THE 
 
 ENCHANTED YEARS 
 
 A Book of Contemporary Verse 
 
 DEDICATED BY POETS OF GREAT 
 BRITAIN AND AMERICA TO THE 
 UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA ON THE 
 OCCASION OF ITS ONE-HUNDREDTH 
 ANNIVERSARY 
 
 EDITED BY 
 
 JOHN CALVIN METCALF 
 
 LINDEN KENT MEMORIAL PROFESSOR OF 
 ENGLISH LITERATURE 
 
 AND 
 
 JAMES SOUTHALL WILSON 
 
 EDGAR ALLAN POE PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH 
 UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY 
 1921 
 
COPYRIGHT, IQ2I, BY 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA 
 
 t 
 
 njk 
 
 THE QUINN a BODEN COMPANY 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 THE opening of the twentieth century has seen a 
 renaissance of poetry in the English-speaking lands. 
 Poetry has become a part of the intellectual interest 
 of thinking people as it has not been since the days 
 of Queen Elizabeth. The nature of this poetic 
 revival is somewhat different in England, in Ireland 
 and in America; but it is significant that in all these 
 countries a simple directness, freedom from rhetori 
 cal strain, and a virile naturalness are noticeable 
 traits. In England there has been a greater power 
 of restrained simplicity and natural force; in Ire 
 land, a finer realization of pure lyric beauty and 
 spiritual values; in America, an intensity of poetic 
 feeling, a variety of expression and thought, and an 
 adventurous courage in imaginative experimentation. 
 
 Of course, as always when art is vitally in touch 
 with reality, there has been marked individuality of 
 manner and tone rather than group similarity. The 
 leading English poets have been too original in crea 
 tive power to be called Georgian, save as the name 
 marks an era. The Irish writers may all have a part 
 in the Celtic Renaissance, but the fairy magic of one 
 or the lyric oracles of another cannot be classified 
 by one academic label. Nor can the term " new 
 poetry" in America resolve the colorful robust 
 vitality, the cryptic vision, the brilliant intellectu 
 ality, and the quiet beauty of certain poets into the 
 patterned product of a narrowed code of art. 
 
 " The Enchanted Years " is a collection of verse 
 representative of many different poetic aims and 
 
 iii 
 
methods. The freer forms of verse and the more 
 traditional phrasings meet on the common ground 
 of a clearly defined poetic purpose. From the voices 
 of many of the sweetest and strongest singers the 
 reader may learn through the poems brought to 
 gether here what the tone in poetry of his own cen 
 tury is. Most of the verses included have not been 
 published before, and, therefore, though some have 
 been printed in periodicals, and three or four in 
 books, the volume is essentially a book of new orig 
 inal poetry. The poets, in all cases, have spoken 
 their own thoughts upon their own themes. The 
 contents of the book have been freely given by the 
 authors as a centennial contribution to the Univer 
 sity of Virginia, and the editors sincerely thank the 
 distinguished group of poets who have dedicated the 
 products of their art to the making of this anthology. 
 They are grateful, also, for the generous interest of 
 several other great writers who, though desirous of 
 contributing to the volume, were for unavoidable 
 reasons prevented from doing so. Perhaps no gift in 
 its centenary year will enter more fully into the 
 heritage of Poe s University than will this gift of 
 the poets. 
 
 The University of Virginia was founded in 1819 
 by Thomas Jefferson. Because of world conditions 
 the centennial celebration was delayed. In this year 
 of hesitant expectancy and of new world conditions, 
 it officially closes one century and turns confidently 
 to the future. With Jefferson as father and distin 
 guished Englishmen upon the first faculty; with Poe 
 among its earliest sons and Woodrow Wilson among 
 
 iv 
 
the latest, it seems fitting that the enchanted years 
 of the past should be symbolized by the mingled 
 voices of poets of great Britain and America whose 
 wisdom helps make the present, too, " The 
 Enchanted Years ". 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA, 
 March 1, 1921. 
 
 J. C. M. 
 J. S. W. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 ARMISTEAD CHURCHILL GORDON 
 
 LORD DUNSANY 
 W. H. DAVIES 
 CALE YOUNG RICE 
 JOHN HALL WHEELOCK 
 GRACE HAZARD CONKLING 
 MARY CAROLYN DAVIES 
 
 ALFRED KREYMBORG 
 
 JAMES C. BARDIN 
 
 VIRGINIA TAYLOR McCoRMiCK 
 
 WILLIAM GRIFFITH 
 
 WILLIAM GRIFFITH 
 
 LOUISE DRISCOLL 
 
 D. H. LAWRENCE 
 
 D. H. LAWRENCE 
 
 JOHN GOULD FLETCHER 
 
 AMY LOWELL 
 
 H.D. (Mrs. Richard Aldington) 
 
 AGNES LEE 
 
 CLINTON SCOLLARD 
 GAMALIEL BRADFORD 
 GAMALIEL BRADFORD 
 HELEN GRAY CONE 
 
 KATHARINE LEE BATES 
 
 VACHEL LINDSAY 
 
 VACHEL LINDSAY 
 
 KATE LANGLEY BOSHER 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The University of Vir 
 
 ginia ... 1 
 
 To Keats ... 3 
 
 On What Sweet Banks 4 
 
 The Lake-Dweller . 5 
 
 Sea-Horizons . . 6 
 
 Maine Woods in Winter 8 
 Tree Songs 
 
 I Be Deferent to 
 
 Trees ... 10 
 II On a Windy Night 
 by a Tree Lie 
 
 Down . . 10 
 
 III Red Yews . . 11 
 
 IV Tree-Taught . 12 
 Chipmunks ... 13 
 Tropic Beach Song . . 14 
 When Spring Returns . 16 
 Spring Blew Open the 
 
 Door .... 17 
 
 Origins .... 19 
 
 A Weed .... 21 
 
 Slopes of Etna . . 22 
 
 Tropic .... 23 
 
 Prelude and Ode . . 24 
 
 The Enchanted Castle . 26 
 
 Egypt .... 27 
 The Singer of the 
 
 Shadows ... 29 
 
 At the Grave of Poe . 32 
 
 Thomas Jefferson . . 34 
 
 Ode to Thomas Jefferson 35 
 Sonnets Dedicated to the 
 
 University of Virginia 38 
 
 Woodrow Wilson . . 40 
 
 Our Mother Pocahontas 43 
 I Know All This When 
 
 Gipsy Fiddles Cry . 46 
 
 Lee . 52 
 
 vii 
 
GEORGE EDWARD WOODBERRY 
 
 WlLLOUGHBY WEAVING 
 
 AMELIA JOSEPHINE BURR 
 OLIVE TILFORD DARGAN 
 WINIFRED M. LETTS 
 
 THEODORE MAYNARD 
 THEODORE MAYNARD 
 FLORENCE WILKINSON 
 LEE WILSON DODD 
 ANGELA MORGAN 
 GRACE FALLOW NORTON 
 GEORGE HERBERT CLARKE 
 GEORGE HERBERT CLARKE 
 CLEMENT WOOD 
 
 JEAN STARR UNTERMEYER 
 THEODOSIA GARRISON 
 CHARLES WHARTON STORK 
 ELEANOR ROGERS Cox 
 ELEANOR ROGERS Cox 
 
 ANNA HEMPSTEAD BRANCH 
 
 JOHN FINLEY 
 MARGUERITE WILKINSON 
 GEORGE STERLING 
 Louis UNTERMEYER 
 EDWIN MARKHAM 
 EDWIN ARLINGTON ROBINSON 
 JOHN DRINKWATER 
 FANNIE STEARNS GIFFORD 
 BASIL L. GILDERSLEEVE 
 
 NORREYS JEPHSON O CoNOR 
 
 NORREYS JEPHSON O CoNOR 
 
 RALPH HODGSON 
 
 RICHARD ALDINGTON 
 
 HENRY AYLETT SAMPSON 
 
 THOMAS HARDY 
 
 MARGARET PRESCOTT MONTAGUE 
 
 WILLIAM ELLERY LEONARD 
 MAY RILEY SMITH 
 
 PAGE 
 
 To the University of 
 Virginia ... 53 
 
 Fate 54 
 
 Before the Crucifix . 56 
 Defiance .... 58 
 Somehow Somewhere 
 
 Sometime . . 60 
 Sonnet .... 61 
 Paganism .... 62 
 The University . . 63 
 Secular Ode ... 65 
 Education ... 66 
 The Smiling Dead . . 67 
 The Last Mobilization . 68 
 "Motionless" ... 70 
 The Man Came to the 
 
 Mountain ... 71 
 To a War Poet . . 74 
 An Old Poet ... 75 
 To a Suicide Poet . . 76 
 To a Dead Poet . . 79 
 Three White Birds of 
 
 Aengus ... 80 
 
 I Think of Him as One 
 
 Who Fights . . 82 
 Duovir . . 84 
 
 Praise . . . 87 
 
 Saul . . . . 90 
 
 The Window . . 93 
 
 Virgilia . . . 95 
 
 Afterthoughts . .100 
 
 A Lesson to My Ghost 101 
 The Turn of the Road 104 
 To the University of 
 
 Virginia . . . 106 
 The Spirit of Ireland 
 Considers her Herit 
 age 107 
 
 In an Oriental Shop . 109 
 Silver Wedding . . 110 
 To a Greek Marble .111 
 On an Old Hymn-Book 112 
 The Two Rosalinds . 113 
 The Soul of the Little 
 
 Room . . . .117 
 Flight of Crows . .118 
 " Sweet Reasonableness " 121 
 
 Vlll 
 
BENJAMIN SLEDD 
 BENJAMIN SLEDD 
 ARTHUR SYMONS 
 SARAH N. CLEGHORN 
 
 PERCY MACKAYE 
 
 RICHARD BURTON 
 MAXWELL STRUTHERS BURT 
 JOSEPHINE DASKAM BACON 
 
 ROBERT HAVEN SCHAUFFLER 
 
 JOHN ERSKINE 
 
 JOHN VANCE CHENEY 
 
 MARGARET SHERWOOD 
 
 TERTIUS VAN DYKE 
 
 R. T. W. DUKE, JR. 
 
 WALTER DE LA MARE 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Poet Singer Bird . 122 
 When Freedom Came . 123 
 The House . . .127 
 On Reading Many His 
 tories of the United 
 States .... 128 
 On Walt Whitman s 
 Leaves of Grass . . 131 
 
 Art 132 
 
 Princeton to Virginia . 133 
 The Pictures Sorolla y 
 
 Bastida .... 135 
 Dream .... 139 
 Achilles and the Maiden 140 
 The Ninth Symphony 145 
 A Choice .... 148 
 Remembered Beauty . 150 
 What the Clay Said unto 
 
 the Potter . . .151 
 Goodbye . . . .152 
 
 IX 
 
THE ENCHANTED YEARS 
 A Book of Contemporary Verse 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA 
 
 (1819-1861-1920) 
 
 MOTHER of Men, mother of loves and dreams, 
 Behold her, standing in her pillared porch, 
 Bearing aloft the unextinguished torch 
 
 Whose light across the crowded century streams, 
 
 With an intrepid countenance that seems 
 
 Touched into rapture by remembered years, 
 And lovely with the tenderness of tears, 
 
 The new smile breaking where the old tear gleams; 
 
 In peace, in war, still keeping her old fashion 
 Of truth that fosters freedom, her old light 
 In eyes that met one equal face of fight 
 
 In her sons faces, when with weaponed passion 
 
 They bared their breasts, in her immortal honor, 
 To Death, and saw that no shame fell upon her. 
 Armistead Churchill Gordon 
 
TO KEATS 
 
 ON a magical morning, with twinkling feet, 
 And a song at his lips that was strange and sweet, 
 Somebody new came down the street 
 To the world s derision and laughter. 
 
 Now he is dumb with no more to say, 
 Now he is dead and taken away, 
 Silent and still and leading the way, 
 And the world comes tumbling after. 
 
 Lord Dunsany 
 
ON WHAT SWEET BANKS 
 
 ON what sweet banks were thy pure fancies fed, 
 What world of smiling light has been thy home; 
 In what fair land of rainbows wert thou bred, 
 From what green land of cuckoos art thou come? 
 
 By all that great blue wonder in thine eyes, 
 Baffled and vexed I stand before thy smile 
 Thy thoughts, like angels, guard thee from surprise, 
 We see them not, yet feel them all the while. 
 
 That smile which, like the sun on every thing, 
 Now falls on me with no increased delight, 
 Must either go behind a cloud and bring 
 Death to my hopes, or give my love more light. 
 
 W. H. Dames 
 
THE LAKE-DWELLER 
 
 I VE never climbed mountains, 
 Nor sailed across the sea; 
 I don t know where Llassa is, 
 Nor Seoul nor Araby; 
 But every year the wild geese, 
 With distance on their wings, 
 Come dropping into Doole Lake 
 And tell me many things. 
 
 They don t speak in Latin, 
 And Greek is not their tongue. 
 Their lore is not in any book, 
 It can t be said or sung. 
 But when I see them sink down 
 From star-expectant skies, 
 I learn what would even make 
 The fool s heart wise. 
 
 They ve been where I ll never go, 
 They ll go as far again. 
 Yet, tho I m but a man, it is 
 Their wings alone I ken. 
 So I can see, at Doole Lake, 
 More than worlds go by 
 In just a flock of wild geese 
 That pass along the sky. 
 
 Cale Young Rice 
 
SEA-HORIZONS 
 
 THE desolate expanse from heaven to heaven 
 From zone to zone, from deep to height above, 
 
 The mute arch of the everlasting heaven 
 Bends over me with Your unwearied love. 
 
 Immeasurable, unutterable, and soundless 
 Wide as the east from the west Your love is wide; 
 
 The unfathomable distances are boundless 
 Infinite tenderness on every side. 
 
 Against the dark strength of Your huge endurance 
 My little being beats her baffled wings, 
 
 Lifts her shrill voice, and wounds the calm assurance 
 And tenderness of Your large evenings. 
 
 In the vast robes of Your serene compassion 
 She hides her soiled and burning face of shame 
 
 Your solemn and inexorable passion 
 
 Lifts her blurred eyes to meet Your glance of 
 flame. 
 
 As bread that for my daily fare is broken, 
 The eternal loveliness before me spread 
 
 Unutterable gesture word unspoken 
 In the proud silences forever said. 
 
 The sun puts forth his strength, the reaches shimmer 
 With inarticulate rapture, and the proud 
 
 Waters are thrilled; the fields of ocean glimmer 
 With shifting light and overshadowing cloud. 
 6 
 
Noon upon noon in heaven takes up his station, 
 Day follows night, and night succeeds to day; 
 
 Your infinite and lonely meditation 
 
 Sinks with the sunset down the starry way. 
 
 Veiled is the Vast: the heaven of evening burning 
 Reveals on the large waters of the sea 
 
 Hopelessness hopelessness the patient yearning 
 And dumb caress of the Immensity. 
 
 Sorrowful is the mighty Heart that reaches ^ 
 Around this brief and scornful heart of mine, 
 
 The long curve of His melancholy beaches 
 And vacancies along the lone sea-line. 
 
 In the huge longing of the far sea-spaces, 
 The tremulous rim about the waters curled, 
 
 Waits the eternal Gentleness, and traces 
 His sad horizons round the fading world. 
 
 Cloud beyond cloud, the arch of heaven goes over- 
 Deep beyond deep, the patient skies descend 
 The illimitable wastes and waves discover 
 Loneliness loneliness without an end. 
 
 Inexorable Compassion, may I never 
 
 Reach the last verge and limits of Your love! 
 
 Beyond me, still beyond me melt forever 
 The eternal margins, fading as I move. 
 
 John Hall Wheelock 
 
MAINE WOODS IN WINTER 
 
 Now I have climbed the hillside to discover 
 The forest sitting in its silver clothes 
 With ermine pulled about its knees. I know 
 There is no better place than trees have found 
 To live their lives in, past the million years 
 That life has toiled to make them perfect trees; 
 And I shall listen to their thoughts a while, 
 For I would share the minds of men no longer. 
 Here the rich snow might be a floor of cloud; 
 Or sifted hawthorn-bloom cloud-like and soft 
 Poured thick from Maytime hedges; or the drift 
 Down a pear-orchard when a gust has passed; 
 Or all the captive foam of a coral island; 
 Or feathers of a comet lost in air 
 And fallen forgotten from the flying star. 
 And not a sound of the world can leap the wall 
 Of thrilling quiet where great trees stand still 
 As though one gesture might unhinge the moon 
 And bring it down too close to show its deeps 
 Of alabaster valley any more, 
 Or send the sun astray with the moon to follow 
 Out of their reach, and blot the sky with dark. 
 They would not break the spell of any dream. 
 And God is dreaming too. 
 
 So they stand still. 
 
 I wonder when I go among such trees 
 Far from the fields and deeper in alone, 
 If I shall find a silence before sound 
 That was in the beginning? Will there be rest 
 8 
 
And room for music in my mind again 
 After the interval? I shall creep close 
 To watch the wind writing upon dry leaves 
 With pencil of sunlight words I cannot read, 
 And I shall write too, with an icicle 
 That withers like a rainbow from my grasp. 
 I shall forget the passionate hastes of men 
 Among the swarthy hemlocks; and Orion 
 Will pierce the forest-thatch with casual eye 
 Before I miss the sun. Oh, I shall be 
 The imagining spirit of that solitude, 
 Bold to create a stillness of my own 
 Above the cataract of the universe 
 Where it pours down obscure and infinite 
 Under a whirling surface-foam of worlds: 
 The trees will keep me listening all day long! 
 And I shall know them, learn their evening look, 
 Gray that is purple, purple that is dusk, 
 Or running with the lean and supple wind 
 Follow the dawn along their mighty columns 
 That loom and glitter in an air like bronze. 
 
 Grace Hazard Conkling 
 
 9 
 
TREE SONGS 
 
 Dedicated to the University of Virginia 
 i 
 
 BE DEFERENT TO TREES 
 
 THE talking oak 
 
 To the ancient spoke. 
 
 But any tree 
 Will talk to me. 
 
 What truths I know 
 I garnered so. 
 
 But those who want to talk and tell, 
 And those who will not listeners be, 
 
 Will never hear a syllable 
 From out the lips of any tree. 
 
 2 
 
 ON A WINDY NIGHT BY A TREE LIE DOWN 
 
 The tree of knowledge of evil and good 
 Is any tree in any wood. 
 If wise and mighty you would be 
 Leave the town and learn of the tree. 
 
 Stand by a tree of a windy day; 
 
 On a windy night by a tree lie down; 
 And months beyond, the words it will say 
 
 Will save you alive, midst the dead in town. 
 10 
 
RED YEWS 
 
 Under the red yews here I lie 
 Listening to the day-sounds die. 
 
 The vine leaves dead 
 
 Are smooth and red 
 
 And the year has spread 
 
 Them for my bed 
 And safe and sheltering over my head 
 
 Are the yews for ceiling. 
 Some trees are for goad and spur, 
 Festering goad and stinging spur; 
 
 But the yew trees are for healing. 
 
 That is because the yews are old, 
 
 Dignified, sober and old. 
 Hundreds of years have made this tree 
 And whispered wisdom to it. We 
 
 Can hear that wisdom if we creep 
 On a windy night close under its boughs 
 And harken in that quiet house 
 
 To the words it murmurs in its sleep. 
 
 Red yew, who are kind and great 
 
 Red yew, here I lie aright 
 Ears and heart are open, and wait 
 
 There is wind! Speak loud tonight! 
 
 ill 
 
4 
 
 TREE-TAUGHT 
 
 The tree-taught ones are the mighty ones 
 
 The town-taught ones fall down 
 Before the spears of the silent ones 
 
 Who learned of tree, not a town. 
 
 For each word of a tree is a truth of the world 
 
 And each word of a town is a lie; 
 So scorning a town where the sun falls down 
 
 Of a tree you shall learn, and I. 
 
 We shall learn of a tree what life can be 
 And death? can the tree-taught die? 
 
 Mary Carolyn Dames 
 
 12 
 
CHIPMUNKS 
 For E.A.P. 
 
 THE supposedly old 
 and the apparently new, 
 madly, blindly chasing each other, 
 hate in each heart 
 screeching death to the other, 
 are chipmunks 
 circling the trunk of a tree 
 around and around and around and 
 
 around 
 
 till the two merge in one 
 dizzy streak of a band, 
 like a pin-wheel afire 
 with rope-skipping flame 
 come to what looks like a stop. 
 But let the band stretch, the band 
 
 snap? 
 we have the rondo all over again! 
 
 Alfred Kreymborg 
 
TROPIC BEACH SONG 
 
 THE surf 
 
 With the sound of tearing silk 
 
 Foams across the barrier reef 
 
 Hisses on the strand. 
 
 And the cloud-streaked moon 
 
 Frets behind a palm frond 
 
 Glistens on the mangoes 
 
 And leaps into fire 
 
 Where a scarlet orchid hangs. 
 
 Running on the sand 
 Swiftly she passes me! 
 A-tiptoe, a-tiptoe 
 Along the waters edge, 
 Comes a girl from the village 
 With a rose in her hair 
 With a rose in her hand 
 With a rose hid deep 
 In the cleft beneath her throat. 
 
 She stops 
 
 On a hummock of the sand. 
 The wind 
 
 Whirls her pina skirt about her 
 And clutches at her bodice 
 As if to snatch the rose 
 Hidden deep, deep, deep 
 In her bosom. 
 And the moon 
 
 Sends a flame through her garments, 
 14 
 
As the wind blows them closer, 
 
 And they seem 
 
 To dissolve 
 
 In the light pouring down. 
 
 She pauses a moment 
 
 A Nereid cut in amber, 
 
 Half concealed where the shadow 
 
 Wins its battle with the light. 
 
 And the waves on the shingle 
 
 Come yearning yearning yearning 
 
 Ah, my heart knows how they hope 
 
 she will stay, 
 And let them kiss her feet. 
 
 James C. Bardin 
 
WHEN SPRING RETURNS 
 
 I WONDER why spring comes again 
 
 To earth with you not there, 
 
 And why the sunshine and the rain 
 
 Should bring us flowers as fair 
 
 As those your gentle hands have pressed 
 
 In all the springs now gone, 
 
 And why the willows stand new-dressed 
 
 To greet the fragrant dawn. 
 
 You can not see their beauty pale, 
 Nor smell the cowslip s breath; 
 The violets purple *all the vale 
 While you keep tryst with Death. 
 You come no more, but know you this, 
 If thoughts your spirit find, 
 In every flower we feel your kiss, 
 Your nearness in each wind. 
 
 Virginia Taylor McCormkk 
 
 16 
 
SPRING BLEW OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 SPRING blew open the door; 
 
 An aspen stirred 
 
 And turned about, 
 
 As if in doubt 
 
 Of the time of day, 
 
 Or so they say; 
 
 And all of a sudden was something 
 
 heard 
 That rose from a sigh to a ghostly 
 
 shout, 
 
 As now and again 
 In a panic the rain 
 Went skurrying over the forest floor 
 A bud came out 
 And then a bird. 
 
 Spring blew open the door; 
 
 On a nearby hill 
 
 A robin found 
 
 A place in the sun, 
 
 And all in fun 
 
 Made a rollicking sound 
 
 That was less than a call 
 
 And more than a trill, 
 
 Sinking low and lower, 
 
 And then was still. 
 
 On all, on all 
 
 Was the dawning grace 
 
 Of a radiant face 
 
And a presence rare 
 As the shadowy things 
 That out of the air 
 A dryad weaves. 
 A rustle of leaves, 
 A flutter of wings, 
 A heavenly stir 
 In the lilac tree 
 And a rogue of a bee 
 Caught sight of Her. 
 
 William Griffith 
 
 18 
 
ORIGINS 
 
 Beginning with Lilith and Eve, there have been two 
 classes of women one that takes the strength out of a 
 man, and one that puts it back. PROVERB. 
 
 INTO a dark world of strange talk 
 
 Came a soft voice, 
 
 As that of a bird 
 
 Lulling forest and fen. 
 
 And then, 
 
 Stirred 
 
 By a word 
 
 That bade him rejoice 
 
 And rise and walk, 
 
 Adam awoke, 
 
 Spoke, 
 
 Listened awhile 
 
 For an answering call, 
 
 As a great silence fell over all. 
 
 Brooding and serious, 
 
 Something mysterious 
 
 On him was casting the shadow of pain 
 
 When, with a vain, 
 
 Curious smile, 
 
 (A sigh of the eye), 
 
 As a siren went by, 
 
 The first of men shuddered, 
 
 Turned over and over 
 
 In thistle and clover, 
 
 And slept again: 
 
 And dreamt of Lilith/ 
 19 
 
Darker and stranger grew the world, 
 
 Fig leaves were shed, 
 
 And serpents curled. 
 
 And overnight 
 
 Was born delight; 
 
 And overday 
 
 Was born desire 
 
 To curb dismay, 
 
 Lest Adam tire. 
 
 The skies were red; 
 
 And all the glory 
 
 Of time in story 
 
 Suddenly flashed. 
 
 And thunder crashed; 
 
 And under the vine and fig-tree there, 
 
 Gowned and crowned with her radiant hair, 
 
 And frail as fire and free as the air, 
 
 And fair as her daughters have sought 
 
 to be fair, 
 A woman stood 
 In virginhood. 
 Over the grass 
 It came to pass 
 That her eyes spoke . . . 
 So sweet was she 
 To hear and see, 
 So virginwise, 
 That from his eyes 
 And body then 
 
 The scales had all but fallen when 
 Adam awoke. 
 
 Eden and Eve! 
 
 William Griffith 
 20 
 
A WEED 
 
 BECAUSE I scatter my seed 
 
 Prodigally, and grew 
 
 Where the wind has chanced to blow, 
 You call me a weed. 
 
 I look at your gardens fair, 
 With flowers in stately rows, 
 And my wild, little seed heart knows 
 
 I could never be happy there. 
 
 My mother was gipsy born, 
 
 My father a roving bee, 
 
 There is vagabond blood in me, 
 I am not to be trained and shorn! 
 
 I am poor and mean indeed, 
 
 But I make the waste place glad, 
 And the wayside color-mad, 
 
 Where there is room for a weed. 
 
 Louise Driscoll 
 
 21 
 
SLOPES OF ETN> 
 
 PEACE is written on the doorstep 
 In lava. 
 
 Peace, black peace 
 
 My heart will know no peace 
 
 Till the mountain bursts again. 
 
 Brilliant, intolerable lava 
 Brilliant as a powerful burning-glass 
 Walking like a royal snake down the mountain 
 towards the sea. 
 
 Forests, cities, bridges 
 
 Gone under again in the bright trail of the snake 
 
 That has slept so long inside the mountain; 
 
 Since Naxos, thousands of feet below the olive-roots; 
 
 To wake again, and walk over the olive leaves 
 
 And lay black roads above the aloe-spikes. 
 
 Peace in lava on the door-step. 
 
 White-hot serpent in my heart, trying to lift its head 
 
 Never at peace. 
 
 Till lava breaks. 
 
 Till it burst forth white-hot, withering 
 
 To set in black rock. 
 
 Call it Peace? 
 
 D. H. Lawrence 
 
 22 
 
TROPIC 
 
 SUN, dark Sun 
 
 Sun of black, void heat 
 
 Sun of the torrid midday s horrific darkness 
 
 Behold my hair twisting and turning black 
 Behold my eyes turn tawny yellow. 
 
 The milk of northern spume 
 Coagulating and going black in my veins 
 Aromatic as frankincense. 
 
 Columns dark and soft 
 
 Sunblack men 
 
 Valved nostrils, sunbreathing mouths 
 
 Eyes of yellow, golden sand 
 
 As frictional, as perilous, explosive brimstone. 
 
 Rock, waves of dark heat 
 
 Waves of dark heat, rock, sway upwards 
 
 Waver perpendicular. 
 
 What is the horizontal rolling of water 
 Compared to the flood of black heat that 
 rolls upward past our eyes. 
 
 D. H. Lawrence 
 
PRELUDE AND ODE 
 
 Dedicated to the University of Virginia 
 
 EAST wind, west wind, 
 
 Blowing through the dark blue pinetops, 
 
 Wind of the winter crying, 
 
 What would you have me say? 
 
 North wind, south wind, 
 
 Sweeping still through years and seasons, 
 
 Wind of the spirit binding 
 
 Poe s heart to Shelley s heart; 
 
 What would you have me say? 
 Years will pass and men may vanish, 
 But the barren heights of life 
 Hold the singer s troubled heart. 
 
 Clouds lie at night along the ancient mountains, 
 Lit by the moon, their rounded heads in stillness 
 
 faintly glowing. 
 
 Underneath pass faint flickers of heat-lightning: 
 The fireflies burn green-yellow on the grass. 
 
 Clouds of the night ascend and over their shifting 
 
 summits 
 There rise the southern stars, unseen in other 
 
 latitudes; 
 
 Canopus and Antares burn their track 
 Above the low horizon, dimly seen; 
 
 24 
 
And on the hilltop is a stranger, one 
 Who keeps his watch as steadfast Israfel; 
 His mind holds all the meaning of the skies, 
 His heart knows all the sorrows of the earth. 
 
 As swift irradiations in the night 
 From far heat-lightning on a lonely plain, 
 Or Venus over a pinewood dimly seen, 
 So to mankind must be the singer s heart. 
 
 He is as one whose face he scarcely knows; 
 Strange must be even to him that secret power 
 That bids him take through years of waning strength 
 Sorrow for victory and defeat for joy; 
 
 He is as one who hears the final words 
 Of comfort, Calvary-spoken; " Even this day, 
 Thou shalt be with me in far Paradise; " 
 And on his forehead is the lustrous sign 
 
 Of one appointed to his lifelong task, 
 Self-consummating, self-consuming. Still 
 He fashions love from death and heaven from hell, 
 Since on his lips has paused the burning word. 
 
 The word, the last and first of essences, 
 In the beginning, God s; and given to this earth 
 As shaped by chiming stars or quiring pines, 
 Or whispered by the moon on Southern nights. 
 
 John Gould Fletcher 
 
THE ENCHANTED CASTLE 
 
 To Edgar Allan Poe 
 
 OLD crumbling stones set long ago upon 
 The naked headland of a suave green shore. 
 Old stones all riven into cracks and glands 
 By moss and ivy. Up above, a peak 
 Of narrow, iron windows, a hooded tower 
 With frozen windows looking to the West. 
 When the sun sets, a winking fiery light 
 Riffles the window-panes above the gloom 
 Of purple waters heaving evenly, 
 Waters moving about the naked headland 
 In sombre slowness, with no dash of spray 
 To strike the stagnant pools and flash the weeds. 
 A rack of shifting clouds 
 Darkens the waters margin. On the shore 
 Are clusters of great trees whose brittle leaves 
 Crackle together as the mournful wind 
 Takes them and shakes them. But the tower 
 
 windows 
 
 Fling bloody streams of light across the dusk, 
 Flanges of bloody light which the upper sky 
 Has hurled at them and now is drawing back. 
 Behind the tower, where no windows are, 
 A little wisp of moon catches the stones 
 So that they glitter palely from the shore, 
 The suave green shore with all its leaden trees. 
 
 Amy Lowell 
 
EGYPT 
 
 (To Edgar Allan Poe) 
 
 EGYPT had cheated us, 
 for Egypt took 
 through guile and craft 
 our treasure and our hope, 
 Egypt had maimed us, 
 offered dream for life, 
 an opiate for a kiss, 
 and death for both. 
 
 White poison flower we loved 
 and the black spike 
 of an ungarnered bush 
 (a spice or without taste 
 we wondered then we asked 
 others to take and sip 
 and watched their death) 
 Egypt we loved, though hate 
 should have withheld our touch. 
 
 Egypt had given us knowledge, 
 and we took, blindly, 
 through want of heart, 
 what Egypt brought; 
 knowing all poison, 
 what was that or this, 
 more or less perilous, 
 than this or that. 
 27 
 
We pray you, Egypt, 
 
 by what perverse fate, 
 
 has poison, bought with knowledge, 
 
 given us this 
 
 not days of trance, 
 
 shadow, fore-doom of death, 
 
 but passionate grave thought, 
 
 belief enhanced, 
 
 ritual returned and magic; 
 
 Even in the uttermost black pit 
 
 of the forbidden knowledge, 
 
 wisdom s glance, 
 
 the grey eyes following 
 
 in the mid-most desert 
 
 great shaft of rose, 
 
 fire shed across our path, 
 
 upon the face grown grey, a light, 
 
 Hellas re-born from death. 
 
 H.,D. 
 
THE SINGER OF THE SHADOWS 
 
 // / could dwell 
 
 Where Israjel 
 
 Hath dwelt, and he where I 
 
 He might not sing so wildly well 
 
 A mortal melody, 
 
 While a bolder note than this might swell 
 
 From my lyre within the sky. 
 
 Edgar Allan Poe 
 
 FROM far beyond all death, all spaces dark, 
 
 With art sublime 
 The singer of the shadows came to mark 
 
 His land, his time. 
 
 Poet of grief, he sought her loneliest cave, 
 
 Her ultimate aisle, 
 Her ruined keep, her mouldering architrave 
 
 And peristyle. 
 
 Poet of tombs, the midnight was his theme. 
 
 Adventuring far, 
 He pierced the opal center of a dream, 
 
 Or of a star. 
 
 Let those who walk with lore the beaten road 
 
 From others ask 
 The daily bread of thought, cheer for the load, 
 
 Sun for the task. 
 
 An hour there is when sunshine brings to pain 
 
 Unfaith, unrest, 
 When she would feel the footfalls of the rain 
 
 Upon her breast, 
 
 29 
 
When, circled in a misty aureole, 
 
 His charm distils 
 A craved narcotic for the fevered soul, 
 
 From sorrow s hills. 
 
 Ah, we to-day the sweeter count the soil 
 His wandering pressed! 
 
 His dust has flowered. The darkness of his toil 
 The light has blessed. 
 
 England acclaims him. France, attuned, aware, 
 
 Greets him with bay, 
 And calls him brother, through her Baudelaire, 
 
 And Mallarme. 
 
 Too long have lettered dwarf and neophyte 
 
 Cast him their stones, 
 Who flesh beheld, not spirit, worked their blight 
 
 Above his bones. 
 
 Enough of slander! Bolted be the gate 
 
 To evils wild 
 Envies evolve and lies perpetuate! 
 
 Art owns her child. 
 
 Cradle him soft, O Art, who only knew 
 
 To speak your tongue! 
 You were his life, and his life s residue 
 
 The dream unsung. 
 
Your lesser planets let his glow outlive, 
 
 High and apart, 
 Who, earthbound, gave you all he had to give 
 
 His tortured heart. 
 
 Pride has departed, Doom has crossed the door, 
 
 Love calls farewell. 
 But from your firmament forever more 
 
 Shines Israfel! 
 
 Agnes Lee 
 
AT THE GRAVE OF POE 
 
 SPRING S glow and glamour over Baltimore 
 Above the green God s acre where he lies, 
 
 The sunlight, amber as some fabled ore, 
 And the ethereal blue of vernal skies, 
 He who so long since solved the great surmise, 
 
 And haply now tunes an immortal lyre 
 
 (He who could tune a mortal lyre so well) 
 With the rapt Israfel, 
 
 And the celestial choir. 
 
 As white as snow the marble of his tomb 
 
 Against the climbing ivy on the wall; 
 No cypress bough, with its unhallowed gloom, 
 
 Here flings its sombre shade funereal; 
 
 Even the church-tower, turreted and tall, 
 Speaks not of dolor, and the slender spines 
 
 Of arbor-vitae tell of life, not death, 
 
 The life that quickeneth 
 His immemorial lines. 
 
 Yet he was phantom-haunted; eldritch things 
 Peopled the silent chambers of his brain; 
 
 Forevermore the winnow of dark wings 
 
 Beat round about him, as when autumn rain 
 Is hurtled by wild gusts against the pane. 
 
 Weird wraiths companioned him, but none the less, 
 Amid the forms of ghoul and ghost and gnome, 
 Figures were wont to roam 
 
 Of light and loveliness. 
 
 32 
 
His was the master s magic; every chord 
 
 He touched gave forth a throb of melody; 
 
 No music welled whereof he was not lord, 
 Whether he sang some city by the sea 
 Or some strange palace built of Faery; 
 
 He wove the spell of immaterial chimes 
 
 Into his fabric; e en the midnight bird 
 An unforgotten word 
 
 Breathed through his charmed rhymes. 
 
 He walked with shadows, and yet who shall say 
 We are not all as shadows, we who fare 
 
 Towards one dim bourn along life s fateful way, 
 Sharing the griefs and joys once his to share 
 Who passed erewhile to that fair Otherwhere 
 
 Beyond the poignancy of bliss or woe! 
 
 There hangs the immitigable pathos of dead 
 
 years, 
 High hopes bedewed with tears, 
 
 About the grave of Poe. 
 
 Clinton Scollard 
 
 33 
 
THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 HE made men free and sought to make them wise, 
 Knowing that haughty and untrammeled will, 
 Restless desires, which judgment does not still, 
 
 Unsettle states with ignorant surmise. 
 
 Sage government, he held, is that which tries 
 To teach distinction between good and ill, 
 To spread large knowledge of the past and fill 
 
 Men s minds with high, serene philosophies. 
 
 We should be better citizens, if we knew 
 
 What wrecked old cities of decayed renown, 
 
 Could test the false, if not divine the true. 
 
 Learning, well disciplined, would beat pride 
 down. 
 
 And weary wit, long strained to find thought s clue, 
 Would own humility as wisdom s crown. 
 
 Gamaliel Bradford 
 
 34 
 
ODE 
 
 TO 
 
 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 For the Centennial Celebration oj the University 
 of Virginia 
 
 " Error is the stuff of which the web of life is woven 
 and he who lives longest and wisest is only able to weave 
 out the more of it." JEFFERSON TO CHASTELLUX. 
 
 I 
 
 EVEN in his day what the wise felt most 
 
 Was human ignorance; how far thought might 
 
 range 
 
 Through shadowy kingdoms, like a groping ghost, 
 Where new ideas in perpetual change 
 Rose, altered, shifted, vanished, till that strange, 
 Bright, turbulent array 
 Left the beholder lost, 
 Ready in desperate weariness to say 
 That learning lures us only to betray. 
 
 ii 
 
 A hundred fleeting, crowded years have past, 
 
 And thought s wide realm, but half surveyed 
 
 before, 
 Has stretched in fields inimitably vast, 
 
 And still extends its borders more and more, 
 Till tired wit, doomed ever to explore 
 New theories, new facts, 
 Each stranger than the last, 
 Folds its reluctant pinion and contracts 
 Its scope from haughty dreams to humble acts. 
 
 35 
 
in 
 
 In all the turmoil of bewildered hope 
 
 His eager brain still roved to find a clue. 
 If through a dubious future we must grope, 
 
 Let us discern the past with watchful view 
 And make the old give counsel to the new. 
 He kindled learning s torch; 
 Bade you reflect, not mope; 
 Seek thoughts that cool, not lusts that sear and 
 
 scorch, 
 Find shelter from the world in wisdom s porch. 
 
 IV 
 
 Yet no man ever knew better than he 
 
 That all our travail, all our endless pain 
 Back on itself recoils, until we see 
 
 How tedious days and nights are spent in vain, 
 And from vast labor our securest gain 
 Is that we learn to bear 
 In sage tranquillity, 
 
 From having seen how ignorant we were, 
 The knowledge of how ignorant we are. 
 
 v 
 Like prattling children we reiterate 
 
 Our petulant questions, ask and ask and ask; 
 With huge endeavor strive to penetrate 
 
 Truth s imperturbable and baffling mask. 
 Happy, if by the long and fruitless task 
 Reason is taught to see 
 That its supreme debate 
 Can but resolve Nature s complexity, 
 Her tangled chaos, into mystery. 
 
 36 
 
VI 
 
 For mystery means wonder, sacred awe; 
 
 Not fret, not terror, not "disturbed, mad eyes, 
 Shrinking from ghosts old superstition saw, 
 But luxury of ever new surprise, 
 New beauty whose enjoyment deifies, 
 Secrets of thought unveiled, 
 Sources from which to draw 
 Splendors of spirit that shall live unpaled, 
 When worn, dead creeds have served their use and 
 failed. 
 
 vn 
 And wonder in the mind breeds in the heart 
 
 Humility and lowly reverence. 
 The best that all our learning can impart 
 Is quiet hope and patient innocence. 
 The deepest wisdom should eschew pretence, 
 High phrase and questing odd, 
 Should centre all its art 
 To build an altar on the simple sod 
 For adoration of the Unknown God. 
 
 Gamaliel Bradford 
 
 37 
 
SONNETS DEDICATED TO THE 
 UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA, A.D. MCMXXI 
 
 BLUE mountains fold about her where she stands, 
 
 Un vexed by murmurs of the crowds afar, 
 Wearing the grace and glory of ancient lands, 
 
 Yet young as hope and the fresh sunrise are. 
 The enchantment of that lucent azure wall 
 
 Safeguards her beauty; still it shines the same 
 As when first leaped in her white-pillared hall, 
 
 Alight on Wisdom s altar, Freedom s flame. 
 The noble hand that wrote our nation free, 
 
 And all men free forever, lit that fire, 
 Caught from the heart s fierce heat for Liberty; 
 
 Her lips are proud to say, " He was my sire! " 
 Years fleet as clouds; hates pass, and harms, and 
 
 pains; 
 The mountains pass not, the pure Truth remains. 
 
 So may she stand another hundred years, 
 
 Storing great memories, moulding manhood 
 
 new; 
 
 Great memories, that survive all stabs and sneers, 
 New manhood, keen to find the labyrinth s clue: 
 So may she stand in a transfigured earth 
 
 Washed clean of wars, in brotherhood bound 
 
 fast; 
 
 And when men ask how such a world had birth, 
 And turn to grant the laurel at the last, 
 38 
 
To praise the prophet held in slight esteem, 
 
 And crown him with another crown than thorn, 
 
 To hail the dreamer of the lofty dream, 
 
 And grave in bronze the name they spoke in 
 scorn : 
 
 Ah, then, her second century s course being run, 
 
 She with proud lips will smile: " He was my son! " 
 
 Years fleet as clouds; hates pass, and harms, and 
 
 pains: 
 The mountains pass not, the pure Truth remains. 
 
 Helen Gray Cone 
 
 39 
 
WOODROW WILSON 
 
 WE stand so close to terror and to splendor, 
 
 Muffled in dark or dazzled by the glow, 
 
 We can not tell our doom from our defender, 
 
 Bewildered by immensity of woe. 
 
 Fear, famine, massacre the waste globe over, 
 
 Old empires rocking, states in rending throe 
 
 Of Revolution, yet the treasure-trover 
 
 Is groping in the ruins, and men graze 
 
 Like cattle in their own fenced field of clover, 
 
 Unmindful that the forest is ablaze. 
 How have we dealt with our high Patriot, 
 The world s bright beacon in distracted days? 
 
 Still lights in darkness shine, and still their lot 
 Is that the darkness comprehendeth not. 
 
 n 
 
 Epitome of all historic pages, 
 
 We have read the ancient savageries of war 
 
 In print scarce dried. All dramas of all ages 
 
 Crowd our brief stage; the stealthy senator 
 Poisons the wind with whispers against greatness 
 That dwindles him, till our worn warrior 
 
 Is ringed with daggers; crookedness and straightness, 
 The traitor knights and questers of the Grail, 
 Merge in that last dim battle, desolateness 
 
 40 
 
Of chivalry, where blindly through the veil 
 Of wizard mist bewildered weapons smite 
 Sore-wounded Arthur in his silver mail, 
 
 Until the pagans triumph and the fight 
 Sobs into silence of the deepening night. 
 
 in 
 
 Spirit long shaping for sublime endeavor, 
 A Sword of God, the gleaming metal came 
 From stern Scotch ancestry, where whatsoever 
 
 Was true, was pure, was noble, won acclaim; 
 
 From scholar sires of holy consecration 
 
 Whose saints were Knox and Calvin. In the flame 
 
 And on the anvil, in that strong creation 
 Of blade from ore, did not Geneva call 
 Unto Geneva? For the world s salvation 
 
 Was wrought that brand, a splendor over all, 
 Deep-scored by many a skilled artificer 
 With runes, cross-hilted, jeweled for the hall, 
 
 Keen-edged for combat, burning through base slur 
 And cruel calumny, Excalibur. 
 
 w 
 
 Upflung upon an agony exceeding 
 All agonies this haggard earth has borne, 
 On his one heart beat all the frantic pleading 
 
 Of all the starved, plague-ridden, battle-torn, 
 Perishing peoples, while those furtive foemen, 
 Old Selfishness, Derision, Faith Forsworn, 
 
Let fly their poisoned arrows, practised bowmen, 
 From ambush. So the wrestling, glorious dream 
 That winged his heart was brought to dust, an omen 
 
 111 for humanity, prompt to blaspheme 
 
 A brightness dimmed, a roseate vision paled. 
 
 Yet from that trampled heart the immortal gleam 
 
 Ascends a living League of Nations hailed 
 
 By Christmas chimes. Its champion has not failed. 
 
 v 
 
 Democracy! Alas, our souls are shaken. 
 
 The wisdom of the multitude is vain, 
 
 A passion that all varying winds awaken, 
 
 Save it becomes the wisdom of the main, 
 The innumerable-created, tossing ocean, 
 Whose tides, though buffeted by hurricane, 
 
 Follow with deep, undauntable devotion 
 Their guiding moon, calm goddess of the sea, 
 Rhythm and law of all its foaming motion. 
 
 O surging hearts! Unless divine decree 
 Or Right control us, one more sorry jest 
 For cynic Time shall our Republic be. 
 
 " Democracy is on its final test," 
 
 Warns our white leader, who has loved it best. 
 
 Katharine Lee Bates 
 December, 1920. 
 
 42 
 
OUR MOTHER POCAHONTAS 
 
 (NOTE: Pocahontas is buried at Gravesend, England.) 
 
 " Pocahontas body, lovely as a poplar, sweet as a red 
 
 haw in November or a pawpaw in May did she 
 
 wonder? does she remember in the dust in the 
 
 cool tombs? _ Carl Sandburg 
 
 I 
 
 POWHATAN was conqueror, 
 Powhatan was emperor. 
 He was akin, to wolf and bee, 
 Brother of the hickory tree. 
 Son of the red lightning stroke 
 And the lightning-shivered oak. 
 His panther-grace bloomed in the maid 
 Who laughed among the winds and played 
 In excellence of savage pride, 
 Wooing the forest, open-eyed, 
 In the springtime, 
 In Virginia, 
 Our Mother, Pocahontas. 
 
 Her skin was rosy copper-red. 
 
 And high she held her beauteous head. 
 
 Her step was like a rustling leaf: 
 
 Her heart a nest, untouched of grief. 
 
 She dreamed of sons like Powhatan, 
 
 And through her blood the lightning ran. 
 
 Love-cries with the birds she sung, 
 
 Birdlike 
 
 In the grape-vine swung. 
 
 By permission of Vachel Lindsay and The Macmillian 
 Company 
 
 43 
 
The Forest, arching low and wide 
 
 Gloried in its Indian bride. 
 
 Rolfe, that dim adventurer 
 
 Had not come a courtier. 
 
 John Rolfe is not our ancestor. 
 
 We rise from out the soul of her 
 
 Held in native wonderland, 
 
 While the sun s rays kissed her hand, 
 
 In the springtime, 
 
 In Virginia, 
 
 Our Mother, Pocahontas. 
 
 ii 
 
 She heard the forest talking, 
 
 Across the sea came walking, 
 
 And traced the paths of Daniel Boone, 
 
 Then westward chased the painted moon, 
 
 She passed with wild young feet 
 
 On to Kansas wheat, 
 
 On to the miners west, 
 
 The echoing canons guest, 
 
 Then the Pacific sand, 
 
 Waking, 
 
 Thrilling, 
 
 The midnight land. . . . 
 
 On Adams street and Jefferson 
 Flames coming up from the ground! 
 On Jackson street and Washington 
 Flames coming up from the ground! 
 And why, until the dawning sun 
 Are flames coming up from the ground? 
 44 
 
Because, through drowsy Springfield sped 
 
 This red-skin queen, with feathered head, 
 
 With winds and stars, that pay her court 
 
 And leaping beasts, that make her sport; 
 
 Because, gray Europe s rags august 
 
 She tramples in the dust; 
 
 Because we are her fields of corn; 
 
 Because our fires are all reborn 
 
 From her bosom s deathless embers, 
 
 Flaming 
 
 As she remembers 
 
 The springtime 
 
 And Virginia, 
 
 Our Mother, Pocahontas. 
 
 in 
 
 We here renounce our Saxon blood. 
 Tomorrow s hopes, an April flood 
 Come roaring in. The newest race 
 Is born of her resilient grace. 
 We here renounce our Teuton pride: 
 Our Norse and Slavic boasts have died: 
 Italian dreams are swept away, 
 And Celtic feuds are lost today. . . . 
 She sings of lilacs, maples, wheat, 
 Her own soil sings beneath her feet, 
 Of springtime 
 And Virginia, 
 Our Mother, Pocahontas. 
 
 Vachel Lindsay 
 
 45 
 
I KNOW ALL THIS WHEN GIPSY FIDDLES 
 CRY 
 
 OH gipsies, proud and stiffnecked and perverse, 
 Saying: " We tell the fortunes of the nations, 
 And revell in the deep palm of the world. 
 The head line is the road we choose for trade, 
 The love line is the lane wherein we camp, 
 The life line is the road we wander on. 
 Mount Venus, Jupiter, and all the rest, 
 Are finger tips of ranges, clasping round 
 And holding up the Romany s wide sky," 
 
 Oh gipsies, proud and stiffnecked and perverse, 
 Saying: " We will swap horses till the doom, 
 And mend the pots and kettles of mankind, 
 And lend our sons to big-time vaudeville, 
 Or to the race-track, or the learned world! 
 But India s Bramah waits within their breasts, 
 They will return to us with gipsy grins, 
 And chatter Romany, and shake their curls, 
 And hug the dirtiest babies of the camp. 
 They will return to the moving pillar of smoke, 
 The whitest toothed, the merriest laughers known, 
 The blackest haired of all the tribes of men. 
 What trap can hold such cats? The Romany 
 Has crossed such delicate palms with lead or gold, 
 Wheedling in sun and rain, through perilous years, 
 All coins now look alike. The palm is all. 
 Our greasy pack of cards is still the book 
 Most read of men. The heart s librarians, 
 
 46 
 
We tell all lovers what they want to know, 
 
 So, out of the famed Chicago Library, 
 
 Out of the great Chicago orchestras, 
 
 Out of the skyscraper, the Fine Arts Building, 
 
 Our sons will come with fiddles and with loot, 
 
 Dressed, as of old, like turkey cocks, and zebras, 
 
 Like tiger lilies and chameleons, 
 
 Go west with us to California, 
 
 Telling the fortunes of the bleeding world, 
 
 And kiss the sunset ere their day is done." 
 
 Oh gipsies, proud and stiffnecked and perverse, 
 
 Picking the brains and pockets of mankind, 
 
 You will go westward for one half hour yet. 
 
 You will turn eastward in a little while. 
 
 You will go back, as men turn to Kentucky, 
 
 Land of their fathers, dark and bloody ground. 
 
 When all the Jews go home to Syria, 
 
 When Chinese cooks go back to Canton, China, 
 
 When Japanese photographers return 
 
 With their black cameras to Tokio, 
 
 And Irish patriots to Donegal, 
 
 And Scotch accountants back to Edinburgh, 
 
 You will go back to India, whence you came. 
 
 When you have reached the borders of your quest, 
 
 Homesick at last, by many a devious way, 
 
 Winding the wonderlands circuitous, 
 
 By foot and horse will trace the long way back, 
 
 Fiddling for ocean liners while the dance 
 
 Sweeps through the decks, your brown tribes all 
 
 will go! 
 
 Those east-bound ships will hear your long farewell, 
 
 47 
 
On fiddle, piccolo and flute and timbrel. 
 I know all this when gipsy fiddles cry. 
 
 That hour of their homesickness I myself 
 Will turn, will say farewell to Illinois, 
 To old Kentucky and Virginia, 
 And go with them to India, whence they came. 
 For they have heard a singing from the Ganges, 
 And cries of orioles, from the temple caves, 
 And Bengal s oldest, humblest villages. 
 They smell the supper smokes of Armitsar. 
 Green monkeys cry in Sanscrit to their souls, 
 From lofty bamboo trees of hot Madras. 
 They think of towns to ease their feverish eyes, 
 And make them stand and meditate forever, 
 Domes of astonishment, to heal the mind. 
 I know all this when gipsy fiddles cry. 
 
 What music will be blended with the wind 
 When gipsy fiddlers, nearing that old land 
 Bring tunes from all the world to Bramah s house? 
 Passing the Indus, winding poisonous forests, 
 Blowing soft flutes at scandalous temple girls, 
 Filling the highways with their magpie loot, 
 What brass from my Chicago will they heap, 
 What gems from Wallah Wallah, Omaha, 
 Will they pile near the Bohdi Tree, and laugh? 
 They will dance near such temples as best suit them, 
 Though they will not quite enter or adore. 
 Looking on roofs, as poets look on lilies, 
 Looking at towers, as birds at forest vines, 
 
 48 
 
That leap to treetops through the dizzy air. 
 I know all this, when gipsy fiddles cry. 
 
 And with the gipsies there will be a king, 
 
 And a thousand desperados, just his style, 
 
 With all their rags dyed in the blood of roses, 
 
 Dyed with the blood of angels and of demons. 
 
 And he will boss them with an awful voice. 
 
 And with a red whip he will beat his wife, 
 
 He will be wicked on that sacred shore, 
 
 And rattle cruel spurs against the rocks, 
 
 And shake Calcutta s walls with circus bugles. 
 
 He will kill Brahmins there, in Kali s name, 
 
 And please the thugs and blood-drunk of the earth. 
 
 I know all this, when gipsy fiddles cry. 
 
 On sweating thieves and hard-boiled scalawags, 
 That still will boast your pride until the doom, 
 Smashing every caste rule of the world, 
 Reaching at last your Hindu goal to smash 
 The caste rules of old India and shout: 
 " Down with the Brahmins, let the Romany reign! " 
 When gipsy girls look deep within my hand 
 They always speak so tenderly and say 
 That I am one of those star-crossed to wed 
 A princess in a forest fairy tale. 
 So there will be a tender gipsy princess, 
 My Juliet, shining through this clan. 
 And I would sing you of her beauty now. 
 And I will fight with knives the gipsy man 
 Who tries to steal her wild young heart away. 
 
 49 
 
And I will kiss her in the waterfalls, 
 
 And at the rainbow s end, and in the incense 
 
 That curls about the feet of sleeping gods, 
 
 And sing with her, in canebrakes, and in ricefields, 
 
 In Romany, eternal Romany. 
 
 We will sow secret herbs, and plant old roses, 
 
 And fumble through dark snaky palaces, 
 
 Stable our ponies in the Taj Mahal, 
 
 And sleep outdoors ourselves. 
 
 In her stange fairy mill-wheel eyes will wait 
 
 All windings and unwindings of the highways, 
 
 From India across America, 
 
 All windings and unwindings of my fancy, 
 
 All windings and unwindings of all souls, 
 
 All windings and unwindings of the heavens. 
 
 I know all this when gipsy fiddles cry. 
 
 We gipsies, proud and stiffnecked and perverse, 
 
 Standing upon the white Himalayas, 
 
 Will think of far divine Yosemite. 
 
 We will heal Hindu hermits there with oil 
 
 Brought from California s tall sequoias, 
 
 And we will be like gods, that heap the thunders, 
 
 And start young redwood trees on time s own 
 
 mountains. 
 
 We will swap horses with the rising moon, 
 And mend that funny skillet called Orion, 
 Color the stars like San Francisco s street-lights, 
 And paint our fortune-telling sign on high, 
 In planets like a bed of crimson pansies; 
 While a million fiddles shake all listening hearts, 
 Crying good fortune to the Universe, 
 
 50 
 
Whispering adventure to the Ganges waves, 
 And to the spirits, and all winds and gods, 
 Till mighty Bramah puts his golden palm 
 Within the gipsy king s great striped tent 
 And asks his fortune told by that great love-line 
 That winds across his palm in splendid flame. 
 
 Only the hearthstone of old India 
 
 Will end the endless march of gipsy feet. 
 
 I will go back to India with them 
 
 When they go back to India, whence they came. 
 
 I know all this, when gipsy fiddles cry. 
 
 Vachel Lindsay 
 
LEE 
 
 A PASSION of conflict Country or State! 
 Allegiance or loyalty! which clearer the call? 
 Man of the nation, a name blazoned high 
 
 On escutcheons of glory 
 Should he part with the past in which they his 
 
 people 
 
 Had writ deep and fast, 
 Lee! 
 
 Harsh, bitter, and cruel the struggle. 
 
 Then white and undimmed 
 
 The altar of Duty shone out of the dusk, 
 
 And Love burned away all dreaming of dross. 
 
 But he knew not, when yielding one sword for 
 
 another, 
 
 He had carved on the heart of his country forever, 
 Lee! 
 
 Kate Langley Bosher 
 
TO THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA 
 
 On her Centenary, 1921 
 
 To tell the truth, to keep their word, to hold 
 Honor the dearest jewel of their hearts, 
 To children s children this fair seat imparts, 
 
 Jefferson s dream; him love of truth made bold 
 
 To irradiate the New World from the old 
 Source of immortal letters, humane arts, 
 The hopes of man; how far its bright flood darts, 
 
 Through the third part of our dominions rolled! 
 
 Virginia, planter of the South and West 
 With the old learning, culture, eloquence, 
 Heaven recompense to thee thy gifts again! 
 
 The star of poetry shines from thy breast; 
 Thy scholars poets, soldiers, Presidents 
 In one full voice uniting, cry " Amen! " 
 
 George Edward Woodberry 
 
 53 
 
FATE 
 
 To the University of Virginia 
 
 SHE holdeth time in her hand 
 
 Like a bubble of glass 
 
 Wherein clouds gather and stand 
 
 And visions pass, 
 
 Glancing at these and those 
 
 With a careless smile 
 
 As pondering things more close 
 
 To her heart the while, 
 
 As time to her were a toy, 
 
 Its phantoms a play, 
 
 And further than these were her joy 
 
 And her grief than they; 
 
 Though her clear calm passionless eyes 
 
 No signs impart 
 
 Of hidden feeling that lies 
 
 In the depths of her heart. 
 
 Her purpose giveth no scope 
 To thought or dream; 
 Neither despair nor hope 
 Her envoys seem; 
 And none can tell from the vain 
 Strange things that fall 
 Whether her heart contain 
 A purpose at all. 
 
 And yet her trackless desire 
 And inscrutable plan 
 Seem wrapt like a vesture of fire 
 Round the heart of man. 
 54 
 
In glory or anguish awhile 
 She surpasseth his life 
 Under her favouring smile 
 Or implacable strife. 
 
 She dreameth and groweth by dreaming 
 
 Now little now great, 
 
 Though her love and her hate of his deeming 
 
 Be but fancies of Fate. 
 
 For whether she sleepeth or waketh 
 
 No passions disclose: 
 
 Not even the great heart that breaketh 
 
 Can break her repose. 
 
 And whether she be or be not 
 
 No wisdom can tell. 
 
 All human visions foresee not 
 
 Her ends, which is well: 
 
 And no living man can measure, 
 
 Though all men have sought, 
 
 If he be the child of her pleasure, 
 
 Or she of his thought. 
 
 Willoughby Weaving 
 
 55 
 
BEFORE THE CRUCIFIX 
 
 Dedicated to the University of Virginia, 1921 
 
 In one of the chapels of Notre Dame de Paris there 
 is a placard asking those who kneel there before the 
 Crucifix to remember in their prayers the dead of the 
 Great War. 
 
 " Here, before the Crucifix, recall 
 " The dead of the Great War." 
 
 Remember all 
 
 Whose clay unclaimed shall be a part of France 
 Forever; those to whom sad Belgium gave 
 All that was left for her to give, a grave; 
 Those who are flotsam on the sea s expanse; 
 The prey of the Red North, of desert sands; 
 The slain, the starved, the stricken of all lands; 
 Dead youth dead hope dead faith remember 
 
 these 
 
 Here in the dusk, alone upon your knees 
 Before the One who cried 
 
 " My God, my God, why hast thou turned from me? 
 " It is finished." And so, died. 
 It was not finished. Will it ever be? 
 
 We thought, we too, that we had paid the price 
 Of a new world, and now we stand aghast 
 Before the seeming-wasted sacrifice. 
 What of the sullied past 
 Is burned away? Has evil suffered loss? 
 Are anger, lust and greed less sad to see? 
 It is God who hangs upon the cross 
 Now, as on Calvary. 
 
 56 
 
And yet, before the cross, no memory 
 
 Can stop at death. Hear Easter s trumpet-blast! 
 
 As He rose, again He shall arise 
 
 To die again? A thousand times, maybe, 
 
 For it is only God who dies and dies 
 
 Undaunted, and lives on eternally. 
 
 It is our dulness bids Him die again 
 
 Since only Calvary lifts Him up to men. 
 
 We see Him so, and worship, who were blind 
 
 When at our side He walked in peaceful days. 
 
 When shall we keep the sight of tears, and find 
 
 Our Master with us in the trodden ways? 
 
 When shall we live with Him, not bid Him die 
 
 To teach us how to live and then forget? 
 
 His Brotherhood will conquer He will yet 
 
 Be throned, not crucified, our lord instead 
 
 Of the Golden tyrant or the Red. 
 
 White comrade of the fighters who are down, 
 
 King of high hearts, who would not wear a crown, 
 
 Strong friend of weakness, welcoming the touch 
 
 Of childish fingers on His calloused hand, 
 
 Forgiver of the sinner who loved much, 
 
 How we shall love Him when we understand! 
 
 Amelia Josephine Burr 
 
 57 
 
DEFIANCE 
 
 OR dear or great they fall as grass: 
 They go, and never come; 
 And still we seek out ways to pass 
 Beyond the tether of the breath; 
 Still hope runs on from tomb to tomb 
 Denying death. 
 
 Set in us, Death, the fear of fears, 
 Some day there ll be no Spring; 
 Tramp earth till every hill be bare, 
 The hosts of life on mocking spheres 
 Beyond the hills of Jupiter 
 Will sigh and sing. 
 
 You conqueror? Then a greater lot 
 Doth he, the conquered, own. 
 He looks into your eyes of stone, 
 He hears you pass, an iron wing, 
 But you, dark Force, you know him not, 
 Nor anything. 
 
 What is the wind-flower s nod to you 
 Whose Spring brings back no ghost? 
 What is the harebell s shaken blue, 
 Rocking again within my heart? 
 What are the tulip sails high tossed 
 Where suns depart. 
 
 You nothing see when youth, the Seer, 
 Dies proud against a wall; 
 Blind yet when eyes of friends long true 
 58 
 
Meet in your shadow; even there 
 Fill with a light undoing all 
 That you can do. 
 
 A sage speaks clear as peals that make 
 A gold lake of the air; 
 On heart and lips that dared, you set 
 The heavy earth; but waiting where 
 A world s two ways their parting take, 
 Men listen yet. 
 
 A poet walks; you haste to cut 
 The breath of flame and dew, 
 And doors of vision fumble shut; 
 But words of his, as bright as tears, 
 Have lit like birds on all the years 
 Time holds from you. 
 
 Who knows how lone the sea must flow 
 
 Is lonelier than the sea; 
 
 A greater than the hills is he 
 
 Who feels them pass from sand to sand; 
 
 And who knows Death, to Death may go 
 
 With almoner s hand. 
 
 Or dear or great they fall as grass; 
 They go, and never come; 
 And still we seek out ways to pass 
 Beyond the tether of the breath; 
 Still hope runs on from tomb to tomb 
 Denying death. 
 
 Olive Tilford Dargan 
 59 
 
SOMEHOW. SOMEWHERE. SOMETIME. 
 
 SOMEHOW, but God knows how, we ll meet again, 
 
 You ll see the firelight on the pane, 
 
 Knock at the door, call, " Come, my dear." 
 
 You ll hear the bolt drawn, " You, love, here? " 
 
 And answer, " Yes no partings now, 
 
 For all things have come right somehow." 
 
 n 
 
 Somewhere beyond the furthest, western sea, 
 My boat will reach a sun-washed quay, 
 White birds, brown sails, a topaz sky, 
 Your smile of welcome. You and I 
 Together with all time to spare, 
 A brave new shining world somewhere! 
 
 in 
 
 Sometime . . . but now, how long we have to wait, 
 
 Grey hair, deaf ears, slow feeble gait, 
 
 The dull monotony of age, 
 
 The book of life spelt page by page 
 
 Till sight fails, hope fails, then sublime 
 
 The great surprise of death sometime! 
 
 Winifred M. Letts 
 
 60 
 
SONNET 
 
 I MUST unlearn my early modes of praise; 
 Forego the noisy trumpet and the drum 
 With which a boy made music. I have come 
 To learn a gentler art. I cannot raise 
 A fanfarade along the city s ways 
 As once I did. My fingers and my thumb 
 Tremble along the lute-strings; and the dumb 
 Wires wake and whisper in the evening haze. 
 
 I have discovered beauty in my pain, 
 And with naught else can I be satisfied. 
 Never, oh, never shall I know again 
 An easy rapture. But with muted breath 
 I softly cry, until my broken pride 
 Be mended by the tenderness of death. 
 
 Theodore Maynard 
 
 61 
 
PAGANISM 
 
 I TOO have rolled upon my lyric tongue 
 
 The splendid taste of blasphemy and have been 
 
 Haunted by Lucifer s loveliness. The queen 
 
 Of frantic heavens and hells, Astarte, flung 
 
 Her arms about my aching body and clung 
 
 And crushed me like a rose her breasts between, 
 
 Whose names are passion and pain. Oh, I have seen 
 
 How old a man may grow while he is young! 
 
 But you and I are torn by a deeper hunger. 
 Pagans we would be and we cannot be: 
 Our classic calm is lost. Virginity 
 Troubles our senses; while the scandalmonger 
 Envies and chides the dreary sins which we 
 (Poor souls!) were cheated with when we were 
 younger. 
 
 Theodore Maynard 
 
 62 
 
THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 THERE S nowhere else in all the world where I would 
 
 rather walk, 
 Than on a college campus and hear the young ghosts 
 
 talk- 
 Some laugh at yesterdays a hundred years ago and 
 
 more 
 Or sad sere yesterdays more recent just the June 
 
 before. 
 
 Oh, nowhere else in all the world is there a sweeter 
 
 place 
 Than college quads and Lawns, a sort of charmed 
 
 space 
 Where youth is always youth and golden hours are 
 
 these 
 By Tuscan columns or beneath the starred magnolia 
 
 trees. 
 
 Young ghosts criss-cross and mingle the medita 
 tive lad, 
 
 The dark Lothario and the blond who did his darn- 
 dest to be bad 
 
 They people halls and cloisters ghosts all but the 
 undergrad, 
 
 From Jefferson the magnificent and Madison and 
 
 Cabell 
 
 Down to our Jim McConnell who will forever dwell 
 Tiptoe and winged, genius of youth and daring 
 
 Well, 
 
 He stands for any boy who thrills with epics yet to 
 tell. 
 
 63 
 
Find me a college meadow, haunted the wide world 
 
 over, 
 Sown by the footsteps of young men, roisterer, 
 
 student, rover, 
 The flame-like feet beneath green shades of lad and 
 
 lout and lover. 
 
 They surely sought a Something here, though vaga 
 bond their mission; 
 
 For us they wrought and left behind the perfume of 
 tradition, 
 
 Faint images that float before, gold glimmer of 
 fruition. 
 
 Florence Wilkinson 
 
SECULAR ODE 
 
 Dedicated to the University of Virginia on the com 
 pletion of Us first hundred years 
 
 MAN, in his little day, 
 What shall we hope of man? 
 What permanence has spray; 
 How shall it build or plan? 
 What spirit has Caliban 
 Beyond his belly s need? 
 What shall we hope of man 
 Born of a crawling breed? 
 
 Yet, in his eyes a spark! 
 Yet, in his heart a flame! 
 Wan Glow-worm, shall the Dark 
 Yet waver at thy name ! 
 Shall the wild Hours grow tame 
 And serve thee on humble feet! 
 Shall nothing be the same 
 Nor all things incomplete? 
 
 Rash prophets from the mire, 
 We know not! but we know 
 What kindles the heart s fire, 
 Why faces lift and glow! 
 Nor blindly do they sow 
 Whose harvest-dawns are bright! 
 Sow frost and gather snow: 
 Sow Truth and gather Light! 
 
 Lee Wilson Dodd 
 
 65 
 
EDUCATION 
 
 (Inscribed to the University of Virginia) 
 
 You are the answer to the times, 
 The challenge of this crimson age; 
 You are the silencer of rage, 
 The end of earth s colossal crimes. 
 
 Across the caverns of mischance 
 Where groping human minds would reach, 
 O er fearful gulfs of ignorance 
 You are the silver bridge of speech. 
 
 You span the silence and the dark 
 Of centuries replete with lore, 
 Where minds of men may softly hark 
 To words of sages gone before. 
 
 You are the swinging crystal gate 
 Where Sophocles and Sappho wait; 
 Where Pericles and Plato bring 
 Their answer to earth s questioning 
 And Dante with his flaming pen 
 Bequeaths the sword of Truth to men. 
 
 You are the Heaven-climbing stair 
 Builded above the world s despair 
 Where souls of men go singing up 
 To drink the sacramental cup. 
 You are the good men grapple for, 
 You shield the song and lift the grail, 
 Because of you man shall not fail 
 For you are Conqueror of War! 
 
 Angela Morgan 
 66 
 
THE SMILING DEAD 
 
 To the memory of those young men who went from 
 
 the University of Virginia to give the gift 
 
 by which we live in faith and freedom 
 
 THESE brought their secret with them to the grave, 
 These who smile. They brought their secret sealed, 
 
 they gave 
 It whole, inviolate, to the grave. 
 
 See, the seeker, sharp red wounds about his head, 
 
 The breaker, broken on the altar-stair, 
 
 The valiant, lips white as the moon, 
 
 The gallant, bayonets for his bed! 
 
 They smile, they smile, they will be laughing soon, 
 
 Their secret safe, well-hidden, where 
 
 Their hands will soon lie crossed, 
 
 Where their hearts lie locked and lost. 
 
 O simple secrets of the dead: 
 
 Hunger of feet, hunger of hands, 
 
 For holy bread, 
 
 For holy lands 
 
 Hunger, hunger, hunger of soul! 
 
 These kept their hunger whole. 
 
 They smile as they lie dead, 
 
 For in their gift of dying they were fed. 
 
 Grace Fallow Norton 
 
THE LAST MOBILIZATION 
 
 ENGLAND, we come 
 Too hard was the waiting; 
 
 We burn to the bugles 
 Eager vibrating. 
 
 Here are your old reserves, 
 Rovers and rangers, 
 
 From the wild, rough places 
 And the dared dangers. 
 
 Blood of your blood we were, 
 Salt of your savour; 
 
 Spartan you moulded us, 
 Never to waver. 
 
 Doom clanged her iron lips 
 A world swayed asunder . . . 
 
 Stoutly you battled on, 
 Faced the fell thunder. 
 
 You have not shamed us where 
 We shadows must tarry: 
 
 Grenville is glad of you, 
 Drake, and King Harry! 
 
 Shades? but we ve broken through, 
 The Border weVe raided; 
 
 Strange, stubborn sentinels 
 We have persuaded. 
 
 From the London Athenaeum. 
 68 
 
Sidney salutes you now; 
 England, here s Clive again; 
 
 Wolfe, with his poet s heart; 
 Richard s alive again! 
 
 What though to dusty death 
 Once we descended? 
 
 Soul of your soul are we 
 Till time be ended. 
 
 Nelson and Wellington, 
 Our captains, commanders, 
 
 Marshal their men-at-arms 
 For France and Flanders. 
 
 Let us lift up our hearts, 
 Devon and Dover, 
 
 Men of antipodes, 
 
 Sailors from frozen seas, 
 Each ranger and rover; 
 
 Comrades, with us unite! 
 
 God, and the freeman s right! 
 
 Lift we our hearts and fight 
 Till this hell-burst be over! 
 
 England, our England, 
 We share your ongoing, 
 
 With full, free banners 
 Gallantly flowing! 
 
 George Herbert Clarke 
 
" MOTIONLESS " 
 
 MOTIONLESS, upon her bed, 
 By pale roses garlanded, 
 
 Little Dorothea lies, 
 
 Incommunicably wise 
 With the wisdom of the dead. 
 
 Twas but yesterday she wed: 
 Now her golden, girlish head 
 Wears another bridal guise, 
 Motionless. 
 
 Were her slumber mine instead, 
 She could not be comforted: 
 Streaming tears would blind her eyes 
 Yet, when Dorothea dies, 
 Silent I wait, with doubt and dread 
 Motionless. 
 
 George Herbert Clarke 
 
 70 
 
THE MAN CAME TO THE MOUNTAIN 
 
 THE man came to the mountain 
 In the greenest hour of Spring; 
 
 He strummed his heart for a banjo, 
 And he began to sing: 
 
 " O vast and stolid mother, 
 
 Paralytic and dumb, 
 Give ear unto my singing; 
 For your song could not come 
 
 " Until my brain awakened, 
 
 Until my tongue grew flame, 
 And my song now is your song, 
 Since out of you I came. . . ., 
 
 " O stooped, decrepit mother, 
 
 Long you gave barren birth 
 To flameless tree and blossom, 
 To mindless beasts of earth; 
 
 " Then from your brown womb uttered 
 
 A word lettered in fire 
 Eyes for your eyeless darkness, 
 Tongue for your locked desire. 
 
 " The word was man. You plagued him 
 
 With tempests black and wild, 
 
 With cold and heat and hunger: 
 
 For such things plague a child. 
 
" You bound him slave to dumb things, 
 
 A rod, a coin, a crown 
 But now his spirit wakens 
 To laugh the dumb gods down; 
 
 " And now his spirit toughens 
 
 To jeer the cold and heat, 
 To take your very tempest 
 As bread for him, and meat; 
 
 " As to drink to wet his palate, 
 
 As food to build him strong; 
 And of your plagues he fashions 
 Your own unuttered song. 
 
 " Take, then, his word from your word; 
 
 For this his tongue must be 
 
 The voice of your unspoken, 
 
 Unyielding liberty. ..." 
 
 The mountain shook with anguish 
 At sight of his broken chains; 
 
 She gave her heart for a banjo, 
 Strung with her iron veins; 
 
 She hurled away in fury 
 
 The rod, the coin, the crown. . . . 
 Age slipped from her wakened shoulders 
 
 Like a garment rumpling down. . . 
 
 The hills leapt like Bacchantes, 
 With green dishevelled hair, 
 
 Until they came to the singer 
 And sang around him there: 
 72 
 
" Man in whom God is living 
 Blossom beyond all plan 
 For God once slept in the mountains, 
 But now he grows in Man 
 
 " Man whose insatiate vision 
 Pierces the furthest haze, 
 And makes a sport and plaything 
 Of us, ancient of days, 
 
 " Sing, till the crown be rusted, 
 
 And the rod be decayed, 
 And all gold be forgotten 
 With all the pain it made. 
 
 " Sing, till the joy of singing 
 
 Is life s first word and last; 
 And life is a singing sunset 
 Out of a singing past. 
 
 " Take you our word and sing it; 
 
 Proclaim our liberty 
 Till that which is is altered 
 To the rapture that will be." 
 
 Clement Wood 
 
 73 
 
TO A WAR POET 
 
 (For Siegfried Sassoon) 
 
 I STAND before your grief with hanging, futile 
 
 hands, 
 
 And long to bring you healing, piteous youth; 
 Yet here the matter stands: 
 You must plow other lands. 
 
 These planted bones will bear no flower, 
 For you have garnered all their truth. 
 Go in another place, another hour. 
 Find a new power! 
 
 Jean Starr Untermeyer 
 
 74 
 
AN OLD POET 
 
 LONG since his song was broken by weight of toil 
 
 and tears, 
 The loveliness unspoken lost in the mist of years. 
 
 Is joy his part, or sadness, when now against the 
 
 skies, 
 Like notes from a choir of gladness, the new songs 
 
 soar and rise? 
 
 Voices of youth, with dower of dawn and life and 
 
 mirth, 
 With that exultant power that lifts the song from 
 
 earth. 
 
 Does he, grown old and tired, grieving, recall that 
 
 one 
 Morn when he too aspired to reach the very sun? 
 
 Or does he hear rejoicing, that though his lips are 
 
 sealed 
 These vibrant hearts are voicing his vision unre- 
 
 vealed? 
 
 God grant to him is given this joy what time youth 
 
 sings, 
 So well assured of Heaven, so confident of wings. 
 
 Theodosia Garrison 
 
 75 
 
TO A SUICIDE POET 
 
 In Memoriam S. M. B. 
 
 (The Facts of this Story are Followed Almost Literally) 
 
 THE crowded room was rank with smoke 
 And raw with fumes of drink. 
 The air was harsh with curse and joke; 
 How could you else than shrink? 
 
 Was this, then, life? You could not know 
 That evil was not king, 
 And the savage law of blow for blow 
 Was not the only thing. 
 
 For you had dwelt in youthful dreams, 
 Ethereal regions fair 
 
 Of starlight meads and moonlight streams 
 Untouched by grief and care. 
 
 You loved to war with cleansing seas, 
 You loved all kindly mirth, 
 You peopled with sweet phantasies 
 Our sordid modern earth. 
 
 Your playtime done, you gladly strove 
 To act a true man s part, 
 You were but plunged amid the drove 
 Of tramplers in the mart. 
 
 And then came war. You volunteered, 
 Aflame for nobler strife. 
 With hero soul, no foe you feared. 
 " Ah! here," you said, " is life." 
 76 
 
They chained your spirit in the grime 
 Of dreary camp routine, 
 And two men pulled you toward the slime 
 Where even love is unclean. 
 
 " We ll make a man of you," they cried, 
 And jeered with taunting yell. 
 " You won t? All right then, damn your pride! 
 We ll make your life a hell." 
 
 They kept their promise well, the two; 
 They know, and God knows, how. 
 They tortured, poisoned, murdered you. 
 May God forgive them now! 
 
 For weeks and months with rankling art 
 They probed you to the quick. 
 They saw you writhe at each new smart 
 Till all your soul was sick. 
 
 The tiny room was thick with smoke 
 And raw with fumes of drink. 
 From foulest curse and filthiest joke 
 You could not else than shrink. 
 
 Your strength, your hate were for the foe. 
 Half-mad there at the end, 
 You were not nerved to strike a blow 
 And kill a should-be friend. 
 
 Then suddenly you saw the lands 
 Where poet souls belong, 
 Where rules a Power that understands, 
 Where comes no taint of wrong. 
 77 
 
You saw your spirit s home-land there, 
 Still lovely, still the same. 
 You, all too gentle, all too rare 
 To learn life as it came, 
 
 You could no longer breathe the air 
 Of fetid lust and shame. 
 
 You did not well. But you were not, 
 As we are, slowly steeled 
 To bear the ills our fates allot. 
 You broke, you could not yield. 
 
 The room was hell and life was hell, 
 
 But there so near outside 
 
 Was your own world where moonbeams dwell 
 
 On dream-fields soft and wide. 
 
 You did but seek your own once more; 
 You fled the garish light. 
 You raised the latch-pin, swung the door, 
 And stepped into the night. 
 
 Charles Wharton Stork 
 
TO A DEAD POET 
 
 I SPEAK your name a magic thing 
 Jocund April takes my hand, 
 Golden birds begin to sing, 
 Laughter fills the silver land. 
 
 I speak your name a Matin bell 
 Buoyant, godlike, you arise 
 Flinging far the slumber-spell 
 Laid upon your heart and eyes. 
 
 I speak your name and Summer s here 
 Glad beyond all Summers gone 
 And you are shining like the spear 
 God fashioned in His first day s dawn. 
 
 Eleanor Rogers Cox 
 
 79 
 
THREE WHITE BIRDS OF AENGUS 
 
 A Young King speaks 
 
 LAST night when all the stars were still, 
 Upon Benn Edar s dew-grey hill 
 I stood, and watched where far away 
 Three sea-birds cleft the moon-white spray; 
 Three sea-birds like white flowers tost 
 Upon the wind, now seen, now lost, 
 Now star-bright mid the sea s deep black, 
 Now lost amid the breaker s wrack, 
 Now nearer, nearer winging yet, 
 Their silver course toward me set, 
 Their silver wings that as they came 
 Turned all to gold and rose-red flame, 
 Casting upon the air around 
 A music of such wondrous sound, 
 So sweetly strange as on that shore 
 Sure mortal never heard before: 
 For binding each bright neck and wing 
 A band of silver chimes did swing, 
 Did swing and sway and round me fold 
 A tremulous thin veil of gold. 
 So that, as one enchanted all 
 I heard upon my spirit fall 
 A woman s voice, and where had been 
 The foremost bird there shone a Queen 
 Poised half-way mid the sky and land, 
 A snow-white girl on either hand; 
 And " You, O King, shall come away 
 From Erin with me on a day, 
 80 
 
Shall leave your loves and wars behind, 
 And ride with me the singing wind! " 
 She chanted, till along the sea 
 The feet of Morn came whisperingly. 
 
 Eleanor Rogers Cox 
 
 81 
 
I THINK OF HIM AS ONE WHO FIGHTS 
 
 You think of him as one who fails, 
 I think of him as one who fights, 
 Who goes on strange adventurous ways 
 Through tortured days and dangerous nights. 
 
 You know him by the fallen flesh 
 The cruel trap where he was caught, 
 I know him by the lifted brow 
 And by the Cause for which he fought. 
 
 And he went first and he went far 
 With glorious banners lifted high 
 And you and I ll have different ways 
 Of judging him, until we die. 
 
 For if he wins or if he falls 
 I know tis written in God s laws 
 That he who fights on the right side 
 Shall wear the splendor of the Cause. 
 
 You know him by the grievous wound 
 And by the earth on which he lies 
 I know him by the patient worth 
 And the deep sadness of his eyes. 
 
 You judge him by the hostile mood 
 Which was the Devil s battle shout, 
 I judge him by his quest for God 
 And by the things he prays about. 
 82 
 
And you shall have your place of pride 
 With lifted banner glittering bright 
 But the whole earth shall hear him speak 
 Of One who raised him in the night. 
 
 And you shall stay in Heaven perchance 
 With righteous souls that do not err, 
 But he shall come to earth again 
 And comfort with the Comforter. 
 
 You think of him as one who fails, 
 I think of him as one who fights 
 Who ventures steep and perilous ways 
 Through tortured days and dangerous nights. 
 Anna Hemp stead Branch 
 
DUOVIR 
 
 I KNOW as you a man who is two men 
 Companioned by diverse ancestral strains 
 In one gaunt awkward body that must needs 
 Attempt to serve them both incessantly; 
 One, scion of a long-forgotten god 
 Who herded clouds and stars and warded trees 
 And tended tides and tamed mad rivers ere 
 The engineers had learned the simplest arts, 
 And who to give him home upon the earth 
 Amid his officed tasks, leading his flocks 
 From sea through forests to the mountain crests, 
 Wedded an Aryan maid whose father dwelt 
 Upon a hill above the highest spring, 
 Commanding view of mountain, sea and sky. 
 So had the first his soul and name from her 
 Who lived, god-visited, upon the heights. 
 
 The other boasted his descent from one 
 Who ruled by might upon the isle where now 
 A king-born man rules but in name alone 
 A practic lord who built great Thorfin s walls, 
 Progenitor of those who habit towns, 
 Who fashion, barter, carry and control, 
 Masters of men who fight and toil and save; 
 Makers of things that clothe and house and feed; 
 Careless of cloud and star except as they 
 Replenish wells or guide the errant ships. 
 
 Each was the heritor of vast estates 
 That stretched divergent back from every day; 
 
 84 
 
On one side towards the Halcyon Grecian isles; 
 And on the other toward the mists that brood 
 Above the northern fjords; nor mingle till 
 They come convergent near the far-off gate 
 Whence Adam came all flushed and frightened forth 
 And Eve beside him weeping sore. 
 
 So got 
 
 Of god and cosmic clay, and so endowed, 
 These diversivolent duoviri, 
 As one big homely human avatar, 
 Tried each with each to do their double best 
 Twixt dream and deed poet and pragmatist, 
 Mystic and potent manager of men. 
 
 One loved the solitude, the forest paths, 
 The lonely night, the voices of the stars, 
 The rain upon the roof, the scent of trees, 
 The light upon the hills, the open road. 
 
 The other cared for crowds and comradeship, 
 The bustling streets, the plauding multitudes, 
 The council hall, the camp, the battle-field, 
 The glare and tumult of the victory. 
 
 Together, they were Man upon his way 
 From God to God, summing the race that s been 
 But giving glimpse of a diviner grace 
 Than has evolved (or will, if we accept 
 The teaching of the biologic mind 
 That sees his evolution at an end) 
 Than has evolved, but will; for soul is bound 
 To mould such body as its needs require 
 
 85 
 
To bear it toward the goal it seeks 
 Else why were clay uplifted to this height 
 If it can never reach the higher height, 
 The image it would make of God in Man? 
 
 John Finley 
 
 86 
 
PRAISE 
 
 Dedicated to the memory of Edgar Allan Poe and 
 Sidney Lanier, two poets of the South 
 
 I HAVE not labored for the praise of men 
 And have not won it. I must work alone, 
 A friend of trees and rivers and grey skies, 
 A friend of humble folk who never hear 
 The chatter of the very nearly great 
 And do not buy their beauty with their bread, 
 But are content to take it, as they think, 
 From the very hand of God. I work alone. 
 Though I have talked with many famous men 
 They have not heard my voice, nor answered me. 
 There is more warmth in winter than in these 
 Who must go fading down the skies of time, 
 Poor ghosts of glory, paling to an ash, 
 A hundred years or world away from me. 
 
 I dare not say that I am too devout 
 In worship of a far and final thing 
 To care for what is near at hand to-day. 
 How often loneliness has humbled me 
 To crave the pleasant speaking of an hour 
 As men crave wealth in poverty, drink in fever, 
 Or love in the hungry innocence of youth ! 
 How often, when I am humble, I could say, 
 " O world of people, give me but a word 
 To fall like sunlight on my weariness, 
 And to make fertile all my dust of days! " 
 
 But always, long before I speak the words, 
 I whip my soul for this humility 
 
 87 
 
With thongs of scorn, and lock my jaws and go 
 To hide my need where the green valleys are, 
 Making my pride the master of my soul. 
 And pride alone can make me stand erect 
 Under my zenith, stubborn in the sun, 
 Though I may not be proud even of my pride 
 Since it is shadowed by a deadly fear. 
 
 Praise is the final peril of the great, 
 Praise is too fat a food, too strong a drink, 
 Making men gluttonous and bibulous 
 So that they can not bear the length of days 
 Sturdily on the shoulders of their souls, 
 So that they can not go, like athletes striding, 
 Across the wilderness of their desires; 
 And I can scorn this food and drink because 
 I have held cup and platter out to men 
 Myself, and heard their noisy swallowing. 
 I have seen them reeling in their drunkenness 
 Who scarcely knew that they had drunk at all! 
 
 Therefore, you mighty dead, whom I may praise 
 Without the fear that I may poison you, 
 Without suspicion of a thought of gain, 
 Be in me, like the prophets and the law, 
 Like light of sun and stars, like thrilling rain, 
 Or angry lightning, like Emanuel, 
 If I must have men s praise before I die, 
 That I may bless the food and be made strong 
 And pour the wine before the feet of men. 
 And be a secret power in me now 
 While I have need to arm myself with pride, 
 88 
 
A warrior who may fall upon a sword 
 
 In utter loneliness at last, and die, 
 
 Not strong enough to fight a world of pain, 
 
 Nor coward enough to want the help of friends. 
 
 I have not labored for the praise of men 
 And have not won it. I must stand alone 
 Against a storm no tree need ever bend to, 
 Against a cold that holds no river fast 
 From bank to bank in the white days of winter, 
 Against a darkness, darker, more profound 
 Than any that the skies of night have known. 
 If, in the end, my own voice praises me, 
 Myself must be content in my deep home 
 With every peril overborne at last 
 And loneliness forgotten in long peace. 
 
 Marguerite Wilkinson 
 
SAUL 
 
 " And they put his armor in the House of Ashtoreth." 
 I SAMUEL, xxxi, 10. 
 
 WEEP for the one so strong to slay, whom One has 
 
 taken at last! 
 Mourn for the mail that rings no more and the ruin 
 
 unforecast! 
 This was he of the flaming heart and the deep, heroic 
 
 breath, 
 Whose sword is laid and his armor hung in the House 
 
 of Ashtoreth. 
 
 Weep for the one so swift to slay, whose knees have 
 
 bent to the night! 
 Dust is thick on his thresholds now, tho trumpets call 
 
 to the fight. 
 Slinger and bowman gather fast, but our strong man 
 
 does not come. 
 Captains long for his counsels now, but the sated 
 
 lips are dumb. 
 
 Cry his name in the citadel, sending the runners 
 
 forth; 
 The South gives back no rumor of him; in vain they 
 
 question the North. 
 Seek him not where the wall is held or the spears 
 
 go in to death, 
 Whose shield is laid and his armor hung in the House 
 
 of Ashtoreth. 
 
 90 
 
This was he grown mighty in war, but her war is 
 
 otherwise; 
 Swords that flash from her bosom bared, arrows 
 
 cast from her eyes. 
 Who shall stoop from her javelin thrown, who from 
 
 her singing dart? 
 Her sudden shaft is hot in his loins, her steel in his 
 
 maddened heart. 
 
 Deep in the still and altared dusk her lamp glows 
 
 small and red, 
 Mirrored clear in the great cuirass, like the rubies of 
 
 her bed; 
 Blood of light on his burnished helm, on the belt 
 
 and the greaves, one saith 
 Whose spear is laid and his armor hung in the House 
 
 of Ashtoreth. 
 
 Tho Gath go up to the threshing-floors, or hosts 
 
 assemble at Tyre, 
 Wait no more for your prince s word, who has taken 
 
 his desire. 
 Cities and fields and given hearts, honor and life 
 
 were weighed, 
 The balance shown and the end foreseen and the 
 
 deep decision made. 
 
 Weep for the one so strong in war, whose war is 
 
 now of the Dark! 
 Well he harnessed his breast with steel, but her 
 
 arrows find their mark. 
 
Her hands have loosened the brazen belt and her 
 
 breath has found his breath, 
 Whose sword is laid and his armor hung in the House 
 
 of Ashtoreth. 
 
 George Sterling 
 
 92 
 
THE WINDOW 
 
 HE knew that he was dying. They had said, 
 
 Seeing his eyes closed, it could not be long. 
 
 Motionless on the white enamelled bed, 
 
 He let them smooth the pillows at his head 
 
 And wondered if the twisting of the prong 
 
 That pierced his tired loins would ever stop. 
 
 He wanted few things now, and nothing quite 
 
 So much as this: to have the shaded light 
 
 Put out, and that dark blind raised to the top. 
 
 Perhaps they d do it soon, he thought. The night 
 
 Was almost over and he d see again 
 
 The panorama of the window-pane, 
 
 So like a running ribbon; the one thread, 
 
 Now worn so thin, that kept him from the dead. 
 
 He tried to sleep, but started in to count 
 The days that he had watched that window-frame 
 Bring life into his room, but the amount 
 Was more than he could master. And the same 
 Desire took hold of him: to raise the blind 
 (Though it was black out there) and see behind 
 The darkness if he could; to pierce the vast 
 And crouching mystery; to grope and tear 
 Some answer from the silence. He could bear 
 The mockery of his pain, but now at last 
 He d have an end of riddles; he would know 
 What the elaborate subterfuge was for. 
 The shade seemed very near, it was a door 
 Already opening ... A steady glow 
 Swept through his body, and he thought he stood 
 
 93 
 
Raising the window as a great wind blew 
 
 Old things into his mind, things that he knew 
 
 But had forgot. He trembled as he felt 
 
 Bells in the -night, bells ringing in his blood. 
 
 A light came singing . . . towered . . . broke 
 
 in two 
 And struck him suddenly . . . 
 
 The doctor knelt 
 
 To catch the falling hands. " I think he s through; 
 I said by daylight surely and you see " . . . 
 
 Under the blind, hanging a bit askew, 
 
 The fingers of the sun groped timidly 
 
 And touched an opening eye-lid. He could be 
 
 Contented now; the sash was raised up high. 
 
 He saw the tree that always grew awry 
 
 Had new buds on it. He could tell the sweet 
 
 Taste of the morning air, the steady beat 
 
 Of unseen wings tipped with that dazzling sky. 
 
 This was the moment that he meant to die ... 
 
 A crowd of boys came whistling up the street, 
 
 And, at the challenge of their happy feet, 
 
 He knew that he must live and wondered why. 
 
 Louis Untermeyer 
 
 94 
 
VIRGILIA 
 
 i 
 
 HAD we two gone down the world together, 
 
 I had made fair ways for the feet of Song, 
 
 And the world s fang been but a foam-soft feather, 
 The world that works us wrong. 
 
 If you had but stayed when the old sweet wonder 
 Was a precious pain in my pulsing side! 
 
 Ah, why did you hurry our lives asunder 
 You, born to be my bride? 
 
 What sent it upon me my soul importunes 
 All the grief of the world in a little span, 
 
 All the tears and fears, all the fates and fortunes, 
 That the heart holds for a man? 
 
 Is this then the grief that the first gods kneaded 
 Into all joy that the strange world brings? 
 
 Did the tears fall into the heap unheeded, 
 These tears in mortal things? 
 
 But why was it that the whole world wasted, 
 
 This you will know when they count the tears, 
 
 After the dust of the grave is tasted, 
 After this noise of years. 
 
 Yet some things stay though a world lies broken, 
 I keep some things that were dear of old 
 
 That first kiss spared and that last word spoken 
 And the glint of your hair s dark gold. 
 
 Copyright secured to the author. Published by permission 
 of Edwin Markham. 
 
 95 
 
Do you mind that hour in the soft sweet morning 
 When I held you fast in divine alarms, 
 
 When my soul stood up like a god adorning 
 His body with bright arms? 
 
 Forget it not till the crowns are crumbled 
 
 And the swords of the kings are rent with rust 
 
 Forget it not till the hills lie humbled, 
 And the springs of the seas run dust. 
 
 n 
 What was I back in the world s first wonder? 
 
 An elf-child found on an ocean-reef, 
 A sea-child nursed by the surge and thunder, 
 
 And marked for the lyric grief. 
 
 I mind me well how the wave s edge whitened 
 
 As the shapes of the storm went whirling by 
 
 How I laughed and ran when the loud void lightened, 
 And tempest shook the sky. 
 
 So I will go down by the way of the willows, 
 And whisper it out to the mother Sea, 
 
 To the soft sweet shores and the long bright billows, 
 The dream that cannot be. 
 
 There will be help for the soul s great trouble 
 
 Where the sea s heart sings to the listening ear, 
 
 Where the high gray cliff in the pool hangs double, 
 And the moon is misting the mere. 
 
 Twas down in the sea that your soul took fashion, 
 O strange Love born of the white sea-wave! 
 
 And only the sea and her lyric passion 
 Can ease the wound you gave. 
 96 
 
I will go down to the wide wild places, 
 
 Where the calm cliffs look on the shores around: 
 
 I will rest in the power of their great grave faces 
 And the gray hush of the ground. 
 
 On a cliff s high head a gray gull clamors, 
 
 But down at the base is the Devil s brew, 
 
 And the swing of arms and the heave of hammers, 
 And the white flood roaring through. 
 
 There on the cliff is the sea-bird s tavern, 
 
 And there with the wild things I ll find a home, 
 
 Laugh with the lightning, shout with the cavern, 
 Run with the feathering foam. 
 
 I will climb down where the nests are hanging 
 
 And the young birds scream to the swinging deep, 
 
 Where the rocks and the iron winds are clanging, 
 And the long waves lift and leap. 
 
 I will thread the shores to the cavern hollows, 
 
 Where the edge of the wave runs white and thin: 
 
 I will sing to the surge and the foam that follows 
 When the dark tides thunder in. 
 
 I will go out where the sea-birds travel, 
 
 And mix my soul with the wind and sea; 
 
 Let the green waves weave and the gray rains ravel, 
 And the tides go over me. 
 
 The Sea is the mother of songs and sorrows, 
 
 And out of her wonder our wild loves come; 
 
 And so it will be through the long to-morrows, 
 Till all our lips are dumb. 
 97 
 
She knows all sighs and she knows all sinning, 
 And they whisper out in her breaking wave: 
 
 She has known it all since the far beginning, 
 Since the grief of that first grave. 
 
 She shakes the heart with her stars and thunder 
 And her soft low word when the winds are late; 
 
 For the sea is Woman, the sea is Wonder 
 Her other name is Fate! 
 
 There is daring and dream in her billows breaking 
 In the power of her beauty our griefs forget: 
 
 She can ease the heart of the long, long aching, 
 And bury old regret. 
 
 m 
 
 Will you find rest as our ways dissever? 
 
 Will the gladness grow as the days increase? 
 Howbeit, I leave on your soul forever 
 
 The word of the eternal peace. 
 
 I will go the road and my song shall save me, 
 
 Though grief may stay as the heart s old guest: 
 
 I will finish the work that the strange God gave me, 
 And then pass on to rest. 
 
 I will go back to the great world-sorrow, 
 
 To the millions bearing the double load 
 
 The fate of to-day and the fear of to-morrow: 
 I will taste the dust of the road. 
 
 I will go back to the pains and the pities 
 
 That break the heart of the world with moan: 
 
 I will forget in the grief of the cities 
 The burden of my own. 
 
 98 
 
There in the world-grief my own grief humbles, 
 My wild hour melts in the days to be; 
 
 As the wild white foam of a river crumbles, 
 Forgotten in the sea. 
 
 Edwin Markham 
 
 99 
 
AFTERTHOUGHTS 
 
 WE parted where the old gas-lamp still burned 
 Under the wayside maple and walked on, 
 Into the dark, as we had always done; 
 And I, no doubt, if he had not returned, 
 Might yet be unaware that he had earned 
 More than earth gives to many who have won 
 More than it has to give when they are gone 
 As duly and indelibly I learned. 
 
 The sum of all that he came back to say 
 Was little then, and would be less to-day: 
 With him there were no Delphic heights to climb, 
 Yet his were somehow nearer the sublime. 
 He spoke, and went again by the old way 
 Not knowing it would be for the last time. 
 
 Edwin Arlington Robinson 
 
 ICO 
 
A LESSON TO MY GHOST 
 
 SHALL it be said that the wind s gone over 
 
 The hill this night, and no ghost there? 
 
 Not the shape of an old-time lover 
 
 Pacing the old road, the high road there? 
 
 By the peacock tree, the tree that spreads its 
 
 branches 
 
 Like a proud peacock s tail (so my lady says), 
 Under a cloudy sky, while the moon launches 
 Scattered beams of light along the dark silences? 
 I will be a ghost there, though I yet am breathing, 
 A living presence still in tight cottage walls, 
 Sitting by the fire whose smoke goes wreathing 
 Over fields and farmyards and farmyard stalls. 
 As a player going to rehearse his faring, 
 I will be my ghost there before my bones are dust. 
 Bid it learn betimes the sock it shall be wearing 
 When it bids the clay good-bye as all ghosts must. 
 Hush, then; upstairs sleep my lady and her mother; 
 The cat curls the night away, and will not stir; 
 Beams of lamp and beech-log cross one another, 
 No wind walks in the garden there. 
 Go, my ghost, it calls you, the high road, the winding, 
 Written by the moonlight on the sleeping hill; 
 I will watch the ashes, you go finding 
 The way you shall walk for generations still. 
 The window-latch is firm, the curtain does not 
 
 tremble, 
 
 The wet grass bends not under your tread, 
 Brushing you shake not the dew from the bramble, 
 They hear no gate who lie abed. 
 
 101 
 
Nodding I stare at the hearth, but I see you, 
 
 My half-wit travels with you the road; 
 
 There shall be your kingdom when death shall free 
 
 you, 
 
 When body s wit is neither leash nor goad. 
 Past the peacock branches proudly gliding, 
 Your own ghost now, I know, I know, 
 You look to the moon on the hill-top riding, 
 The mares in the meadow sleep as you go, 
 Your eyes that are dark yet great for divining 
 Brood on the valleys of wood and plough, 
 And you stand where the silver flower is shining 
 Of cherry against the black holly bough. 
 Rehearse, O rehearse, as you pass by the hedgerows, 
 Remembrance of all that was my bright will, 
 That so my grave of whispers and echoes 
 May rest for the ghost that is yet on the hill. 
 The primroses burn and the cowslips cover 
 The starry meadows as heaven is clad, 
 Learn them all, O ghost, as a lover, 
 So shall your coming again be glad. 
 The inn-sign hangs in the windless watches, 
 You pass the shadowy piles of stone 
 Under the walls where the hawthorn catches 
 Shapes from the moon that are not its own. 
 Wander, wander down by the cresses, 
 Over the crest of the hill, between 
 The brown lych-gate and the cider presses, 
 Pass the well and across the green. 
 Heed me, my ghost, my heir. To-morrow, 
 Or soon, my body to ash must fall, 
 Heed me, my ghost, my heir. To-morrow, 
 
 1 02 
 
Heed me, ghost, and I shall not sorrow 
 Learn this beauty, O learn it all. 
 Night goes on, the beech-log s ended, 
 Half-wit s drowsy, and doctrine done, 
 Ghost, come home from the road; befriended 
 My moon shall be when I leave the sun. 
 
 John Drinkwater 
 
 103 
 
THE TURN OF THE ROAD 
 
 Now my thick years bend your back. 
 Cut the thongs that hold the pack 
 
 Merrily, merrily . . . 
 
 I will not be sad again. 
 
 I will strip myself of pain 
 
 And go singing as of old. 
 
 Though my hands are thin to hold, 
 
 Though my hair is pale as sand, 
 
 And I shiver as I stand, 
 
 I am not so short of breath 
 
 As to strangle you to death. . . . 
 
 Why should you go crook d for me? 
 Shake yourself and run! run free! 
 No. It s long enough you ache 
 Borrowing years for my stiff sake. 
 No. I do not need you now. . . . 
 
 Toss the wild hair from your brow: 
 Run! while roads and city-smoke 
 Beckon young dream- worthy folk, 
 Why should I be lonely? See, 
 The old sun shines to comfort me, 
 And the small old hours dance 
 Lovely with all lost romance. 
 I have needed time to dream, 
 But you must run, and grow, and gleam, 
 
 Merrily! Merrily! 
 104 
 
And if you come back to find 
 No one here but sun and wind, 
 Think, He did not fail away 
 Cringing like a beast at bay, 
 But like an eagle or a star, 
 Lost by flying far, so far! 
 
 (God forgive me if I lie. . . . 
 
 All I love in life, good-bye. . . .) 
 
 Look! the long road and the sky! . . . 
 Merrily! Merrily! . . . 
 
 Fannie Stearns Gijford 
 
 105 
 
TO THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA 
 
 No summer rose my life Tis like a tree, 
 An ancient tree which holds an empty nest, 
 Apples a few on topmost boughs, the rest 
 Sun-dried, or strawn neglected on the lea. 
 
 What fitting tribute can I pay to thee? 
 How much I love thee, let those years attest, 
 Those twenty years I served thee with my best, 
 Poor best, perhaps, but all that lay in me. 
 
 Twice twenty years I tilled another field 
 Another? Nay. To me the two were one; 
 Love would not see the distance on the map 
 And bade me count whate er I reaped thy yield; 
 And now that all my work in life is done, 
 Dear Mother, let me sleep upon thy lap. 
 
 Basil L. Gildersleeve 
 
 106 
 
THE SPIRIT OF IRELAND CONSIDERS HER 
 HERITAGE 
 
 Who speaks in the name of Ireland speaks in my 
 name. 
 
 I AM one with the spray blown upward from waves 
 
 that break 
 On the rocks below me; one with the cry of the 
 
 sea-gull, 
 
 The call of the curlew; one with the grass 
 Dark green on peaks of the headland. 
 
 I am one with the smoke curling thin from the valley 
 
 chimneys 
 Of thatched roofs dwarfed by the mountain, and one 
 
 with the lake 
 Whose waters are quiet at sunset, whose foliage 
 
 shores 
 Are shrouded in silence of evening. 
 
 Bodies of cleric and soldier, trampled, forgotten, 
 And tossed aside by the ploughshare; war shouts of 
 
 rovers; 
 The grating of swords; slaughter of Dane and of 
 
 Saxon 
 These are as one in my life-blood. 
 
 Defenders who stood on the ramparts and towers of 
 
 Derry: 
 Men who fought for King James on the bridge oi 
 
 Athlone and at Aughrim; 
 107 
 
Men who heartened King Albert, and seamen who 
 
 watched on the oceans 
 These are a part of my heritage. 
 
 One with the beauty and one with the honor of Erin, 
 One with her past, her present, and one with her 
 
 future, 
 Shall I heed those who rend her asunder, who bring 
 
 her to madness 
 By will of the reivers of Belgium? 
 
 Who speaks in the name of Ireland speaks in my 
 name. 
 
 Norreys Jephson O Conor 
 
 108 
 
IN AN ORIENTAL SHOP 
 
 WITH you and song I do not count the days, 
 For even centuries would not seem long, 
 But all too short a time in which to praise 
 
 Both you and song. 
 
 Here hang embroideries from far Hong Kong, 
 Storks and white lilies lost in golden maze, 
 A wondrous junk the lily-pads among 
 
 Rare treasures garnered from the twilight haze 
 Of time forgotten. I strike a temple gong, 
 And from old music weave new roundelays 
 
 Of you and song. 
 
 Norreys Jephson O Conor 
 
 109 
 
SILVER WEDDING 
 
 IN the middle of the night he started up 
 
 At a cry from his sleeping Bride, 
 
 A bat from some ruin in a heart he d never searched, 
 
 Nay, hardly seen inside : 
 
 " Want me and take me for the woman that I am 
 
 " And not for her that died, 
 
 " The lovely chit nineteen I one time was, 
 
 " And am no more " she cried. 
 
 Ralph Hodgson 
 
 no 
 
TO A GREEK MARBLE 
 
 WHITE grave goddess, 
 
 Pity my sadness, 
 O silence of Paros. 
 
 I am not of these about thy feet, 
 
 These garments and decorum; 
 
 I am thy brother, 
 
 The lover of aforetime crying to thee, 
 
 And thou hearest me not. 
 
 I have whispered thee in thy solitudes 
 
 Of our loves in Phyrgia, 
 
 The far ecstasy of burning noons 
 
 When the fragile pipes 
 
 Ceased in the cypress shade, 
 
 And the brown fingers of the shepherd 
 
 Moved over slim shoulders; 
 
 And only the cicada sang. 
 
 I have told thee of the hills 
 
 And the lisp of reeds 
 
 And the sun upon thy breasts, 
 
 And thou hearest me not, 
 Thou hearest me not. 
 
 Richard Aldington 
 
 in 
 
ON AN OLD HYMN BOOK 
 
 The hands that turned the pages, long ago, 
 
 Of this old hymnal, were they young or old? 
 
 They were a woman s see, the dim leaves fold 
 
 A rusted needle! small the eye; we know 
 
 No man could thread it, nor might old eyes show 
 
 The narrow way: then, too, old hands are cold. 
 
 Hence, she was young, blue-eyed, with hair of 
 
 gold? 
 
 Brunette? Maybe, none lives who light might throw. 
 These pages reek of sinners and their hell. 
 What were her thoughts when these sad hymns 
 
 were sung? 
 
 Stained are the leaves blest by her virgin tears? 
 Shrined she his violets, to keep them well? 
 Ah, they are dust, these two, who once were 
 
 young 
 Dust, in the wreckage of an hundred years. 
 
 Henry Aylett Sampson 
 
 112 
 
THE TWO ROSALINDS 
 
 i 
 
 THE dubious daylight ended, 
 And I walked the Town alone, unminding whither 
 
 bound and why, 
 As from each gaunt street and gaping square a mist 
 
 of light ascended 
 And dispersed upon the sky. 
 
 ii 
 
 Files of evanescent faces 
 Passed each other without heeding, in their travail, 
 
 teen, or joy, 
 Some in void unvisioned listlessness inwrought with 
 
 pallid traces 
 Of keen penury s annoy. 
 
 HI 
 
 Nebulous flames in crystal cages 
 Gleamed as if with discontent at city movement, 
 
 murk, and grime, 
 And as waiting some procession of great ghosts from 
 
 bygone ages 
 To exalt the ignoble time. 
 
 IV 
 
 In a colonnade high-lighted 
 By a thoroughfare where stern utilitarian traffic 
 
 dinned, 
 On a red and white emblazonment of players and 
 
 parts, I sighted 
 The name of " Rosalind," 
 
 By permission of Thomas Hardy and The Macmillan Com 
 pany. 
 
V 
 
 And her famous mates of " Arden," 
 Who observed no stricter customs than " the seasons 
 
 difference " bade, 
 Who lived with running brooks for books in Nature s 
 
 wildwood garden, 
 And called idleness their trade .... 
 
 VI 
 
 Now the poster stirred an ember 
 Still remaining from my ardours of some forty years 
 
 before, 
 When the selfsame portal on an eve it thrilled me to 
 
 remember 
 A like announcement bore; 
 
 vn 
 
 And expectantly I had entered, 
 And had first beheld in human mould a Rosalind 
 
 woo and plead, 
 On whose transcendent figuring my speedy soul had 
 
 centred 
 As it had been she indeed . 
 
 vrrr 
 
 So; all other plans discarding, 
 I resolved on entrance, bent on seeing what I once 
 
 had seen, 
 
 And approached the gangway of my earlier knowl 
 edge, disregarding 
 The expanse of time between. 
 114 
 
rx 
 
 " The words, sir? " cried a creature 
 Hovering twixt the shine and shade as mid the 
 
 live world and the tomb; 
 But the well-known numbers needed not for me a 
 
 text or teacher 
 To revive and re-illume. 
 
 x 
 
 In I went. . . . But how unfitted 
 Was this Rosalind! a mammet quite to me, in 
 
 memories nurst, 
 And with chilling disappointment soon I sought the 
 
 street I had quitted, 
 To re-ponder on the first. 
 
 XI 
 
 The hag still hawked, I met her 
 Just without the colonnade. " So you don t like 
 
 her, sir? " said she, 
 "Ah I was once that Rosalind! I acted her 
 
 none better 
 Yes, in eighteen sixty-three. 
 
 XII 
 
 " Thus I won Orlando to me 
 In my then triumphant days when I had charm 
 
 and maidenhood, 
 Now some forty years ago. I used to say, Come 
 
 woo me, woo me! " 
 And she struck the attitude. 
 
xm 
 
 It was when I had gone there nightly; 
 And the voice though raucous now was yet the 
 
 old one. Clear as noon 
 My Rosalind was here. . . . Thereon the band 
 
 withinside lightly 
 Beat up a merry tune. 
 
 Thomas Hardy 
 
 116 
 
THE SOUL OF THE LITTLE ROOM 
 
 SWEET room, dear loved of all my people, where 
 The blue-tiled hearth has held the leaping flare 
 Of singing logs whose hearts still keep the dead 
 Enchanted melody of birds long fled, 
 And where with understanding friends my folk 
 Have watched the tapestry of flame, and spoke 
 Slow musing thoughts, the while with gentle chime 
 The clock made audible the flight of time, 
 Hast thou no spirit? Here on summer days 
 The wind on tip-toe feet comes in and plays 
 Now with the curtain, now a lady s hair, 
 Then, fitful, sweep slow fingers here and there, 
 Like some unseen and silent child who quests 
 With eager hands this little world. Here rests 
 The peace of tranquil years. Dear little place, 
 Hast thou no soul to guess thine own sweet grace? 
 
 One child who dreamed and laughed, suffered and 
 
 grew 
 
 Herein to womanhood believes it true 
 Thou hast a soul, distilled from all the years, 
 A heart made slowly up from all the fears, 
 The hope, the singing loves, the joy and life 
 Of those who played their parts of calm or strife 
 Through youth to comprehending age, 
 On this sequestered corner of Life s stage. 
 
 Then give Thyself, O little room, fling wide 
 Thine heart! And may thy garnered soul abide 
 With all who shelter here. From out thy meed 
 Of wisdom give to each his dearest need 
 May the light-hearted find some pathos here, 
 But to the sad, O little room, give cheer! 
 
 Margaret Prescott Montague 
 117 
 
FLIGHT OF CROWS 
 (In Memoriam W. J. L., 1837-1920) 
 
 OUT of the chaos of sunset, the one white star and 
 
 the silence, 
 Far in the fiery dusk, off at the ends of the 
 
 world, 
 Out of the lavender twilight of misty October 
 
 horizons, 
 Bursts, like a birth in the skies, swarming the 
 
 legion of crows; 
 Onward and over the valley, and strangely perturbed 
 
 in their winging, 
 Bigger and blacker they stream, cawing in 
 
 answer to caw. 
 So have I noted in April the wild-geese honking to 
 
 northward, 
 Only in loftier air, up in the blue and the 
 
 day. . . 
 
 Morning and night and the seasons, and ever the 
 ancient migrations, 
 
 While, for his hour a man stands 
 
 on a hill as they pass. 
 
 n 
 
 News, like the caw of the crow or the cry of the 
 
 Canada flyers, 
 
 Startled me walking at noon, naming me one 
 who had died 
 118 
 
Flashed by the desolate wires that yonder, threading 
 
 the tree-tops 
 Pole unto pole on the moor, under the flight 
 
 of the crows, 
 Still are to see, on a silvery strip of the nethermost 
 
 heavens, 
 
 Cutting the splotches of red, crossing from dark 
 ness to dark . . . 
 News of the earth and the ages, and spelt by the 
 
 spirit of lightning: 
 
 Bolt from the cloud or the wire each is an 
 omen to man. 
 
 in 
 
 Here by the mound of the Eagle, obscure in the 
 
 yellowing grasses, 
 Under an oak that is gone, leaving the acorn for 
 
 ours, 
 Once, ere the Saxon invader renamed the ravines 
 
 and the ranges, 
 
 Bronze hands kindled a blaze, cheery and pun 
 gent as mine, 
 Pausing, I fancy as I, as followed the last of the 
 
 fledgings 
 Bat-like hither and yon suddenly swifter 
 
 away 
 
 Night and the seasons and cycles, and ever the 
 
 ancient migrations, 
 
 While, for its hour a fire . . . burns on a hill 
 as they pass. 
 
 119 
 
IV 
 
 And, as the haze and the gloaming have blotted the 
 
 roads and the landmarks, 
 Yonder and yonder the plain. . . . spreads, 
 
 like an alien world, 
 Quiet, primeval, and vast, as in autumns after the 
 
 ice-age, 
 When, from the journeying seeds, blown by the 
 
 South in the spring 
 (Blown to the edge of the desert, the hollows of silt 
 
 and the drumlins, 
 Born in the toes of a tern, cast in the dung of a 
 
 deer), 
 Summer by summer the junipers, sumachs, birches, 
 
 and berries, 
 Gained on the leagues of the north, bleak with 
 
 Arcturus and cold . . . 
 Season and cycle and aeon, and ever the ancient 
 
 migrations, 
 
 Whether a man and his fire . . . linger or not 
 on the hill. 
 
 William Ellery Leonard 
 
 120 
 
" SWEET REASONABLENESS " 
 
 RETURN, Sweet Reasonableness 
 
 To our perturbed earth, 
 Gather its sceptres in thy hands, 
 
 Preside at every hearth, 
 Say thy command upon our lips, 
 
 Subdue our flaunting dress, 
 And on the pulse of our desires 
 
 Thy cooling finger press. 
 
 For lo, Religion wanting thee 
 
 Builds inquisition halls; 
 Sweet Love turns jailor to her mate 
 
 Her palace crumbling falls. 
 The wine of pleasure poison is 
 
 Without thy antidote; 
 And life a shipwreck if thy hand 
 
 Guide not her tossing boat. 
 
 Among thy peaceful olive groves 
 
 No gloomy prisons stand, 
 And War s rude trumpet never blows 
 
 Where thou dost rule the land. 
 Dear Guest of Nation and of Hearth, 
 
 We miss thy gracious sway. 
 Come to our troubled House of Earth 
 
 Thou hast been long away! 
 
 May Riley Smith 
 
 121 
 
POET, SINGER, BIRD 
 ON a sunshine autumn day 
 In a sordid London park, 
 I listened by the thronging way 
 To the summer s last, lone lark 
 O er his coppice-hidden haunt 
 Pouring out his skyward chaunt 
 Man and season could not daunt. 
 And listening, lingering, on I stray 
 Till, lo, a nook for poets meet, 
 And a sundial at my feet. 
 And stooping down the hour to see, 
 This legend I can dimly read 
 In the tarnished marble brede: 
 " Here, in eighteen-twenty-three 
 Beethoven wrote his Fruhlingslied." 
 
 As nearer, clearer, overhead 
 Sang the lark, I musing said: 
 " Even the Master Poet, he, 
 In his measure wild and free, 
 Can but show us heaven s gate 
 Where, with dawn and cloud elate, 
 Nor seen nor heard, the lark must be; 
 And wingless, on the fettering land, 
 Yearning, tiptoe, must we stand 
 Till the Singer wanders by 
 And touches with his wizard wand 
 The Poet s struggling, half-freed word 
 Soaring now up to the sky; 
 And at heaven s gate are heard 
 Together Poet, Singer, Bird." 
 
 Benjamin Sledd 
 122 
 
WHEN FREEDOM CAME 
 
 1865 
 
 THAT fateful spring-time morn, how fair it dawned! 
 Yet all things seemed amiss. Across the bars 
 Old Bess and Rose, the last of goodly herds, 
 Saved by their cunning from the spoiler s hand, 
 Lowed for the tardy maid; and from the swamp, 
 Poor, lonely Don, in weary hiding-out, 
 Would neigh and neigh again. 
 
 Silent and dark 
 
 To hungry little eyes the kitchen stood, 
 The crane hung grimly by the mighty hearth 
 In patient waiting for the faithful hand 
 Which year in year had swung it back and forth. 
 Was Mary ill? How strange to miss her song 
 Which, low and sweet, ceased not from dawn to dark. 
 Her song had changed of late; vengeful and stern 
 At times it grew, awing the listening child; 
 Then sung with whispered breath, as if she feared 
 Her lips might tell the rapture of her heart. 
 
 Wondering and half afraid, the child stole in, 
 Then tiptoed out, over the creaking floor, 
 Like one who leaves at night a dead man s room; 
 And, shuddering^ crouched down on the sunny stile 
 In heart-sick longing for he knew not what. 
 His dusky playmates heeded not his signs, 
 But round the cabin corners furtive peeped 
 With looks of mingled sorrow, craft and fear. 
 
 123 
 
And even Isaac, dearest, best of slaves, 
 Comrade and comforter, strode muttering past 
 With bended head, and feigned to see him not. 
 He could have wept for very loneliness. 
 
 What ailed the negroes all? Beside her door 
 Sat aged Martha stolid, dumb, but now 
 With kerchiefed head and bundle on her knee 
 In patient-eager waiting, like a child 
 Arrayed for its first journey. In and out 
 Went Isaac, shepherd of the expectant flock, 
 Which, huddling round, stayed but some promised 
 sign. 
 
 Galloping round the bend, a soldier came, 
 
 Paused, waved a flag, and shouted to the slaves. 
 
 Then in the deep, tense stillness, wild and sweet. 
 
 Fierce and exultant as the cry of beasts, 
 
 Their voices rose in mighty unison 
 
 Of frenzied song; and Isaac led them forth 
 
 In solemn march down freedom s unknown way, 
 
 Trustful, unthinking, as the tribes of yore. 
 
 And they were gone, without one farewell word, 
 
 One motion of regret for the old life. 
 
 Far off their singing faint and fainter grew, 
 
 Then died away, and in the death-like hush 
 
 Only the low, deep sobbing of a child. 
 
 Day after day the desolate cabins stood 
 With doors wide-flung the master willed it so, 
 In hope to lure the flock back to their fold. 
 Still in its corner waited Mary s bed 
 
 124 
 
White and untouched; and Isaac s faithful clock 
 Ticked placidly away with none to heed. 
 The gourd hung dry and thirsty by the door. 
 
 Would they return? A long, long week had gone, 
 And creeping up to bed a lonely child 
 Peeped wistful out into the misty night 
 To see a light gleam from its well-known place 
 By Isaac s hearth. If only it could be! 
 Out at the back-hall-door and down the path 
 The white-robed figure went with flying feet, 
 And paused half-frightened in the cabin door. 
 Twas he indeed! but older grown he seemed, 
 His eyes fixed mournfully upon the fire. 
 "Isaac! " and at the breathless cry of joy 
 The old man started up, as round his neck 
 Soft little arms were flung; and to his heart 
 He clasped the child and rocked him tenderly, 
 Mumbling and sobbing out endearing names. 
 
 And she, the wise, good mistress, only smiled 
 And stole noiseless away with tear-dimmed eyes, 
 When late at night, as in the time now gone, 
 She found old Isaac fallen fast asleep 
 Beside the trundle-bed, his great black hand 
 Clasped to the bosom of the sleeping child. 
 
 How like a dream it was when Isaac s horn 
 Wakened the child at daybreak, as of old; 
 And from the kitchen came once more the sound 
 Of Mary s voice! And yet something was gone! 
 Cowering beneath the covers, the young heart 
 Sobbed out the bitterness of first-found grief. 
 
 125 
 
One after one the fugitives crept back, 
 Like children from a stolen holiday, 
 Half sheepish, half defiant in their looks; 
 And Isaac s master hand imposed again 
 The interrupted task. A little while 
 Seemed all as it had been; and then once more 
 Vacant and desolate the cabins stood, 
 And one by one yielding to swift decay, 
 Their roof-beams tottered in. 
 
 That faithful heart- 
 Faithful until the end long since in dust, 
 Sleeps in the garden at the master s feet. 
 But still his cabin stands lone, voiceless ghost 
 Of all that was. And never do I pass 
 Its threshold but with bowed, uncovered head. 
 
 Benjamin Sledd 
 
 126 
 
THE HOUSE 
 
 " WHY do you batter down the walls of my house? " 
 I shouted to one as I stood on the top of my roof. 
 He stopped his battering and said with an air of 
 
 reproof: 
 
 " I always hated you because you stand aloof, 
 And because you sit drinking wine in the shadow of 
 
 the boughs." 
 
 At that there arose a clamour of the crows 
 And all the air was darkened with their wings. 
 I lifted the wine to my lips in a heavenly drowse. 
 And then I cast off all thought of material things 
 So he that hated the clamour of the crows 
 Stopped, slept, and left off battering at my house. 
 
 Arthur Symons 
 
 127 
 
ON READING MANY HISTORIES OF 
 THE UNITED STATES 
 
 A LONG time I thought it was our Land that made us ; 
 
 The land so free so long, 
 
 The homestead 
 
 Earned by the ploughing pioneer; 
 
 A long time I thought it was the Hundred Races 
 
 Protagonists. 
 
 Licking with outland tongues our language, 
 
 And planting, like barbs in a bull, 
 
 Their exotic and hybrid thinking in ours. 
 
 But reading many volumes, now I see 
 Who plays the master role; 
 The dark Israel 
 In the American Egypt. 
 
 He that is forbidden 
 To share our policies, 
 By that exclusion 
 As by a long handle, 
 He twists and turns them; 
 
 He that is excluded 
 From our society, 
 The act of his banishment 
 Shapes our order; 
 
 128 
 
Like the slave gangs 
 Sweating in the brickyards 
 Who moulded the fates 
 Of the golden Pharoahs. 
 
 Egypt! we have our plagues. 
 
 The plague of lice; the taboo, the Delicate Subject; 
 
 The plague of locusts; the plague of a thousand 
 
 cautions, 
 Circumlocutions, 
 Customs, 
 
 Whose infinitesimal mouths eat up our freedom; 
 The plague of blood in the rivers; the Christian 
 
 and Jewish churches, 
 Discreetly silent, demure. 
 The plague of dead fish; the plague of the Double 
 
 Standard, 
 Democracy with its master and subject races. 
 
 Past, long past, is the Death of the First-Born, 
 When the angel looked at the slave s low lintel, 
 And passed it by, 
 
 While the sons of the Pharoahs and all their hun 
 dreds, 
 
 Yankee and Southron, horse and foot, 
 Fell, 
 On the field of the bugle and drum. 
 
 He has risen as if in sleep, to the passionless order 
 Of a force blind, universal 
 As gravitation; 
 
 It is he, the hewer of wood, the drawer of water, 
 
 129 
 
Yea, since the day of the first Dutch slaver. 
 
 It is he, 
 
 Who has written, who is writing 
 
 American history; 
 
 Who has moulded, who is moulding 
 
 The white man s soul. 
 
 Sarah N. Cleghorn 
 
 130 
 
ON WALT WHITMAN S " LEAVES OF GRASS " 
 
 THIS book is all the beaches of the world 
 
 Abask at noon beneath the procreant sun, 
 
 The weedy marge of God s fecundity 
 
 Wallowed with flow and ebb of rhythmic tides. 
 
 Here lies the margin of the soul of man 
 
 That shoreward slopes to the upshining hills 
 
 Of Art s acropolis, and seaward plunges 
 
 To primal deeps of storm and lonely stars. 
 
 Here breed the minnow and leviathan; 
 
 Here spawn the jelly-pulps of life; and here, 
 
 Naked and vast, uprises from the ooze 
 
 The Adam of a New World Genesis, 
 
 Ancestral of Democracy. In dream 
 
 He stands, and twines his beard with tangled bloom; 
 
 Behind him o er the sand the summer wind 
 
 Blows from the sunk wrecks of a thousand years: 
 
 On every wreck a mating song-bird sings. 
 
 Percy MacKaye 
 
ART 
 
 ART has her altars and her avatars, 
 Makers-of-Beauty worship at her shrine; 
 Earth may not daunt a soul that scans the stars, 
 And wets the lips with more than mortal wine. 
 
 Imagination s frankincense and myrrh 
 Bedew the dust and sweeten common day; 
 The Poet walks in meadows lovelier 
 Than ours, and Visions light his wandering way.- 
 
 Once having known the ecstasy of these, 
 Once having glimpsed that high, supernal gleam, 
 A Sappho sings across the centuries, 
 A Poe sleeps, folded in that perfect Dream. 
 
 Richard Burton 
 
 132 
 
PRINCETON TO VIRGINIA 
 
 BEAUTY and loveliness go by on the green winds of 
 
 Spring, 
 And in these northern elms at dusk the new come 
 
 thrushes sing; 
 Sing to a twilight where in hollows, the blossom 
 
 trembles with flight of swallows. 
 Through the April night, night long, 
 Towers rise like dreaming song: 
 All the leaves whisper and stir at the quick feet 
 
 of her. 
 O little ghosts of thrushes dead and ghosts of Spring 
 
 glad men, 
 Here is another Spring for you, to wake dead hearts 
 
 again! 
 
 Here is another Spring, gold bees, gold birds; a new 
 green tent; 
 
 The stifled beating of a heart; the same gay baffle 
 ment; 
 
 And if we do not know if here is grief or joy of the 
 year, 
 
 Through each April night still go 
 
 Dreaming men, who dream, and so 
 
 All the night, for their sake, listens and is wide 
 awake. 
 
 Warm arcades and cloister, where the tangled sun 
 light falls; 
 
 Where the fragrant mist is caught; where the voice 
 of youth recalls 
 
Now the gentle hesitant, older spirits, who have 
 grown bolder; 
 
 All your scented hours that speed, 
 
 Are mur mrous and accompanied. 
 
 Through the horror and the wrong, still uncon 
 querable is song. 
 
 O keepers of a memory of loveliness and pain, 
 
 You have done well to guard your ghosts, lest the 
 great dead be slain! 
 
 Maxwell Struthers Burt 
 
 134 
 
THE PICTURES OF SOROLLA Y BASTIDA 
 
 EASTWARD He planted His garden, 
 
 Eastward in Eden field: 
 
 Grapes, green globed, 
 
 Peaches, flamy lobed, 
 
 Citron and honey-melon and pale quince 
 
 (It seems they have grown sour and smaller, since!) 
 
 Thick as the ground could yield 
 
 God planted Eden field. 
 
 Surely twas bravely planned, 
 
 That shady garden land! 
 
 What slipped and went awry? 
 
 I cannot tell, not I. 
 
 Twould seem He tossed His ball up, up toward 
 
 heaven, 
 
 And then . . . and then . . . 
 Somehow the heavy hearts of us poor men 
 Dragged it below again. 
 
 Down, down it fell, all doomed, all unforgiven, 
 Toward very hell: 
 Poor Gardener, that tried to garden well! 
 
 See now, He catches the ball in His hand. 
 
 (Mark me well: you shall understand.) 
 
 What was wrong? 
 
 Did I gentle them too long? 
 
 Were the fruits too many and sweet 
 
 I gave them to eat? 
 
 Was there no salt to purify them? 
 
 No tempting, untrusty sea to try them? 
 
Was there no wind to blow them clean? 
 Did I wall them in too lush and green? 
 " Out o the garden, lads! " quoth He, 
 " I ll plant ye now twixt the sun and the sea! " 
 
 And still He cried, " More sun! " till the sky burned, 
 And then, "More sea!" and heaped tie green 
 
 waves high, 
 
 And yet again, " More sun! I say, more sun! " 
 Smoothly began the great seas then to run, 
 Purpling and blooming like a pigeon s wing, 
 Tinted like summer plums, 
 When luscious August comes, 
 That falls in deeps of emerald grass; 
 Speared through, where shafts of sunlight pass 
 Into green glooms, 
 Where strange white coral looms, 
 And the fresh froth, piled high in milky ledges 
 Upon the smooth sea s glassy, sheeted edges. 
 And the wind drove down with a shout, 
 And deep in the core of the sky the sun poured out, 
 And the air shook with it and quivered and throbbed 
 
 through it round and about. 
 
 Then where the wave slipped back and left the sand 
 As smooth and polished as a dove s wing, spread, 
 He dropped two children from His curved hand, 
 Pink, full of mirth, and hardy, seaward led. 
 And one stood naked as the seacliffs stand. 
 And over one a wondrous sun-lit, sky-clear robe was 
 spread. 
 
 136 
 
And one He tossed (and laughed and caught again 
 And tossed again, as children toss a bubble) 
 Who lighted, laughing, bubble-light, and then, 
 Ran by on waves of blue, through clouds of blue, 
 Breathing the blue, star-shining through the blue, 
 The very blue of eternity O when 
 Was life so wholly glad, 
 And knew not to be sad, 
 
 Nor guessed that pain and want stood waiting, death 
 and the soul and trouble! 
 
 And soft fleshed babies fell, 
 
 Like little rolling loves blown down from the blue, 
 
 That drooped their heads as baby roses do 
 
 Against the mother flower, 
 
 Or staggered into the spray, 
 
 Whom the waves chased away, 
 
 Dripping like rosebuds in a shower. 
 
 (Say, could the Gardener tell 
 
 They would outgrow His planting 
 
 And cease one day their happy cherub chanting?) 
 
 Watch while He catches His ball again! 
 
 Will ye not turn to Me, then? 
 
 Think on Me, who lit the sun for ye, 
 
 Loosed the salt sea and let it run o er ye, 
 
 Come to Me, now, will ye come? 
 
 But the children were dumb. 
 
 Look back and upward: your God stands behind! 
 
 But the children were blind. 
 
Sun-soaked and sea-drenched they wait there, 
 
 Drunk with the reek of the sun, 
 
 Fresh from the wash of the sea, 
 
 Laughing against the wind. 
 
 The infinite blue is their Fate, there, 
 
 Sorrow has never begun, 
 
 Suffering never shall be, 
 
 None has repented nor sinned. 
 
 So long as the Ball shall roll, 
 
 They laugh at us there, supreme, 
 
 W ; th the blue for a dream, 
 
 And the sun for a heart, 
 
 And the sea for a soul, 
 
 Safe, and unworn, and forever set sweetly apart! 
 
 Josephine Daskam Bacon 
 
 138 
 
DREAM 
 
 Dedicated to the University of Virginia 
 WHEN I am through with un-immortal things, 
 
 And dwell in Heaven s courtyards, blithe and 
 
 free, 
 
 They will be kind to humbler souls like me, 
 Whose souls, even here on earth, were brave with 
 
 wings. 
 
 What if great Homer finds my gate and sings 
 The music of his loud-resounding sea? 
 And what if Michelangelo should be 
 Ready to paint his rare imaginings 
 Upon my mansion s wall? 
 
 Hid from the street, 
 I think that on my lawn a beechen dial 
 
 Will mark all hours, carved there by 
 
 Rodin s knife; 
 
 And Brahms himself will play with me the suite 
 Composed by Papa Franck for my dear viol 
 Of mellow wood cut from the tree of life. 
 
 Robert Haven Schauffler 
 
 139 
 
ACHILLES AND THE MAIDEN 
 
 Wind cannot bring so far the blood and dust, 
 
 But only raise your head up do you hear 
 
 Faint bell-notes from the plain? Blade-strokes, 
 
 sword-thrust, 
 Shield-rattle! They are fighting, and you not there. 
 
 He would not heed the challenge, would not stir, 
 Though none so well as he that signal knew: 
 From his unhappy memories would not pause, 
 Though the breeze whispered and the danger grew. 
 
 No man, a maiden drives them from the field, 
 A wicked huntress out of the cold moon! 
 She touches them, they die, they have no shield; 
 What will you come to, if you come not soon? 
 
 But he with bowed head let the voice go by, 
 And felt rebellious loathing, and behind 
 Impenetrable silence nursed disgust. 
 This, then, was this the great hour he should find 
 Brief, crowded with beauty, bringing fame? 
 Beauty? What beauty? Fame? Blown with the 
 dust! 
 
 Take up your arms, come down and fight again, 
 They have bidden the wind carry their last cry. 
 You shall hear now the curse of dying men; 
 What will you say, Achilles? Must they die? 
 
 140 
 
It was the wind that freshened, or the wave 
 Of flight and terror toward his station broke; 
 At last he heard, and wearily bound on 
 Breast-plate, picked up the shield, the spear of oak, 
 And toward the battle walked superbly down, 
 Wearing the armor lightly, a mere cloak, 
 Easy in his hand the spear; and bold he went 
 Unhelmeted, with insolent beauty brave, 
 His body moving in rhythm magnificent. 
 
 He came down from his lofty hill, by charred 
 And scattered ashes of abandoned fires, 
 Hoof-prints of stamping horses, and spilled oats, 
 Through the weird, empty camp where yesternight 
 The army took its shelter. Here were coats 
 Dropped at the first alarum, a wine-cup 
 With half its ruby burden yet untouched, 
 And the ironic dice lay on the board. 
 Beyond the tents he walked through a green calm 
 Of clover, untrodden meadows poppy-sown, 
 And then the crowded plain and the loud fight. 
 
 Before him as he came the host made room 
 All peril over, with him there, the one man! 
 Yet without shout they saw him, raised no cry, 
 No welcome, so many bodies lay, for whom 
 He came late to the rescue. But he strode by, 
 Bringing his solitude, and opened up 
 A wedge of silence till he reached the van. 
 Then from the other side the headlong foe 
 Following the maiden felt him in the track, 
 
 141 
 
Caught sight of armor and his golden hair, 
 Fled unabashed, and left those two alone 
 With awe and terror, both lines swaying back 
 Within a girdled silence gave them space. 
 She, when the battle ceased from round her, stood 
 Waiting for him, a little thrilled to know 
 The moment come at last, and see him there 
 Splendid as they had said, now face to face. 
 And he casually marked the cypress grove, 
 The screen of contrast that behind her rose, 
 Her helmet crested, her corslet glittering, 
 The belted sword, the two spears in her hand, 
 Twin javelins, light as a hunter s dart, 
 All gleaming against the shadowy green. 
 Illusive radiance on that vivid form 
 Smoothness to sight and touch, the enchanted sheen 
 Of jade or porphyry the gold sunbeams threw; 
 Caught from this world she seemed, and wrought 
 
 in art, 
 
 Cut marble or ivory cameo. 
 What eyes the helmet hid, he tried to guess, 
 To trace her body under the bronzen dress, 
 He fancied her heart panting, her wild pulse 
 After the running and the rain of blows, 
 Yet asked again whether she breathed at all, 
 So motionless her beauty held its pose. 
 Each stood on guard to know the other s will. 
 With unexcited spirit, unlifted arm, 
 He studied the bright mystery until 
 The quiet weighed upon him like a charm. 
 With that she threw a spear, a silver flash; 
 He caught it on his shield, and the shaft broke. 
 
 142 
 
Did her heart faint a little, certitude 
 
 Fall from her? She leapt toward him like a flame, 
 
 She cast that other javelin furiously, 
 
 And drew her sword. He only leaned aside, 
 
 Slipped from the peril, and reaching back for aim, 
 
 Drove true through the vain bronze his matchless 
 
 spear, 
 
 Straight through the corslet to her living heart. 
 It never left his hand, she was so near; 
 His fingers on the weapon felt her death, 
 Felt the woman quiver along the wood 
 As though her nerves had mingled pain with his. 
 He had not loosed a stream of fighting wrath 
 To ride him lightly over things like this 
 To see her body crumble with quick breath. 
 
 He leaned, and gently turned the relaxed form, 
 Undid the armor on the wounded side 
 With numb, regretful fingers, tenderly 
 Raised it, and drawing out the spear-head, tried 
 In pity not to disturb the delicate cloth 
 Blood-molded to her bosom, soft and warm. 
 With eyes impulse-averted he untied 
 The helmet from the limp and drooping head, 
 And lo, a face made for another fate 
 Brown hair upon a white and queenly brow, 
 And dreaming lips that held no curve of hate, 
 Eyelids self-closed, as though content to sleep, 
 And cheeks with rose-bloom not yet ebbed away; 
 Beauty that called for worship and the prayers 
 Of lovers tortured with their empty arms, 
 Yet in itself austere, remote, unmoved; 
 
 143 
 
A face to set on passion, yet beneath 
 
 Archness and ardor, beneath the golden breasts 
 
 A maiden soul as at evening when fleecy clouds 
 
 Blush in the east a farewell to the sun, 
 
 Glides, under the warmth, untouched, the new moon. 
 
 He stood up to his height, gazed down at her, 
 Then stooping yet again as though he must, 
 Took up his scarlet spear from where it lay, 
 Then gazed once more on the face whitening fast. 
 
 He that had killed her, found it ill to leave 
 The fragile danger he had laid in dust; 
 Not well to stay, but hard to turn at last 
 To thread his journey through the evening camp, 
 Through cheerful noises around supper-fires, 
 Through laughter of soldiers at their lucky day, 
 With joke and ribald song. He heard one say 
 How he would use his safety after war 
 What sort of woman, and what kind of wine. 
 
 ^ John Erskine 
 
 144 
 
THE NINTH SYMPHONY 
 
 i 
 
 PLAINING in the pained stillness breeds, 
 Wail that no night-wind conjures in the pines, 
 lo mix with the feeble plaint of faded weeds 
 
 Where pale grass waves. 
 
 And no star shines, 
 Where Autumn drenches unremembered graves. 
 
 n 
 
 Fled all that woeful mystery, 
 As of Death s last privacy 
 Wherein the Silence called aloud 
 From windings of the shroud. 
 
 Antic measures run 
 
 For dancers i the sun, 
 Such as once did of the dew-bell sup, 
 And house them in the acorn-cup; 
 Anon to trip the moon- washed knoll behind. 
 The while Titania gave her ringlets to the wind. 
 
 A chill wind blows this way, 
 
 Scares the fairy folk away: 
 Before hoarse revel blasted forth 
 Of Thor and all his North, 
 To some sweet keep the greenwood has 
 
 Piper and dancer pass. 
 
 m 
 
 Hark! a glad voice sings 
 Of humble, sunny things 
 
 In a shepherd s tune. 
 145 
 
Pastoral passion! learn of birds when they 
 From the boon East woo down the day: 
 Blithe viols of the morn, 
 Smooth flute and woolly horn, 
 
 Call around 
 Half odour and half sound 
 
 Happy harmony, 
 
 All minstrelsies 
 
 With iterative bliss, 
 For comfort of the summer ground. 
 
 IV 
 
 With what speech, now, is it imbued 
 
 The locked and stolid wood! 
 
 The quickened string, what does it say, 
 
 What utter might obey, 
 
 Answering the bright brass, brave, 
 
 With splendour of the stellar stave! 
 
 As on the mother morn, 
 
 When the stars were born, 
 Once more the worlds from out the murk of night 
 
 Leap into light, 
 
 Break into praise 
 Of Him the Ancient of Days! 
 
 To bless the ears of men, 
 It is abroad again, 
 The concord of the sonorous night 
 The wild worlds made 
 When they obeyed, 
 146 
 
And did into their orbits draw, 
 
 Life s hymn, her rhythmic order, voiceful law: 
 
 What He builds up shall none destroy; 
 Go thou the path, and eat thy bread with joy: 
 The enduring soul shall unto gladness grow, 
 Love shall have and know. 
 
 John Vance Cheney 
 
 147 
 
A CHOICE 
 
 I HEED not him who science sings, 
 Busy with the dull shows of things, 
 Mistaking earth and air and sea 
 For ultimate reality, 
 Nor knowing them the changing dress 
 Where spirit puts on loveliness. 
 Philosophy I may not boast, 
 Where endlessly ghost chases ghost 
 Too swiftly o er the universe 
 For this, my human-hearted verse. 
 Of history so much I choose 
 As a diviner art may use 
 To quicken faith in faltering soul. 
 Here, part is greater than the whole! 
 All ugly deeds I banish thus 
 To dwell with night in Erebus. 
 What need have we of ancient crimes 
 Within whose ears the music chimes 
 That wins the souls of men to run 
 A nobler race than they have done? 
 
 Of poetry be mine to tell, 
 Where Truth, which aye unseen doth dwell 
 Beyond the sight and ear of men, 
 Is fashioned fair for human ken, 
 In images so radiant-fair 
 Our eyes may see and know her there. 
 Unending converse shall be mine 
 With those whose glorious faces shine 
 From out the dark, as shines a star, 
 Steadfast forever, and afar. 
 148 
 
Antigone s sweet sacrifice, 
 
 The love in young Alcestis eyes, 
 
 The spirit-strife of Lancelot, 
 
 And Hamlet s thought escape me not. 
 
 For moments come, when I unloose 
 
 Latchets of my unworthy shoes 
 
 Where Shakespeare s soul, in godlike strife, 
 
 Fights on the far frontier of life 
 
 To win one inch for you and me 
 
 From all-surrounding mystery; 
 
 Where very inspiration broods 
 
 In the young Keats immortal moods; 
 
 Where Shelley, winged all rainbow-bright, 
 
 Speeds toward the far-off gates of light; 
 
 Where Browning scorns, in challenge fine, 
 
 Who fail to find this life divine. 
 
 All dull, mechanic tasks I spurn, 
 Praying that still within me burn 
 Some little spark of sacred fire, 
 That I may share their large desire 
 Who wrought, for your delight and mine, 
 Beauty eternal and divine, 
 In poetry, the " creed of creeds," 
 Where noble words tell noble deeds. 
 
 Margaret Sherwood 
 
 149 
 
REMEMBERED BEAUTY 
 
 I WILL look round about with love 
 
 On all of God s created things: 
 
 The stream that down the valley sings, 
 
 The clouds that float so free above, 
 
 The ferns that fringe the mountain springs, 
 
 The woodland where the shy beasts rove, 
 
 The sea that fills this quiet cove, 
 
 The warbler jewelled with flashing wings; 
 
 The day will come when in the strife 
 That breaks the strength of generous life 
 Remembered joys may bring release 
 To walk in steadfastness and peace: 
 Etched by emotion s fadeless art 
 A flower may bow my haughty heart. 
 
 Tertius van Dyke 
 
 ISO 
 
WHAT THE CLAY SAID UNTO THE POTTER 
 
 I DO not question why I thus was made; 
 Low in the dust with hand on lips I bow; 
 I do not ask Thee either why or how 
 Thy hand did shape me, or what balance weighed 
 My merits or demerits. I have prayed 
 For all the light Thy wisdom would allow, 
 To make my pathway clear, but now 
 So long in darkness have my footsteps strayed, 
 I trust my all unto Thee to the end. 
 Whether for honored or dishonored use, 
 Whether to be Time s king or man s dull drudge, 
 From Thee I came; when from Thy ways I trend, 
 Remember what I am Thou mad st me thus, 
 And being clay as Thou hast made me judge. 
 
 R. T. W. Duke, Jr. 
 
GOODBYE 
 
 THE last of last words spoken is, Goodbye 
 The last dismantled flower in the weed-grown hedge, 
 The last thin rumor of a feeble bell far ringing, 
 The last blind rat to spurn the mildewed rye, 
 
 A hardening darkness glasses the haunted eye, 
 Shines into nothing the Watchman s burnt-out 
 
 candle, 
 
 Wreathes into scentless nothing the wasting incense, 
 The last of last words spoken is, Goodbye. 
 
 Love of its muted music breathes no sigh, 
 Thought in her ivory tower gropes in her spinning, 
 Toss on in vain the whispering trees of Eden, 
 Last, of all last words spoken, is, Goodbye. 
 
 Walter de la Mare 
 
 152 
 
INDEX 
 
 Achilles and the Maiden, 140 
 
 Afterthoughts, 100 
 
 ALDINGTON, RICHARD To a Greek Marble, 111 
 
 ALDINGTON, MRS. RICHARD (H. D.) Egypt, 27 
 
 Art, 132 
 
 At the Grave of Poe, 32 
 
 BACON, JOSEPHINE DASKAM The Pictures of Sorolla y Bas- 
 tida, 135 
 
 BARDIN, JAMES C Tropic Beach Song, 14 
 
 BATES, KATHARINE LEE Woodrow Wilson, 40 
 
 Before the Crucifix, 56 
 
 BOSHER, KATE LANGLEY Lee, 52 
 
 BRADFORD, GAMALIEL Thomas Jefferson, Ode to Thomas Jef 
 ferson, 34, 35 
 
 BRANCH, ANNA HEMPSTEAD I Think of Him as One Who 
 Fights, 82 
 
 BURR, AMELIA JOSEPHINE Before the Crucifix, 56 
 
 BURT, MAXWELL STRUTHERS Princeton to Virginia, 133 
 
 BURTON, RICHARD Art, 132 
 
 CHENEY, JOHN VANCE The Ninth Symphony, 145 
 
 Chipmunks, 13 
 
 Choice, A, 148 
 
 CLARKE, GEORGE HERBERT The Last Mobilization, Motionless, 
 
 68,70 
 CLEGHORN, SARAH N On Reading Many Histories of the 
 
 United States, 128 
 CONE, HELEN GRAY Sonnets Dedicated to the University of 
 
 Virginia, 38 
 
 CONKLING, GRACE HAZARD Maine Woods in Winter, 8 
 Cox, ELEANOR ROGERS To a Dead Poet, The White Birds of 
 
 Aengus, 79, 80 
 
 DARGAN, OLIVE TILFORD Defiance, 58 
 
 DAVIES, MARY CAROLYN Tree Songs, 10 
 
 DAVIES, W. H. On What Sweet Banks, 4 
 
 DAVIS, FANNIE STEARNS See Gifford, Fannie Stearns 
 
 153 
 
Defiance, 58 
 
 DE LA MARE, WALTER Good-bye, 152 
 
 DODD, LEE WILSON Secular Ode, 65 
 
 Dream, 139 
 
 DRINKWATER, JOHN A Lesson to My Ghost, 101 
 
 DRISCOLL, LOUISE A Weed, 21 
 
 DUKE, R. T. W., JR. What the Clay Said unto the Potter, 151 
 
 DUNSANY, EDWARD, LORD To Keats, 3 
 
 Duovir, 84 
 
 Education, 66 
 
 Egypt, 27 
 
 Enchanted Castle, The, 26 
 
 ERSKINE, JOHN Achilles and the Maiden, 140 
 
 Fate, 54 
 
 FLETCHER, JOHN GOULD Prelude and Ode, 24 
 
 Flight of Crows, 118 
 
 FINLEY, JOHN Duovir, 84 
 
 GARRISON, THEODOSIA An Old Poet, 75 
 GIFFORD, FANNIE STEARNS The Turn of the Road, 104 
 GILDERSLEEVE, BASIL L. To the University of Virginia, 106 
 Good-bye, 152 
 
 GORDON, ARMISTEAD CHURCHILL The University of Virginia, 1 
 GRIFFITH, WILLIAM Spring Blew Open the Door, Origins, 
 17, 19 
 
 HARDY, THOMAS The Two Rosalinds, 113 
 H. D. (Mrs. Richard Aldington) Egypt, 27 
 House, The, 127 
 
 I Know All This When Gipsy Fiddles Cry, 46 
 I Think of Him as One Who Fights, 82 
 In an Oriental Shop, 109 
 
 KREYMBORG, ALFRED Chipmunks, 13 
 
 Lake Dweller, The, 5 
 
 Last Mobilization, The, 68 
 
 LAWRENCE, D. H. Slopes of Etna, Tropic, 22, 23 
 
 Lee, 52 
 
 LEE, AGNES The Singer of the Shadows, 29 
 
 LEONARD, WILLIAM ELLERY Flight of Crows, 118 
 
 Lesson to My Ghost, A, 101 
 
 LETTS, WINIFRED M. Somehow Somewhere Sometime, 60. 
 
 154 
 
LINDSAY, VACHEL Our Mother Pocahontas, I Know All This 
 
 When Gipsy Fiddles Cry, 43, 46 
 LOWELL, AMY The Enchanted Castle, 26 
 
 MACKAYE, PERCY On Walt Whitman s Leaves of Grass, 131 
 
 Maine Woods in Winter, 8 
 
 Man Came to the Mountain, The, 71 
 
 MARKHAM, EDWIN Virgilia, 95 
 
 MAYNARD, THEODORE Sonnet, Paganism, 61, 62 
 
 McCoRMiCK, VIRGINIA TAYLOR When Spring Returns, 16 
 
 MONTAGUE, MARGARET PRESCOTT The Soul of the Little 
 
 Room, 117 
 
 MORGAN, ANGELA Education, 66 
 " Motionless," 70 
 
 Ninth Symphony, The, 145 
 
 NORTON, GRACE FALLOW The Smiling Dead, 67 
 
 O CONOR, NORREYS JEPHSON The Spirit of Ireland Considers 
 
 Her Heritage, In an Oriental Shop, 107, 109 
 Ode to Thomas Jefferson, 35 
 Old Poet, An, 75 
 
 On an Old Hymn-Book, 112 
 
 On Reading Many Histories of the United States, 128 
 
 On Walt Whitman s Leaves of Grass, 131 
 
 On What Sweet Banks, 4 
 
 Origins, 19 
 
 Our Mother Pocahontas, 43 
 
 Paganism, 62 
 
 Pictures of Sorolla y Bastida, The, 135 
 
 Poet Singer Bird, 122 
 
 Praise, 87 
 
 Prelude and Ode, 24 
 
 Princeton to Virginia, 133 
 
 Remembered Beauty, 150 
 
 RICE, CALE YOUNG The Lake Dweller, 5 
 
 ROBINSON, EDWIN ARLINGTON Afterthoughts, 100 
 
 SAMPSON, HENRY AYLETT On an Old Hymn-Book, 112 
 
 Saul, 90 
 
 SCHAUFFLER, ROBERT HAVEN Dream, 139 
 
 SCOLLARD, CLINTON At the Grave of Poe, 32 
 
 Sea-Horizons, 6 
 
 Secular Code, 65 
 
 155 
 
SHERWOOD, MARGARET A Choice, 148 
 
 Singer of the Shadows, The, 29 
 
 SLEDD, BENJAMIN Poet Singer Bird, When Freedom Came, 
 
 122, 123 
 
 Slopes of Etna, 22 
 Smiling Dead, The, 67 
 
 SMITH, MAY RILEY " Sweet Reasonableness," 121 
 Somehow Somewhere Sometime, 60 
 Sonnet, 61 
 
 Sonnets Dedicated to the University of Virginia, 38 
 Soul of the Little Room, The, 117 
 Spirit of Ireland Considers Her Heritage, The, 107 
 Spring Blew Open the Door, 17 
 STERLING, GEORGE Saul, 90 
 
 STORK, CHARLES WHARTON To a Suicide Poet, 76 
 " Sweet Reasonableness," 121 
 SYMONS, ARTHUR The House, 127 
 
 Thomas Jefferson, 34 
 
 To a Dead Poet, 79 
 
 To a Greek Marble, 111 
 
 To a Suicide Poet, 76 
 
 To a War Poet, 74 
 
 To Keats, 3 
 
 To the University of Virginia, 53 
 
 To the University of Virginia, 106 
 
 Tree Songs: I II III IV, 10, 11, 12 
 
 Tropic, 23 
 
 Tropic Beach Song, 14 
 
 Turn of the Road, The, 104 
 
 Two Rosalinds, The, 113 
 
 University, The, 63 
 University of Virginia, The, 1 
 UNTERMEYER, JEAN STARR To a War Poet, 74 
 UNTERMEYER, Louis The Window, 93 
 
 VAN DYKE, TERTIUS Remembered Beauty, 150 
 Virgilia, 95 
 
 WEAVING, WILLOUGHBY Fate, 54 
 
 Weed, A, 21 
 
 What the Clay Said unto the Potter, 151 
 
 WHEELOCK, JOHN HALL Sea-Horizons, 6 
 
 When Freedom Came, 123 
 
 When Spring Returns, 16 
 
 White Birds of Aengus, The, 80 
 
 156 
 
WILKINSON, FLORENCE The University, 63 
 
 WILKINSON, MARGUERITE Praise, 87 
 
 Window, The, 93 
 
 WOOD, CLEMENT The Man Came to the Mountain, 71 
 
 WOODBERRY, GEORGE EDWARD To the University of Virginia, 
 
 Woodrow, Wilson, 40 
 
 157 
 
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