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ILLINOIS HISTORICAL SURVEY 
 
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Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 in 2012 with funding from 
 
 University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/illinipoetry191800weir 
 
ILLINI POETRY 
 
1 ' 
 
 ILLINI 
 POETRY 
 
 1918-19-2.3 
 
 Edited by 
 
 'Bruce Weirick 
 
 (@) 
 
 chica.go 
 covici-m?gee co. 
 
 191-3 
 
 
 1 
 
 ) 
 
Copyright 1923 
 
 COVICI-McGEE CO. 
 CHICAGO 
 
 PRESS OF 
 PRINTING 
 SERVICE 
 COMPANY 
 CHICAGO 
 
Preface 
 
 With Masters, Lindsay, Sandburg, and 
 Sarett, Illinois has in the last ten years had the 
 good fortune to give to American letters perhaps 
 half the good poetry which the decade has pro- 
 duced. By means of these men, and with Poetry 
 Magazine in Chicago, the middle west has for the 
 first time found a voice and has begun to sing. 
 Irony, optimism, barbaric gusto, and beauty are 
 here, chanted in verse of energy and joy. With 
 what seems, to a region formerly little sung, almost 
 a renaissance, these poets have appeared quite sud- 
 denly in the poetical firmament. Under such an 
 impulse, it is not therefore to be wondered at that 
 the universities should also catch at a strain or 
 two. In the east and west there have been eddies. 
 With Noyes and his group at Princeton, with the 
 Harvard and Yale series of student verse, with 
 Witter Bynner at California, to mention no more, 
 students have of late written much shall we say, 
 reputable poetry, with now and then something a 
 bit more than reputable. 
 
 As gardens for poets our universities will al- 
 ways be important. It is therefore a vital matter 
 in American letters to know from time to time how 
 the arts flourish at these centers of learning. How 
 especially in the middle west, the source of so much 
 energy, industrial, social, and human. As yet there 
 have been few soundings in these colleges. Wis- 
 consin, Michigan, Ohio, Chicago, Illinois, have been 
 relatively dumb, at least poetically; farmers, 
 journalists, lawyers, and business men being about 
 the height of their great argument. It is with dif- 
 fidence, yet with a good deal of pleasure too, that 
 Illinois breaks the silence with this anthology of 
 
some of her recent verse. Yet after some thought it 
 has seemed good that the silence should be broken. 
 The poems in the present volume were written 
 during the last five years by the members of the 
 Poetry Society of the University of Illinois. The 
 society was organized in 1918 by Miss Allene 
 Gregory, daughter of the first president of the 
 University, and then an instructor in English there. 
 The group has usually consisted of some twelve or 
 fifteen. At its fortnightly meetings the new poetry 
 is read and discussed, and once a year there is an 
 open meeting, at which the best work of the society 
 is offered to the public. The reception of our 
 poetry at those readings has encouraged the pro- 
 duction of this volume. 
 
 The most distinguished member of the Society, 
 Lew Sarett, does not appear here, as his two vol- 
 umes of Indian chants, "Many Many Moons' 9 
 (1920), and "The Box of God" (1922) are suffi- 
 ciently known. The poems of Lois Seyster Mont- 
 ROSS, joint-author of "Town and Gown" we here 
 present for the first time in any volume, though a 
 book of hers "The Crimson Cloak" has been an- 
 nounced as in prospect. It is with some eagerness 
 that we await the reception of such poems of hers 
 as "Taj Mischa" and "The Crimson Cloak" One 
 other writer, Lem Phillips, a southern Indiana 
 boy, who saw two years of the war, and had done 
 two or three summers of sailing in the Black Sea 
 and Indian Ocean, died last year. His free buoy- 
 ant character, and the promise of his all too few 
 poems and stories make his loss especially poig- 
 nant. The only faculty members whose work is here 
 included, are Gregory, Landis, Syford, and 
 Weirick. 
 
 If this volume of Mini poetry reveals a back- 
 ground and society not so exclusively agricultural 
 and industrial as some of our sharper critics like 
 to ascribe to us, we can only apologize for not 
 running as true to form as they might wish. The 
 stimulating presence of Mr. Stuart P. Sherman 
 
in the department of English may account for some 
 of our perverseness. The dynamic energy generated 
 by an institution that wishes to despise no kind of 
 achievement that may benefit man or the state, may 
 account for the rest. If this work may seem to 
 others a worthy performance, its authors will re- 
 joice. And if it may have the luck to arouse from 
 silence our songless university contemporaries in 
 the middle west, it will perhaps still more have 
 served its purpose as a book well born. 
 
 BRUCE WEIRICK. 
 
Contents 
 
 Alene Gregory 1 
 
 Personality 1 
 
 To Certain Alumni 1 
 
 To an Ag Freshman 2 
 
 Respectability 2 
 
 All Hallows 3 
 
 Don C. Allen 4 
 
 • Moonstones; A Song for Irish Fairies . 4 
 
 Rann for Mary Magdalene 5 
 
 Delia Bell 6 
 
 City Curtains 6 
 
 Prayer 7 
 
 T. P. Bourland 7 
 
 Incident's Close 7 
 
 To a Lady Far Away 8 
 
 The Early Summer of Philosophy . . 8 
 
 Hollow Log and Hollow Reed .... 9 
 
 A Postscript for Unmailable Letters . . 10 
 
 Hypnosis 10 
 
 Nous Sommes Ici — Parceque — Nous 
 
 Sommes Ici 11 
 
 Outrage 12 
 
 Cosmology in a Cafe 12 
 
 The Rocket 14 
 
 Quincy Guy Burris 15 
 
 To a Woman's Hands 15 
 
 A Villanelle of Violets 15 
 
 Garreta Helen Busey 16 
 
 The New Moon 16 
 
 White Jasmine 17 
 
 We Would Forget 18 
 
 On Reading Poems Old and New ... 18 
 
The Lincoln Ox-Yoke 19 
 
 Rain at Evening 19 
 
 Helen B. Carr 20 
 
 Domine 20 
 
 A Cat Scratch 21 
 
 Esther Colvin 22 
 
 Youth Memories 22 
 
 Lament for One Just Dead 22 
 
 Our Street 23 
 
 Francis C. Coughlin 24 
 
 Analogy 24 
 
 Arthur R. Curry 25 
 
 The Jeweler 25 
 
 The Reference Librarian 25 
 
 David V. Felts 26 
 
 "Chinese Lanterns Idly Swaying" ... 26 
 "Spring Smiles On From Dawn Till 
 
 Gloaming" 27 
 
 To Dorothy 27 
 
 Marcus Selden Goldman 28 
 
 Novum Carmen Veterum 28 
 
 Paul Nissley Landis 29 
 
 "What Though of Late We've Scarcely 
 
 Met" 29 
 
 "My Heart Is Like a Little Road" . . 29 
 
 Ghosts 29 
 
 "When a Child I Found a Pretty Thing" 30 
 "Day After Day, Year After Year, He 
 
 Came" 30 
 
 Thrift 31 
 
 H L , M. D 32 
 
 Jim Moore 32 
 
 My Heart Grows Faint 33 
 
 Amor Grammatici 33 
 
 Isador Lipton 34 
 
 Spring Dawn 34 
 
 What a Lover Is the Sea! 34 
 
 Listen, Lem 35 
 
 Solitaire 37 
 
 Picknicking on Golgotha 38 
 
 The Bitter Beauty 41 
 
Mirza French MacKay 44 
 
 Cabin Sleep-Song 44 
 
 Anemone 45 
 
 J. R. McNeill 46 
 
 The Nature-Lovers 46 
 
 Jeannette 46 
 
 The Dancer 47 
 
 Harold McKinley Mann 49 
 
 The Threnody of the Mourning Dove . 49 
 Prayer 50 
 
 Lois Seyster Montross 53 
 
 Codes 53 
 
 Dead Leaves 54 
 
 To Charmian, Unborn 54 
 
 Lapidary 54 
 
 The Stranger 55 
 
 "Have You Known What Snow Is?" . 55 
 
 You Say Death Is Not Sad? 56 
 
 Galleon Dawn 56 
 
 "I Am A Hedonist, God Wot!" .... 57 
 
 Missie 60 
 
 Empty Spools 62 
 
 Meditations of a Dump-Heap 63 
 
 Runners 67 
 
 Taj-Mischa 70 
 
 "I Wear a Crimson Cloak Tonight" . . 73 
 
 Wm. B. Mowery 74 
 
 Hokku 74 
 
 Chas. Edmund Noyes 77 
 
 Tonight 77 
 
 Song 77 
 
 Demiurge 77 
 
 Lem Phillips 78 
 
 Before Sailing 78 
 
 Sugar 79 
 
 A Scholar 80 
 
 Earth Hunger 81 
 
 Winter Sunset . 82 
 
 Spring Song 82 
 
 Still They Think of War 82 
 
 To Pain 83 
 
Raymond A. Seng 84 
 
 Summer Rain 84 
 
 Song 85 
 
 Bliss Seymour 85 
 
 Spring on the Prairie 85 
 
 Ghost Night 86 
 
 The Philanderer 86 
 
 Wonder-Walking 87 
 
 The Stadium 88 
 
 Constance Miriam Syford 88 
 
 Tints and Undertones 88 
 
 Silhouette 89 
 
 Picture 90 
 
 Boutonnieres 91 
 
 Laurence F. Triggs 92 
 
 Burn Candles, Love 92 
 
 Triad 92 
 
 The One Remains 93 
 
 Roberta Wagner 93 
 
 Saffron .93 
 
 Bruce Weirick 94 
 
 Lines Written in a Crypt of the Art 
 
 Institute, Chicago 94 
 
 Lines Written in Early Spring While 
 
 Under the Influence of Philosophy . 94 
 The Dancer 96 
 
ILLINI FOETRY 
 
Allene Gregory" 
 
 Personality 
 
 I am a stained glass window, 
 
 Little of light comes through, 
 
 Flecked with a thousand colors, 
 
 Crimson, and mauve, and blue. 
 
 Yet when you praised my colors, 
 
 Only the dear stars knew 
 
 How I longed to shatter my painted glass 
 
 And show far worlds to you. 
 
 To Certain Alumni 
 
 I have kept faith with you, wistful faces, 
 
 clear young eyes that once I filled with dream, 
 Giving you tidings of high lonely places, 
 
 Bringing you legends of white peaks agleam. 
 
 I did not prate of heights and stay unquesting; 
 
 My feet are bleeding with the bitter scars 
 Of lonely ways where I have passed, unresting, 
 
 Seeking the paths that lead beyond the stars. 
 
 My youth was yours. I have lived, and done with 
 speaking. 
 
 1 had not guessed the cost of being free, 
 
 The anguish of the quest. Yet with your seeking 
 I have kept faith. Have you kept faith with me? 
 
 *[In private life Mrs. Edmund Allen.] 
 
 [ 1 ] 
 
To an Ag Freshman 
 
 Gaunt, awkward, prairie born, 
 
 Farm bred, your slow speech lacking every grace, 
 The wistful boyhood of your lonely face 
 
 Stirs us. We vaguely wish you less forlorn. 
 We teach you, and our patience is half scorn. 
 Yet your clear eyes 
 
 Are deep with peace we lack, we over- wise; 
 What secret have you learned among the corn? 
 
 Respectability 
 
 I hug my hearth fire, cozy-warm, 
 
 Approved by wise and loving friends; 
 
 She passes in the marching storm 
 Down the long road that never ends, 
 
 Rebel and outcast, beggared, free, 
 The woman that I dare not be. 
 
 I have a task that fills my days, 
 
 I do it with a right good will 
 And earn thereby both bread and praise; 
 
 Why does her mocking laughter still 
 Burn to the very soul of me, 
 
 The woman that I dare not be? 
 
 A sanctuary I would seek 
 
 On Sundays in the House of Prayer; 
 
 But when I kneel among the meek, 
 Between me and the altar there, 
 
 God's scorn in her clear eyes, I see 
 The woman that I dare not be. 
 
 [ 2 ] 
 
All Hallows 
 
 The saints of God, they frighten me. Their faith 
 is always whole. 
 They stand like tall white candles by the altars 
 of the soul. 
 I have so many wayward moods that take me un- 
 awares, 
 I had rather ask God's poets to help me at my 
 prayers. 
 
 Saint Orispin was a workingman before he made 
 his vow, 
 Theresa was a woman once that wears a halo 
 now, 
 And Hugh of Lincoln played the games that little 
 children know; 
 But they were all so innocent, those lives of 
 long ago. 
 
 The poets were a feckless lot, and seldom over 
 wise, 
 And many wrong and foolish things had value 
 in their eyes; 
 They trailed their visions in the dust, were often 
 somewhat blind — 
 One dare confess to them that God is very hard 
 to find. 
 
 So, Dante, teach me love and hate, and Chaucer, 
 show me mirth, 
 And Langland, give me plowman's faith that 
 labors close to earth, 
 And Shelley, sacred heart aflame with sense of 
 human wrong, 
 Make me a valiant rebel for the weak against 
 the strong. 
 
 [ 3 ] 
 
Don C. Allen 
 
 Moonstones: A Song for 
 Irish Fairies 
 
 Watch the Moon when she is blue, 
 
 Just before the break of day 
 
 In her cloudy rendezvous, 
 
 While you watch her slowly say. . . . 
 
 "Crystal globe of Heaven's light 
 Drop a tear or drop a sigh 
 In the basin of the night." 
 Croon the Moon a lullaby, 
 She will answer bye and bye 
 With a tear-drop or a sigh. 
 
 Watch the Moon when she is blue, 
 Watch the land and watch the sea; 
 If they are the same then you 
 Sing beneath the bramble-tree. . . . 
 
 "Queen of Heaven, bright and fair, 
 With your coronet of green, 
 Listen, listen to my prayer." 
 (Pan has crossed the sky unseen.) 
 She will know whate'er you mean, 
 Drop her coronet of green. 
 
 Watch the Moon when she is blue 
 In the tarlatan of dawn 
 Sprinkled with her retinue; 
 Sing them lightly leprechaun .... 
 
 [ 4 ] 
 
"Pearl of Heaven, pure and cool 
 'Gainst a cloth of indigo; 
 Let your tear-drops make a pool. . 
 Little wells of soft Moon-glow." 
 She will answer you, I know. 
 Leave a pool of soft Moon-glow. 
 
 L'Envoi. 
 
 Come, waken, sprite of Fairy Lands, 
 
 The Sun is near the noon. 
 
 Then let us flee across the sands 
 
 Where lazy waters croon; 
 
 There we will fill our trembling hands 
 
 With tear-drops of that Moon. 
 
 Rann for Mary Magdalene 
 
 "A ghloir ionmhuin dob' iseal aoibhinn 
 An fior go gcualas tren shuanaibu thu. 
 No an fior an t-eolas ata clom'bheo-ghoin. 
 Mo bhron, 9a tuamba nil fuaim na guth." 
 
 From 'A Chinn Aluinn!- 
 
 Oh woman with the storm cloud's hair; 
 Seller of Love for sordid fee, 
 Go hide thyself from common stare, 
 For Christ is calling, calling thee. 
 
 Oh woman with the primrose thighs ; 
 A thousand men have lain with thee 
 But aye the sadness of your eyes .... 
 The lover Christ can comfort thee. 
 Oh woman with the wild thing's heart, 
 Hiding in wood, in nook, in tree 
 
 C 5 ] 
 
From hounds of Lust, forspent thou art 
 The hunter Christ will pity thee. 
 
 Oh woman bankrupt of thyself; 
 Waster of Love, vain debauchee; 
 Slave to men's eyes for little pelf .... 
 The Shuiler Christ will buy thee free. 
 
 Oh woman of the cold, cold kiss, 
 Whom no true lover ever knew; 
 Weep, woman, is it not for this 
 That Christ will die for you, for you? 
 
 Delia Bell 
 
 City Curtains 
 
 I like the little curtains at the windows. 
 When morning breezes swing them to and fro, 
 They make a cool white brotherhood of houses, 
 Of closely packed, and drooping soulless houses, 
 That grow so tired of standing in a row. 
 
 The dimpled baby died across the high way 
 
 The morning that the other baby came; 
 
 The little curtains waved their arms in greeting 
 
 Across the street in lovely ruffled greeting, 
 
 All clean and white and hemstitched, just the same. 
 
 I like the little curtain screens at evening 
 With all the rosy homelight streaming out; 
 It may be that behind them hearts are aching, 
 It is such balm to know when hearts are aching 
 That little curtain screens are close about. 
 
 [ 6 ] 
 
Prayer 
 
 I saw his head was bald, when he knelt, 
 
 And that he stooped so slowly. He was old. 
 
 I smiled. 
 
 An ignorant, aged, trusting child, I felt. 
 
 I wondered if he found the dim church cold. 
 
 What is it stained glass windows do 
 
 To make a gray old man look warm and bright? 
 
 That they are dark and colorful is true, 
 
 And yet, 
 
 Why should I sometimes dream of them at night? 
 
 T. P. Bourland 
 
 Incident's Close 
 
 Now we must go our ways. 
 
 Long days 
 
 And loneliness our portion for a while. 
 
 Our hands touch, 
 
 And we smile. 
 
 Much beauty has been ours; 
 
 Tall towers, 
 
 White castles, spires, high casements in the sky — 
 
 We built these, 
 
 You and I, 
 
 Our hands touch, and we smile; 
 
 What guile 
 
 We need, whose eyes must nothing tell. 
 
 Our lips say 
 
 "Fare thee well!" 
 
 [ 7 ] 
 
To a Lady Far Away 
 
 Tonight, if you were here, I'd block 
 
 The silly hands upon the clock; 
 
 And I would turn to you and say 
 
 "My child, it never will be day 
 
 Unless we start the clock again," 
 
 Then I would make a daisy chain, 
 
 And snare three little stars to light 
 
 Your face, if you were here tonight. 
 
 And if by chance black butterflies 
 
 Presumed to dwell upon your eyes, 
 
 I know an ancient spell we'd say 
 
 To frighten butterflies away. 
 
 I'd gather shadows from the wall 
 
 And bid them dance for us, and call 
 
 Our neighbor Pan, that he might blow 
 
 Mad tunes upon his reed ... I know 
 
 We two would find a magic way 
 
 To lay the ghost of yesterday, 
 
 And deck the garments of the year 
 
 With flowers tonight ... if you were here. 
 
 The Early Slimmer of Philosophy 
 
 I weary you with praises. I have said 
 That grace envelopes you; that on your head 
 Some god had set the seal of loveliness; 
 That one touch of your hand, one slight caress, 
 Flamed like a burning star. That on your mouth 
 Slept all the scented blossoms of the South, 
 I said to you. And little songs I made 
 To your two little feet, for that they played 
 Most wantonly and sweetly in my heart; 
 And of your eyes, I said there was no art 
 
 [ 8 j 
 
Could shadow forth their beauty: that your eyes 
 
 Were Lethe, Fairyland, and Paradise. 
 
 So would I sing you ever. "But the days 
 
 "Are swift," some say. "And all this windy praise 
 
 "Is but a sorry effigy of you." 
 
 (Daughter of Eve, your eyes are very blue.) 
 
 But say the wise, "This is frivolity; 
 
 "What boots this talk of lip and hair and eye ? 
 
 "They are illusion. Fix, youth, thy mind 
 
 "On matters of the pure, grave, vital kind. 
 
 "Whence come ye? Ponder that. And ask thyself 
 
 "Why seek ye earthly love and earthly pelf? 
 
 "To what end livest thou? Where sail thy ships? 
 "0, babble not of hair and eyes and lips! 
 "Life is too real . . ." or was it "real" they said? 
 My child, the wise are wise. Incline your head 
 While I will whisper high grave things to you: 
 Daughter of Eve, your eyes are very blue. 
 
 Hollow Log and Hollow Reed 
 
 With me it has been ever so. 
 Through all the winter time I go 
 Austere, and mindful of my book, 
 Deaf to sweet music; and I brook 
 No byplay of white arms. Pierrette 
 Beckons in vain, the jade. While yet 
 The elms of green are innocent, 
 I keep a lonely watch, content. 
 
 But oh, there comes an April night 
 When all the town is strangely white, 
 And little questing winds blow by; 
 
 [ 9 ] 
 
And when that night is on me I 
 Do shortly fling my book away, 
 And seek Pierrette, the jade, and say 
 "My child, the time has come to play." 
 
 I cannot say the springtime nay. 
 Perforce, when lifts the winter fog 
 I venture from my hollow log 
 And cut a hollow reed to blow. 
 
 With me it has been ever so. 
 
 A Postscript for Untnailable 
 Letters 
 
 Though I send these lines to you, 
 And your name is writ above, 
 Some of them may not be true. 
 All my fancy's yours, but love . . . 
 
 Love is quite a grave affair. 
 (As I wrote I heard a slow, 
 vagrant, sentimental air.) 
 Music often moves me so. 
 
 Hypnosis 
 
 Oh Ph. D 
 Your Phibate key 
 Entrances me. 
 
 Its face displays 
 The solar rays 
 
 [ 10 ] 
 
Of golden days; 
 Hypnosis shakes 
 My mind; it makes 
 Me feel like snakes. 
 
 You lecture there; 
 Thin is you hair! 
 Earnest your air. 
 
 But dancingly 
 Your Phibate key 
 Blinks — mockingly. 
 
 It's getting me. 
 
 T. P. B. 
 
 Nous Sommes let — Parceque — 
 Nous Sommes let 
 
 We sit, learned doctor, at thy feet, 
 
 And daily, with our costly fountain pens 
 
 Take notes concerning homo sapiens 
 
 And calculus and plant disease and Crete, 
 
 And when you say black's white, we write it down; 
 
 And when you prove it true we acquiesce, 
 
 Knowing full well no errors effervesce 
 
 Behind the stately rampart of your frown. 
 
 And, though our minds are shrouded with a fog, 
 And though our poor perceptions seem quite rough, 
 And though at times you leave us obfuscated, 
 We daily stay to hear your monolog, 
 Because we know, if we stay long enough, 
 We will, in God's good time, be educated. 
 
 [ 11 ] 
 
Outrage 
 
 I wear suspenders, and when nights wax cold 
 A flannel night-shirt comforts me. At times 
 I con John Dryden, and the rocking rhymes 
 Of Alec Pope have solaced me of old. 
 I'm absent minded. My ungartered hose 
 Most comfortably sag. My tie's a sight. 
 I never kiss my female friends good night. 
 My spectacles slip downward on my nose. 
 
 Grant that I smoke seegars, and sometimes dance, 
 And grant that once a barmaid on me smiled: 
 Yet Time has cooked me in his casserole 
 More than enough. So tell me, what mad chance 
 Prompted Pierrette to say, "You silly child, 
 You never will grow up!" . . . God bless my soul! 
 
 Cosmology in a Cafe 
 
 Scene: A place of amusement. 
 
 Persons: A young man, an auditor, and revelers. 
 
 Time; The moribund year. 
 
 I know her escort slightly. He's a man 
 Of nice adjustments, and experience, and tact, 
 And taste in wenches. This one — does she not? 
 Dances with grace and manifest delight. 
 They're pleased, each with the other. Pretty babes! 
 His hand, like a white leech upon her back, 
 Her silken back . . . and note his gray, cold eyes. 
 Now, that's a dancing ditty. What's it called? 
 "Hot Lips" you say? Ha! Right well named. A 
 tune 
 
 [ 12 ] 
 
That roves precisely yet insistently along: 
 Empedocles, gone mathematic mad, 
 And by some paradox inflamed with love, 
 Might whistle such from Aetna. 
 Music and mathematics, intermeshed. 
 Why not? I've heard that all the world 
 And all things incident to all our lives 
 Are numbered fictions. Why not music, then? 
 Indeed, this hampered and desirous flesh, 
 Moved in the dance by mandate of the powers 
 Of X and Y. The sallow waiter there, 
 Cursing the bus-boy in sheer weariness, 
 The lady who spilled wine upon my coat, 
 And that absurd Silenus with the drum, 
 Are, like as not, but interwoven digits: 
 Mere permutations in arithmetic. 
 Likewise all things. Go down the shadowed street: 
 Each dog and cat and man and shuttered house, 
 Each footfall in the night, all things, in fine, 
 A man might stumble on between this room 
 And the last quiet star, do come to naught 
 Unless they curve and coalesce to form 
 This passionate equation we call life. 
 On any other terms these things lack point, 
 Or so it seems to me. The science men 
 Will bear me out. They calculate that space, 
 Instead of going on, and on, and on, 
 Curves in upon itself: is limited. 
 A pretty thought to play with, is it not? 
 The Universe a sphere, surrounded by 
 Unspatial space, or something of the sort: 
 Within whose glassy, flawless boundary wall 
 We dance and contract debts, write books, make 
 love, 
 
 [ 13 ] 
 
And move about, according to the place 
 
 And power and number of our formulae. 
 
 Somewhere behind Arcturus squats the King, 
 Ornately decked in nothingness; midstream 
 In uncreated night; staring eternally 
 Upon his round, minute domain, with tempered 
 pride. 
 
 Waiter, the check — and give this note 
 
 If opportunity presents itself 
 
 To that slim lady with the jade-green fan. 
 
 At least, I'll know her number in this scheme. 
 
 The Rocket 
 
 One summer night the world was empty and quiet. 
 The trees and the stars, all in their places, 
 Shrouded their secret forms in purple mists; 
 0, the world was a giant asleep in a perfumed 
 
 chamber, 
 Dreaming and drugged and dead that night. 
 Shadowed, adrift in the infinite somnolence, 
 Where the ghost of a house, and the ghost 
 Of a lilac-scent brooded, lost and desolate, 
 Somewhere .... 
 
 My white face looked from a window. 
 Out in the fringe of the town 
 I saw a rocket splendidly defy the night — 
 Golden, and bright, and proud, 
 Invading infinity with a fantastic happiness 
 It spread its jeweled robes, 
 Lifted its gallant head, 
 And was gone. 
 You were like that. 
 
 [ 14 ] 
 
Quincy Guy Burris 
 
 To a Woman s Hands 
 
 I would obey thy least commands, 
 
 Serve thy behests implicitly, 
 Frail, pallid, lovely, fluttering hands. 
 
 Blithely I suffer reprimands 
 
 From thee, pale, drooping fleurs-de-lis. 
 I would obey thy least commands. 
 
 Lightly as Spanish sarabands, 
 
 Come, hover o'er me momently, 
 Frail, pallid, lovely, fluttering hands. 
 
 Give me to conquer men, or lands, 
 
 Or wander on a shoreless sea — 
 I would obey thy least commands. 
 
 Curved gently as long, sea-lapped strands; 
 
 Translucent as chalcedony, 
 Frail, pallid, lovely, fluttering hands. 
 
 Be they as many as the sands — 
 
 Or nobleness or infamy — 
 I would obey thy least commands, 
 Frail, pallid, lovely, fluttering hands. 
 
 A Fillanelle of Violets 
 
 Love, disillusion, wild regrets 
 
 Within me stormed, but after came 
 This Villanelle of Violets. 
 
 [ 15 ] 
 
Stately as ancient minarets— 
 
 A form; a face, riant, to claim 
 Love, disillusion, wild regrets. 
 
 Eyes, like two mystic amulets, 
 
 Held in their depths the flowers that name 
 This Villanelle of Violets. 
 
 The purl of silver rivulets 
 
 Hid in a voice, and in that same, 
 Love, disillusion, wild regrets. 
 
 Fierce lips — the breath of mignonettes 
 
 Between — seared mine, seared these which frame 
 This Villanelle of Violets. 
 
 Drear thoughts these are; swift silhouettes, 
 
 Where erst dwelt she who did inflame 
 Love, disillusion, wild regrets — 
 This Villanelle of Violets. 
 
 Garreta Helen Busey 
 
 The New Moon 
 
 The moon is a slender reminder 
 Of long-ago fealty vowed 
 As we sat in the curve of the crescent 
 And dabbled our feet in a cloud. 
 
 The cloud was a puff of rose petals; 
 Of gold from the sun was our swing, 
 
 [ 16 ] 
 
Carved richly and hung by an angel 
 And swayed by the brush of his wing. 
 
 It lulled you to sleep with its swaying; 
 You rested your head on the horn, 
 Till, quietly, as you lay dreaming, 
 You slipped to the earth — and were born. 
 
 My outcry of swift desolation 
 
 From star to star echoed aloud — 
 
 An instant poised there on the crescent — 
 
 A dive through the rose petal cloud. 
 
 The search has been lonely, beloved, 
 And earth shadows darken our eyes, 
 But the new moon has let down her ladder! 
 Come, let us climb back to the skies! 
 
 White Jasmine 
 
 Tinkle of glass, of cups the genial clatter 
 Mingle with gay inconsequential chatter. 
 My lady at the tea-urn plays her part, 
 Blushingly fair by nature and by art. 
 "Lemon or cream?" she queries graciously, 
 And pours the steaming jasmine-scented tea. 
 
 Fragrance of Jasmine! — Lo! the spell 
 Bears me across sun-jewelled deeps 
 To where an age-old cloister rears 
 Its slender columns. Near the well, 
 Whence russet monks, for countless years, 
 Have drawn its cool and sparkling stream, 
 Frail jasmine grows, as waxen- white 
 
 [ 17 ] 
 
As tapers, in the dimming light 
 Before cathedral altars, gleam 
 Unlighted. Now, with falling dusk 
 And vesper bell, the garden sleeps, 
 And nun-like flowers spill their musk, 
 As incense, on the night — 
 
 Through time and space comes laughter teasingly, 
 Calling me back to courtesy and tea. 
 
 We Would Forget 
 
 We would forget the gold and purple past, 
 Rise from its shadows and shake free at last 
 Our wings, all drenched with beauty and with pain, 
 To mount exultant through the sun and rain. 
 We struggle, but we cannot rise, nor spread 
 The pinions of our spirits, for the thread 
 Of love has bound them fast to other years, 
 In clinging cobwebs, jewelled with our tears. 
 
 On Reading Poems Old and New 
 
 The flavor of old songs is on my lips — 
 Songs rare and mellow with the flowing years, 
 Wistful with dreams of love, sharp with its tears, 
 Catching the sea-gull's rhythm, as it dips 
 And swings in air, or pulse of wind that whips 
 The ocean; battle hymns; the chanted boast; 
 The ringing, fierce "Aoi!" of Norman host; 
 And songs of men that dared the sea in ships. 
 
 Old songs are put away, like precious wines, 
 In dusty flasks that gather cobweb strands 
 
 [ 18 ] 
 
To mark the years; and when the poet sips, 
 Drinking such Tuscan sunlight as the vines 
 Drew in, long years ago in far-off lands — 
 The flavor of old songs clings to his lips. 
 
 The Lincoln Ox-yoke 
 
 1919 
 
 An ox-yoke, rude, and marred, and weather-dyed, 
 Fashioned in curves of strength by hero hand! 
 A Lincoln drove the shaggy beasts it spanned, 
 Across the prairie — he, the destined guide 
 To liberty and union nation-wide! 
 Now scarlet-belted peasants walk the banks 
 Of Bosnian rivers. By the creamy flanks 
 Of oxen, strong, white-garmented, they stride. 
 These men who fought for freedom, and are free, — 
 Thou home of Lincoln, these men turn to thee! 
 Their land new-won, bewildered still their thought, 
 They turn to thee for lessons Lincoln taught. 
 To wider skies his standards be unfurled — 
 Union and liberty for all the world! 
 
 Rain at Evening 
 
 I saw the silver-footed rain, 
 Pursued by shafts of flaming light, 
 Come stealing down a forest lane 
 Into the depths of night. 
 
 The tinkle of her passing feet 
 Upon the leaves, came to my ears, 
 
 [ 19 ] 
 
And on my brow fell, wondrous sweet, 
 Her cool and fragrant tears. 
 
 They were the beauty of the world, 
 Distilled into a magic draught, 
 Which, from a leafy chalice, pearled 
 With shining drops, I quaffed. 
 
 And thenceforth an eternal pain 
 Drives me across the moonlit hills 
 To mountain torrents, where again 
 The cup of beauty fills. 
 
 J© 
 
 Helen B. Carr . 
 
 Domine 
 
 Thou sender of the drifting clouds, 
 And sower in the sun, 
 Shall I be like to turn to thee 
 When all my days are done? 
 
 Men say thou canst not travel by, 
 In valley train and prairie road, 
 Stand at the horses heads and aid 
 The shifting of the load. 
 
 They say thou canst not laugh with me, 
 And smile upon the dawn, 
 Nor stand with me on silent peaks, 
 When the shades of dusk are drawn. 
 
 [ 20] 
 
Thou sender of the drifting clouds, 
 And sower in the sun, 
 Shall I be like to turn to thee 
 When all my days are done? 
 
 A Cat Scratch 
 
 par M'selle Mrrarr 
 
 Chilly little ankles, chilly little bean, 
 Isn't she the classiest thing, 
 That you've ever seen? 
 Rawh! 
 
 Silly little topknot, silly little heels, 
 Like a "Dame in Paris" 
 Seen in seven reels. 
 Haw! 
 
 Vampy little spit curl, lampy little eyes, 
 Wonder what does happen, 
 When she ups and cries 
 Maw! 
 
 Smartest little skirt length, like potato peels, 
 When the blowsy wind blows, 
 Wonder how she feels? 
 Caw! 
 
 Cheeks as red as roses, Lor' knows where her nose is, 
 Of all the U. I. posies, 
 Isn't she the queen? 
 
 Naw! 
 
 Paw'd 
 Jaw 
 
 [ 21 ] 
 
Maw'd 
 Haw 
 
 She's too raw 
 
 AW! 
 
 NAW!! 
 
 Chorus: 
 
 Chilly little ankles, chilly little bean, 
 Isn't she she the dumbest thing, 
 That you've ever seen! 
 
 @> 
 
 Esther Colvin 
 
 Youth Memories 
 
 A gray house — near a gray wood; 
 
 A low stone wall, thick-covered with vines, 
 
 The bright, tender green of leaf-buds, peeping 
 
 through ; 
 The scent of wet, wild roses along narrow lanes; 
 Wind and driving rain and 
 The sullen, deep murmur of the Merrimac: 
 All these — and — 
 
 Death, thin, cold, immeasurably just, 
 Lurking, watching — behind closed doors. 
 
 Lament for One Just Dead 
 
 The house is very strange and still, tonight. 
 The firelight gleams upon the wall 
 
 [ 22 ] 
 
And touches the quaint, carved chair in the corner, 
 
 With a glowing, tender light. 
 
 Outside, the dusk calls softly. 
 
 Long blue shadows stretch across the lawn 
 
 And, in the West, golden and beautiful, 
 
 The light still lingers. 
 
 The trees along the avenue are gray and slender 
 
 in the twilight. 
 Through the open window, the lilting laugh of a 
 
 child floats in — 
 And the quick, happy tones of youth. 
 Softly, over the hush, the chimes ring out. 
 
 I shall never see your face again — 
 And I shall never hear your voice. 
 
 Our Street 
 
 as seen by Margaret Ann, aged eleven 
 
 Our street is so very quiet and sedate, 
 
 With prim, gray houses and precise gardens 
 
 And close-cut lawns and hedges, 
 
 That even the wind scarcely ever blows there, 
 
 I think it is afraid of the people 
 
 Who live in the prim, gray houses 
 
 And who walk in the precise gardens 
 
 And on the well-kept lawns. 
 
 For, just around the corner, 
 
 On the little street that goes twisting down 
 
 To the long, blue river, 
 
 Stands a tiny, English cottage, 
 
 With roses growing all about the wide, low door, 
 
 And with tall tiger-lilies blooming 
 
 [ 23 ] 
 
And great trees waving friendly arms, 
 
 Over the queer-red-tiled roof. 
 
 And sometimes, 
 
 Cool, soft breezes blow. 
 
 They set all the green leaves whispering, 
 
 And the tiger-lilies blowing, 
 
 And the roses nodding 
 
 On their long, thorny stems 
 
 And sometimes, 
 
 The wind blows hard and fast 
 
 Until the green leaves dance up and down 
 
 And the roses bend from side to side like 
 
 Great tall reeds by the water-side 
 
 And the tiger-lilies riot. 
 
 I wish I lived in a little English cottage 
 
 On a queer, little street 
 
 That goes twisting down to the river. 
 
 J® 
 
 Francis C. Coughlin 
 
 Analogy 
 
 Spring does not come with fanfares high and shrill, 
 
 Ah, Spring comes softly, nonetheless but true, 
 
 Over the quiet plains when earth is still 
 
 Under a silvered chasuble of blue 
 
 Then little, babbling wood-locked winds beguile 
 
 With old, old tales of love's sweet retinue 
 
 Both leaves and lovers for a little while 
 
 I cannot tell, but I may think of you, 
 
 Ah, love comes softly nonetheless but true. 
 
 [ 24 ] 
 
Arthur R. Curry 
 
 The Jeweler 
 
 The jeweler put out a velvet pad 
 
 Pleasing to touch and yellow as pure gold. 
 
 Thereon he placed a row of glowing rubies; 
 
 Then, nearer me, a row of cold white diamonds ; 
 
 And last, a row of tranquil amethysts; 
 
 Then looking up to catch my admiration, 
 
 "These," he said, pointing, "are erotic sonnets, 
 
 And these are poems of the intellect, 
 
 And these are of devotion and the spirit. 
 
 Some lapidary, taking stones of value, 
 
 Has made them into gems of sparkling beauty. 
 
 But see you this," he said, the while withdrawing 
 
 A purple pad whereon a necklace lay, 
 
 A coil of lucent pearls. He raised them up 
 
 And fondled them between us and the light. 
 
 "No lapidary, friend, is vain enough 
 
 To touch an instrument to one of these. 
 
 These are the lovely thoughts that move in beauty 
 
 Like maidens sporting in a lily pond." 
 
 He placed the necklace on the purple pad; 
 
 Then, looking up, and pointing while he spoke: 
 
 "This is the poetry that needs no art 
 
 But that inherent in the form God gave it. 
 
 We make our diamonds, but we search for pearls." 
 
 The Reference Librarian 
 
 One day I thought I'd try her out, 
 I'd heard the neighbors talk about 
 Her having special education 
 
 [ 25 3 
 
To help her locate information. 
 Well now, says I, I want to see 
 If she can find some facts for me. 
 
 I've read a scattered heap you know, 
 Since forty-seven years ago, 
 And I allowed to ask some questions 
 That didn't have the least connections 
 With what folks are supposed to know. 
 I wrote 'em down in order, so: 
 
 What is the height of Eiffel tower? 
 What makes my apple cider sour? 
 And then to test the Bible knowledge 
 Of them that study off at college, 
 I asked her where Cain got his wife! 
 And last, I asked the source of life. 
 
 I thought the girl would be amazed, 
 Instead of that, not even fazed, 
 She told the height of Eiffel tower, 
 Explained what made my cider sour, 
 Discussed Cain and the land of Nod, 
 And said the source of life was God. 
 
 David V. Felts 
 
 Chinese lanterns idly swaying, 
 Palm hid Sax and violin playing, 
 Couples round the terrace swaying, 
 Moon and everything. 
 
 [ 26 ] 
 
But I, lonesome and rejected 
 Watch the party; I'm neglected. 
 Things are just as I expected 
 In the Spring. 
 
 Spring smiles on from dawn till gloaming 
 Nature's creatures go a-homing 
 Youth and maiden idly roaming 
 Wander hand in hand. 
 
 Bursting buds, caressing breezes, 
 Nice warm mud that softly squeezes, • 
 Little birds and brooks and beeses, 
 Boy! Aint Nature Grand? 
 
 To Dorothy 
 
 I might have told you, you are very fair 
 
 (I could have said as much and known it true) 
 
 I might have been much nicer, Dot, to you 
 
 (I wish I had; perhaps I didn't dare) 
 
 I might have told you, you have pretty eyes 
 
 (I always liked them, brown with dancing light) 
 
 I wish that we had danced for just one night 
 
 (I am conceited; yet, that's no surprise) 
 
 But still we played and laughed and talked each 
 
 day 
 And ground out copy for the "dirty sheet" 
 And oftentimes you brought peanuts to eat 
 And brightened up an ordinary day. 
 But now you've gone and left me where we played 
 It's Spring and nice and Gee, I wish you'd stayed. 
 
 [ 27 ] 
 
Marcus Selden Goldman 
 
 Novum Carmen Veterum 
 
 "I praise not old things for the new are better." 
 So in his pride did once Timotheous sing, 
 Till drawing near in wrath, the Spartan ephor 
 Cut with his sword each golden cithara string. 
 And after him no more was wondrous music 
 Heard in the cities of the Hellenes 
 And they who would have drunk the wine of song- 
 craft, 
 Found in the Muse's chalice only lees. 
 
 "I do not mourn the golden age of heroes: 
 Today for me is golden," Ovid said, 
 Turning his face toward the present glory, 
 Turning his back upon the mighty dead. 
 And after him there came no laurelled poets, 
 Winning song-kingdoms for the Latin tongue; 
 The sisters nine forsook the banks of Tiber, 
 Leaving the songs that might have been, unsung. 
 
 So now in quick impatience and in anger 
 Men turn them to new verses and new themes, 
 Forgetful that the art of old is deathless, 
 That youth eternal dwells in olden dreams. 
 Yet may the gods' just anger be averted 
 If here and there choice spirits still shall hold 
 Unscorned the memory of old songs and singers, 
 And tell anew the tale of glories old. 
 
 [ 28 ] 
 
Paul Nissley Landis 
 
 What though of late we've scarcely met, 
 And each has smiled on other loves, 
 
 Does ever wanderer forget 
 
 His home, however far he roves? 
 
 Hearts are gypsies in the spring, 
 Knowing not a fixed abode; 
 
 But half the joy of wandering 
 
 Is coming back the homeward road. 
 
 My heart is like a little road 
 
 That will not travel true, 
 But wanders ever back to join 
 
 The high-road that is you. 
 
 But high-roads heed not little roads, 
 
 And neither know nor care 
 If little roads return again, 
 
 Or when they go or where. 
 
 So must we wind our ways through life 
 
 Till, lost, I come to rest, 
 Forlorn on some forgotten moor, 
 
 Or happy on your breast. 
 
 Ghosts 
 
 Life is a little troubled sleep 
 Within a haunted room 
 
 [ 29 ] 
 
Where ghosts called Joy and Sorrow creep 
 About amid the gloom. 
 
 Twin figures of the fancy spun — 
 
 Though very real they seem — 
 The one a phantom flame, and one 
 
 The shadow of a dream. 
 
 But soon or late a dawning light 
 Breaks on the dream-tossed head 
 
 That, waking, hears from out the night, 
 Far off and faint: "He's dead." 
 
 When as a child I found a pretty thing, 
 I put it in a box beneath my bed — 
 Trifles like buttons and an old doll's head, 
 Some bits of colored glass, a tinsel string, 
 The crown I wore one Christmas as a king 
 Of orient — and on rainy days I sped 
 The gloom of lonely hours with beauty bred 
 Of these bright bits in my imagining. 
 
 Still like a child I keep my little box 
 
 Of pretty fragments, which, when gray days come, 
 
 My heart with memory's golden key unlocks 
 
 And finds again an almost childlike bliss 
 
 In playing with the treasures drawn therefrom — 
 
 A few soft words, her smile, and her last kiss. 
 
 Day after day, year after year, he came 
 
 To dig among these musty books. It seemed 
 
 [ 30 J 
 
His eyes could bear no stronger light than streamed 
 Dust-dimmed through painted windows; passion's 
 
 flame 
 Burned not his shrunken soul; he could not claim 
 Companionship with men; he never dreamed, 
 He only dug in books, and this he deemed 
 Worth while to learn how Shakespeare spelled 
 
 his name. 
 
 And all the while some truant in a wood 
 Thrilled with the song of Rosalind, and one 
 Unlearned under Juliet's window stood, 
 And for an idler in the evening dells 
 Titania and Puck a romance spun, 
 And Touchstone tinkled merrily his bells. 
 
 Thrift 
 
 John Shultz had fifty thousand, wisely placed 
 In bonds and mortgages, and lived content 
 To farm. The land he owned and every cent 
 
 Were his by virtue of an even-paced 
 
 Increase of seven generations, based 
 On poverty that counted all it spent, 
 And learned from need in all life's testament 
 
 One single law: The blackest sin is waste. 
 
 So John wore overalls, and walked to town 
 To clip his coupons; and when Doctor Saul 
 Said that young John, who had been very ill, 
 
 Might eat some chicken, old John with a frown 
 Spoke of the lot would spoil, and wouldn't kill 
 One — since the boy could never eat it all. 
 
 [ 31 ] 
 
H .... L ... .,M.D. 
 
 "There's something less than courage in his sneers 
 At pain," we said. The careless way he rolled 
 A cigarette and flipped the match and told 
 
 The hearse to come, as he were ordering beers, 
 
 Made us believe that what he lacked was tears, 
 And hope we'd see him shiver with the cold 
 Of death. "He'll not be quite so bold," 
 
 We smiled and waited, "facing his own fears." 
 
 They came to take him to the hospital. 
 
 Too late — he was a doctor, and he knew — 
 Knew also we'd be somewhere near to watch; 
 And so he walked, alone, though not too well 
 
 Down to the street, and for a last adieu, 
 Rolled one more cigarette and flipped the match. 
 
 Jim Moore 
 
 Jim never seemed to care for comforts, or 
 
 Perhaps they cost too much; at least he'd not 
 Complained a bit that year on year his lot 
 
 Had been to sneak about a dingy store, 
 
 All crammed with bags and boxes to the door — 
 No light, no air — and then somehow he got 
 Into his head to buy a burial plot 
 
 For him alone, with room for twenty more. 
 
 And when we questioned him, he waved his hand 
 To indicate the litter in the place, 
 
 And summoned all the strength he could command, 
 With joy anticipated on his face — 
 
 "I've been so damned hemmed in here, boys," he 
 said, 
 
 "I'd like to have some room when I am dead." 
 
 [ 32 ] 
 
My Heart Grows Faint 
 
 My heart grows faint when I behold 
 The wives my friends have married; 
 
 I knew them, too, when they were girls, 
 
 With silken hose and clustering curls — 
 
 And figures easy to enfold, — 
 Thank God, I tarried! 
 
 My friends did not, — deluded churls! 
 And when I see them, there, I sigh, 
 But for the grace of God go I. 
 
 Amor Grammatici 
 
 Reproach me not, my dear, that I 
 
 Press not, impatient, passion's claim. 
 
 I cannot love like Anthony 
 In words of singing flame. 
 
 For I was born for milder things — 
 The quiet joy of books my part — 
 
 And schooled to shun the pain that clings 
 To high adventures of the heart. 
 
 So, safe with lamp and pipe and book, 
 I've played with nymphs of Arcady, 
 
 Loved Helen long, and dared to look 
 On Venus rising from the sea. 
 
 But dead queens teach not lovers shy 
 The grace a living queen to woo ; 
 
 Yet count it something, love, that I 
 Renounce them all for you. 
 
 [ 33 ] 
 
 rv 
 
 f- 
 
Isador Lipton 
 
 Spring Dawn 
 
 Spring, summer, winter, and the spring 
 Returning, to the woodlands bring 
 The orioles, and the orioles sing; 
 
 The alder boughs bud fresh and clean, 
 And there the silver sycamores lean 
 White arms against their first faint green ; 
 
 While all around and everywhere 
 
 The swirling ground-mist, like a prayer 
 
 Rises on the morning air; 
 
 Earth lays her scented bosom bare, 
 The winged winds swoop down and bear 
 The incense they have gathered there; 
 
 And to the flaming east are gone 
 To lay their sacrifice upon 
 The crimson altars of the dawn. 
 
 O What a Lover Is the Seal 
 
 Oh what a lover is the sea, 
 
 How soft and suave and fierce and free! 
 
 See with what a hungry hand 
 He laves the languor-laden land, 
 Fawning at his maiden's feet, 
 Breathing praises soft and sweet — 
 
 [ 3; ] 
 
Yet I know that in the night, 
 In his passion and his might, 
 He will break and beat and moan 
 With fevered eyes and lips of foam, 
 And in the morn with soothing hands 
 Caress the bruised and beaten sands. 
 
 How oft my tingling fingertips 
 Caress your hair and eyes and lips, 
 How oft my frantic fingers tear 
 The wildernesses of your hair! 
 
 Oh what a lover is the sea, 
 
 How soft and suave and fierce and free! 
 
 Listen, Lem 
 
 Listen, Lem: 
 
 Do you remember now 
 
 The one you told about the bloody row 
 
 You saw once when you went ashore 
 
 At Mandalay — 
 
 Or was it Singapore? 
 
 Well, anyway, 
 
 How some black, weasel-eyed galoot 
 
 Got the willies drinkin' dago red, 
 
 And draws his bolo on a strappy Boer 
 
 You'd picked up at the Cape, 
 
 And tries to knife him dead — 
 
 Just because he didn't like his looks; 
 
 And how that Boer, just in the nick of time, 
 
 Grabbed at the naked, blue-edged blade 
 
 And held it, buried in his bloody fist, 
 
 [ 35 ] 
 
And slowly, slowly bent it — 
 'Till it snapt! 
 
 It just comes to me now, 
 
 How, like that plucky-hearted Boer 
 
 In Mandalay — or Singapore, 
 
 You 
 
 Gripped the naked blade of life; 
 
 You knew 
 
 The poet's business is to take 
 
 The knife-edged things that go to make 
 
 The life-stuff of his art — 
 
 Men, women, things — 
 
 To crunch them in his bleeding fist, 
 
 To bend and break 
 
 And weld them to a purpose of his own. 
 
 0, I could say a futile word or two 
 
 About how sad it is to think of you 
 
 All covered over with black dirt; 
 
 But I know you don't mind it, Lem, 
 
 You who always loved the smell of earth ; 
 
 And why should I be grieved 
 
 To think of you 
 
 Dissolved into the richest dirt 
 
 In all the world, 
 
 And sending up the tallest wheat 
 
 That ever grew, 
 
 Yes, and the whitest morning-glories, too. 
 
 Out on these laughing prairie lands 
 Where nothing sad will grow, 
 Nor any tree more solemn than an elm, 
 It's hard to lay your dead away; 
 
 [ 36 ] 
 
And so we bring the willow from the south 
 
 And pine trees from the north — proud pines — to 
 
 cast 
 Their great, gaunt shadows o'er the plain by day, 
 And in the night, like old Norse gods, 
 To chant their swaggering sagas in their beards; 
 The while their drooping sisters from the south, 
 With tears of twilight in their gleaming hair, 
 Bewail our dead. 
 
 It's somehow good to know, 
 That somewhere on this treeless land 
 The great, orchestral pine trees stand, 
 Crooning chanties like your own 
 In a thund'rous undertone. 
 
 When I heard 
 
 That you were dead, 
 
 Without a word 
 
 I turned away — 
 
 What could a fellow say? 
 
 Solitaire 
 
 Who can make of loneliness a song? 
 
 It has no love, no fire, 
 
 No fever of desire, 
 No beauty, no pain — 
 
 One only knows the days are long. . . and long — 
 Ah, who can make of loneliness a song? 
 
 If love comes 
 
 In a swirl of passionate dance, 
 
 [ 37 ] 
 
With lifted breasts 
 And waves of wet, sea-tangled hair, 
 Her fingers pluck respondent strings 
 Till flesh is flame 
 
 And fancy sings. . . . 
 
 Or when the amorous night 
 Grows musical with stars, 
 And that great pearl, the moon, 
 Lies buried in her bosom, 
 And the wind of a sudden 
 Comes warm from the hills — 
 
 This, too, is song. . . . 
 Or pain — 
 
 One mother hears another is bereaved 
 Of her one only child; 
 She writes: 
 
 When I heard that your baby boy was dead 
 
 I pressed my own child closer to my breast. 
 How could a plodding, tired-eyed mother know 
 These simple words were music . . . sad . 
 
 and slow? 
 
 Love, beauty, pain . . . these things, 
 Come swift ... on wings 
 Storm-driven, musical and strong — 
 
 But who can make of loneliness a song? 
 
 Picnicking on Golgotha 
 
 Three crosses rise from a hill 
 
 To a laughing April sky, 
 Blood and black against blue 
 
 And mute as a stifled cry; 
 
 [ 38 ] 
 
This is the Place of the Skull 
 
 And these, they are thieves, these two, 
 
 The other, between them, is Jesus, 
 Jesus, a certain Jew. 
 
 "0 Christian men and women, Hell 
 
 Is yawning for your souls tonight; 
 
 Repent, the Judgment Day is near, 
 
 Come out of darkness intu light. 
 
 Jesus wants you; come tonight; 
 
 Don't go and leave him in the lurch; 
 
 He can wash you clean of sin, 
 
 Come to Jesus, join the church. 
 
 'Behold, I stand at the door and knock.' 
 
 Open you sinners and let him in; 
 
 Do you want to burn in the fires of Hell? 
 
 Do you want to live and die in sin? 
 
 come and be washed in the blood of Christ, 
 
 He suffered on the bloody tree 
 
 To win salvation for our souls, 
 
 To save poor sinners like you and me. 
 
 Stand up, stand up for Jesus Christ, 
 
 Hit the trail and take the cross, 
 
 Get off the devil's payroll now 
 
 And make the Son of God your boss. 
 
 There's heaven for Christian men, my friends, 
 
 Why should you be the devil's pawn? 
 
 Join the church and the preacher will say 
 
 Nice things about you when you're gone. 
 
 'Behold, I stand at the door and knock,' 
 
 And you, you sin and smoke and dance, 
 
 There's no salvation for your souls, 
 
 You haven't got a ghostly chance. 
 
 The devil is running your public schools 
 
 [ 39 ] 
 
And dragging your children to the pit 
 Of Hell with heathen books and songs 
 Against the words of Holy Writ. 
 And worse — since Eve and Adam fell 
 And you young women paint and flirt 
 You've been the devil's choicest bait — 
 Your souls ain't worth a whoop in Hell. 
 'Behold, I stand at the door and knock.' 
 Come on, you sinners, hit the trail; 
 Jesus walks by your side tonight, 
 He'll keep you from the devil's jail. 
 Come on, come on, that's right, now more, 
 More souls for Jesus, hit the trail, 
 We've got the devil going now, 
 There go his cloven hooves and tail. 
 Come on, we've got him licked, come on, 
 Has Satan got your soul enticed 
 To Hell? Come on, Hallelujah! 
 Hit the trail for Jesus Christ!" 
 
 Three crosses rise from a hill 
 
 To a laughing April sky, 
 Blood and black against blue 
 
 And mute as a stifled cry; 
 
 This is the Place of the Skull 
 
 And these, they are thieves, these two, 
 The other, between them, is Jesus, 
 
 Jesus, a certain Jew. 
 
 [ 40 ] 
 
The Bitter Beauty 
 
 Did I hear someone say 
 Great Homer never wept; That he found life 
 Surpassing sweet and sang it so? 
 
 Suppose you were a poet, let us say, 
 
 And you chanced to be passing by one day 
 
 The storied ruins of some ancient town; 
 
 You know the place, here heroes lie; there is 
 
 An immanent presence in the very stones 
 
 For you, whose ears have learned their lesson 
 
 well, 
 From countless bards who sang their great re- 
 nown 
 In camp and castle. Ah, here is a theme 
 For some old, windy-bearded bard to tell. 
 
 There lies the gate; that pile was once a tower; 
 Here, it would seem, a kingly name is writ 
 In letters of eternal stone; men say, 
 That forests of broad pillar-bases once 
 Supported colonnades tremendous-tall 
 To grace the vast, dim-vaulted banquet hall. 
 Ah, who can guess what giants feasted here? 
 But doubtless they were such as fame relates, 
 Omnipotent, with iron-girded limbs, 
 With steadfast eyes, straightforward as the sun, 
 Who reveled in this hero-haunted hall 
 And garrisoned these lion-guarded gates, 
 And then, as now, the sequel was the same — 
 For men may feast and sing but men must fight — 
 At last the wonder-rumored galleys came; 
 Your poet's eyes can see the storm-touched prows 
 
 [ 41 ] 
 
Of laden ships that lean against the moon 
 On distant, unimaginable seas. 
 
 Why come they here? What seek they in this 
 
 place? 
 What have men ever sought? A golden cup 
 With skill-wrought lions rampant on its face, 
 A purple robe, a jeweled crown or two, 
 A helpless, vanquished graven idol vowed 
 To serve before the triumphed altar of 
 The one true god; but more than all things else — 
 High-breasted women sculptural and proud. 
 They come and on the sea-rim they unfold 
 Their tents, all tapestried with cloth of gold; 
 What men are these that come to plunder lands 
 Upon the perilous bourne of all the world? 
 Bronze-browed and cedar-straight with sea- 
 bruised hands — 
 Of such are these; and you who are a bard 
 Can see, as never earth-blind men can see, 
 The bristling ranks, the strident shriek of horns, 
 The thunder crash of arms, the swift retreat, 
 The years of siege, brave sallies from the gates, 
 And then at last the sudden breach by night, 
 The wild alarm, the hard-contested fight, 
 Red battle rife beneath a blood-red moon, 
 Where drunken gods go staggering down the 
 
 streets 
 And tall night-wandering women pass. 
 
 Now is the moment of all silent things, 
 The pause before all final answers; calm 
 As folded hands when all their work is done; 
 The delicate-fingered daughters of old days 
 
 [ 42 ] 
 
Are dust beneath unworthy feet; they sleep 
 Whose eyes could bend the brazen will of kings; 
 Their alabaster eyelids are as still 
 As carven eyelids of the Buddha ... so 
 Superbly still . . . 
 
 Now in this moment such a wonder is 
 As only you can know, whose potent hands 
 Can open wide the many-bolted door 
 That leads to purple paths beyond the sun. 
 Time was when gentle-spoken shepherds saw 
 Wind-footed fairies tip-toe down the stars 
 And kiss their lilac-scented finger-tips 
 To all-believing men who watched below; 
 This was their boon to be enraptured so. 
 Yet even now who can but weep to see 
 In sticks and stones so much of mystery? 
 And whose eyes but a poet's eyes could guess 
 That trodden dust held so much loveliness? 
 And is it strange that our mysterious eyes 
 That hold the mirror to such loveliness 
 Should also hold the chalice of our tears? 
 For all that's lovely is sublimely sad, 
 And he, and only he, will ever know 
 The bitter after-taste of things most sweet 
 Whose eyes have seen the land where beauty 
 slept — 
 
 Who said great Horaer never wept? 
 
 [ 43 ] 
 
Mirza French Mackay 
 
 Cabin Sleep-Song 
 
 Clouds am a-sailin' an' win' goes woo-oo! 
 
 01' Mis', Marse Tom, an' lil' Miss Sue, 
 
 Bettah shet 'e win'ows up — goin' fo' to blew! — 
 Massa ketch 'e chicken-hawk, 
 Massa ketch 'e chicken-hawk, 
 Massa ketch 'e chicken-hawk, — 
 Woo-oo! 
 
 Mah ol' 'ooman make a hoe-cake, 
 Sot it in 'e ashes, sot it fo' to bake — 
 'Long come dat 'ar good-fo'-nothin' Jake — 
 Massa ketch 'e chicken-hawk, 
 Massa ketch 'e chicken-hawk, 
 Massa ketch 'e chicken-hawk, — 
 Woo-oo ! 
 
 Heah dat chicken, sizzlin' in 'e pan! — 
 
 Come to 'is daddy, daddy's lil' man; 
 
 Ride on 'e hoss-back, give 'e lil' han', — 
 Massa ketch 'e chicken-hawk, 
 Massa ketch 'e chicken-hawk, 
 Massa ketch 'e chicken-hawk, — 
 Woo-oo ! 
 
 Heah dat Marse Win', tearin' at 'e do'! 
 
 Storm am a-comin' fas', dat's dead sho'! 
 
 Mammy's got 'is bed fix', dar on 'e fiV, — 
 Massa ketch 'e chicken-hawk, 
 Massa ketch 'e chicken-hawk, 
 Massa ketch 'e chicken-hawk, — 
 Woo-oo! 
 
 [ 44 3 
 
Anemone 
 
 Anemone! Anemone! 
 
 Thou harbinger of spring-to-be! 
 
 The gray bleak hills yet winterbound — 
 No bush or tree for miles around — 
 Are thy forbidding proving-ground, 
 
 Anemone! 
 
 The last late lingering drift of snow 
 
 Has scarcely disappeared, when lo ! 
 
 Out on the hills, up through the sod, 
 
 Barren of green, thy bed of clod, 
 
 Thou pasque flower liftest hands to God,- 
 
 Anemone! 
 
 Not with thy cousin lily's grace 
 Thou show'st thy blushing orchid face; 
 But gowned in sober velvet, drest 
 In thy prim pussy willow best, — 
 A little country cousin guest, — 
 Anemone! 
 
 The Sunshine State's well chosen flower, 
 
 The emblem of her prairie dower; 
 
 The symbol of that dauntless band 
 Who, faring forth, possessed the land 
 Where thou as bravely tak'st thy stand, 
 
 Anemone ! 
 
 No sheltering leaves for thee await; 
 
 The settlers of thy northern state 
 
 Found no more barren lodging here 
 Upon these open prairies drear, — 
 Thou sturdy little pioneer, — 
 
 Anemone! 
 
 [ 45 ] 
 
J. R. McNeill 
 
 The Nature-Lovers 
 
 A country road winding through the hills — 
 
 A man and woman racing along in a powerful 
 
 motor car, 
 With a butterfly flattened against the radiator. 
 
 "Gee, ain't the country grand!" 
 "Uh-huh, nature's wonderful like this." 
 
 The car whines out of sight, 
 
 Taking the nature-lovers back to the city. 
 
 Birds fly down from the trees, 
 
 The shrill cicadas resume their song — 
 
 Ah! well, the butterfly will not be missed. 
 
 Jeannette 
 
 Your eyes! Jeannette, mon dieu! your eyes! 
 
 So beeg, so sad, so full, heem are — 
 All tarn heem have ze look surprise, 
 
 All tarn heem look so still, so far! 
 Mon dieu, your eyes. 
 
 Une telle petite fille, Jeannette, 
 
 Such leetle, dainty girl, so small — 
 Une telle bebe pour Pierre Marquette, 
 
 Heem fear she's are no girl a-tall, 
 Si frele, Jeannette! 
 
 What mak you cry? I see ze tear — 
 
 Heem cannot hide from Pierre Marquette; 
 So? You grow beeg, an' please your Pierre? 
 
 [ 46 ] 
 
You are a foolish girl, Jeannette — 
 Such foolish tear! 
 
 Give Pierre a kees, you bad Jeannette, 
 What mak you seem so sad, lak thees? 
 
 Give Pierre a kees, So! Hees forget 
 Si frele bebe, for one small kees 
 From hees Jeannette. 
 
 Ah! Pierre, hees very strong an' wise; 
 
 He chop ze tree, an' mak heem fall — 
 He does not weep ze tear a-tall; 
 He very wise! 
 
 But Pierre's Jeannette, mon dieu, such eyes, 
 So beeg, so sad, so full, heem are — 
 
 All tarn hees have ze look surprise, 
 All tarn hees look so still, so far — 
 Mon dieu, such eyes! 
 
 The Dancer 
 
 [I.] 
 
 The Dancer's gone, but in my memory 
 I hold the rapture of a wond'rous night; 
 It seem'd to me I never knew before 
 Life's ecstasy; that night its mockery 
 
 Was torn away; now life shall mock no more, 
 And truth reveaPd shows as a dawning light 
 How all the world doth dance in harmony. 
 
 [ii.] 
 
 Flotsam and jetsam, down at the sea, 
 Dancing and whirling, eternally; 
 
 [ 47 ] 
 
Out on the ebbtide, back on the flow, 
 Dancing in moonlight, mystically slow- 
 Dance for the dolphins, dance for the mew, 
 Dance where the waves roll, seagreen and blue; 
 Dance in fair weather, dance in the gale, 
 Leaping like devils, when the winds wail. 
 
 Flotsam and jetsam, playthings of chance, 
 Rhythmic, eternal, ceaselessly dance; 
 Waves on the seashore sob mournfully. 
 Flotsam and jetsam, eternally 
 Dance for the lapwing, dance for the gull, 
 Fast when the winds blow, slow when they lull. 
 
 [in.] 
 
 Grass on the prairie, dancing slow, 
 Nod to the winds that gently blow; 
 Winds of the south, with soft caress, 
 Winds with a lover's tenderness. 
 
 Grass on the prairie, dance with glee, 
 Dance with the wind in ecstasy; 
 Bow to the flowers, through the day, 
 Dance in the east wind's eager sway. 
 
 Trees in the forest, frenziedly 
 Dance to the north wind's buffetry; 
 Bend to the blasts and rise amain, 
 Dance with the rapture born of pain. 
 
 Grass on the prairie, storm-tost tree, 
 
 Dance till the moonlight floods the world, 
 
 [ 48 J 
 
Then while the winds rest, sleep enfurl'd, 
 Dance in your dreams, dance dreamily. 
 
 [IV.] 
 Up in the skies the stars dance with the sun; 
 Whole constellations join in that vast dance 
 And human folk grow old ere one step's done, 
 And kingdoms fade, before that far expanse 
 Of dancers has begun. 
 
 Dim eons pass — time mortals cannot know; 
 
 New mountains rise — the old are worn away, 
 New lands are form'd, and oceans overflow, 
 
 And in that time the Cosmic Voice doth say, 
 "How fast the dancers go!" 
 
 [V.] 
 The Dancer's gone, and I should long for her, 
 That we might dance again, as on that time; 
 I should be sad that only dreams remain 
 Where once she was, that I, the worshipper 
 
 Could let her go, and lightly take the pain 
 It cost me then. Her memory's sublime, 
 'Tis mine; and she, I sometimes wish she were. 
 
 Harold McKinley Mann 
 
 The Threnody of the Mourning 
 Dove 
 
 All night I lay among the white stones, 
 Silent, staring, cold white stones. 
 
 t 49 ] 
 
Jupiter rose to cross the sky, 
 Rose to follow his course and die. 
 
 A plaintive longing note, the mourning dove, 
 Lost love, lost love, lost love, lost love. 
 
 Swift, a slender soft-curved girl, the moon, 
 Red with a fleeing passion, love at noon, 
 Fled in a virgin's half-unwilling fear 
 The first faint warnings that her love was near. 
 
 Swiftly she fled, but swifter still came he, 
 Unsatiate, love untasted, tokens spurned, 
 He rose from out the far off Eastern sea 
 And for an instant there as one they burned, 
 Their flaming loves entwined, forgotten flight, 
 A blood-red passion kiss of lurid light. 
 An instant, and remembering she was chaste, 
 The moon turned, wheeled in flight, a ghost of 
 paste. 
 
 The cooling sun sang with the mourning dove, 
 Lost love, lost love, lost love, lost love. 
 
 Prayer 
 
 Out of a sheltered life to this 
 
 Cold kiss, 
 
 Cold kiss, 
 
 Out of a sheltered life to this. 
 
 You cannot understand, you say, 
 Why I left George and came to stay 
 Here in this place of passion cold 
 Where love is bought and kisses sold 
 
 [ 50 ] 
 
For passing gold, 
 
 Where souls don't count and painted lips 
 And counterfeit joys are the only sips 
 The spirit finds to brighten the way 
 Through the midnight darkness which marks my 
 day. 
 
 Listen, have you ever heard 
 
 The downy owl, the evening bird, 
 
 Chant through the night its monotone, 
 
 Or the unaccented megaphone 
 
 Of the train dispatcher's soulless drone, 
 
 Sounds which beat upon the mind 
 
 With a flat and dull relentless grind? 
 
 As a cliff wave-washed by the constant sea 
 
 Is determined, so it was with me. 
 
 You'll laugh when I tell? Don't laugh at me, 
 
 Not all souls know infinity, 
 
 But some walk sightless down the road 
 
 And stumble along with a blind man's load 
 
 Of faltering fear for the step ahead, 
 
 Small souls who think that the dead are dead, 
 
 And do not, cannot see ahead 
 
 Where long eternity sits crowned, 
 
 Life's little moments grouped around, 
 
 Of many parts a perfect whole, 
 
 And beckons on the seeing soul. 
 
 Two tiny rooms, efficiency, 
 We slept in one and one to me 
 Was kitchen, parlor, sitting room, 
 And at the last a living tomb. 
 
 The month of April was the best, 
 A straying robin built her nest 
 
 [ 51 ] 
 
Upon my window sill. She sang 
 Three notes which in my memory rang 
 From days long past when I, too, sang. 
 
 With May she left, and once again 
 
 My heart re-echoed with the pain 
 
 Of boundless soundless quietudes, 
 
 And all foreshortened interludes 
 
 When George came home and ate and read, 
 
 Said he was tired and went to bed. 
 
 Naught else to do, I joined him there, 
 
 A cold unlovely married pair. 
 
 June came, George said we needed ice, 
 He said we needn't mind the price. 
 And so the chest was filled, I set 
 A pan to catch the rivulet 
 Of melted ice which dripped away 
 Like stalactites till judgment day. 
 
 Drip, drip, day, night, drip, drip, 
 Silence, silence, drip, drip, 
 My life took on a dull grey tone, 
 Dripping, dripping monotone. 
 The dripping ice shut in my soul 
 As ice shuts in the Southern pole. 
 
 George would not understand, I knew, 
 Helpless, I did what I could do 
 To check the sound, I fixed a board 
 So that the drops ran downward toward 
 The pan and did not splash or drip. 
 Once more I felt the silence slip 
 Over my soul and under me — 
 There was no death on Calvary! 
 
 [ 52 ] 
 
I lay awake, the silence fell 
 
 As heavy as the chains of Hell, 
 
 I listened and the silence seemed 
 
 A thousand hammers I had dreamed, 
 
 The hammers all resolved to one. 
 
 Heaven forbid, Mary's Son! 
 
 The board I'd fixed so well had slipped, 
 
 The whole night through the waters dripped, 
 
 That morning George gave me a kiss 
 
 And I left George for this, for this. 
 
 Excitement, change, variety, 
 Christ, but I paid to get the three, 
 And now I offer them to Thee, 
 Pity me, Christ, 
 Oh, pity me. 
 
 J® 
 
 Lois Seyster Montross 
 
 Codes 
 
 They wove for me a little cloak 
 Of worsted brown and strong, 
 
 They wove it firm, these kindly folk 
 That I might wear it long. 
 
 I, who would dance in gossamer 
 
 With poplars on a hill, 
 Or wander naked with the wind, 
 
 They clothe in worsted still. 
 
 [ 53 ] 
 
Dead Leaves 
 
 What was that song the viols played the moon, 
 All fair and golden-lipped its haunting tune? 
 There was no song, no showering notes of light, 
 Only the mad wind weeping in the night. 
 
 What was that love that gleamed like summer rain 
 Through dangling shadows — ecstasy and pain? 
 There was no love nor pain nor ecstasy. 
 Only dead leaves that whispered mournfully. 
 
 To Charmian, Unborn 
 
 My body folded tawny wings 
 To walk with slow, uncertain feet; 
 My body put off silken things 
 For linen, humble and discreet; 
 
 My songs that were as butterflies, 
 So frail they bore but phantom gold, 
 Cling to the earth and dare not rise 
 Out of the withered grass and mold; 
 
 My laugh is dumb that fluttered wild, 
 My hands are bare of shining rings, 
 My soul goes fasting that a child 
 Be born for silk and song and wings. 
 
 Lapidary 
 
 Thine eyes, beneath arched ebony, 
 Are jade and lapis lazuli, 
 
 With turquoise shadows under them. 
 
 [ 54 3 
 
So locked, thy fingers' filigree 
 Enclosing palms of ivory 
 
 Are perfect caskets for a gem. 
 
 Ladyes so like their jewels grown 
 
 Have flawless hearts ... of blood-red stone. 
 
 The Stranger 
 
 She is back in her shuttered house again, 
 
 Weary and alone. 
 
 Talk of the life she led in distant cities 
 
 Wreaths up like smoke from the chimney. 
 
 She walks in her little garden at sundown, 
 
 In a torn, black lace dress. 
 
 The sparrows gossip about her 
 
 And the tulips whisper she is — queer! 
 
 Have you known what snow is? 
 
 Have you known it as a sweet, warm drink 
 
 That puts to rest unrestfulness? 
 
 Have you known it as white, unscented hands 
 
 Holding jasmine flowers 
 
 Gently? 
 
 Have you heard it a low chord 
 Sounded above the city's grotesque 
 Hoarseness? 
 
 Have you felt the serenity of snow 
 
 Assuaging 
 
 Your fever? 
 
 Tonight I walked in the snow-calmed street . . 
 Tonight I know what snow is. 
 
 t 55 ] 
 
You Say Death Is Not Sad? 
 
 You say death is not sad? You have not died, 
 Followed a bier tall-piled with broken dreams, 
 Nor known why those that laughed at death 
 
 still cried 
 Like wild birds bleeding in their loved marsh 
 
 streams. 
 Perhaps you reasoned, "These had thoughts, 
 
 drew breath, 
 Sorrowing so, they yet were living most," — 
 This is the paradox! Sight of death is death, 
 Not the forerunner but the dread, grim ghost. 
 You are as one who, deeming Spring was all, 
 Warming his days beneath the unchanging sun 
 And turquoise skies as drowsy as Bagdad, 
 First saw the frost's white, steely work begun, 
 First heard the poplars weeping in the fall, 
 And said, "Be still! October is not sad." 
 
 Galleon Dawn 
 
 Blue day, high day, 
 
 Sailing past mine eyes, 
 Like a graceful galleon 
 
 Bound for paradise — 
 New day, tall day, 
 
 Tell your cargo's worth, 
 Let your masthead clip for me 
 
 Horizons of mirth .... 
 Slow ship, go ship, 
 
 But let me first surmise 
 What you bear: Nippon ware, 
 
 Peacock vanities, 
 
 [ 56 ] 
 
Mauve silk, pale fan, 
 
 Brought by wavering caravan, 
 Indolent perfume, Mandarin dyes, 
 
 Ivory carved in Hindustan, 
 All unload and load again 
 
 For my hungry eyes. 
 I shall stand upon the shore, 
 
 Fleet day, fair day, 
 Knowing that you come no more 
 
 Down this way — 
 I shall see your proud head 
 
 Specked upon the skies, 
 I shall stand with bowed head 
 
 And hungry, hidden eyes, 
 Graceful, graceful galleon — 
 
 So faint ... so far ... so wise. 
 
 "I Am A Hedonist, God Wot!" 
 
 I am a Hedonist, God wot! 
 
 Never a man shall say me not. 
 
 E'en Heav'n's great bowl, it could not measure 
 
 The pleasure I do gain from pleasure. 
 
 Why should I have for other goal 
 
 Purification of the soul? 
 
 Pure souls, like maids, are very dull — 
 
 Souls do not make man's belly full. 
 
 Sir Soul cannot a lyric write, 
 And singing rhyme is my delight; 
 Methinks, Sir Soul has meager cheer, 
 Quaffing no ale nor rum nor beer; 
 Sir Soul is never hale to meet, 
 Nor loiters in his straitened street. 
 
 [ 57 ] 
 
His righteous eye of flashing steel 
 Doth make me like a school-boy feel! 
 
 But Pleasure, there's a goodly wight — 
 
 I trow he chaffers all the night, 
 
 And in two minutes they do so 
 
 Can turn a sprightly roundelay. 
 
 No song there is he doth not know, 
 
 He listeth where the wind do blow, 
 
 He struts and hath no humble thought 
 
 And knows no thing of "must" or "ought." 
 
 Good lack! I link me oft with Pleasure 
 
 And count his laugh my primest treasure; 
 
 Together do we view the moon, 
 
 That swaggert rogue in cloud doubloon; 
 
 We dine upon a pun with zest, 
 
 Sup pungently on dripping jest; 
 
 And when all good folk are in bed, 
 
 We 'gin a merrie bout instead, 
 
 For tongues wag best when liquored loose, 
 
 Which is of aged wine the use. 
 
 I count Sir Pleasure such a friend 
 That to him I my gold do lend, 
 Knowing full well that on the morrow 
 All unashamed, he more will borrow. 
 I labor earnestly each day 
 That I, at night, his debts may pay, 
 And snubbing cold Sobriety, 
 Forget my good wife Piety, 
 And when she chides me for my sin, 
 I know my fault but say within: 
 "Her sad arraignment soon will end, 
 And I shall quickly join my friend, 
 And mistress, blithe Inconsequence, 
 
 [ 58 ] 
 
(No cousin to spare Innocence)." 
 Thus do I seek them without fail: 
 Mine Host, John Barleycorn, is hale 
 And jovial and lends his Inne 
 To many a quaint, delicious sin — 
 
 (Hearken the wind toy with the leaves, 
 Hearken the faint rain on the eaves! 
 The candle flaming straight and sure, 
 Doth make our little room secure. . . . ) 
 
 — My fair wretch spreads her satins out 
 And taunts me with a pretty pout, 
 A scented nosegay hides her face, 
 Her velvet shoon are hid in lace 
 And bending closer then, I see 
 Her eyes and ankles peep at me! 
 Beside the chimney, 'stride a chair, 
 Droll Pleasure tosses back his hair, 
 Stately and grave as any lord, 
 He strums a fancied harpsichord 
 And halts with gesture and grimace; 
 While on his brown and weathered face 
 The very shadows love to trace 
 His precious moods, so various, 
 Mad, fanciful, hilarious — 
 
 (Hearken the wind wooing the leaves 
 With speech now tender, now jocose, 
 Hearken the faint rain on the eaves! 
 Inconsequence, my child, come close. . . 
 
 — His laughter is a mellow wine, 
 Heady but sweet, withal benign. 
 Thumping the deal till goblets ring, 
 He shouts wild verses. Hear him sing: 
 
 [ 59 ] 
 
"Life's no slice of pale, white cake, 
 
 Gramercy ! Gramercy ! 
 Life's no pastry quick to bake, 
 
 Tirra-lirra, gramercy! 
 Life's a hunk of blackened bread 
 
 Gramercy, that's true! 
 Give me butter thick on one side, 
 Not thinly spread on two! ..." 
 
 This is Sir Pleasure, this is he 
 
 Who owns the very heart of me. 
 
 I marvel at such folk as choose 
 
 His gaiety and grace to lose — 
 
 Sir Soul doth frown on song and color, 
 
 He dines with Duty and with Dolor. 
 
 I claim few bounties for my due, 
 
 Old World, our Squire, doth pay me few — 
 
 The rascal stabbed me, robbed me twice, 
 
 And cheated me with leaden dice — 
 
 Yet I will grant him any fee 
 
 Save losing Pleasure's company, 
 
 And never a man shall say me not. 
 
 I am a Hedonist, God wot! 
 
 Missie 
 
 "She listened to his verses, smiled charmingly on his two 
 years 9 courtship, and at the end of two years married the 
 waiter instead." 
 
 — "Ernest Dowsori" 
 by Arthur Symons. 
 
 Wharf-rat, gamin, coker, the leprous and the lame, 
 Stevedore and stoker, he knew them all by name. 
 
 For him the shadows lengthened to serpents on the 
 floor, 
 
 [ 60 ] 
 
For him the shadows strengthened to fiends around 
 the door. 
 
 Pricked by dreams appalling, mad cold and mock- 
 ing heat, 
 
 He wandered, calling, calling, through the smoul- 
 dering street. 
 
 His thoughts like blood ran gushing till Missie 
 
 calmly wrought 
 Magic of stilling, hushing — her eyes could stanch 
 
 his thought. 
 
 Head on Missie's bosom, he fell to troubled rest — 
 She dreamed not he was kissing Cleopatra's breast. 
 
 It was not Missie, Missie, dove-white and ripe per- 
 fumed, 
 
 Nor candles, feckless candles, the twilit place 
 illumed: 
 
 For Sappho, Helen, Circe glided in golden file! . . 
 He dreamed while Missie, dreamless, smiled her 
 rose-lipped smile. 
 
 Her cheeks were pale, lost lilies, a fleur-de-lis her 
 
 hand, 
 Her charms were aching rapture — she could not 
 
 understand . . . 
 
 Oh, when his fiends came thronging her touch 
 
 could make him whole, 
 But when he parched with longing, she could not 
 
 slake his soul. 
 
 Missie, unawoken, played her idle part, 
 
 Nor guessed that she had broken a poet's heart. 
 
 t 61 ] 
 
Empty Spools 
 
 Behind the red glass panels of their door 
 No light intrigues us. Now we hear no more 
 The husky saucy voice of blonde Renee 
 Winding its thread on spools from day to day. 
 
 I looked inside their rooms when all was done: 
 Trunk taken, cab called — whirr! — and they were 
 
 gone — 
 The dressing table, mirror-eyed and vain; 
 The stripped brass bed where stripped brass love 
 
 had lain, 
 Quarrelsome and shiny with its new bold look; 
 
 The gloomy kitchen appetite forsook; 
 The pans she hated and the wobbly shelves 
 His unaccustomed hands had nailed, themselves. 
 So easy-visaged — silken, blue peignoir; 
 Odd rounded petulance her shoulders wore: 
 "Don't set that clock so early!" 
 
 "I'll be late!" 
 "Now when you meet me, don't you make me wait!" 
 "My God! You wait for him!" 
 
 "You can't forget 
 To throw him in my face — so jealous yet!" 
 
 Recriminations, tears . . . but volatile, 
 One jests and laughs, a punning imbecile. 
 They seize the ukulele and they sing, 
 Harmonics crude, vague sweetness of the string: 
 
 "/ wonder who's buying the wine 
 For lips that I used to call mine, 
 I wonder if she ever tells him of me, 
 
 [ 62 ] 
 
/ wonder who's kissing her now?" 
 
 Even in song, their strained determination 
 
 To be abreast of high sophistication, 
 
 He used vaudeville dialogue, blase, 
 
 Profane, to woo the nice ear of Renee! 
 
 Outside the million little wands of rain, 
 
 By necromancy turn the streets to glass, 
 
 Where golden headlights, molten fluxions pass, 
 
 Leap, flash and vanish, merge and part again — 
 
 Inside . . . they sing of Egypt . . . Araby . . . 
 
 Oh, Avalon! Oh, lapping coral sea! . . . 
 
 He falls to swearing dully at the key. 
 
 The rounded petulance her shoulders wore 
 
 Still haunts the crimson panels of their door — 
 
 Look! Are those the empty spools upon the floor 
 
 Bare of their tight-wound voice? 
 
 Did blonde Renee 
 
 Grow silent suddenly, 
 
 . . . And slip away? 
 
 Meditations of a Dump-Heap 
 
 Nobody knows the innermost thoughts of a dump- 
 heap, 
 For I am refuse and refuse is myself — 
 My body and my soul are one 
 Whatever the dualists contend. 
 I know I am scum, I know I am filth, 
 I know I stink 
 And hobnob with the rats. 
 I like rats. 
 
 They are more subtle than the dogs 
 Who visit garbage cans . . . 
 
 [ 63 ] 
 
I had a previous existence: 
 
 Ages past, 
 
 In the strange cycle of life 
 
 When my ego was in chaos 
 
 I lived in garbage cans and dreamed 
 
 Of being free! 
 
 Foolishly, I said to myself, "There is another life 
 
 Vaster and more coherent, 
 
 A life lived on a windy slope, 
 
 Spread full to the stars and close to the clean dirt, 
 
 A paradise for the body after the soul is sloughed 
 
 off!" 
 The dogs were Orthodox and quoted Plato — 
 Victorian beasts! 
 . . . They were wrong. 
 
 After travail and a torrent of weeping, 
 After a season of madness and sleeping, 
 After a longing and lethargy seized me, 
 After the god of the dump cart teased me, 
 Out of the pain was peacefulness risen, 
 Out of the anguish, rest. 
 
 Sit down rats and listen — 
 
 Hear the lake beating the strong chorus: 
 
 Life, life, life, life, life! 
 
 Not one bit of garbage but a million, 
 
 Not one longing but all longing, 
 
 Not one note of laughter but the gamut of mirth, 
 
 my birthright and my bondage! 
 My tales are greater than the Mabinogion — 
 Let me be a troubadour to you, rats, 
 Creep into the lush weeds at my feet 
 And listen, listen — 
 
 [ 64 ] 
 
Listen tenderly to the delicate lyrics I can sing you, 
 Listen cynically to the story of this old tin basin, 
 Listen mirthfully to the story of this broken plaster 
 
 saint, 
 Listen with hushed hearts, to the tale of Maryelle, 
 Yes, be hushed by that, 
 Be hushed by that. . . 
 Look at the moon a-tiptoe on the lake-line, 
 Quivering, young and breathless she steals in 
 
 silence 
 Behind the lacy marsh grass and the goblin dirt- 
 mounds, 
 Stepping in careful rhythm on the sharp rocks 
 Lest she might wound her white, white, white, white 
 
 feet! 
 Last night she paused and dipped her fingers in 
 
 the water 
 And flung the tattered spray high on the shore, 
 And laughed so low, so low I could not hear. 
 You moon, I could not hear, I tell you! 
 Why do you laugh so low? 
 You are breaking my heart. 
 Every night I long to hear you laugh aloud, 
 Every night in the saffron twilight 
 You steal among the weeds, inscrutable vir- 
 gin- 
 Cold, ah, cold you are — your soul a wisp of 
 
 gauzy aloofness, 
 And a surge of hatred beats me into madness ! 
 And I hate your frosty soul, you moon un- 
 
 conquered ! 
 I could crush your breasts with my two hands, 
 And hurl you into the lake you torture with 
 your calm image 
 
 [ 65 ] 
 
And you would either laugh or cry and I 
 could say: 
 
 "I — I have made the moon articulate; 
 
 She smiled. She wept. And I am satisfied." 
 
 Yet . . . she is a moon and I am a dump-heap. 
 ... Be quiet, look at the mauve tendrils of smoke 
 Twining their viny path about the latticed chimneys. 
 Tonight the gray water flows into the gray sky 
 And the surf echoes the whispering of the little 
 
 ingenuous clouds 
 Who play upon the sky's pale beach of saffron 
 With stars they think are fish, 
 And ask the big clouds silly questions about why 
 
 the earth is pirouetting 
 And how they were born and when they must die. 
 (Hide in the weeds until the dog is gone, rats, 
 He's creeping down the road now, 
 A smug, Philistine smile on his face.) 
 No, not even the moon can hurt my heart tonight — 
 And memories are beating with impotent hands at 
 
 the flood-gates of my voice — 
 Oh, let me rid myself of these turbulent thoughts! 
 Come, memories, get you down the Romany road of 
 remembrance 
 
 Out of my heart, 
 
 Out of my voice, 
 
 Into the night, 
 
 Into you, my listeners. 
 
 I was thinking of Maryelle. 
 
 You stand before me, Maryelle, so almost real 
 
 I think I see your dusk eyes vagued with dreaming. 
 
 There is a purple shadow on your throat 
 
 Like something half-remembered, half-forgotten . . . 
 
 Somehow I fear an idle wind to blow 
 
 [ 66 ] 
 
Lest it should tear that shadow into petals. 
 Maryelle! Maryelle! . . . 
 
 I am a maundering idiot, drunk with quaffing life, 
 But life was a damned good vintage, old and 
 
 mellow. 
 It gave me a red nose but I am glad I drank it. 
 
 Runners 
 
 Look! The runner is running down hill — 
 
 Faster, with slack limbs, 
 
 Faster, with tense limbs, 
 
 Whichever way — faster! 
 
 Arms elbowed, fists doubled, breath a panorama of 
 
 desire for speed, 
 Each breath a new picture of his increasing urge, 
 Eyes half shut like two crouching beasts, 
 Lips parted, nostrils a-quiver, hair mobile to the 
 
 fingers of the wind! 
 
 Night is running with him . . . look, have you 
 
 seen her? 
 Naked of all but beauty she leaps a-tiptoe through 
 
 the pear trees, 
 Sways a breathless moment at the edge of the dark 
 
 brook, 
 Smelling the piquant gentians, 
 Spreading full her arms to the coolness — 
 Now to the road, the curving down hill road, 
 Shadowed with memories, fetishes, mysteries, 
 Folked with goblins, pixies, fays — 
 The little people look up and whisper, "See, our 
 
 splendid queen is dreaming toward us!" . . . 
 Night is running down hill with the runner. 
 
 [ 67 ] 
 
He runs like a patient tiger now, 
 
 Tongue lolling, 
 
 Eyes gold with fire, 
 
 Pat-pat-patting down the steep hill, 
 
 On flesh-padded feet he goes, 
 
 Still and easy and breathless he goes, 
 
 Silent as death, 
 
 Missing no one of his measured, graceful paces. 
 
 Have you seen Youth running with the runner? 
 
 Where night runs there is Youth, 
 
 Youth with white face upturned to the stars, 
 
 Hands out to break the prickling bushes, 
 
 Skin torn from mullein-weed, wildrose, mint and 
 
 thistle, 
 The wet cobwebs cling across his forehead, 
 He stumbles on, sobbing, 
 Unknowing why he goes. 
 Following . . . leading ... he is running with 
 
 the runner down hill 
 
 The sheaves like idle peasants at the roadside 
 
 Hold up a moon lantern to stare at the flying limbs, 
 
 Winging the road. 
 
 They see a new hastener now, 
 
 One who runs without panting, on quiet feet at the 
 last of the caravan, 
 
 One who runs looking ahead, never behind, 
 
 Never sobbing nor murmuring but gaining, always 
 gaining; 
 
 He will pass Youth 
 
 And put his hand on the runner's glistening, sweat- 
 ing shoulder, 
 
 Gentle and dignified he will say, "We are here." 
 
 [ 68 ] 
 
Look! Have you seen what it is to be a runner 
 Who cannot pause till a hand thuds on your 
 
 shoulder, 
 And smears the sweat you shed like blood 
 And stops you with the goal far distant! 
 And a voice cries: "We are here" — 
 
 To be stabbed with beauty in curled 
 apple petals and turn cold 
 as you lie hushed by sky hands 
 in the lush orchard grass; 
 To know suddenly that you must rise and run 
 never to stop running till the last hastener 
 overtakes you; 
 To tremble at an aching note in the unguarded 
 
 voice of a thrush; 
 To feel a wound where no poniard came; 
 To laugh exultantly at the chanted litany of the 
 
 locust high in the poplars; 
 To see that Youth and Night are beckoning you 
 
 to the road; 
 To distrust Youth and his hot breath so close to 
 
 your throat; 
 To fear the dizzying eyes of night and the intoxica- 
 tion of her breasts ; 
 To find the road merging into a swift descent 
 So there is no turning back, no slowing nor 
 
 stopping, 
 Faster, with slack limbs, 
 Faster, with tense limbs, 
 Whichever way — faster! 
 
 This is the runner who cannot pause till a hand 
 thuds on his shoulder . . . 
 
 Look! Death is running with the runner down hilL 
 [ 69 ] 
 
Taj-Mischa 
 
 [I.] 
 
 The earth is like some idle Oriental 
 
 Who smokes his hookah gaily without care 
 
 For any money-maddened Occidental 
 
 Who rushes here and scampers yon and there. 
 
 Lie still, fat earth, so meaningless, so gentle, 
 Rest on your elbow, watch men rend their hair, 
 Nothing to you the fight of tax and rental, 
 Nothing to you the skimp to eat and wear, 
 Nothing to you the cost of fish and lentil, 
 The privilege of roof and bed and chair. 
 
 October earth, you leisured Oriental, 
 Man would come rest with you, but does not dare; 
 See how he gasps and runs, poor Occidental, 
 Gaping ahead with absent, fretted stare. 
 
 [iL] 
 
 Let me sit with you here upon the slope, 
 Taj-Mischa, gazing in your crystal ball, 
 Let me look clear and see if this is all, 
 
 (The crystal ball is but the sky, 
 
 Soft, pale, ingenuous and shy.) 
 
 Well, then this ancient tale of Hell and God, 
 And rotting bodies gaining from the sod 
 Some potency to rise and live again — 
 The story had its birth with shivering men 
 Who hated truth and shunned its healthy glare. 
 They feared themselves; hyena-toothed despair 
 
 [ 70 ] 
 
Howled at their heels; they found all beauty 
 
 "mental," 
 Shunned bodies, warped facts, labelled earth-things 
 
 lies, 
 And died — nor heard again of paradise. 
 They never knew you, idle Oriental, 
 And now you mock them calmly, without care. 
 Yes .... Let your mystic smile be slow and 
 
 gentle. 
 They would have loved your rest. They did not 
 
 dare. 
 
 [in.] 
 
 Let me break open now with ruthless hands 
 The silver wrappings of my woven dream — 
 I long, Taj-Mischa, for that web to seem 
 Precious and rare, as from another land. 
 
 (I am like some old immigrant woman 
 
 Who pulls a shawl from a dull, lacquered 
 chest, 
 
 And says, "New things are good — but this was 
 fashioned 
 
 In mine own country where they weave them 
 best.") 
 I wrought this rug, Taj-Mischa, from the strandings 
 I made in mine own country. All apart 
 I sat and drew the little threads of longing, 
 And some of them I raveled from my heart. 
 
 Do you see, Taj-Mischa, do you see — 
 That saffron sky, the purple clouds that pass, 
 The workman silhouetted and the grass 
 Like delicate lace swirling about his heedless 
 
 feet . . . 
 The still pool quivering at the sun's trespass, 
 
 [ 71 ] 
 
The doves low-flying o'er the russet wheat? 
 
 Then see this fringe of moons, and each was minted 
 
 From a new gold as love has ebbed and flowed: 
 
 Nothing alloy and nothing poor or stinted, 
 
 Much of it burned; but much, at least, has glowed. 
 
 The first moon came with my first love, 
 
 Pale and bright; 
 We plucked this moon from a pine-tree 
 
 On a spring night; 
 One moon hung like a lantern, 
 
 All crimson round, 
 
 And neither spoke; 
 One moon whispered my last love's name, 
 My heart fell to the ground . . . 
 
 And broke. 
 
 The country road, curved like a woman's cheek, 
 
 The stark trees in majestic devastation, 
 
 Iron gray like an old, old man, and bleak 
 
 With stern thoughts, yet with elation 
 
 That storms turn from its branches yet — defeated! 
 
 [IV.] 
 
 Was it not good, Taj-Mischa, to sit weaving 
 
 The tangled threads of dawn in dusk and gloom? 
 
 I knew that very soon I should be leaving 
 
 And come no more, no more unto the loom. 
 
 The rug I made an alien will complete, 
 
 Or lose the skeins or tear the crimson woof — 
 
 I shall not care, with coffin-lid for roof! 
 
 And you, fat Oriental earth whom I have known 
 
 So intimately, you will smoke and smile 
 
 Nor will your face be sad a little while; 
 
 Your pipe will taste as ripe when I am gone. 
 
 [ 72 ] 
 
. . . Yet, some day, pounding in an artery, 
 May you not yet feel the dusty blood of me? 
 Ah, when the worms and maggots have their due, 
 Taj-Mischa ... I become a part of — you. 
 
 "I Wear a Crimson Cloak Tonight' 9 
 
 In vain they are trying to make account of Alan Seeger, 
 He was silent and none seemed to know him. Only, there 
 is a tale that he was seen one night in the slums of Bos- 
 ton wearing a red cloak, 
 
 I wear a crimson cloak tonight, 
 Villon, Villon, look down and see 
 I wander insolent and free, 
 
 Free as the wind in Montfaugon — 
 
 And is thy droll ghost there, Villon, 
 
 Thy spirit as my flesh bedight? 
 
 Ah, would I might lock arms with thee, 
 
 I wear a crimson cloak tonight. 
 
 Marlowe, in doublet slashed with gold, 
 
 Insouciant as a drunken star, 
 
 Surely no Lethean mandates bar 
 This life from death, as dark from light? 
 I wear a crimson cloak tonight, 
 Bold is my heart, my trappings bold — 
 
 Thy rich, bright laugh I hear afar, 
 Marlowe, in doublet slashed with gold. 
 
 I wear a crimson cloak tonight, 
 
 Dowson, Baudelaire, Verlaine! 
 
 I, too, have seen Octobers wane 
 And watched decadent Love pass by 
 With naked feet and drooping eye, 
 
 t 73 ] 
 
With throat of laughter, lips of light; 
 Trembling to hear thy songs again 
 I wear a crimson cloak tonight. 
 
 The fainting moon is wan and white, 
 Our silken courtesan, the moon — 
 Ah, brothers, hast thou watched her swoon? 
 
 Over the stars ye lean to tell : 
 
 Death is an endless villanelle 
 
 That Life frees poet-hands to write .... 
 I'll join thy vagabondia soon, 
 
 I wear the crimson cloak tonight! 
 
 Wm. B. Mowery 
 
 Hokku 
 
 WALKING ON SKULLS 
 
 I would not carry clay from the far slope 
 Nor stones from the river-bed. 
 
 I would build my House of pine-tree boughs 
 And fragrant calomel rushes. 
 
 The small cloud that dallied in the western sky 
 Meant no good for me. 
 
 I stood by a sheltering rock watching mad winds 
 Tear my House to shreds. 
 
 [ 74 ] 
 
At night in the tornado -wreckage 
 The dead, upturned faces are white. 
 
 Through I travel down a pleasant valley 
 At night the faces will be white. 
 
 These dead white faces will lie in the wreckage 
 Youth made a mansion of. 
 
 Yea, I will carry stones and clay 
 There will be no more faces. 
 
 [i] 
 
 FAULTS 
 
 There are thunderclouds on the sky around me; 
 Overhead it is clear. 
 
 [II] 
 POETRY 
 
 Quick white snakes are playing in the dark clouds; 
 And through my soul a song leaps. 
 
 [HI] 
 VANISHING 
 
 Where is the cloud I saw last evening; 
 Or the Girl I used to love? 
 
 VERSE 
 
 In the fields flit butterflies; in my heart, songs. 
 Behold! I have caught one. 
 
 [ 75 ] 
 
The keen pencils on my desk are greyhounds 
 That race after little songs. 
 
 VANITY 
 
 Big Jake, strongest man in the steel yard, 
 Swallowed a fly and went home sick. 
 
 FRIENDSHIP 
 
 The robins are very friendly now; 
 Our cherry trees are turning red. 
 
 UNCERTAINTY 
 
 Is that a soft viola singing 
 
 Or my friend reading lyric verses? 
 
 RAIN 
 
 A few big drops go thumping by 
 Like scouts before a heavy rank; 
 The cock is running for the barn; 
 The old dog on the grassy bank 
 Neglects to snap the teasing fly; 
 A woman gathers up in haste 
 Some clothes spread on the grass to dry; 
 A farmer frantic in his hay 
 Is swearing that it did not stay 
 As clear as it was all last week 
 And give him just another day; 
 And Barefoot races down the lane 
 To get the cows before the rain; 
 And evening comes before her turn, 
 And long before the sun has set 
 The candles in the farm-house burn. 
 
 [ 76 ] 
 
Chas. Edmund Noyes 
 
 Tonight 
 
 Tonight, I hold the thought of you 
 As though it were a fragile thing; 
 
 If you were all of melody 
 I could not sing. 
 
 But when my lips are turned to earth, 
 My heart to Love again, 
 
 Somewhere beyond all memory 
 You will remain. 
 
 Song 
 
 While yet the silver cord is fast 
 
 And the golden bowl unbroken 
 Or ever the silken night is past 
 
 Or the smooth steel words be spoken, 
 There is time for dreams and for satin dreams, 
 
 There is time for fantasy, 
 And I shall write on the faithless streams 
 
 A little song of thee. 
 And when it fades as the streams flow on 
 
 I think I shall not care, 
 But you will know when the hour is gone 
 
 That once a song was there. 
 
 Demiurge 
 
 After they're gone, the fine despised illusions, 
 Love, and the dreams we say are never true — 
 
 [ 77 ] 
 
When laughter is no more a careless fountain 
 
 And you are only you; 
 
 When these things are, (as we have known they'll 
 
 be), 
 Then will there be an end to all delusions? 
 And shall we see (as we are sure we'll see) 
 The whole of our white-gleaming distant mountain, 
 Place where our dreams are, standing very near, 
 Misty through clouds no longer, plain and cold, 
 No fairyland, but dreams we've had, made clear, 
 When we are old? 
 
 Perhaps we travel ever toward the place, 
 In death attaining one, the last bright dream; 
 And yet I think we could not bear to face 
 A time when fancies quite unveiled should gleam 
 So close at hand. 
 
 Blindness, I think, would cut the light before 
 We saw, or that dim mist where fancies stand 
 Vanish, and show behind an empty space, 
 Smooth desert, where we two should dream no 
 
 more, 
 There left to wander on forever, groping 
 In that bright land with no far mystery, 
 For some mirage-like trick of memory 
 And vanished hoping. 
 
 <® 
 
 Lem Phillips 
 
 Before Sailing 
 
 Let's drink a toast to ourselves, then, brothers, 
 A toast to men of our kind, 
 
 [ 78 ] 
 
For we'll see no more of the others 
 When the pier head's left behind. 
 
 Let's drink a toast to the sailor-man 
 
 In a draught of fiery liquor, 
 For we'll soon have done with the landsman clan 
 
 When the salt sea crusts our slicker. 
 
 The landsman's kind is not our kind, 
 
 He is bound by an earthen fetter, 
 And we are as free as the heaving brine 
 
 And we count our freedom better, 
 
 Aye — better than the glowing hearth 
 
 Are the blue green seas we roam, 
 And better the stinging gale from the north 
 
 Than the love of a lass — and home. 
 
 Aye, a loving lass and a hearthstone warm 
 
 Are the strength of a man ashore, 
 But the strength of a ship in a rocking storm 
 
 Is ours, and we ask no more. 
 
 So, Drink! On the next high tide we are sailing, 
 
 We who were born to roam 
 And our lives like a white frothed wake go tra ling 
 
 Till the sea has claimed its own. 
 
 Sugar 
 
 Niggers sweating under the burning sun 
 In Cuban cane-fields. 
 
 Guinea stevedores in the stinking hold of a sugar 
 ship — 
 
 [ 79 ] 
 
Stumbling under three hundred bags. 
 
 Polacks shuffling, heavy footed, 
 
 Changing shifts at a refinery. 
 
 Girls in a long row — 
 
 With tired eyes 
 
 And drooping shoulders 
 
 Filling gaudy colored boxes. 
 
 Another girl 
 
 Leaning back in the soft cushions of a limousine 
 
 Offers Fido a bonbon. 
 
 A Scholar 
 
 I have red blood in my veins 
 
 And a strong body 
 
 Fit for work. 
 
 I have a broad back 
 
 And thick muscled arms 
 
 That can handle a stoker's slice bar. 
 
 My hand has known the feel of the throttle. 
 
 I have been the master of power. 
 
 I have stood between the roaring cranks 
 
 And been not afraid. 
 
 I have strong gripping fingers 
 
 That have held me firm 
 
 On the swaying mast. 
 
 I have skill in my hands to steer a steady course 
 
 In a stormy sea. 
 
 I have eyes to mark a distant light 
 
 And a deep-throated voice to report it. 
 
 I have red blood in my veins 
 And a strong body 
 Fit for work, 
 
 [ 80 ] 
 
Yet I have put oval panes of glass 
 
 Before my eyes, 
 
 That I might drink a diluted cup of life 
 
 From a printed page 
 
 God! I am lazy! 
 
 Earth Hunger 
 
 Wind of the Spring, 
 
 Soft warm, 
 
 Toys in my hair like fingers of love. 
 
 Rich smells of earth 
 Ascend to my nostrils 
 From the greening sod. 
 
 I fling myself face down 
 
 On your broad bosom, Old Mother. 
 
 I stretch wide my arms 
 
 And clutch the black mould with my fingers, 
 
 To feel that I hold you. 
 
 Hold me close to you, 
 
 Oh, broad-breasted Mother of All. 
 
 Let me feel my kinship 
 
 To the sweet-smelling loam. 
 
 Let me feel the tumult of life 
 
 Expanding within you, 
 
 Reverberate in my own bosom. 
 
 Make me humble before you, Old Mother, 
 And arrogant before conventions of man. 
 Fill my mind with your enduring truth, 
 And cleanse it of his sophistries. 
 
 Let me creep closer, 
 Oh, all-containing Earth. 
 
 [ 81 ] 
 
I bare my breast to feel the soft moist soil. 
 I bury my face 
 
 To breathe deep of your fragrance — 
 Enraptured to be a part of you. 
 
 Winter Sunset 
 
 The sun sinks cold in the grey sky's field, 
 Glazing it o'er with a brassy shield. 
 
 My heart, I think, is cold and hard 
 As the brassy shield of the sky, 
 
 For I thought of myself and my own reward 
 And passed a beggar by. 
 
 Spring Song 
 
 Fresh is the wind in my face tonight; 
 
 Sweet is the breath of the new green sod; 
 Gold in the blue is the moon's fair light; 
 
 Soft under-foot are the paths I trod. 
 
 Old as the valleys, the song I sing; 
 
 Life in the mould of the earth set free; 
 Love born anew and the lark a-wing 
 
 Spring in the wind and the heart of me. 
 
 Old is the song of the Spring and youth, 
 Yet would I sing it again to you: 
 
 Time is the gauge and the test of truth; 
 True is my song and my love for you. 
 
 Still They Think of War 
 
 Still they think of war, 
 
 And two healing years of peace 
 
 [ 82 ] 
 
Have not yet purged the gore-soaked fields of 
 
 France. 
 Empty trenches stretch half the breadth of Europe, 
 Like raw gaping wounds in the green earth. 
 Sightless eyes hideous behind dark glasses; — 
 Coat sleeves hanging empty — 
 Workmen fainting at their tasks, 
 Clutching at their throats in agony — 
 Hissing to their comrades, 
 "Gassed — Argonne." 
 
 Mankind shattered with bleeding bandaged head — 
 And still they think of war. 
 
 I lie in the sweet smelling meadows 
 
 Of my own prairies 
 
 To listen to the meadow-lark 
 
 Sing promises of Spring, 
 
 And over the rolling hill-top 
 
 Down a narrow lane 
 
 Rides a squadron of cavalry, 
 
 Their sabers clanking, 
 
 Hungry for blood, 
 
 And the hoofs of the horses 
 
 Resounding on the soft earth 
 
 Like the beat of a muffled drum 
 
 In a dead march — 
 
 Still they think of war. 
 
 To Pain 
 
 What though thy presence lines my face, Pain, 
 And racks my aching body, filled with ills, 
 I shrink not from thy power; I know it fills 
 My soul with wisdom and a proud disdain, 
 
 [ 83 ] 
 
For petty human frailties that reign 
 In this base flesh, o'er which my conquering will 
 A faster fort from knowing thee doth build. 
 I welcome thee, that bring triumphs attained. 
 
 I know that thou and Sorrow bring to me, 
 Great visions, born of sleepless nights when I 
 Lie ill abed and hear the world roar by; 
 Full visions, only thou can'st make me see, 
 And though thou bringst me age that should be 
 
 youth, 
 I welcome thee, for thou art life and truth. 
 
 Raymond A. Seng 
 
 Summer Rain 
 
 Rain and the gray mist swirling, 
 
 Swirling over the lake, 
 Thin waves softly curling 
 
 With never a whitened break; 
 
 Drenched crows winging blackly 
 
 Into the leaden sky, 
 Poplars swaying slackly, 
 
 Swallows that wheel and cry. 
 
 Over the days you're calling 
 Singing your wonderful lays, 
 
 Weaving your spell enthralling, 
 Strangely sweet rainy days. 
 
 [ 84 ] 
 
Song 
 
 A lady lived in Lesbos 
 
 A long, long age ago, 
 A lady lived in Lesbos, 
 
 I loved that lady so. 
 
 But she was made of blue sky, 
 And I was made of clay, 
 
 And she sang songs like moonlight 
 All the golden day. 
 
 A lady lived in Lesbos, 
 
 That lady is a star, 
 lady thou of Lesbos, 
 
 I still love thee afar. 
 
 Bliss Seymour 
 
 Spring on The Prairie 
 
 Spring across the prairie, with pussy-willows flying, 
 Nests of golden glory in the hearts of daffodils, 
 Rolling green of meadows, and the breezes sigh- 
 ing— 
 (I wonder if the redbud is aflame against the 
 hills!) 
 
 Sky against the prairie, and apple-blossoms blow- 
 ing, 
 
 [ 85 ] 
 
Meadow-larks a' carolling that all the world's in 
 bloom, 
 Robins, mad with melody, where the spring is 
 glowing, 
 (But, oh, to hear the whip-poor-wills, wailing 
 through the gloom!) 
 
 Singing in the sunshine, laughter in the gloaming, 
 
 Breath of flower-fragrance, through the dreaming 
 
 air, 
 
 Sun upon the prairie, and all the world is homing, 
 
 (But spring creeps down the hillsides, and I 
 
 cannot be there!) 
 
 Ghost Night 
 
 There's a tricky moon in the sky tonight, 
 And the world is doing a thousand things; 
 
 The trees, lifting longing arms to light, 
 Sway to the song that the darkness sings. 
 
 The fireflies are loves which were never born; 
 The moon is more cruel than dead dreams are, — 
 * * * • 
 
 I've tangled my hair in the white hawthorn, 
 And wounded my heart on a pointed star! 
 
 The Philanderer 
 
 I remember Philip's eyes, 
 
 Brown as russet-drying furze — 
 
 Ah, but he was worldly wise, 
 King of all Philanderers! 
 
 [ 86 ] 
 
He'd a sweeping throat, and hair 
 Burnt like butter-nuts in fall, 
 
 And a fancy light as air, 
 
 But a conscience — none at all. 
 
 He could drink the ruddy wine 
 Of a barmaid's laughing lips, 
 
 Or, as easily, kiss the shrine 
 Of a vestal's finger tips. 
 
 Once the fingers were possessed 
 He must needs sit by her side. 
 
 Russet eyes could do the rest. 
 (Vestals were his special pride.) 
 
 There was once a maid, folks say, 
 Scorned him as he sauntered by — 
 
 Let them tell it as they may — 
 I am sure it wasn't I! 
 
 W onder-W diking 
 
 There is a wonder in walking home, 
 
 And gathering dreams all along the way, 
 
 Choosing the furnishings for my heart. 
 . . . Here are the ones that I found today 
 
 A house with a rain-barrel painted blue; 
 
 A crooked brass lantern over a door; 
 The ruffle of clouds in a gentle sky; 
 
 The wind-silvered leaves of a sycamore. 
 
 A crippled boy, whistling a marching song; 
 A quilt, sewn with hollyhocks on a line; 
 
 [ 87 ] 
 
Then, sudden and sweet, from a weathered hedge, 
 The drifting perfume of the eglantine. 
 
 There is a wonder in coming home, 
 
 Bringing in dreams from along the way, 
 
 Colorful tapestries for my heart. 
 
 . . . These are the ones that I found today! 
 
 The Stadium 
 
 Like autumn leaves that flutter and grow still, 
 The rooters hush and sink into their places, 
 The gripping moment over. In their faces, 
 
 (Young faces, burning with the combat's thrill, 
 
 And yet quite strangely old and sober-eyed) — 
 No thought dares enter of another game 
 When killing and not scoring was their aim, 
 
 And all of them fought on the selfsame side. 
 
 Yet we remember them, and all those others 
 Who lie in France. The Stadium's grey stones 
 Forbid us to forget; the shadow tones 
 
 Across the field make, living and dead, brothers. 
 And in the shouting we recall a day 
 When death came to the loser in the play. 
 
 Constance Miriam Syford 
 
 Tints and Undertones 
 
 Cosmos and daisies calico-wise 
 In a dull gray field of fern; 
 
 [ 88 ] 
 
Sprinklings of rose on a morning of mist 
 Relaxing my passion in dream; 
 Green soft leaves and tall grass reeds 
 Cooling my head in their shade — 
 I lie watching the wall-paper move. 
 
 Mirrors of rain — 
 Broken shadows 
 Of quivering trees 
 Restrained — 
 
 Still and naked, unashamed, 
 The trees look down 
 Into the white mirror 
 On the ground. 
 
 Silhouette 
 
 One black bird 
 
 On a sharply broken bough, 
 
 Leaning out to touch the sky 
 
 Against a ragged shore, — 
 
 Meadows of marsh-grass, 
 
 Sudden peering necks of woods, 
 
 And then a city panting, 
 
 Emitting gasps of hot, quick breath, 
 
 Thick with the odor of oil and gas.- 
 
 [ 89 ] 
 
Crackling locusts under yellow street lamps, 
 
 Flickering, flickering, — 
 
 Popping rubber tires, their parched dry tongues 
 
 Licking the wet, oily-skinned pavements. 
 
 One pale woman 
 
 In a crowded ocean city 
 
 Leaning out to touch the heavens. 
 
 Picture 
 
 When I saw her wrapped in ermine, 
 
 Perched near a soft blue bowl 
 
 Distinguished by some golden-rod, 
 
 She reminded me of a white parrot 
 
 I once saw all puffed in fluffy plumage. 
 
 Poised daintily on one foot, 
 
 Head and eyes and golden beak 
 
 Turned sidewise 
 
 Against a branch of sharp, stiff pine. 
 
 It was in a tea-room, too 
 On a neuter-colored wall 
 As dull as she. 
 
 I know a road 
 
 All filigree, 
 
 That goes in summer 
 
 Foliaged, 
 
 Down to meet another road 
 
 That moves along demurely 
 
 Like a maiden trembling 
 
 In her stiff and dainty dotted muslin. 
 
 And I, too, 
 All a-quiver, 
 
 [ 9C J 
 
In the summer, 
 
 Have followed these two winding roads 
 
 That stroll along together 
 
 Just as lovers wander far 
 
 To find some old, old trysting place. 
 
 But still I wander. 
 
 Boutonnieres 
 
 Some men 
 Wear their cigars like scars 
 Burnt into seared holes of mouths, 
 As heroes — proudly. 
 
 And some 
 Wear them like pedestal lamps 
 Rooted in a desert of a face. 
 
 Still others 
 Pucker up all their being 
 Into the gleam of that ^Hstant 
 Little light. 
 
 Some women 
 Wear their loves like scars 
 Burnt into their seared, hollow souls, 
 As saints — devoutly. 
 
 And some 
 Wear them like lofty signal lights 
 Gleaming from their desert faces. 
 
 Still others 
 Pucker up all their being 
 To the visioned dream of that love 
 They know not. 
 
 And some men 
 Decorate themselves with women's loves 
 Stuck carelessly, like railroad tickets, 
 
 [ 91 ] 
 
Instead of feathers, in their hats. 
 
 And some women 
 Decorate themselves with men's loves 
 Worn like badges on their bosoms. 
 
 And some men and women 
 Decorate themselves with life 
 Worn like a flower in the lapel of Eternity. 
 
 J© 
 
 Laurence F. Triggs 
 
 Burn Candles, Love 
 
 Burn candles, Love, incessantly, 
 For love is dead; Come, bind the hair 
 In wreaths of bay; No one will care — 
 Burn candles, Love, incessantly. 
 
 Triad 
 
 Comes a day when Memory 
 
 Is all I have, 
 
 I want these things to be: 
 
 To remember great men without envy, 
 
 To remember women without desire, 
 
 And to remember you 
 
 As on that splendid day in Spring; 
 
 Without regret . 
 
 [ 92 ] 
 
The One Remains 
 
 There is a rift within the lute, 
 The music falters and is done; 
 I come to find your lips are mute 
 But on your hair the setting sun 
 Enmeshes strands of mauve and gold, 
 Translucent lights, the stars ascend, 
 And love and song are as of old — 
 Where Beauty is there is no end. 
 
 <© 
 
 Roberta Wagner 
 
 Saffron 
 
 People are colors; saffron colored you are, 
 Like a pine-rimmed lake at sundown 
 With the gold sky shining in its depths; 
 Like shimmering Indian summer and maize; 
 Like topazes; 
 
 Like desert poppies holding the sun; 
 Like the great amber, orange moon 
 Rising behind black trees — 
 Saffron colored you are. 
 
 C 93 ] 
 
Bruce Weirick 
 
 Lines Written in a Crypt of the Art 
 Institute, Chicago. 
 
 Here in the quiet of the Middle Age 
 There is a haunting solace sweet as rest, 
 No warfare grim disturbs their heritage 
 Among the solemn counsels of the blest. 
 Sad saints and sacred angels hover o'er 
 These tombs where kings are laid in modest state, 
 And the dim Christ in mildness evermore 
 Broods with his cross above the minster gate. 
 
 But soft! a little from this crypt I see 
 
 Three young Greek statues white and marble pure, 
 
 Naked as grace and as the ocean free, 
 
 Yet in their calm divine, as gods secure; 
 
 Oh beauty, wonder, rapture, life aflame, 
 
 How hath thy sunlight struck these saints to shame. 
 
 Lines Written in Early Spring 
 While Under the Influence of 
 Philosophy 
 
 What is a tree, save touch and sight? 
 
 But touch and sight's in me! 
 
 Then tree is too; if not, what right 
 
 Have I to talk of tree? 
 
 An "unperceived perception" — 
 
 Get the force of my idee? 
 
 [ 94 ] 
 
Well, put 'em in; put nature in; 
 
 Put God in; put in dreams; 
 
 What's mind? An idea; in she goes! 
 
 In what: In mind! This seems 
 
 The limit; dog eats dog! God knows 
 
 I write this stuff in reams. 
 
 Kick mind out then, I've left, let's see 
 
 Perceptions! One by one 
 
 I get them, but don't keep them 
 
 There's no "I" to have that fun! 
 
 But how can one add two plus two? 
 
 It can't! Go get a gun. 
 
 Kick out ideas; kick out th« mi^d: 
 
 Kick out the inside tree: 
 
 Put outside on the outside! 
 
 Outside what? We'll let tha 1 hi 
 
 Let's call it all "adjustment," 
 
 "Cues to action," then let's see. 
 
 Suppose I say "give me a drink." 
 That's sense! But where's the sp 7 3e? 
 In booze, in youse, or in the gink 
 That makes it! None! You see 
 It's in the combination — 
 Something you can't touch nor see. 
 
 They call this pragmatism dodge 
 The latest — here's the tree's 
 Not outside all, nor inside all, 
 But in between us: see? 
 What you are, what the tree is 
 Ain't the question: but what's three. 
 But this cue, relation, attitude, 
 I cannot touch nor smell, 
 
 [ 95 ] 
 
Nor taste, nor see, no weigh, nor hear — 
 Elusive, ain't it? Well- 
 It's the unknown solves the unknown, 
 Call it X, or God, or hell. 
 
 The Dancer 
 
 The dancers whirl about the room, 
 
 Elate with motion, eyes alive, 
 
 And ladies' dresses like the bloom 
 
 Of gorgeous shaken flowers drive 
 
 The senses on to ecstasy; 
 
 Rich lovely faces here and there 
 
 With lips half-parted, smiling, see 
 
 The room's a soul of fire and air. 
 
 Vet there is one who dances on 
 
 With eyes unseeing, dreamily, 
 
 And when she goes the dance is gone, 
 
 Come back, the dance is revelry. 
 
 She dances in the central sun, 
 
 And where she walks bright flowers are, 
 
 The violet and the rose are one, 
 
 And time is like a falling star. 
 
 I 36 ] 
 
UNIVERSITY OF ILUNOIS-URBANA 
 SiMS 1918-1923^0 
 
 3 0112 025323418