This little selection of verses, to which I have given the title "Rari
Nantes," was made at the instance of several friends. I have chosen from
my published works those poems which seemed to me most faithfully to
express my artistic message; and the title obviously implies that I
think them the ones most likely to weather the maëlstroms of Time. Be
that as it may.
Vachel Lindsay and I have often discussed over a glass of port (one
glass only: alas, that Vachel should abstain!) the state of the Muse
to-day. He deems that she now has fled from cities to dwell on the
robuster champaigns of Illinois and Kansas. Would that I could agree;
but I see her in the cities and everywhere, set down to menial
taskwork. She were better in exile, on Ibsen's sand dunes or
Maeterlinck's bee farm. But in America the times are very evil.
Prodigious convulsion of production, the grinding of mighty forces, the
noise and rushings of winds--and what avails? _Parturiunt montes_ ...you
know the rest. The ridiculous mice squeak and scamper on the granary
floor. They may play undisturbed, for the real poets, those great gray
felines, are sifting loam under Westminster. Gramercy Park and the
Poetry Society see them not.
It matters not. With this little book my task is done. Vachel and I sail
to-morrow for Nova Zembla.
_The Grotto, Yonkers._