing the nightingale's cry:
"Back through a hundred, hundred years
Hear the waves as they climb the piers,
Hear the howl of the silver seas,
Hear the thunder.
Hear the gongs of holy China
How the waves and tunes combine
In a rhythmic clashing wonder,
Incantation old and fine:
`Dragons, dragons, Chinese dragons,
Red fire-crackers, and green fire-crackers,
And dragons, dragons, Chinese dragons.'"
Then the lady, rosy-red,
Turned to her lover Chang and said:
"Dare you forget that turquoise dawn,
When we stood in our mist-hung velvet lawn,
And worked a spell this great joss taught
Till a God of the Dragons was charmed and caught?
From the flag high over our palace home
He flew to our feet in rainbow-foam --
A king of beauty and tempest and thunder
Panting to tear our sorrows asunder:
A dragon of fair adventure and wonder.
We mounted the back of that royal slave
With thoughts of desire that were noble and grave.
We swam down the shore to the dragon-mountains,
We whirled to the peaks and the fiery fountains.
To our secret ivory house we were borne.
We looked down the wonderful wing-filled regions
Where the dragons darted in glimmering legions.
Right by my breast the nightingale sang;
The old rhymes rang in the sunlit mist
That we this hour regain --
Song-fire for the brain.
When my hands and my hair and my feet you kissed,
When you cried for your heart's new pain,
What was my name in the dragon-mist,
In the rings of rainbowed rain?"
"Sorrow and love, glory and love,"
Said the Chinese nightingale.
"Sorrow and love, glory and love,"
Said the Chinese nightingale.
And now the joss broke in with his song:
"Dying ember, bird of Chang,
Soul of Chang, do you remember? --
Ere you returned to the shining harbor
There were pirates by ten thousand
Descended on the town
In vessels mountain-high and red and brown,
Moon-ships that climbed the storms and cut the skies.
On their prows were painted terrible bright eyes.
But I was then a wizard and a scholar and a priest;
I stood upon the sand;
With lifted hand I looked upon them
And sunk their vessels with my wizard eyes,
And the stately lacquer-gate made safe again.
Deep, deep below the bay, the sea-weed and the spray,
Embalmed in amber every pirate lies,
Embalmed in amber every pirate lies."
Then this did the noble lady say:
"Bird, do you dream of our home-coming day
When you flew like a courier on before
From the dragon-peak to our palace-door,
And we drove the steed in your singing path --
The ramping dragon of laughter and wrath:
And found our city all aglow,
And knighted this joss that decked it so?
There were golden fishes in the purple river
And silver fishes and rainbow fishes.
There were golden junks in the laughing river,
And silver junks and rainbow junks:
There were golden lilies by the bay and river,
And silver lilies and tiger-lilies,
And tinkling wind-bells in the gardens of the town
By the black-lacquer gate
Where walked in state
The kind king Chang
And his sweetheart mate . . .
With his flag-born dragon
And his crown of pearl . . . and . . . jade,
And his nightingale reigning in the mulberry shade,
And sailors and soldiers on the sea-sands brown,
And priests who bowed them down to your song --
By the city called Han, the peacock town,
By the city called Han, the nightingale town,
The nightingale town."
Then sang the bird, so strangely gay,
Fluttering, fluttering, ghostly and gray,
A vague, unravelling, final tune,
Like a long unwinding silk cocoon;
Sang as though for the soul of him
Who ironed away in that bower dim: --
"I have forgotten
Your dragons great,
Merry and mad and friendly and bold.
Dim is your proud lost palace-gate.
I vaguely know
There were heroes of old,
Troubles more than the heart could hold,
There were wolves in the woods
Yet lambs in the fold,
Nests in the top of the almond tree . . .
The evergreen tree . . . and the mulberry tree . . .
Life and hurry and joy forgotten,
Years on years I but half-remember . . .
Man is a torch, then ashes soon,
May and June, then dead December,
Dead December, then again June.
Who shall end my dream's confusion?
Life is a loom, weaving illusion . . .
I remember, I remember
There were ghostly veils and laces . . .
In the shadowy bowery places . . .
With lovers' ardent faces
Bending to one another,
Speaking each his part.
They infinitely echo
In the red cave of my heart.
`Sweetheart, sweetheart, sweetheart,'
They said to one another.
They spoke, I think, of perils past.
They spoke, I think, of peace at last.
One thing I remember:
Spring came on forever,
Spring came on forever,"
Said the Chinese nightingale.
Love Songs. [Sara Teasdale]
Come
Come, when the pale moon like a petal
Floats in the pearly dusk of Spring,
Come with arms outstretched to take me,
Come with lips that long to cling.
Come, for life is a frail moth flying,
Caught in the web of the years that pass,
And soon we two, so warm and eager,
Will be as the gray stones in the grass.
Message
I heard a cry in the night,
A thousand miles it came,
Sharp as a flash of light,
My name, my name!
It was your voice I heard,
You waked and loved me so --
I send you back this word,
I know, I know!
Moods
I am the still rain falling,
Too tired for singing mirth --
Oh, be the green fields calling,
Oh, be for me the earth!
I am the brown bird pining
To leave the nest and fly --
Oh, be the fresh cloud shining,
Oh, be for me the sky!
Night Song at Amalfi
I asked the heaven of stars
What I should give my love --
It answered me with silence,
Silence above.
I asked the darkened sea
Down where the fishers go --
It answered me with silence,
Silence below.
Oh, I could give him weeping,
Or I could give him song --
But how can I give silence
My whole life long?
Song
Let it be forgotten as a flower is forgotten,
Forgotten as a fire that once was singing gold,
Let it be forgotten forever and ever,
Time is a kind friend, he will make us old.
If any one asks, say it was forgotten
Long and long ago,
As a flower, as a fire, as a hushed footfall
In a long forgotten snow.
Love is a Terrible Thing. [Grace Fallow Norton]
I went out to the farthest meadow,
I lay down in the deepest shadow;
And I said unto the earth, "Hold me,"
And unto the night, "O enfold me,"
And unto the wind petulantly
I cried, "You know not for you are free!"
And I begged the little leaves to lean
Low and together for a safe screen;
Then to the stars I told my tale:
"That is my home-light, there in the vale,
"And O, I know that I shall return,
But let me lie first mid the unfeeling fern.
"For there is a flame that has blown too near, And there is a name that has grown too dear, And there is a fear . . ."
And to the still hills and cool earth and far sky I made moan, "The heart in my bosom is not my own!
"O would I were free as the wind on wing; Love is a terrible thing!"
Valley Song. [Carl Sandburg]
Your eyes and the valley are memories.
Your eyes fire and the valley a bowl.
It was here a moonrise crept over the timberline.
It was here we turned the coffee cups upside down.
And your eyes and the moon swept the valley.
I will see you again to-morrow.
I will see you again in a million years.
I will never know your dark eyes again.
These are three ghosts I keep.
These are three sumach-red dogs I run with.
All of it wraps and knots to a riddle:
I have the moon, the timberline, and you.
All three are gone -- and I keep all three.
Spring in Carmel. [George Sterling]
O'er Carmel fields in the springtime the sea-gulls follow the plow.
White, white wings on the blue above!
White were your brow and breast, O Love!
But I cannot see you now.
Tireless ever the Mission swallow
Dips to meadow and poppied hollow;
Well for her mate that he can follow,
As the buds are on the bough.
By the woods and waters of Carmel the lark is glad in the sun.
Harrow! Harrow! Music of God!
Near to your nest her feet have trod
Whose journeyings are done.
Sing, O lover! I cannot sing.
Wild and sad are the thoughts you bring.
Well for you are the skies of spring,
And to me all skies are one.
In the beautiful woods of Carmel an iris bends to the wind.
O thou far-off and sorrowful flower!
Rose that I found in a tragic hour!
Rose that I shall not find!
Petals that fell so soft and slowly,
Fragrant snows on the grasses lowly,
Gathered now would I call you holy
Ever to eyes once blind.
In the pine-sweet valley of Carmel the cream-cups scatter in foam.
Azures of early lupin there!
Now the wild lilac floods the air
Like a broken honey-comb.
So could the flowers of Paradise
Pour their souls to the morning skies;
So like a ghost your fragrance lies
On the path that once led home.
On the emerald hills of Carmel the spring and winter have met.
Here I find in a gentled spot
The frost of the wild forget-me-not,
And -- I cannot forget.
Heart once light as the floating feather
Borne aloft in the sunny weather,
Spring and winter have come together --
Shall you and she meet yet?
On the rocks and beaches of Carmel the surf is mighty to-day.
Breaker and lifting billow call
To the high, blue Silence over all
With the word no heart can say.
Time-to-be, shall I hear it ever?
Time-that-is, with the hands that sever,
Cry all words but the dreadful "Never"!
And name of her far away.
Music I heard. [Conrad Aiken]
Music I heard with you was more than music, And bread I broke with you was more than bread; Now that I am without you, all is desolate; All that was once so beautiful is dead.
Your hands once touched this table and this silver, And I have seen your fingers hold this glass. These things do not remember you, beloved, -- And yet your touch upon them will not pass.
For it was in my heart you moved among them, And blessed them with your hands and with your eyes; And in my heart they will remember always, -- They knew you once, O beautiful and wise.
Dusk at Sea. [Thomas S. Jones, Jr.]
To-night eternity alone is near:
The sea, the sunset, and the darkening blue;
Within their shelter is no space for fear,
Only the wonder that such things are true.
The thought of you is like the dusk at sea --
Space and wide freedom and old shores left far,
The shelter of a lone immensity
Sealed by the sunset and the evening star.
Old Ships. [David Morton]
There is a memory stays upon old ships, A weightless cargo in the musty hold, -- Of bright lagoons and prow-caressing lips, Of stormy midnights, -- and a tale untold. They have remembered islands in the dawn, And windy capes that tried their slender spars, And tortuous channels where their keels have gone, And calm blue nights of stillness and the stars.
Ah, never think that ships forget a shore,
Or bitter seas, or winds that made them wise;
There is a dream upon them, evermore; --
And there be some who say that sunk ships rise
To seek familiar harbors in the night,
Blowing in mists, their spectral sails like light.
The Wanderer. [Zoe Akins]
The ships are lying in the bay,
The gulls are swinging round their spars;
My soul as eagerly as they
Desires the margin of the stars.
So much do I love wandering,
So much I love the sea and sky,
That it will be a piteous thing
In one small grave to lie.
Harbury. [Louise Driscoll]
All the men of Harbury go down to the sea in ships, The wind upon their faces, the salt upon their lips.
The little boys of Harbury when they are laid to sleep, Dream of masts and cabins and the wonders of the deep.
The women-folk of Harbury have eyes like the sea, Wide with watching wonder, deep with mystery.
I met a woman: "Beyond the bar," she said, "Beyond the shallow water where the green lines spread,
"Out beyond the sand-bar and the white spray, My three sons wait for the Judgment Day."
I saw an old man who goes to sea no more, Watch from morn till evening down on the shore.
"The sea's a hard mistress," the old man said; "The sea is always hungry and never full fed.
"The sea had my father and took my son from me -- Sometimes I think I see them, walking on the sea!
"I'd like to be in Harbury on the Judgment Day, When the word is spoken and the sea is wiped away,
"And all the drowned fisher boys, with sea-weed in their hair, Rise and walk to Harbury to greet the women there.
"I'd like to be in Harbury to see the souls arise, Son and mother hand in hand, lovers with glad eyes.
"I think there would be many who would turn and look with me, Hoping for another glimpse of the cruel sea!
"They tell me that in Paradise the fields are green and still, With pleasant flowers everywhere that all may take who will,
"And four great rivers flowing from out the Throne of God That no one ever drowns in and souls may cross dry-shod.
"I think among those wonders there will be men like me, Who miss the old salt danger of the singing sea.
"For in my heart, like some old shell, inland, safe and dry, Any one who harks will still hear the sea cry."
A Lynmouth Widow. [Amelia Josephine Burr]
He was straight and strong, and his eyes were blue
As the summer meeting of sky and sea,
And the ruddy cliffs had a colder hue
Than flushed his cheek when he married me.
We passed the porch where the swallows breed, We left the little brown church behind, And I leaned on his arm, though I had no need, Only to feel him so strong and kind.
One thing I never can quite forget;
It grips my throat when I try to pray --
The keen salt smell of a drying net
That hung on the churchyard wall that day.
He would have taken a long, long grave --
A long, long grave, for he stood so tall . . .
Oh, God, the crash of a breaking wave,
And the smell of the nets on the churchyard wall!
City Roofs. [Charles Hanson Towne]
Roof-tops, roof-tops, what do you cover? Sad folk, bad folk, and many a glowing lover; Wise people, simple people, children of despair -- Roof-tops, roof-tops, hiding pain and care.
Roof-tops, roof-tops, O what sin you're knowing, While above you in the sky the white clouds are blowing; While beneath you, agony and dolor and grim strife Fight the olden battle, the olden war of Life.
Roof-tops, roof-tops, cover up their shame -- Wretched souls, prisoned souls too piteous to name; Man himself hath built you all to hide away the stars -- Roof-tops, roof-tops, you hide ten million scars.
Roof-tops, roof-tops, well I know you cover Many solemn tragedies and many a lonely lover; But ah, you hide the good that lives in the throbbing city -- Patient wives, and tenderness, forgiveness, faith, and pity.
Roof-tops, roof-tops, this is what I wonder: You are thick as poisonous plants, thick the people under; Yet roofless, and homeless, and shelterless they roam, The driftwood of the town who have no roof-top and no home!
Eye-Witness. [Ridgely Torrence]
Down by the railroad in a green valley
By dancing water, there he stayed awhile
Singing, and three men with him, listeners,
All tramps, all homeless reapers of the wind,
Motionless now and while the song went on
Transfigured into mages thronged with visions;
There with the late light of the sunset on them
And on clear water spinning from a spring
Through little cones of sand dancing and fading,
Close beside pine woods where a hermit thrush
Cast, when love dazzled him, shadows of music
That lengthened, fluting, through the singer's pauses
While the sure earth rolled eastward bringing stars
Over the singer and the men that listened
There by the roadside, understanding all.
A train went by but nothing seemed to be changed.
Some eye at a car window must have flashed
From the plush world inside the glassy Pullman,
Carelessly bearing off the scene forever,
With idle wonder what the men were doing,
Seeing they were so strangely fixed and seeing
Torn papers from their smeary dreary meal
Spread on the ground with old tomato cans
Muddy with dregs of lukewarm chicory,
Neglected while they listened to the song.
And while he sang the singer's face was lifted,
And the sky shook down a soft light upon him
Out of its branches where like fruits there were
Many beautiful stars and planets moving,
With lands upon them, rising from their seas,
Glorious lands with glittering sands upon them,
With soils of gold and magic mould for seeding,
The shining loam of lands afoam with gardens
On mightier stars with giant rains and suns
There in the heavens; but on none of all
Was there ground better than he stood upon:
There was no world there in the sky above him
Deeper in promise than the earth beneath him
Whose dust had flowered up in him the singer
And three men understanding every word.
The Tramp Sings:
I will sing, I will go, and never ask me "Why?" I was born a rover and a passer-by.
I seem to myself like water and sky,
A river and a rover and a passer-by.
But in the winter three years back
We lit us a night fire by the track,
And the snow came up and the fire it flew And we couldn't find the warming room for two.
One had to suffer, so I left him the fire And I went to the weather from my heart's desire.
It was night on the line, it was no more fire, But the zero whistle through the icy wire.
As I went suffering through the snow
Something like a shadow came moving slow.
I went up to it and I said a word;
Something flew above it like a kind of bird.
I leaned in closer and I saw a face;
A light went round me but I kept my place.
My heart went open like an apple sliced; I saw my Saviour and I saw my Christ.
Well, you may not read it in a book,
But it takes a gentle Saviour to give a gentle look.
I looked in his eyes and I read the news; His heart was having the railroad blues.
Oh, the railroad blues will cost you dear, Keeps you moving on for something that you don't see here.
We stood and whispered in a kind of moon; The line was looking like May and June.
I found he was a roamer and a journey man Looking for a lodging since the night began.
He went to the doors but he didn't have the pay. He went to the windows, then he went away.
Says, "We'll walk together and we'll both be fed." Says, "I will give you the `other' bread."
Oh, the bread he gave and without money! O drink, O fire, O burning honey!
It went all through me like a shining storm: I saw inside me, it was light and warm.
I saw deep under and I saw above,
I saw the stars weighed down with love.
They sang that love to burning birth,
They poured that music to the earth.
I heard the stars sing low like mothers. He said: "Now look, and help feed others."
I looked around, and as close as touch
Was everybody that suffered much.
They reached out, there was darkness only; They could not see us, they were lonely.
I saw the hearts that deaths took hold of, With the wounds bare that were not told of;
Hearts with things in them making gashes; Hearts that were choked with their dreams' ashes;
Women in front of the rolled-back air,
Looking at their breasts and nothing there;
Good men wasting and trapped in hells;
Hurt lads shivering with the fare-thee-wells.
I saw them as if something bound them;
I stood there but my heart went round them.
I begged him not to let me see them wasted. Says, "Tell them then what you have tasted."
Told him I was weak as a rained-on bee; Told him I was lost. -- Says: "Lean on me."
Something happened then I could not tell, But I knew I had the water for every hell.
Any other thing it was no use bringing; They needed what the stars were singing,
What the whole sky sang like waves of light, The tune that it danced to, day and night.
Oh, I listened to the sky for the tune to come; The song seemed easy, but I stood there dumb.
The stars could feel me reaching through them They let down light and drew me to them.
I stood in the sky in a light like day, Drinking in the word that all things say
Where the worlds hang growing in clustered shapes Dripping the music like wine from grapes.
With "Love, Love, Love," above the pain, -- The vine-like song with its wine-like rain.
Through heaven under heaven the song takes root Of the turning, burning, deathless fruit.
I came to the earth and the pain so near me, I tried that song but they couldn't hear me.
I went down into the ground to grow,
A seed for a song that would make men know.
Into the ground from my roamer's light
I went; he watched me sink to night.
Deep in the ground from my human grieving, His pain ploughed in me to believing.
Oh, he took earth's pain to be his bride, While the heart of life sang in his side.
For I felt that pain, I took its kiss,
My heart broke into dust with his.
Then sudden through the earth I found life springing; The dust men trampled on was singing.
Deep in my dust I felt its tones;
The roots of beauty went round my bones.
I stirred, I rose like a flame, like a river, I stood on the line, I could sing forever.
Love had pierced into my human sheathing, Song came out of me simple as breathing.
A freight came by, the line grew colder, He laid his hand upon my shoulder.
Says, "Don't stay on the line such nights," And led me by the hand to the station lights.
I asked him in front of the station-house wall If he had lodging. Says, "None at all."
I pointed to my heart and looked in his face. -- "Here, -- if you haven't got a better place."
He looked and he said: "Oh, we still must roam But if you'll keep it open, well, I'll call it `home'."
The thrush now slept whose pillow was his wing.
So the song ended and the four remained
Still in the faint starshine that silvered them,
While the low sound went on of broken water
Out of the spring and through the darkness flowing
Over a stone that held it from the sea.
Whether the men spoke after could not be told,
A mist from the ground so veiled them, but they waited
A little longer till the moon came up;
Then on the gilded track leading to the mountains,
Against the moon they faded in common gold
And earth bore East with all toward the new morning.
God's Acre. [Witter Bynner]
Because we felt there could not be
A mowing in reality
So white and feathery-blown and gay
With blossoms of wild caraway,
I said to Celia, "Let us trace
The secret of this pleasant place!"
We knew some deeper beauty lay
Below the bloom of caraway,
And when we bent the white aside
We came to paupers who had died:
Rough wooden shingles row on row,
And God's name written there -- `John Doe'.
General William Booth Enters into Heaven. [Vachel Lindsay]
(To be sung to the tune of `The Blood of the Lamb' with indicated instrument)
I
(Bass drum beaten loudly)
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 bravoes 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?)
(Banjos)
Every slum had sent its half-a-score
The round world over. (Booth had groaned for more.)
Every banner that the wide world flies
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 trumpets blowed a blare, blare, blare,
On, on upward thro' the golden air!
(Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?)
II
(Bass drum 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.
(Sweet flute music)
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.
(Bass drum louder)
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!
(Grand chorus of all instruments. Tambourines to the foreground)
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?)
O, 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.
(Reverently sung, no instruments)
And when Booth halted by the curb for prayer He saw his Master thro' 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?
Compensation. [William Ellery Leonard]
I know the sorrows of the last abyss:
I walked the cold black pools without a star;
I lay on rock of unseen flint and spar;
I heard the execrable serpent hiss;
I dreamed of sun, fruit-tree, and virgin's kiss;
I woke alone with midnight near and far,
And everlasting hunger, keen to mar;
But I arose, and my reward is this:
I am no more one more amid the throng:
Though name be naught, and lips forever weak,
I seem to know at last of mighty song;
And with no blush, no tremor on the cheek,
I do claim consort with the great and strong
Who suffered ill and had the gift to speak.
A Girl's Songs. [Mary Carolyn Davies]
Borrower
I sing of sorrow,
I sing of weeping.
I have no sorrow.
I only borrow
From some tomorrow
Where it lies sleeping,
Enough of sorrow
To sing of weeping.
Vintage
Heartbreak that is too new
Can not be used to make
Beauty that will startle;
That takes an old heartbreak.
Old heartbreaks are old wine.
Too new to pour is mine.
The Kiss
Your kiss lies on my face
Like the first snow
Upon a summer place.
Bewildered by that wonder,
The grasses tremble under
The thing they do not know.
I tremble even so.
Free
Over and over
I tell the sky:
I am free -- I!
Over and over I tell the sea:
- I am free!
Over and over I tell my lover
I am free, free!
Over and over.
But when the night comes black and cold,
I who am young, with fear grow old;
And I know, when the world is clear of sound,
I am bound -- bound.
The Enchanted Sheepfold. [Josephine Preston Peabody]
The hills far-off were blue, blue,
The hills at hand were brown;
And all the herd-bells called to me
As I came by the down.
The briars turned to roses, roses;
Ever we stayed to pull
A white little rose, and a red little rose,
And a lock of silver wool.
Nobody heeded, -- none, none;
And when True Love came by,
They thought him naught but the shepherd-boy.
Nobody knew but I!
The trees were feathered like birds, birds;
Birds were in every tree.
Yet nobody heeded, nobody heard,
Nobody knew, save me.
And he is fairer than all -- all.
How could a heart go wrong?
For his eyes I knew, and his knew mine,
Like an old, old song.
Where Love is. [Amelia Josephine Burr]
By the rosy cliffs of Devon, on a green hill's crest, I would build me a house as a swallow builds its nest; I would curtain it with roses, and the wind should breathe to me The sweetness of the roses and the saltness of the sea.
Where the Tuscan olives whiten in the hot blue day, I would hide me from the heat in a little hut of gray, While the singing of the husbandman should scale my lattice green From the golden rows of barley that the poppies blaze between.
Narrow is the street, Dear, and dingy are the walls Wherein I wait your coming as the twilight falls. All day with dreams I gild the grime till at your step I start -- Ah Love, my country in your arms -- my home upon your heart!
Interlude. [Scudder Middleton]
I am not old, but old enough
To know that you are very young.
It might be said I am the leaf,
And you the blossom newly sprung.
So I shall grow a while with you,
And hear the bee and watch the cloud,
Before the dragon on the branch,
The caterpillar, weaves a shroud.
The Lover envies an Old Man. [Shaemas O Sheel]
I envy the feeble old man
Dozing there in the sun.
When all you can do is done
And life is a shattered plan,
What is there better than
Dozing in the sun?
I could grow very still
Like an old stone on a hill
And content me with the one
Thing that is ever kind,
The tender sun.
I could grow deaf and blind
And never hear her voice,
Nor think I could rejoice
With her in any place;
And I could forget her face,
And love only the sun.
Because when we are tired,
Very very tired,
And cannot again be fired
By any hope,
The sun is so comforting!
A little bird under the wing
Of its mother, is not so warm.
Give me only the scope
Of an old chair
Out in the air,
Let me rest there,
Moving not,
Loving not,
Only dozing my days till my days be done,
Under the sun.
"If you should tire of loving me". [Margaret Widdemer]
If you should tire of loving me
Some one of our far days,
Oh, never start to hide your heart
Or cover thought with praise.
For every word you would not say
Be sure my heart has heard,
So go from me all silently
Without a kiss or word;
For God must give you happiness,
And Oh, it may befall
In listening long to Heaven-song
I may not care at all!
The Flower of Mending. [Vachel Lindsay]
When Dragon-fly would fix his wings,
When Snail would patch his house,
When moths have marred the overcoat
Of tender Mister Mouse,
The pretty creatures go with haste
To the sunlit blue-grass hills
Where the Flower of Mending yields the wax
And webs to help their ills.
The hour the coats are waxed and webbed
They fall into a dream,
And when they wake the ragged robes
Are joined without a seam.
My heart is but a dragon-fly,
My heart is but a mouse,
My heart is but a haughty snail
In a little stony house.
Your hand was honey-comb to heal,
Your voice a web to bind.
You were a Mending Flower to me
To cure my heart and mind.
Venus Transiens. [Amy Lowell]
Tell me,
Was Venus more beautiful
Than you are,
When she topped
The crinkled waves,
Drifting shoreward
On her plaited shell?
Was Botticelli's vision
Fairer than mine;
And were the painted rosebuds
He tossed his lady,
Of better worth
Than the words I blow about you
To cover your too great loveliness
As with a gauze
Of misted silver?
For me,
You stand poised
In the blue and buoyant air,
Cinctured by bright winds,
Treading the sunlight.
And the waves which precede you
Ripple and stir
The sands at your feet.
The Dream of Aengus Og. [Eleanor Rogers Cox]
When the rose of Morn through the Dawn was breaking, And white on the hearth was last night's flame, Thither to me 'twixt sleeping and waking, Singing out of the mists she came.
And grey as the mists on the spectre meadows Were the eyes that on my eyes she laid, And her hair's red splendor through the shadows Like to the marsh-fire gleamed and played.
And she sang of the wondrous far-off places
That a man may only see in dreams,
The death-still, odorous, starlit spaces
Where Time is lost and no life gleams.
And there till the day had its crest uplifted, She stood with her still face bent on me, Then forth with the Dawn departing drifted Light as a foam-fleck on the sea.
And now my heart is the heart of a swallow
That here no solace of rest may find,
Forevermore I follow and follow
Her white feet glancing down the wind.
And forevermore in my ears are ringing -- (Oh, red lips yet shall I kiss you dumb!) Twain sole words of that May morn's singing, Calling to me "Hither"! and "Come"!
From flower-bright fields to the wild lake-sedges Crying my steps when the Day has gone, Till dim and small down the Night's pale edges The stars have fluttered one by one.
And light as the thought of a love forgotten, The hours skim past, while before me flies That face of the Sun and Mist begotten, Its singing lips and death-cold eyes.
"I am in Love with High Far-Seeing Places". [Arthur Davison Ficke]
I am in love with high far-seeing places
That look on plains half-sunlight and half-storm, --
In love with hours when from the circling faces
Veils pass, and laughing fellowship glows warm.
You who look on me with grave eyes where rapture
And April love of living burn confessed, --
The Gods are good! The world lies free to capture!
Life has no walls. O take me to your breast!
Take me, -- be with me for a moment's span! --
I am in love with all unveiled faces.
I seek the wonder at the heart of man;
I would go up to the far-seeing places.
While youth is ours, turn toward me for a space
The marvel of your rapture-lighted face!
You. [Ruth Guthrie Harding]
Deep in the heart of me,
Nothing but You!
See through the art of me --
Deep in the heart of me
Find the best part of me,
Changeless and true.
Deep in the heart of me,
Nothing but You!
Choice. [Angela Morgan]
I'd rather have the thought of you
To hold against my heart,
My spirit to be taught of you
With west winds blowing,
Than all the warm caresses
Of another love's bestowing,
Or all the glories of the world
In which you had no part.
I'd rather have the theme of you
To thread my nights and days,
I'd rather have the dream of you
With faint stars glowing,
I'd rather have the want of you,
The rich, elusive taunt of you
Forever and forever and forever unconfessed
Than claim the alien comfort
Of any other's breast.
O lover! O my lover,
That this should come to me!
I'd rather have the hope for you,
Ah, Love, I'd rather grope for you
Within the great abyss
Than claim another's kiss --
Alone I'd rather go my way
Throughout eternity.
Song. [Margaret Steele Anderson]
The bride, she wears a white, white rose -- the plucking it was mine; The poet wears a laurel wreath -- and I the laurel twine; And oh, the child, your little child, that's clinging close to you, It laughs to wear my violets -- they are so sweet and blue!
And I, I have a wreath to wear -- ah, never rue nor thorn! I sometimes think that bitter wreath could be more sweetly worn! For mine is made of ghostly bloom, of what I can't forget -- The fallen leaves of other crowns -- rose, laurel, violet!
Romance. [Scudder Middleton]
Why should we argue with the falling dust
Or tremble in the traffic of the days?
Our hearts are music-makers in the clouds,
Our feet are running on the heavenly ways.
We'll go and find the honey of romance
Within the hollow of the sacred tree.
There is a spirit in the eastern sky,
Calling along the dawn to you and me.
She'll lead us to the forest where she hides
The yellow wine that keeps the angels young --
We are the chosen lovers of the earth
For whom alone the golden comb was hung.
Good-Bye. [Norreys Jephson O'Conor]
Good-bye to tree and tower,
To meadow, stream, and hill,
Beneath the white clouds marshalled close
At the wind's will.
Good-bye to the gay garden,
With prim geraniums pied,
And spreading yew trees, old, unchanging
Tho' men have died.
Good-bye to the New Castle,
With granite walls and grey,
And rooms where faded greatness still
Lingers to-day.
To every friend in Mallow,
When I am gone afar,
These words of ancient Celtic hope,
"Peace after war."
I would return to Erin
When all these wars are by,
Live long among her hills before
My last good-bye.
Beyond Rathkelly. [Francis Carlin]
As I went over the Far Hill,
Just beyond Rathkelly,
- Och, to be on the Far Hill
O'er Newtonstewart Town!
As I went over the Far Hill
With Marget's daughter Nellie, The night was up and the moon was out,
And a star was falling down.
As I went over the Far Hill,
Just beyond Rathkelly,
- Och, to be on the Far Hill
Above the Bridge o' Moyle!
As I went over the Far Hill,
With Marget's daughter Nellie, I made a wish before the star
Had fallen in the Foyle.
As I went over the Far Hill,
Just beyond Rathkelly,
- Och, to be on the Far Hill
With the hopes that I had then!
As I went over the Far Hill,
I wished for little Nellie, And if a star were falling now
I'd wish for her again.
A Song of Two Wanderers. [Marguerite Wilkinson]
Dear, when I went with you
To where the town ends,
Simple things that Christ loved --
They were our friends;
Tree shade and grass blade
And meadows in flower;
Sun-sparkle, dew-glisten,
Star-glow and shower;
Cool-flowing song at night
Where the river bends,
And the shingle croons a tune --
These were our friends.
Under us the brown earth
Ancient and strong,
The best bed for wanderers
All the night long;
Over us the blue sky
Ancient and dear,
The best roof to shelter all
Glad wanderers here;
And racing between them there
Falls and ascends
The chantey of the clean winds --
These were our friends.
By day on the broad road
Or on the narrow trail,
Angel wings shadowed us,
Glimmering pale
Through the red heat of noon;
In the twilight of dawn
Fairies broke fast with us;
Prophets led us on,
Heroes were kind to us
Day after happy day;
Many white Madonnas
We met on our way --
~Farmer and longshoreman,
Fisherman and wife,
Children and laborers
Brave enough for Life,
Simple folk that Christ loved --
They were our friends. . . .~
Dear, we must go again
To where the town ends. . . .
In the Mushroom Meadows. [Thomas Walsh]
Sun on the dewy grasslands where late the frost hath shone, And lo, what elfin cities are these we come upon! What pigmy domes and thatches, what Arab caravan, What downy-roofed pagodas that have known no touch of man! Are these the oldtime meadows? Yes, the wildgrape scents the air; The breath of ripened orchards still is incense everywhere; Yet do these dawn-encampments bring the lurking memories Of Egypt and of Burma and the shores of China Seas.
The Path that leads to Nowhere. [Corinne Roosevelt Robinson]
There's a path that leads to Nowhere
In a meadow that I know,
Where an inland island rises
And the stream is still and slow;
There it wanders under willows
And beneath the silver green
Of the birches' silent shadows
Where the early violets lean.
Other pathways lead to Somewhere,
But the one I love so well
Had no end and no beginning --
Just the beauty of the dell,
Just the windflowers and the lilies
Yellow striped as adder's tongue,
Seem to satisfy my pathway
As it winds their sweets among.
There I go to meet the Springtime,
When the meadow is aglow,
Marigolds amid the marshes, --
And the stream is still and slow. --
There I find my fair oasis,
And with care-free feet I tread
For the pathway leads to Nowhere,
And the blue is overhead!
All the ways that lead to Somewhere
Echo with the hurrying feet
Of the Struggling and the Striving,
But the way I find so sweet
Bids me dream and bids me linger,
Joy and Beauty are its goal, --
On the path that leads to Nowhere
I have sometimes found my soul!
Days. [Karle Wilson Baker]
Some days my thoughts are just cocoons -- all cold, and dull, and blind, They hang from dripping branches in the grey woods of my mind;
And other days they drift and shine -- such free and flying things! I find the gold-dust in my hair, left by their brushing wings.
Ellis Park. [Helen Hoyt]
Little park that I pass through,
I carry off a piece of you
Every morning hurrying down
To my work-day in the town;
Carry you for country there
To make the city ways more fair.
I take your trees,
And your breeze,
Your greenness,
Your cleanness,
Some of your shade, some of your sky,
Some of your calm as I go by;
Your flowers to trim
The pavements grim;
Your space for room in the jostled street
And grass for carpet to my feet.
Your fountains take and sweet bird calls
To sing me from my office walls.
All that I can see
I carry off with me.
But you never miss my theft,
So much treasure you have left.
As I find you, fresh at morning,
So I find you, home returning --
Nothing lacking from your grace.
All your riches wait in place
For me to borrow
On the morrow.
Do you hear this praise of you,
Little park that I pass through?
A Note from the Pipes. [Leonora Speyer]
Pan, blow your pipes and I will be
Your fern, your pool, your dream, your tree!
I heard you play, caught your swift eye,
"A pretty melody!" called I,
"Hail, Pan!" And sought to pass you by.
Now blow your pipes and I will sing
To your sure lips' accompanying!
Wild God, who lifted me from earth,
Who taught me freedom, wisdom, mirth,
Immortalized my body's worth, --
Blow, blow your pipes! And from afar
I'll come -- I'll be your bird, your star,
Your wood, your nymph, your kiss, your rhyme,
And all your godlike summer-time!
Afternoon on a Hill. [Edna St. Vincent Millay]
I will be the gladdest thing
Under the sun!
I will touch a hundred flowers
And not pick one.
I will look at cliffs and clouds
With quiet eyes,
Watch the wind bow down the grass,
And the grass rise.
And when lights begin to show
Up from the town,
I will mark which must be mine,
And then start down!
Open Windows. [Sara Teasdale]
Out of the window a sea of green trees
Lift their soft boughs like the arms of a dancer;
They beckon and call me, "Come out in the sun!"
But I cannot answer.
I am alone with Weakness and Pain,
Sick abed and June is going,
I cannot keep her, she hurries by
With the silver-green of her garments blowing.
Men and women pass in the street
Glad of the shining sapphire weather,
But we know more of it than they,
Pain and I together.
They are the runners in the sun,
Breathless and blinded by the race,
But we are watchers in the shade
Who speak with Wonder face to face.
Old Amaze. [Mahlon Leonard Fisher]
Mine eyes are filled today with old amaze
At mountains, and at meadows deftly strewn
With bits of the gay jewelry of June
And of her splendid vesture; and, agaze,
I stand where Spring her bright brocade of days
Embroidered o'er, and listen to the flow
Of sudden runlets -- the faint blasts they blow,
Low, on their stony bugles, in still ways.
For wonders are at one, confederate yet:
Yea, where the wearied year came to a close,
An odor reminiscent of the rose;
And everywhere her seal has Summer set;
And, as of old, in the horizon-sky,
The sun can find a lovely place to die.
Voyage a l'Infini. [Walter Conrad Arensberg]
The swan existing
Is like a song with an accompaniment
Imaginary.
Across the grassy lake,
Across the lake to the shadow of the willows,
It is accompanied by an image,
-- as by Debussy's
"Reflets dans l'eau".
The swan that is
Reflects
Upon the solitary water -- breast to breast
With the duplicity:
"~The other one!~"
And breast to breast it is confused.
O visionary wedding! O stateliness of the procession!
It is accompanied by the image of itself
Alone.
At night
The lake is a wide silence,
Without imagination.
After Sunset. [Grace Hazard Conkling]
I have an understanding with the hills
At evening when the slanted radiance fills
Their hollows, and the great winds let them be,
And they are quiet and look down at me.
Oh, then I see the patience in their eyes
Out of the centuries that made them wise.
They lend me hoarded memory and I learn
Their thoughts of granite and their whims of fern,
And why a dream of forests must endure
Though every tree be slain: and how the pure,
Invisible beauty has a word so brief
A flower can say it or a shaken leaf,
But few may ever snare it in a song,
Though for the quest a life is not too long.
When the blue hills grow tender, when they pull
The twilight close with gesture beautiful,
And shadows are their garments, and the air
Deepens, and the wild veery is at prayer, --
Their arms are strong around me; and I know
That somehow I shall follow when you go
To the still land beyond the evening star,
Where everlasting hills and valleys are:
And silence may not hurt us any more,
And terror shall be past, and grief, and war.
Morning Song of Senlin. [Conrad Aiken]
It is morning, Senlin says, and in the morning
When the light drips through the shutters like the dew,
I arise, I face the sunrise,
And do the things my fathers learned to do.
Stars in the purple dusk above the rooftops
Pale in a saffron mist and seem to die,
And I myself on a swiftly tilting planet
Stand before a glass and tie my tie.
Vine leaves tap my window,
Dew-drops sing to the garden stones,
The robin chirps in the chinaberry tree
Repeating three clear tones.
It is morning. I stand by the mirror
And tie my tie once more.
While waves far off in a pale rose twilight
Crash on a white sand shore.
I stand by a mirror and comb my hair:
How small and white my face! --
The green earth tilts through a sphere of air
And bathes in a flame of space.
There are houses hanging above the stars
And stars hung under a sea . . .
And a sun far off in a shell of silence
Dapples my walls for me . . .
It is morning, Senlin says, and in the morning
Should I not pause in the light to remember God?
Upright and firm I stand on a star unstable,
He is immense and lonely as a cloud.
I will dedicate this moment before my mirror
To him alone, for him I will comb my hair.
Accept these humble offerings, cloud of silence!
I will think of you as I descend the stair.
Vine leaves tap my window,
The snail-track shines on the stones,
Dew-drops flash from the chinaberry tree
Repeating two clear tones.
It is morning, I awake from a bed of silence, Shining I rise from the starless waters of sleep. The walls are about me still as in the evening, I am the same, and the same name still I keep. The earth revolves with me, yet makes no motion, The stars pale silently in a coral sky. In a whistling void I stand before my mirror, Unconcerned, and tie my tie.
There are horses neighing on far-off hills
Tossing their long white manes,
And mountains flash in the rose-white dusk,
Their shoulders black with rains . . .
It is morning. I stand by the mirror
And surprise my soul once more;
The blue air rushes above my ceiling,
There are suns beneath my floor . . .
. . . It is morning, Senlin says, I ascend from darkness And depart on the winds of space for I know not where, My watch is wound, a key is in my pocket, And the sky is darkened as I descend the stair. There are shadows across the windows, clouds in heaven, And a god among the stars; and I will go Thinking of him as I might think of daybreak And humming a tune I know . . .
Vine-leaves tap at the window,
Dew-drops sing to the garden stones,
The robin chirps in the chinaberry tree
Repeating three clear tones.
Good Company. [Karle Wilson Baker]
To-day I have grown taller from walking with the trees, The seven sister-poplars who go softly in a line; And I think my heart is whiter for its parley with a star That trembled out at nightfall and hung above the pine.
The call-note of a redbird from the cedars in the dusk Woke his happy mate within me to an answer free and fine; And a sudden angel beckoned from a column of blue smoke -- ~Lord, who am I that they should stoop -- these holy folk of thine?~
"Feuerzauber". [Louis Untermeyer]
I never knew the earth had so much gold --
The fields run over with it, and this hill,
Hoary and old,
Is young with buoyant blooms that flame and thrill.
Such golden fires, such yellow -- lo, how good
This spendthrift world, and what a lavish God --
This fringe of wood,
Blazing with buttercup and goldenrod.
You too, beloved, are changed. Again I see
Your face grow mystical, as on that night
You turned to me,
And all the trembling world -- and you -- were white.
Aye, you are touched; your singing lips grow dumb;
The fields absorb you, color you entire . . .
And you become
A goddess standing in a world of fire!
Birches. [Robert Frost]
When I see birches bend to left and right
Across the lines of straighter darker trees,
I like to think some boy's been swinging them.
But swinging doesn't bend them down to stay.
Ice-storms do that. Often you must have seen them
Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning
After a rain. They click upon themselves
As the breeze rises, and turn many-colored
As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel.
Soon the sun's warmth makes them shed crystal shells,
Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust --
Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away
You'd think the inner dome of heaven had fallen.
They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load,
And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed
So low for long, they never right themselves:
You may see their trunks arching in the woods
Years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground
Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair
Before them over their heads to dry in the sun.
But I was going to say when Truth broke in
With all her matter-of-fact about the ice-storm
(Now am I free to be poetical?)
I should prefer to have some boy bend them
As he went out and in to fetch the cows --
Some boy too far from town to learn baseball,
Whose only play was what he found himself,
Summer or winter, and could play alone.
One by one he subdued his father's trees
By riding them down over and over again
Until he took the stiffness out of them,
And not one but hung limp, not one was left
For him to conquer. He learned all there was
To learn about not launching out too soon
And so not carrying the tree away
Clear to the ground. He always kept his poise
To the top branches, climbing carefully
With the same pains you use to fill a cup
Up to the brim, and even above the brim.
Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish,
Kicking his way down through the air to the ground.
So was I once myself a swinger of birches.
And so I dream of going back to be.
It's when I'm weary of considerations,
And life is too much like a pathless wood
Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs
Broken across it, and one eye is weeping
From a twig's having lashed across it open.
I'd like to get away from earth awhile
And then come back to it and begin over.
May no fate willfully misunderstand me
And half grant what I wish and snatch me away
Not to return. Earth's the right place for love:
I don't know where it's likely to go better.
I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree,
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
TOWARD heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
But dipped its top and set me down again.
That would be good both going and coming back.
One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.
Fifty Years Spent. [Maxwell Struthers Burt]
Fifty years spent before I found me,
Wind on my mouth and the taste of the rain,
Where the great hills circled and swept around me
And the torrents leapt to the mist-drenched plain;
Ah, it was long this coming of me
Back to the hills and the sounding sea.
Ye who can go when so it tideth
To fallow fields when the Spring is new,
Finding the spirit that there abideth,
Taking fill of the sun and the dew;
Little ye know of the cross of the town
And the small pale folk who go up and down.
Fifty years spent before I found me
A bank knee-deep with climbing rose,
Saw, or had space to look around me,
Knew how the apple buds and blows;
And all the while that I thought me wise
I walked as one with blinded eyes.
Scarcely a lad who passes twenty
But finds him a girl to balm his heart;
Only I, who had work so plenty,
Bade this loving keep apart:
Once I saw a girl in a crowd,
But I hushed my heart when it cried out aloud.
City courts in January, --
City courts in wilted June,
Often ye will catch and carry
Echoes of some straying tune;
Ah, but underneath the feet
Echo stifles in a street.
Fifty years spent, and what do they bring me?
Now I can buy the meadow and hill:
Where is the heart of the boy to sing thee?
Where is the life for thy living to fill?
And thirty years back in a city crowd
I passed a girl when my heart cried loud!
The City. [Charles Hanson Towne]
When, sick of all the sorrow and distress
That flourished in the City like foul weeds,
I sought blue rivers and green, opulent meads,
And leagues of unregarded loneliness
Whereon no foot of man had seemed to press,
I did not know how great had been my needs,
How wise the woodland's gospels and her creeds,
How good her faith to one long comfortless.
But in the silence came a Voice to me;
In every wind it murmured, and I knew
It would not cease though far my heart might roam.
It called me in the sunrise and the dew,
At noon and twilight, sadly, hungrily,
The jealous City, whispering always -- "Home!"
The Most-Sacred Mountain. [Eunice Tietjens]
Space, and the twelve clean winds of heaven,
And this sharp exultation, like a cry, after the slow six thousand
steps of climbing!
This is Tai Shan, the beautiful, the most holy.
Below my feet the foot-hills nestle, brown with flecks of green;
and lower down the flat brown plain, the floor of earth, stretches away
to blue infinity.
Beside me in this airy space the temple roofs cut their slow curves
against the sky,
And one black bird circles above the void.
Space, and the twelve clean winds are here; And with them broods eternity -- a swift, white peace, a presence manifest. The rhythm ceases here. Time has no place. This is the end that has no end.
Here, when Confucius came, a half a thousand years before the Nazarene,
he stepped, with me, thus into timelessness.
The stone beside us waxes old, the carven stone that says: "On this spot once
Confucius stood and felt the smallness of the world below."
The stone grows old:
Eternity is not for stones.
But I shall go down from this airy place, this swift white peace,
this stinging exultation.
And time will close about me, and my soul stir to the rhythm
of the daily round.
Yet, having known, life will not press so close, and always I shall feel time
ravel thin about me;
For once I stood
In the white windy presence of eternity.
The Chant of the Colorado. [Cale Young Rice]
(At the Grand Canyon)
My brother, man, shapes him a plan
And builds him a house in a day,
But I have toiled through a million years
For a home to last alway.
I have flooded the sands and washed them down,
I have cut through gneiss and granite.
No toiler of earth has wrought as I,
Since God's first breath began it.
High mountain-buttes I have chiselled, to shade
My wanderings to the sea.
With the wind's aid, and the cloud's aid,
Unweary and mighty and unafraid,
I have bodied eternity.
My brother, man, builds for a span:
His life is a moment's breath.
But I have hewn for a million years,
Nor a moment dreamt of death.
By moons and stars I have measured my task --
And some from the skies have perished:
But ever I cut and flashed and foamed,
As ever my aim I cherished:
My aim to quarry the heart of earth,
Till, in the rock's red rise,
Its age and birth, through an awful girth
Of strata, should show the wonder-worth
Of patience to all eyes.
My brother, man, builds as he can,
And beauty he adds for his joy,
But all the hues of sublimity
My pinnacled walls employ.
Slow shadows iris them all day long,
And silvery veils, soul-stilling,
The moon drops down their precipices,
Soft with a spectral thrilling.
For all immutable dreams that sway
With beauty the earth and air,
Are ever at play, by night and day,
My house of eternity to array
In visions ever fair.
The Water Ouzel. [Harriet Monroe]
Little brown surf-bather of the mountains!
Spirit of foam, lover of cataracts, shaking your wings in falling waters!
Have you no fear of the roar and rush when Nevada plunges --
Nevada, the shapely dancer, feeling her way with slim white fingers?
How dare you dash at Yosemite the mighty --
Tall, white limbed Yosemite, leaping down, down over the cliff?
Is it not enough to lean on the blue air of mountains?
Is it not enough to rest with your mate at timberline, in bushes that hug
the rocks?
Must you fly through mad waters where the heaped-up granite breaks them?
Must you batter your wings in the torrent?
Must you plunge for life and death through the foam?
Old Manuscript. [Alfred Kreymborg]
The sky
Is that beautiful old parchment
In which the sun
And the moon
Keep their diary.
To read it all,
One must be a linguist
More learned than Father Wisdom;
And a visionary
More clairvoyant than Mother Dream.
But to feel it,
One must be an apostle:
One who is more than intimate
In having been, always,
The only confidant --
Like the earth
Or the sky.
The Runner in the Skies. [James Oppenheim]
Who is the runner in the skies,
With her blowing scarf of stars,
And our Earth and sun hovering like bees about her blossoming heart?
Her feet are on the winds, where space is deep,
Her eyes are nebulous and veiled,
She hurries through the night to a far lover.
Evening Song of Senlin. [Conrad Aiken]
It is moonlight. Alone in the silence
I ascend my stairs once more,
While waves, remote in a pale blue starlight,
Crash on a white sand shore.
It is moonlight. The garden is silent.
I stand in my room alone.
Across my wall, from the far-off moon,
A rain of fire is thrown . . .
There are houses hanging above the stars,
And stars hung under a sea:
And a wind from the long blue vault of time
Waves my curtains for me . . .
I wait in the dark once more,
Swung between space and space:
Before my mirror I lift my hands
And face my remembered face.
Is it I who stand in a question here,
Asking to know my name? . . .
It is I, yet I know not whither I go,
Nor why, nor whence I came.
It is I, who awoke at dawn
And arose and descended the stair,
Conceiving a god in the eye of the sun, --
In a woman's hands and hair.
It is I whose flesh is grey with the stones
I builded into a wall:
With a mournful melody in my brain
Of a tune I cannot recall . . .
There are roses to kiss: and mouths to kiss;
And the sharp-pained shadow of death.
I remember a rain-drop on my cheek, --
A wind like a fragrant breath . . .
And the star I laugh on tilts through heaven;
And the heavens are dark and steep . . .
I will forget these things once more
In the silence of sleep.
A Thrush in the Moonlight. [Witter Bynner]
In came the moon and covered me with wonder, Touched me and was near me and made me very still. In came a rush of song, like rain after thunder, Pouring importunate on my window-sill.
I lowered my head, I hid it, I would not see nor hear, The birdsong had stricken me, had brought the moon too near. But when I dared to lift my head, night began to fill With singing in the darkness. And then the thrush grew still. And the moon came in, and silence, on my window-sill.
Orchard. [H. D.]
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:
You have flayed us
With your 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 you an offering --
Do you, alone unbeautiful,
Son of the god,
Spare us from loveliness:
These fallen hazel-nuts,
Stripped late of their green sheaths,
Grapes, red-purple,
Their berries
Dripping with wine,
Pomegranates already broken,
And shrunken figs
And quinces untouched,
I bring you as offering.
Heat. [H. D.]
O wind, rend open the heat,
Cut apart the heat,
Rend it to tatters.
Fruit cannot drop
Through this thick air --
Fruit cannot fall into heat
That presses up and blunts
The points of pears
And rounds the grapes.
Cut the heat --
Plough through it,
Turning it on either side
Of your path.
Madonna of the Evening Flowers. [Amy Lowell]
All day long I have been working,
Now I am tired.
I call: "Where are you?"
But there is only the oak tree rustling in the wind.
The house is very quiet,
The sun shines in on your books,
On your scissors and thimble just put down,
But you are not there.
Suddenly I am lonely:
Where are you?
I go about searching.
Then I see you,
Standing under a spire of pale blue larkspur,
With a basket of roses on your arm.
You are cool, like silver,
And you smile.
I think the Canterbury bells are playing little tunes.
You tell me that the peonies need spraying,
That the columbines have overrun all bounds,
That the pyrus japonica should be cut back and rounded.
You tell me these things.
But I look at you, heart of silver,
White heart-flame of polished silver,
Burning beneath the blue steeples of the larkspur.
And I long to kneel instantly at your feet,
While all about us peal the loud, sweet `Te Deums' of the Canterbury bells.
The New God. [James Oppenheim]
Ye morning-glories, ring in the gale your bells, And with dew water the walk's dust for the burden-bearing ants: Ye swinging spears of the larkspur, open your wells of gold And pay your honey-tax to the hummingbird . . .
O now I see by the opening of blossoms,
And of bills of the hungry fledglings,
And the bright travel of sun-drunk insects,
Morning's business is afoot: Earth is busied with a million mouths!
Where goes eaten grass and thrush-snapped dragonfly? Creation eats itself, to spawn in swarming sun-rays . . . Bull and cricket go to it: life lives on life . . . But O, ye flame-daubed irises, and ye hosts of gnats, Like a well of light moving in morning's light, What is this garmented animal that comes eating and drinking among you? What is this upright one, with spade and with shears?
He is the visible and the invisible,
Behind his mouth and his eyes are other mouth and eyes . . .
Thirster after visions
He sees the flowers to their roots and the Earth back through its silent ages:
He parts the sky with his gaze:
He flings a magic on the hills, clothing them with Upanishad music,
Peopling the valley with dreamed images that vanished in Greece
millenniums back;
And in the actual morning, out of longing, shapes on the hills
To-morrow's golden grandeur . . .
O ye million hungerers and ye sun-rays
Ye are the many mothers of this invisible god,
This Earth's star and sun that rises singing and toiling among you,
This that is I, in joy, in the garden,
Singing to you, ye mor