SARA TEASDALE, ALAN SEEGER, AND OTHERS
Sara Teasdale--her poems of love--her youth--her finished
art--Fannie Stearns Davis--her thoughtful verse--Theodosia
Garrison--her war poem--war poetry of Mary Carolyn
Davies--Harriet Monroe--her services--her original work--Alice
Corbin--her philosophy--Sarah Cleghorn--poet of the country
village--Jessie B. Rittenhouse--critic and poet--Margaret
Widdemer--poet of the factories--Carl Sandburg--poet of
Chicago--his career--his defects--J. C. Underwood--poet of
city noises--T. S. Eliot--J. G. Neihardt--love poems--C. W.
Stork--_Contemporary Verse_--M. L. Fisher--_The
Sonnet_--S. Middleton--J. P. Bishop--W. A. Bradley--nature
poems--W. Griffith--_City Pastorals_--John Erskine--W. E.
Leonard--W. T. Whitsett--Helen Hay Whitney--Corinne Roosevelt
Robinson--M. Nicholson--his left hand--Witter Bynner--a
country poet--H. Hagedorn--Percy Mackaye--his theories--his
possibilities--J. G. Fletcher--monotony of free verse--Conrad
Aiken--his gift of melody--W. A. Percy--the best American poem
of 1917--Alan Seeger--an Elizabethan--an inspired poet.
Sara Teasdale (Mrs. Filsinger) was born at St. Louis (pronounced
Lewis), on the eighth of August, 1884. Her first book appeared when
she was twenty-three, and made an impression. In 1911 she published
_Helen of Troy, and Other Poems_; in 1915 a volume of original
lyrics called _Rivers to the Sea_; some of these were reprinted,
together with new material, in _Love Poems_ (1917), which also
contained _Songs out of Sorrow_--verses that won the prize
offered by the Poetry Society of America for the best unpublished work
read at the meetings in 1916; and in 1918 she received the Columbia
University Poetry Prize of five hundred dollars, for the best book
produced by an American in 1917.
In spite of her youth and the slender amount of her production, Sara
Teasdale has won her way to the front rank of living American poets.
She is among the happy few who not only know what they wish to
accomplish, but who succeed in the attempt. How many manuscripts she
burns, I know not; but the comparatively small number of pages that
reach the world are nearly fleckless. Her career is beginning, but her
work shows a combination of strength and grace that many a master
might envy. It would be an insult to call her poems "promising," for
most of them exhibit a consummate control of the art of lyrical
expression. Give her more years, more experience, wider range, richer
content, her architecture may become as massive as it is fine. She
thoroughly understands the manipulation of the material of poetry. It
would be difficult to suggest any improvement upon
TWILIGHT
The stately tragedy of dusk
Drew to its perfect close,
The virginal white evening star
Sank, and the red moon rose.
Although she gives us many beautiful pictures of nature, she is
primarily a poet of love. White-hot passion without a trace of
anything common or unclean; absolute surrender; whole-hearted devotion
expressed in pure singing. Nothing is finer than this--to realize that
the primal impulse is as strong as in the breast of a cave-woman, yet
illumined by clear, high intelligence, and pouring out its feeling in
a voice of gracious charm.
PITY
They never saw my lover's face,
They only know our love was brief,
Wearing awhile a windy grace
And passing like an autumn leaf.
They wonder why I do not weep,
They think it strange that I can sing,
They say, "Her love was scarcely deep
Since it has left so slight a sting."
They never saw my love nor knew
That in my heart's most secret place
I pity them as angels do
Men who have never seen God's face.
A PRAYER
Until I lose my soul and lie
Blind to the beauty of the earth,
Deaf tho' a lyric wind goes by,
Dumb in a storm of mirth;
Until my heart is quenched at length
And I have left the land of men,
Oh, let me love with all my strength
Careless if I am loved again.
If the two pieces just cited are not poetry, then I have no idea what
poetry may be.
Another young woman poet is Fannie Stearns Davis (Mrs. Grifford). The
quality of her mind as displayed in her two books indicates
possibilities of high development. She was born at Cleveland, on the
sixth of March, 1884, is a graduate of Smith College, was a teacher in
Wisconsin, and has made many contributions to various magazines. Her
first book of poems, _Myself and I_, appeared in 1913; two years
later came the volume called _Crack o' Dawn_. She is not much
given to metrical adventure, although one of her most original poems,
_As I Drank Tea Today_, has an irregular rime-scheme. For the
most part, she follows both in subject and style the poetic tradition.
She has the gift of song--not indeed in the superlative degree--but
nevertheless unmistakable; and she has a full mind. She is neither
optimist nor pessimist; I should call her a sympathetic observer. The
following poem sums up fairly well her accumulated wisdom:
I have looked into all men's hearts.
Like houses at night unshuttered they stand,
And I walk in the street, in the dark, and on either hand
There are hollow houses, men's hearts.
They think that the curtains are drawn,
Yet I see their shadows suddenly kneel
To pray, or laughing and reckless as drunkards reel
Into dead sleep till dawn.
And I see an immortal child
With its quaint high dreams and wondering eyes
Sleeping beneath the hard worn body that lies
Like a mummy-case defiled.
And I hear an immortal cry
Of splendour strain through the sodden words,
Like a flight of brave-winged heaven-desirous birds
From a swamp where poisons lie.
--I have looked into all men's hearts.
Oh, secret terrible houses of beauty and pain!
And I cannot be gay, but I cannot be bitter again,
Since I looked into all men's hearts.
There is one commandment that all poets under the first class, and
perhaps some of those favoured ones, frequently break: the tenth. One
cannot blame them, for they know what poetry is, and they love it.
They not only know what it is, but their own limited experience has
taught them what rapture it must be to write lines of flawless beauty.
This unconquerable covetousness is admirably and artistically
expressed in Fannie Davis's poem, _After Copying Goodly Poetry_.
It is an honest confession; but its author is fortunate in being able
to express vain desire so beautifully that many lesser poets will
covet her covetousness.
Theodosia Garrison was born at Newark, New Jersey, on the twenty-sixth
of November, 1874. She has published three volumes of verse, of which
perhaps the best known is _The Joy of Life_ (1909). At present
she is engaged in war work, where her high faith, serene womanliness,
and overflowing humour ought to make her, in the finest sense of the
word, efficient. Her short poem on the war is a good answer to
detractors of America.
APRIL 2nd
We have been patient--and they named us weak;
We have been silent--and they judged us meek,
Now, in the much-abused, high name of God
We speak.
Oh, not with faltering or uncertain tone--
With chosen words we make our meaning known,
That like a great wind from the West shall shake
The double throne.
Our colours flame upon the topmost mast,--
We lift the glove so arrogantly cast,
And in the much-abused, high name of God
We speak at last.
Another war alchemist is Mary Carolyn Davies, poet of Oregon and
Brooklyn. She knows both coasts of America, she understands the
American spirit of idealism and self-sacrifice, and her verses have a
direct hitting power that will break open the hardest heart. In her
book, _The Drums in Our Street_ (1918), the glory and the tragedy
of the world-struggle are expressed in terms of individual feeling.
There is decided inequality in this volume, but the best pieces are so
carefully distributed among the commonplace that one must read the
whole work.
Harriet Monroe was born in Chicago and went to school in Georgetown,
D. C. In connection with the World's Exposition in Chicago she
received the honour of being formally invited to write a poem for the
dedication. Accordingly at the ceremony commemorating the four
hundredth anniversary of the discovery of America, 21 October, 1892,
her _Columbian Ode_ was given with music.
Harriet Monroe's chief services to the art of poetry are seen not so
much in her creative work as in her founding and editing of the
magazine called _Poetry_, of which I made mention in my remarks
on Vachel Lindsay. In addition to this monthly stimulation--which has
proved of distinct value both in awakening general interest and in
giving new poets an opportunity to be heard, Miss Monroe, with the
assistance of Alice Corbin Henderson, published in 1917 an anthology
of the new varieties of verse. Certain poets are somewhat arbitrarily
excluded, although their names are mentioned in the Preface; the title
of the book is _The New Poetry_; the authors are fairly
represented, and with some sins of commission the selections from each
are made with critical judgment. Every student of contemporary verse
should own a copy of this work.
In 1914 Miss Monroe produced a volume of her original poems, called
_You and I_. There are over two hundred pages, and those who look
in them for something strange and startling will be disappointed.
Knowing the author's sympathy with radicalism in art, and with all
modern extremists, the form of these verses is surprisingly
conservative. To be sure, the first one, _The Hotel_, is in a
kind of polyphonic prose, but it is not at all a fair sample of the
contents. Now whether the reading of many manuscripts has dulled Miss
Monroe's creative power or not, who can say? The fact is that most of
these poems are in no way remarkable either for feeling or expression
and many of them fail to rise above the level of the commonplace.
There is happily no straining for effect; but unhappily in most
instances there is no effect.
Alice Corbin (Mrs. Henderson) is a native of Virginia and a resident
of Chicago. She is co-editor with Miss Monroe of _The New Poetry_
anthology, wherein her own poems are represented. These indicate skill
in the manipulation of different metrical forms; and they reveal as
well a shrewd, healthy acceptance of life as it is. This feeling
communicates itself in a charming way to the reader; it is too
vigorous for acquiescence, too wise for blind optimism, but nearer
optimism than pessimism. It seems perhaps in certain aspects to
resemble the philosophy of Ralph Hodgson, although his command of the
art of poetry is beyond her range.
Sarah Norcliffe Cleghorn was born at Norfolk, Virginia, on the fourth
of February, 1876, but since childhood has lived in Vermont. She
studied at Radcliffe College, and has written much verse and prose. In
1915 a number of her lyrics were printed between the short stories in
a volume by her friend, Dorothy Canfield, called _Hillsboro
People_. In 1917 she published a book of verses, _Portraits and
Protests_, where the portraits are better than the protests. No one
has more truly or more sympathetically expressed the spirit of George
Herbert's poetry than Miss Cleghorn has given it with a handful of
words, in the lyric _In Bemerton Church_. But she is above all a
country mouse and a country muse; she knows her Vermont neighbours to
the skin and bone, and brings out artistically the austere sweetness
of their daily lives. I think I like best of all her work the poem
A SAINT'S HOURS
In the still cold before the sun,
_Her matins_ Her brothers and her sisters small
She woke, and washed and dressed each one.
And through the morning hours all
_Prime_ Singing above her broom she stood
And swept the house from hall to hall.
Then out she ran with tidings good,
_Tierce_ Across the field and down the lane,
To share them with the neighbourhood.
Four miles she walked, and home again,
_Sexts_ To sit through half the afternoon
And hear a feeble crone complain.
But when she saw the frosty moon
_Nones_ And lakes of shadow on the hill,
Her maiden dreams grew bright as noon.
She threw her pitying apron frill
_Vespers_ Over a little trembling mouse
When the sleek cat yawned on the sill
In the late hours and drowsy house.
_Evensong_ At last, too tired, beside her bed
She fell asleep--her prayers half said.
Is not this one of the high functions of poetry, to interpret the life
the poet knows best, and to interpret it always in terms of the
eleventh and twelfth commandments? Observe she loves the
sister-mother, and she loves the mouse as well as the cat. There is no
reason why those who love birds should not love cats as well; is a cat
the only animal who eats birds? It is a diverting spectacle, a man
with his mouth full of squab, insisting that cats should be
exterminated.
A woman who has done much for the advance of English poetry in America
by her influence on public critical opinion, is Jessie B. Rittenhouse.
She is a graduate of Genesee Wesleyan Seminary in Lima, New York,
taught Latin and English in Illinois and in Michigan, and for five
years was busily engaged in journalism. In 1904 she published a volume
of criticism on contemporary verse, and for the last fourteen years
has printed many essays of interpretation, dealing with the new poets.
I dare say no one in America is more familiar with the English poetry
of the twentieth century than she. She has been so occupied with this
important and fruitful work that she has had little time to compose
original verse; but any one who will read through her volume, _The
Door of Dreams_, will find it impossible not to admire her lyrical
gift. She has not yet shown enough sustained power to give her a place
with Anna Hempstead Branch or with Sara Teasdale; but she has the
capacity of putting much feeling into very few words.
Margaret Widdemer, the daughter of a clergyman, was born at
Doylestown, Pennsylvania, and was graduated from Drexel Institute
Library School in 1909. She has written verse and prose from early
childhood, but was not widely known until the appearance of her poem
_Factories_. In 1915 this was published in a book with other
pieces, and a revised, enlarged edition was printed in 1917, called by
the name of the now-famous song, and containing in addition nearly a
hundred lyrics. Although her soul is aflame at the omnipresence of
injustice in the world, her work covers a wide range of thought and
feeling. Her heart is swollen with pity for the sufferings of women;
but she is no sentimentalist. There is an intellectual independence, a
clear-headed womanly self-reliance about her way of thinking and
writing that is both refreshing and stimulating. In hope and in
despair she speaks for the many thousands of women, who first found
their voice in Ibsen's _Doll's House_; her poem, _The Modern
Woman to Her Lover_ has a cleanly honesty without any strained
pose. And although _Factories_ is doubtless her masterpiece in
its eloquent _Inasmuch as ye did it not_, she can portray a more
quiet and more lonely tragedy as well. Her poem called _The Two
Dyings_ might have been named _The Heart Knoweth its own
Bitterness_.
I can remember once, ere I was dead,
The sorrow and the prayer and bitter cry
When they who loved me stood around the bed,
Watching till I should die:
They need not so have grieved their souls for me,
Grouped statue-like to count my failing breath--
Only one thought strove faintly, bitterly
With the kind drug of Death:
How once upon a time, unwept, unknown,
Unhelped by pitying sigh or murmured prayer,
My youth died in slow agony alone
With none to watch or care.
Never in any period of the world's history was the table of life so
richly spread as in the years 1900-1914; women were just beginning to
realize that places ought to be reserved for them as well as for men,
when the war came, and there was no place for any one except a place
to fight the Black Plague of Kaiserism; now when the war is over,
suppose the women insist? What then? Before the French Revolution,
only a few were invited to sit down and eat, while the majority were
permitted to kneel and watch from a distance. A Frenchman once
remarked, "The great appear to us great because we are kneeling--let
us rise." They rose, and out of the turmoil came an enormous
enlargement of the dining-hall.
Carl Sandburg sings of Chicago with husky-haughty lips. I like Chicago
and I like poetry; but I do not much care for the combination as
illustrated in Mr. Sandburg's volume, _Chicago Poems_. I think it
has been overrated. It is pretentious rather than important. It is the
raw material of poetry, rather than the finished product. Mere passion
and imagination are not enough to make a poet, even when accompanied
by indignation. If feeling and appreciation could produce poetry, then
we should all be poets. But it is also necessary to know how to write.
Carl Sandburg was born at Galesburg, Illinois, on the sixth of
January, 1878. He has "worked his own way" through life with courage
and ambition, performing any kind of respectable indoor and outdoor
toil that would keep him alive. In the Spanish war, he immediately
enlisted, and belonged to the first military company that went to
Porto Rico. In 1898 he entered Lombard College; after his Freshman
year, he tried to enter West Point, succeeding in every test--physical
and mental--except that of arithmetic; there he has my hearty
sympathy, for in arithmetic I was always slow but not sure. He
returned to Lombard, and took the regular course for the next three
years, paying his way by hard work. His literary ambition had already
been awakened, and he attained distinction among his mates. Since
graduation he has had constant and varied experience in journalism.
For a group of poems, of which the first was _Chicago_, he was
awarded the Levinson prize as the best poem by an American that had
appeared in _Poetry_ during the year October 1913-October 1914.
In 1916 appeared a substantial volume from his pen, called _Chicago
Poems_.
His work gives one the impression of being chaotic in form and
content. Miss Lowell quotes him as saying, "I don't know where I'm
going, but I'm on my way." According to G. K. Chesterton, this
attitude was characteristic of modern life in general before the war.
We don't know where we're going,--but let's put on more speed. Perhaps
the other extreme, so characteristic of our southern African friends,
is no better, yet it has a charm absent in the strenuosity of mere
eagerness. A Southern negro, being asked whither he was going, replied
"I aint goin' nowhar: Ise been done gone whar I was goin'!" It would
appear that there is sufficient room between these extremes for
individual and social progress.
In manner Mr. Sandburg is closer to Walt Whitman than almost any other
of our contemporary poets. I do not call him an imitator, and
certainly he is no plagiarist; but I like that part of his work which
is farthest removed from the manner of the man of Camden. Walt Whitman
was a genius; and whilst it is quite possible and at times desirable
to imitate his freedom in composition, it is not possible to catch the
secret of his power. It would be an ungracious task to quote Mr.
Sandburg at his worst; we are all pretty bad at our worst, whether we
are poets or not; I prefer to cite one of his poems which proves to me
that he is not only an original writer, but that he possesses a
perceptive power of beauty that transforms the commonplace into
something of poignant charm, like the song of the nightingale:
Desolate and lone
All night long on the lake
Where fog trails and mist creeps,
The whistle of a boat
Calls and cries unendingly,
Like some lost child
In tears and trouble
Hunting the harbour's breast
And the harbour's eyes.
He has a notable gift for effective poetic figures of speech; in his
_Nocturne in a Deserted Brickyard_, an old pond in the moonlight
is a "wide dreaming pansy." This and other pieces show true power of
poetic interpretation; which makes me believe that the author ought to
and will greatly surpass the average excellence exhibited in
_Chicago Poems_.
John Curtis Underwood is not only a dynamic, but an insurgent poet and
critic. He has published four volumes of poems, _The Iron Muse_
(1910), _Americans_ (1912), _Processionals_ (1915), and
_War Flames_ (1917). The roar of city streets and the deafening
pounding of machinery resound through his pages; yet he somehow or
other makes a singing voice heard amid the din. In fact he uses the
din as an accompaniment; he is a kind of vocal Tubal Cain. He writes
about strap-hangers, chorus girls, moving pictures, convicts,
hospitals, bridge-builders and construction gangs--a symphony of
noise, where everybody plays some instrument. He is no pessimist and
he is not sour; there are a good many "damns" and "hells" in his
verse, because, whatever he lacks, he does not lack emphasis. His
philosophy seems to be similar to that of the last two stanzas of
_In Memoriam_, though Mr. Underwood expresses it somewhat more
concretely.
Leading the long procession through the midnight,
Man that was ether, fire, sea, germ and ape,
Out of the aeons blind of slime emerging,
Out of the aeons black where ill went groping,
Finding the fire, was fused to human shape.
Heading the dreary marches through dark ages;
Where the rest perished that the rest might be,
Out of the aeons raw and red of bloodshed,
Man that was caveman, found the stars. Forever
Man to the stars goes marching from the sea.
His poem _Central_, in which the telephone girl's work is
interpreted, is as typical as any of Mr. Underwood's style; and no
one, I think, can fail to see the merit in his method.
Though men may build their bridges high and plant their piers
below the sea,
And drive their trains across the sky; a higher task is left to
me.
I bridge the void 'twixt soul and soul; I bring the longing
lovers near.
I draw you to your spirit's goal. I serve the ends of fraud
and fear.
The older fates sat in the sun. The cords they spun were
short and slight.
I set my stitches one by one, where life electric fetters night,
Till it outstrips the planet's speed, and out of darkness leaps
to day;
And men in Maine shall hear and heed a voice from San
Francisco Bay.
There is such a display of cynical cleverness in the verse of T. S.
Eliot that I think he might be able to write almost anything except
poetry. He has an aggressive champion in the distinguished novelist,
May Sinclair, who says his best work is equal to the best of Robert
Browning.
John G. Neihardt was born in Illinois on the eighth of January, 1881.
From 1901 to 1907 he lived among the Nebraska Indians, studying their
folklore and characteristics. He has published a number of books, of
which the best is perhaps _A Bundle of Myrrh_, 1907. In 1915 he
produced an epic of the American Fur Trade, preparing himself for the
task as follows: "I descended the Missouri in an open boat, and also
ascended the Yellowstone for a considerable distance. On the upper
river the country was practically unchanged; and for one familiar with
what had taken place there, it was no difficult feat of the
imagination to revive the details of that time--the men, the trails,
the boats, the trading posts where veritable satraps once ruled under
the sway of the American Fur Company."
I heartily envy him these experiences; to me every river is an
adventure, even the quiet, serious old Connecticut.
Yet the poem that resulted from these visions is not remarkable.
Nothing, I suppose, is more difficult than to write a good long poem.
Poe disapproved of the undertaking in itself; and only men of
undoubted genius have succeeded, whereas writers of hardly more than
ordinary talent have occasionally turned off something combining
brevity and excellence. I feel sure that Mr. Neihardt talks about this
journey more impressively than he writes about it. His love lyrics, in
_A Bundle of Myrrh_, are much better. The tendency to eroticism
is redeemed by sincerity of feeling.
Charles Wharton Stork was born at Philadelphia, on the twelfth of
February, 1881, and studied at Haverford, Harvard, and the University
of Pennsylvania. He is a scholar, a member of the English Faculty of
the University of Pennsylvania, and has made many translations of
Scandinavian poems. Always interested in modern developments of
poetry, both in America and Europe, he is at present the editor of
_Contemporary Verse_, a monthly magazine exclusively made up of
original poems. This periodical has been of considerable assistance to
students of contemporary poetry, for it has given an opportunity to
hitherto unknown writers, and often it contains some notable
contribution from men of established reputation. Thus the number for
April, 1918, may some day have bibliographical value, since it leads
off with a remarkable poem by Vachel Lindsay, _The Eyes of Queen
Esther_. I advise collectors to secure this, and to subscribe to
the magazine. Mr. Stork has written much verse himself, of which
_Flying Fish: an Ode_, may be taken as illustrative of his
originality and imagination.
Another excellent magazine of contemporary poetry is _The
Sonnet_, edited and published by Mahlon Leonard Fisher, at
Williamsport, Pennsylvania, of which the first number bears the date
February, 1917. This appears bimonthly; and while the attempt to
publish any magazine whatever displays courage, Mr. Fisher is
apparently on the side of the conservatives in art. "We have attempted
no propagandism, and acknowledged no revolution," is the sentence that
forms the signature to his periodical. Furthermore, we are informed
that "the sole aim of _The Sonnet_ is to publish poetry so well
thought of by its makers that they were willing to place it within
strict confines. The magazine will have nothing to say in defence of
its name. It will neither attack nor respond to attacks." It has
certainly printed some good sonnets, among which are many by the
editor. In 1917 appeared a beautiful little volume, limited to two
hundred copies, and published by the author--_Sonnets: a First
Series_. Fifty specimens are included, all written by Mr. Fisher.
More than a few have grace and truth.
A new aspirant appeared in 1917 with his first volume, _Streets and
Faces_. This is Scudder Middleton, brother of George Middleton, the
dramatist. He was born at New York, on the ninth of September, 1888,
and studied at Columbia. His little book of poetry contains nothing
profound, yet there is evidence of undoubted talent which gives me
hope. The best poem of his that I have seen was published in
_Contemporary Verse_ in 1917, and makes a fine recessional to Mr.
Braithwaite's Anthology.
THE POETS
We need you now, strong guardians of our hearts,
Now, when a darkness lies on sea and land,
When we of weakening faith forget our parts
And bow before the falling of the sand.
Be with us now or we betray our trust
And say, "There is no wisdom but in death"--
Remembering lovely eyes now closed with dust--
"There is no beauty that outlasts the breath."
For we are growing blind and cannot see,
Beyond the clouds that stand like prison bars,
The changeless regions of our empery,
Where once we moved in friendship with the stars.
O children of the light, now in our grief
Give us again the solace of belief.
A young Princeton student, John Peale Bishop, First Lieutenant of
Infantry in the Officers Reserve Corps, who studied the art of verse
under the instruction of Alfred Noyes, published in 1917 a little book
of original poems, with the modest title, _Green Fruit_. These
were mostly written during his last undergraduate year at college, and
would not perhaps have been printed now had he not entered the
service. The subjects range from the Princeton Inn to Italy. Mr.
Bishop is a clear-voiced singer, and there are original songs here,
which owe nothing to other poets. Such a poem as _Mushrooms_ is
convincing proof of ability; and there is an excellent spirit in him.
William Aspenwall Bradley was born at Hartford, Connecticut, on the
eighth of February, 1878. He was a special student at Harvard, and
took his bachelor's and master's degrees at Columbia. He is now in the
Government War Service. He wrote an admirable _Life of Bryant_ in
the English Men of Letters series, and has made many scholarly
contributions to the literature of criticism. He has issued two
volumes of original verse, of which perhaps the better known is _Old
Christmas_, 1917. This is composed of tales of the Cumberland
region in Kentucky. These poem-stories are not only full of dramatic
power, comic and tragic, but they contain striking portraits. I think,
however, that I like best Mr. Bradley's nature-pictures. The pleasure
of recognition will be felt by everyone who reads the first few lines
of
AUTUMN
Now shorter grow November days,
And leaden ponds begin to glaze
With their first ice, while every night
The hoarfrost leaves the meadows white
Like wimples spread upon the lawn
By maidens who are up at dawn,
And sparkling diamonds may be seen
Strewing the close-clipped golfing green.
But the slow sun dispels at noon
The season's work begun too soon,
Bidding faint filmy mists arise
And fold in softest draperies
The distant woodlands bleak and bare,
Until they seem to melt in air.
William Griffiths was born at Memphis, Missouri, on the fifteenth of
February 1876, and received his education at the public schools. He
has been a "newspaper man" and magazine editor, and has produced a
number of books in verse and prose, of which the best example is
_City Pastorals_, originally published in 1915, revised and
reissued in 1918. The title of this book appears to be a paradox; but
its significance is clear enough after one has read a few pages. It is
an original and interesting way of bringing the breath of the country
into the town. The scene is a New York Club on a side street; the year
is 1914; the three speakers are Brown, Gray, Green; the four divisions
are Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter. The style is for the most part
rimed stanzas in short metre, which go trippingly on the tongue. Grace
and delicacy characterize the pictures of the country that the men
bring back to the smoky city from their travels.
Occultly through a riven cloud
The ancient river shines again,
Still wandering like a silver road
Among the cities in the plain.
On far horizons softly lean
The hills against the coming night;
And mantled with a russet green,
The orchards gather into sight.
Through apples hanging high and low,
In ruddy colours, deeply spread
From core to rind, the sun melts slow,
With gold upcaught against the red.
And here and there, with sighs and calls,
Among the hills an echo rings
Remotely as the water falls
And down the meadow softly sings.
A wind goes by; the air is stirred
With secret whispers far and near;
Another token--just a word
Had made the rose's meaning clear.
I see the fields; I catch the scent
Of pine cones and the fresh split wood,
Where bearded moss and stains are blent
With autumn rains--and all is good.
An air, arising, turns and lifts
The fallen leaves where they had lain
Beneath the trees, then weakly shifts
And slowly settles back again.
While with far shouts, now homeward bound,
Across the fields the reapers go;
And, with the darkness closing round,
The lilies of the twilight blow.
Many of the other poems in this volume, that follow the _City
Pastorals_, are interpretations of various individuals and of
various nationalities. Mr. Griffith has a gift for the making of
epigrams; and indeed he has studied concision in all his work. It may
be that this is a result of his long years of training in journalism;
he must have silently implored the writers of manuscripts he was forced
to read to leave their damnable faces and begin. Certain it is, that
although he can write smoothly flowing music, there is hardly a page in
his whole book that does not contain some idea worth thinking about.
His wine of Cyprus has both body and bouquet.
Three professional teachers of youth who write poetry as an avocation
are John Erskine, professor at Columbia, whose poems bear the impress
of an original and powerful personality, William Ellery Leonard,
professor in the University of Wisconsin, the author of a number of
volumes of poems, some of which show originality in conception and
style, and William Thornton Whitsett, of Whitsett Institute, Whitsett,
North Carolina, whose book _Saber and Song_ (1917), exhibits such
variations in merit that if one read only a few pages one might be
completely deceived as to the author's actual ability. His besetting
sin as an artist is moralizing. Fully half the contents of the volume
are uninspired, commonplace, flat. But when he forgets to preach, he
can write true poetry. He has the lyrical gift to a high degree, and
has a rather remarkable command of the technique of the art. _An Ode
to Expression, The Soul of the Sea_, and some of the _Sonnets_,
fully justify their publication. The author is rather too fond of the
old "poetic diction"; he might do well to study simplicity.
A poet who differs from the two last mentioned in her ability to
maintain a certain level of excellence is Helen Hay Whitney. She
perhaps inherited her almost infallible good taste and literary tact
from her distinguished father, that wholly admirable person, John Hay.
His greatness as an international statesman was matched by the
extraordinary charm of his character, which expressed itself in
everything he wrote, and in numberless acts of kindness. He was the
ideal American gentleman. One feels in reading the poems of Mrs.
Whitney that each one is written both creatively and critically. I
mean that she has the primal impulse to write, but that in writing, and
more especially in revising, every line is submitted to her own severe
scrutiny. I am not sure that she has not destroyed some of her best
work, though this is of course only conjecture. At all events, while
she makes no mistakes, I sometimes feel that there is too much
repression. She is one of our best American sonnet-writers. Such a poem
as _After Rain_ is a work of art.
Corinne Roosevelt Robinson (Mrs. Douglas Robinson, sister of Theodore
Roosevelt) has published two volumes of poems, _The Call of
Brotherhood_, 1912, and _One Woman to Another_, 1914. I hope
that she will speedily collect in a third book the fugitive pieces
printed in various magazines since 1914. Mrs. Robinson's poetry comes
from a full mind and a full heart. There is the knowledge born of
experience combined with spiritual revelation. She is an excellent
illustration of the possibility of living to the uttermost in the
crowded avenues of the world without any loss of religious or moral
values. It must take a strong nature to absorb so much of the strenuous
activities of metropolitan society while keeping the heart's sources as
clear as a mountain spring. It is the exact opposite of asceticism, yet
seems not to lose anything important gained by the ascetic vocation. She
does not serve God and Mammon: she serves God, and makes Mammon serve
her. This complete roundness and richness of development could not have
been accomplished except through pain. She expresses grief's
contribution in the following sonnet:
Beloved, from the hour that you were born
I loved you with the love whose birth is pain;
And now, that I have lost you, I must mourn
With mortal anguish, born of love again;
And so I know that Love and Pain are one,
Yet not one single joy would I forego.--
The very radiance of the tropic sun
Makes the dark night but darker here below.
Mine is no coward soul to count the cost;
The coin of love with lavish hand I spend,
And though the sunlight of my life is lost
And I must walk in shadow to the end,--
I gladly press the cross against my heart--
And welcome Pain, that is Love's counterpart!
Meredith Nicholson, the American novelist, like Mr. Galsworthy, Mr.
Phillpotts and many other novelists in England, has published a volume
of original verse, _Poems_, 1906. It is possibly a sign of the
growing interest in poetry that so many who have won distinction in
prose should in these latter days strive for the laurel crown. Mr.
Nicholson's poems are a kind of riming journal of his heart. It is
clear that he is not a born poet, for the flame of inspiration is not
in these pages, nor do we find the perfect phrase or ravishing music;
what we do have is well worth preservation in print--the manly,
dignified, imaginative speculations of a clear and honest mind.
Furthermore, although he writes verse with his left hand, there is
displayed in many of these pieces a mastery of the exact meaning of
words, attained possibly by his long years of training in the other
harmony of prose.
Witter Bynner--the spelling of whose name I defy any one to remember,
and envelopes addressed to him must be a collection of
curiosities--was born at Brooklyn on the tenth of August, 1881. He was
graduated from Harvard in 1902, and addressed his _Alma Mater_ in
an _Ode To Harvard_, published in book form in 1907. In 1917 he
collected in one attractive volume, _Grenstone Poems_, the best
of his production--exclusive of his plays and prose--up to that date.
One who knew Mr. Bynner only by the terrific white slave drama
_Tiger_, would be quite unprepared for the sylvan sweetness of
the Grenstone poems. Their environment, mainly rural, does not
localize the sentiment overmuch; for the poet's mind is a kingdom,
even though he is bounded in a nutshell. The environment, however, may
be partly responsible for the spirit of healthy cheerfulness that
animates these verses; whatever they lack, they certainly do not lack
purity and charm. Far from the madding crowd the singer finds
contentment, which is the keynote of these songs; happiness built on
firm indestructible foundations. Some of the divisional titles
indicate the range of subjects: _Neighbors and the Countryside,
Children and Death, Wisdom and Unwisdom, Celia, Away from
Grenstone_, where homesickness is expressed while travelling in the
Far East. And the tone is clearly sounded in
A GRACE BEFORE THE POEMS
"Is there such a place as Grenstone?"
Celia, hear them ask!
Tell me, shall we share it with them?--
Shall we let them breathe and bask
On the windy, sunny pasture,
Where the hill-top turns its face
Toward the valley of the mountain,
Our beloved place?
Shall we show them through our churchyard,
With its crumbling wall
Set between the dead and living?
Shall our willowed waterfall,
Huckleberries, pines and bluebirds
Be a secret we shall share?--
If they make but little of it,
Celia, shall we care?
It will be seen that the independence of Mr. Bynner is quite different
from the independence of Mr. Underwood; but they both have the secret
of self-sufficiency.
Another loyal Harvard poet is Herman Hagedorn, who was born at New
York in 1882, and took his degree at college in 1907. For some time he
was on the English Faculty at Harvard, and has a scholar's knowledge
of English literature. He has published plays and books of verse, of
which the best known are _A Troop of the Guard_ (1909) and
_Poems and Ballads_, which appeared the same year. He has a good
command of lyrical expression, which ought to enable him in the years
to come to produce work of richer content than his verses have thus
far shown.
The best known of the Harvard poets of the twentieth century is Percy
Mackaye, who is still better known as a playwright and maker of
pageants. He was born at New York, on the sixteenth of March, 1875,
and was graduated from Harvard in 1897. He has travelled much in
Europe, and has given many lectures on dramatic art in America. His
poetry may be collectively studied in one volume of appalling
avoirdupois, published in 1916. It takes a strong wrist to hold it,
but it is worth the effort.
The chief difficulty with Mr. Mackaye is his inability to escape from
his opinions. He is far too self-conscious, much too much preoccupied
with theory, both in drama and in poetry. He can write nothing without
explaining his motive, without trying to show himself and others the
aim of poetry and drama. However morally noble all this may be--and it
surely is that--it hampers the author. I wish he could for once
completely forget all artistic propaganda, completely forget himself,
and give his Muse a chance. "She needs no introduction to this
audience."
There is no doubt that he has something of the divine gift. His
_Centenary Ode on Lincoln_, published separately in 1909, was the
best out of all the immense number of effusions I read that year. He
rose to a great occasion.
One of his most original pieces is the dog-vivisection poem, called
_The Heart in the Jar_. There is a tumultuous passion in it
almost overpowering; and no one but a true poet could ever have
thought of or have employed such symbolism. Mr. Mackaye's mind is so
alert, so inquisitive, so volcanic, that he seems to me always just
about to produce something that shall surpass his previous efforts. I
have certainly not lost faith in his future.
John Gould Fletcher was born at Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1886. He
studied at Andover and at Harvard, and has lived much in London. He
has become identified with the Imagists. Personally I wish that Mr.
Fletcher would use his remarkable power to create gorgeous imagery in
the production of orthodox forms of verse. Free verse ought to be less
monotonous than constantly repeated sonnets, quatrains, and
stanza-forms; but the fact is just the other way. A volume made up
entirely of free verse, unless written by a man of genius, has a
capacity to bore the reader that at times seems almost criminal.
Conrad Aiken was born at Savannah, Georgia, on the fifth of August,
1889, is a graduate of Harvard and lives in Boston. He has published
several volumes of poems, among which _Earth Triumphant_ (1914)
is representative of his ability and philosophy. It certainly
represents his ability more fairly than _The Jig of Forslin_
(1916), which is both pretentious and dull. I suspect few persons have
read every page of it. I have.
Not yet thirty, Mr. Aiken is widely known; but the duration of his
fame will depend upon his future work. He has thus far shown the power
to write melodious music, to paint nature pictures in warm colours; he
is ever on the quest of Beauty. His sensible preface to _Earth
Triumphant_ calls attention to certain similarities between his
style in verse-narrative and that of John Masefield. But he is not a
copier, and his work is his own. Some poets are on the earth; some are
in the air; some, like Shelley, are in the aether. Conrad Aiken is
firmly, gladly on the earth. He believes that our only paradise is
here and now.
He surely has the gift of singing speech, but his poetry lacks
intellectual content. In the volume _Nocturne of Remembered
Spring_ (1917), there is a dreamy charm, like the hesitating notes
of Chopin.
Although his contribution to the advance of poetry is not important,
he has the equipment of a poet. When he has more to say, he will have
no difficulty in making us listen; for he understands the magic of
words. Thus far his poems are something like librettos; they don't
mean much without the music. Let him remember the bitter cry of old
Henry Vaughan: every artist, racked by labour-pains, will understand
what Vaughan meant by calling this piece _Anguish_:
O! 'tis an easy thing
To write and sing;
But to write true, unfeigned verse
Is very hard! O God, disperse
These weights, and give my spirit leave
To act as well as to conceive
Among our young American poets there are few who have inherited in
richer or purer measure than William Alexander Percy. He was born at
Greenville, Mississippi, on the fourth of May, 1885, and studied at
the University of the South and at the Harvard Law School. He is now
in military service. In 1915, his volume of poems, _Sappho in
Leukas_, attracted immediately the attention of discriminating
critics. The prologue shows that noble devotion to art, that high
faith in it, entirely beyond the understanding of the Philistine, but
which awakens an instant and accurate vibration in the heart of every
lover of poetry.
O singing heart, think not of aught save song;
Beauty can do no wrong.
Let but th' inviolable music shake
Golden on golden flake,
Down to the human throng,
And one, one surely, will look up, and hear and wake.
Weigh not the rapture; measure not nor sift
God's dark, delirious gift;
But deaf to immortality or gain,
Give as the shining rain,
Thy music pure and swift,
And here or there, sometime, somewhere, 'twill reach the grain.
There is a wide range of subjects in this volume, Greek, mediaeval,
and modern--inspiration from, books and inspiration from outdoors.
But there is not a single poem that could be called crude or flat.
Mr. Percy is a poet and an artist; he can be ornate and he can be
severe; but in both phases there is a dignity not always
characteristic of contemporary verse. I do not prophesy--but I feel
certain of this man.
One day in 1917, I clipped a nameless poem from a daily newspaper, and
carried it in my pocketbook for months. Later I discovered that it
was written by Mr. Percy, and had first appeared in _The
Bellman_. I know of no poem by any American published in the year
1917 that for combined beauty of thought and beauty of expression is
superior to this little masterpiece.
OVERTONES
I heard a bird at break of day
Sing from the autumn trees
A song so mystical and calm,
So full of certainties,
No man, I think, could listen long
Except upon his knees.
Yet this was but a simple bird,
Alone, among dead trees.
Alan Seeger--whose heroic death glorified his youth--was born at New
York on the twenty-second of June, 1888. He studied at Harvard; then
lived in Paris, and no one has ever loved Paris more than he. He
enlisted in the Foreign Legion of France at the outbreak of the war in
1914, and fell on the fourth of July, 1916. His letters show his mind
and heart clearly.
He knew his poetry was good, and that it would not die with his body.
In the last letter he wrote, we find these words: "I will write you
soon if I get through all right. If not, my only earthly care is for
my poems. Add the ode I sent you and the three sonnets to my last
volume and you will have _opera omnia quae existant_."
He wrote his autobiography in one of his last sonnets, paying poetic
tribute to Philip Sidney--lover of woman, lover of battle, lover of
art.
Sidney, in whom the heydey of romance
Came to its precious and most perfect flower,
Whether you tourneyed with victorious lance
Or brought sweet roundelays to Stella's bower,
I give myself some credit for the way
I have kept clean of what enslaves and lowers,
Shunned the ideals of our present day
And studied those that were esteemed in yours;
For, turning from the mob that buys Success
By sacrificing all life's better part,
Down the free roads of human happiness
I frolicked, poor of purse but light of heart,
And lived in strict devotion all along
To my three idols--Love and Arms and Song.
His most famous poem, _I Have a Rendezvous with Death_, is almost
intolerably painful in its tragic beauty, in its contrast between the
darkness of the unchanging shadow and the apple-blossoms of the sunny
air--above all, because we read it after both Youth and Death have
kept their word, and met at the place appointed.
He was an inspired poet. Poetry came from him as naturally as rain
from clouds. His magnificent _Ode in Memory of the American
Volunteers Fallen in France_ has a nobility of phrase that matches
the elevation of thought. Work like this cannot be forgotten.
Alan Seeger was an Elizabethan. He had a consuming passion for
beauty--his only religion. He loved women and he loved war, like the
gallant, picturesque old soldiers of fortune. There was no pose in all
this; his was a brave, uncalculating, forthright nature, that gave
everything he had and was, without a shade of fear or a shade of
regret. He is one of the most fiery spirits of our time, and like
Rupert Brooke, he will be thought of as immortally young.