A GROUP OF YALE POETS
Henry A. Beers--the fine quality of his literary style in
prose and verse--force and grace--finished art--his humour--C.
M. Lewis--his war poem--E. B. Reed--_Lyra Yalensis_--F.
E. Pierce--his farm lyrics--Brian Hooker--his strong
sonnets--his _Turns_--R. C. Rogers--_The
Rosary_--Rupert Hughes--novelist, playwright, musician,
poet--Robert Hunger--his singing--R. B. Glaenzer--his
fancies--Benjamin R. C. Low--his growth--William R. Benét--his
vitality and optimism--Arthur Colton--his Chaucer poem--Allan
Updegraff--_The Time and the Place_--Lee Wilson Dodd--his
development--a list of other Yale Poets--Stephen V. Benét.
During the twentieth century there has been flowing a fountain of
verse from the faculty, young alumni, and undergraduates of Yale
University; and I reserve this space at the end of my hook for a
consideration of the Yale group of poets, some of whom are already
widely known and some of whom seem destined to be. I am not thinking
of magazine verse or of fugitive pieces, but only of independent
volumes of original poems. Yale has always been close to the national
life of America; and the recent outburst of poetry from her sons is
simply additional evidence of the renaissance all over the United
States. Anyhow, the fact is worth recording.
Professor Henry A. Beers was born at Buffalo on the second of July,
1847. He was admitted to the New York Bar in 1870, but in 1871 became
an Instructor in English Literature at Yale, teaching continuously for
forty-five years, when he retired. He has written--at too rare
intervals--all his life. His book of short stories, containing _A
Suburban Pastoral_ and _Split Zephyr_, the last-named being,
according to Meredith Nicholson, the best story of college life ever
printed, would possibly have attracted more general attention were it
not for its prevailing tone of quiet, unobtrusive pessimism, an
unwelcome note in America. I am as sure of the high quality of _A
Suburban Pastoral_ as I am sure of anything; and have never found a
critic who, after reading the tale, disagreed with me. In 1885
Professor Beers published a little volume of poems, _The Thankless
Muse_; and in 1917 he collected in a thin book _The Two
Twilights_, the best of his youthful and mature poetic production.
The variety of expression is so great that no two poems are in the
same mood. In _Love, Death, and Life_ we have one of the most
passionate love-poems in American literature; in _The Pasture
Bars_ the valediction has the soft, pure tone of a silver bell.
Professor Beers has both vigour and grace. His fastidious taste
permits him to write little, and to print only a small part of what he
writes. But the force of his poetic language is so extraordinary that
it has sometimes led to a complete and unfortunate misinterpretation
of his work. In _The Dying Pantheist to the Priest_, he wrote a
poem as purely dramatic, as non-personal, as the monologues of
Browning; he quite successfully represented the attitude of an
(imaginary) defiant, unrepentant pagan to an (imaginary) priest who
wished to save him in his last moments. The speeches put into the
mouth of the pantheist no more represent Mr. Beers's own sentiments
than Browning's poem _Confessions_ represented Browning's
attitude toward death and religion; yet it is perhaps a tribute to the
fervour of the lyric that many readers have taken it as a violent
attack on Christian theology.
Just as I am certain of the finished art of _A Suburban
Pastoral,_ I am equally certain of the beauty and nobility of the
poetry in _The Two Twilights._ This volume gives its author an
earned place in the front rank of living American poets.
To me one of the most original and charming of the songs is the
valediction to New York--and the homage to New Haven.
NUNC DIMITTIS
Highlands of Navesink,
By the blue ocean's brink,
Let your grey bases drink
Deep of the sea.
Tide that comes flooding up,
Fill me a stirrup cup,
Pledge me a parting sup,
Now I go free.
Wall of the Palisades,
I know where greener glades,
Deeper glens, darker shades,
Hemlock and pine,
Far toward the morning lie
Under a bluer sky,
Lifted by cliffs as high,
Haunts that are mine.
Marshes of Hackensack,
See, I am going back
Where the Quinnipiac
Winds to the bay,
Down its long meadow track,
Piled in the myriad stack,
Where in wide bivouac
Camps the salt hay.
Spire of old Trinity,
Never again to be
Seamark and goal to me
As I walk down;
Chimes on the upper air,
Calling in vain to prayer,
Squandering your music where
Roars the black town:
Bless me once ere I ride
Off to God's countryside,
Where in the treetops hide
Belfry and bell;
Tongues of the steeple towers,
Telling the slow-paced hours--
Hail, thou still town of ours--
Bedlam, farewell!
Those who are familiar with Professor Beers's humour, as expressed in
_The Ways of Yale,_ will wish that he had preserved also in this
later book some of his whimsicalities, as in the poem _A Fish
Story,_ which begins:
A whale of great porosity,
And small specific gravity,
Dived down with much velocity
Beneath the sea's concavity.
But soon the weight of water
Squeezed in his fat immensity,
Which varied--as it ought to--
Inversely as his density.
Professor Charlton M. Lewis was born at Brooklyn on the fourth of
March, 1866. He took his B.A. at Yale in 1886, and an LL.B at Columbia
in 1889. For some years he was a practising lawyer in New York; in
1895 he became a member of the Yale Faculty. In 1903 he published
_Gawayne and the Green Knight_, a long poem, in which humour and
imagination are delightfully mingled. His lyric _Pro Patria_
(1937) is a good illustration of his poetic powers; it is indeed one
of America's finest literary contributions to the war.
PRO PATRIA
Remember, as the flaming car
Of ruin nearer rolls,
That of our country's substance are
Our bodies and our souls.
Her dust we are, and to her dust
Our ashes shall descend:
Who craves a lineage more august
Or a diviner end?
By blessing of her fruitful dews,
Her suns and winds and rains,
We have her granite in our thews,
Her iron in our veins.
And, sleeping in her sacred earth,
The ever-living dead
On the dark miracle of birth
Their holy influence shed....
So, in the faith our fathers kept,
We live, and long to die;
To sleep forever, as they have slept,
Under a sunlit sky;
Close-folded to our mother's heart
To find our souls' release--
A secret coeternal part
Of her eternal peace;--
Where Hood, Saint Helen's and Rainier,
In vestal raiment, keep
Inviolate through the varying year
Their immemorial sleep;
Or where the meadow-lark, in coy
But calm profusion, pours
The liquid fragments of his joy
On old colonial shores.
Professor Edward B. Reed, B.A. 1894, published in 1913 a tiny volume
of academic verse, called _Lyra Yalensis_. This contains happily
humorous comment on college life and college customs, and as the
entire edition was almost immediately sold, the book has already
become something of a rarity. In 1917, he collected the best of his
more ambitious work in _Sea Moods_, of which one of the most
impressive is
THE DAWN
He shook his head as he turned away--
"Is it life or death?" "We shall know by day."
Out from the wards where the sick folk lie,
Out neath the black and bitter sky.
Past one o'clock and the wind is chill,
The snow-clad streets are ghostly still;
No friendly noise, no cheering light,
So calm the city sleeps to-night,
I think its soul has taken flight.
Back to the empty home--a thrill,
A shudder at its darkened sill,
For the clock chimes as on that morn,
That happy day when she was born.
And now, inexorably slow,
To life or death the hours go.
Time's wings are clipped; he scarce doth creep.
Tonight no drug could bring you sleep;
Watch at the window for the day;
'Tis all that's left--to watch and pray.
But I think the prayer of an anguished heart
Must pierce that bleak sky like a dart,
And tear that pall of clouds apart.
The poplars, edging the frozen lawn,
Shudder and whisper: "Wait till dawn."
Two spirits stand beside her bed
Softly stroking her curly head.
Death whispers, "Come"--Life whispers, "Stay."
Child, little child, go not away.
Life pleads, "Remember"--and Death, "Forget."
Little child, little child, go not yet.
By all your mother's love and pain,
Child of our heart, child of our brain,
Stay with us; go not till you see
The Fairyland that life can be.
. . . . . . . .
The poplars, edging the frozen lawn,
Are dancing and singing. "Thank God--the Dawn!"
Professor Frederick E. Pierce, B.A. 1904, has produced three volumes
of poems, of which _The World that God Destroyed_ exhibits an
epic sweep of the imagination. He imagines a world far off in space,
where every form of life has perished save rank vegetation. One day in
their wanderings over the universe, Lucifer and Michael meet on this
dead ball. A truce is declared and each expresses some of the wisdom
bought by experience.
The upas dripped its poison on the ground
Harmless; the silvery veil of fog went up
From mouldering fen and cold, malarial pool,
But brought no taint and threatened ill to none.
Far off adown the mountain's craggy side
From time to time the avalanche thundered, sounding
Like sport of giant children, and the rocks
Whereon it smote re-echoed innocently.
Then in a pause of silence Lucifer
Struck music from the harp again and sang.
"I am the shadow that the sunbeams bring,
I am the thorn from which the roses spring;
Without the thorn would be no blossoming,
Nor were there shadow if there were no gleam.
I am a leaf before a wind that blows,
I am the foam that down the current goes;
I work a work on earth that no man knows,
And God Works too,--I am not what I seem.
"There comes a purer morn whose stainless glow
Shall cast no shadow on the ground below,
And fairer flowers without the thorn shall blow,
And earth at last fulfil her parent's dream.
Oh race of men who sin and know not why,
I am as you and you are even as I;
We all shall die at length and gladly die;
Yet even our deaths shall be not what they seem."
Then Michael raised the golden lyre, and struck A note more solemn
soft, and made reply.
"There dwelt a doubt within my mind of yore;
I sought to end that doubt and laboured sore;
But now I search its mystery no more,
But leave it safe within the Eternal's hand.
The tiger hunts the lamb and yearns to kill,
Himself by famine hunted, fiercer still;
And much there is that seems unmingled ill;
But God is wise, and God can understand.
"All things on earth in endless balance sway;
Day follows night and night succeeds the day;
And so the powers of good and evil may
Work out the purpose that his wisdom planned.
Eternal day would parch the dewy mould,
Eternal night would freeze the lands with cold;
But wise was God who planned the world of old;
I rest in Him for He can understand.
"Yet good and evil still their wills oppose;
And serving both, we still must serve as foes
On yon far globe that teems with human woes;
And sin thou art, though God work through thy hand.
But here the race of man is now no more;
The task is done, the long day's work is o'er;
One hour I'll dream thee what thou wert of yore,
Though changed thou art, too changed to understand."
All day sat Michael there with Lucifer
Talking of things unknown to men, old tales
And memories dating back beyond all time.
And all night long beneath the lonely stars,
That watched no more the sins of man, they lay,
The angel's lofty face at rest against
The dark cheek scarred with thunder.
Morning came,
And each departed on his separate way;
But each looked back and lingered as he passed.
Some of his best work, however, appears in short pieces that might
best be described as lyrics of the farm, or, to use a title discarded
by Tennyson, _Idylls of the Hearth_. Mr. Pierce knows the lonely
farm-houses of New England, both by inheritance and habitation, and is
a true interpreter of the spirit of rural life.
One of the best-known of the group of Yale poets is Brian Hooker, who
was graduated from Yale in 1902, and for some years was a member of
the Faculty. His _Poems_ (1915) are an important addition to
contemporary literature. He is a master of the sonnet-form, as any one
may see for himself in reading
GHOSTS
The dead return to us continually;
Not at the void of night, as fables feign,
In some lone spot where murdered bones have lain
Wailing for vengeance to the passer-by;
But in the merry clamour and full cry
Of the brave noon, our dead whom we have slain
And in forgotten graves hidden in vain,
Rise up and stand beside us terribly.
Sick with the beauty of their dear decay
We conjure them with laughters onerous
And drunkenness of labour; yet not thus
May we absolve ourselves of yesterday--
We cannot put those clinging arms away,
Nor those glad faces yearning over us.
Mr. Hooker also includes in this volume a number of _Turns_,
which he describes as "a new fixed form: Seven lines, in any rhythm,
isometric and of not more than four feet; Rhyming AbacbcA, the first
line and the last a Refrain; the Idea (as the name suggests) to Turn
upon the recurrence of the Refrain at the end with a different sense
from that which it bears at the beginning." For example:
MISERERE
Ah, God, my strength again!--
Not power, nor joy, but these:
The waking without pain,
The ardour for the task,
And in the evening, peace.
Is it so much to ask?
Ah, God, my strength again!
American literature suffered a loss in the death of Robert Cameron
Rogers, of the class of 1883. His book of poems, called _The
Rosary_, appeared in 1906, containing the song by which naturally
he is best known. Set to music by the late Ethelbert Nevin, it had a
prodigious vogue, and inspired a sentimental British novel, whose
sales ran over a million copies. The success of this ditty ought not
to prejudice readers against the author of it; for he was more than a
sentimentalist, as his other pieces prove.
Rupert Hughes is an all around literary athlete. He was born in
Missouri, on the thirty-first of January, 1872, studied at Western
Reserve and later at Yale, where he took the degree of M.A. in 1899.
He is of course best known as a novelist and playwright; his novel
_The Thirteenth Commandment_ (1916) and his play _Excuse Me_
(1911) are among his most successful productions. His works in prose
fiction are conscientiously realistic and the finest of them are
accurate chronicles of metropolitan life; while his short stories,
_In a Little Town_ (1917) are, like those of William Allen White,
truthful both in their representation of village manners in the West,
and in their recognition of spiritual values. In view of the
"up-to-dateness" of Mr. Hughes's novels, it is rather curious that his
one long poem _Gyges' Ring_ (1901), which was written during his
student days at Yale, should be founded on Greek legend. Yet Mr.
Hughes has been a student of Greek all his life, and has made many
translations from the original. I do not care much for _Gyges'
Ring_; it is hammered out rather than created. But some of the
author's short poems, to which he has often composed his own musical
accompaniment, I find full of charm. Best of all, I think, is the
imaginative and delightful.
WITH A FIRST READER
Dear little child, this little book
Is less a primer than a key
To sunder gates where wonder waits
Your "Open Sesame!"
These tiny syllables look large;
They'll fret your wide, bewildered eyes;
But "Is the cat upon the mat?"
Is passport to the skies.
For, yet awhile, and you shall turn
From Mother Goose to Avon's swan;
From Mary's lamb to grim Khayyam,
And Mancha's mad-wise Don.
You'll writhe at Jean Valjean's disgrace;
And D'Artagnan and Ivanhoe
Shall steal your sleep; and you shall weep
At Sidney Carton's woe.
You'll find old Chaucer young once more,
Beaumont and Fletcher fierce with fire;
At your demand, John Milton's hand
Shall wake his ivory lyre.
And learning other tongues, you'll learn
All times are one; all men, one race;
Hear Homer speak, as Greek to Greek;
See Dante, face to face.
_Arma virumque_ shall resound;
And Horace wreathe his rhymes afresh;
You'll rediscover Laura's lover;
Meet Gretchen in the flesh.
Oh, could I find for the first time
The _Churchyard Elegy_ again!
Retaste the sweets of new-found Keats;
Read Byron now as then!
Make haste to wander these old roads,
O envied little parvenue;
For all things trite shall leap alight
And bloom again for you!
Robert Munger, B.A., 1897, published in 1912 a volume called _The
Land of Lost Music_. He is a lyric poet. Melody seems as natural to
him as speech.
There is a land uncharted of meadows and shimmering mountains,
Stiller than moonlight silence brooding and wan,
The land of long-wandering music and dead unmelodious fountains
Of singing that rose in the dreams of them that are gone.
That rose in the dreams of the dead and that rise in the
dreams of the living,
Fleeting, bodiless songs that passed in the night,
Winging away on the moment of wonder their cadence was giving
Into the deeps of the valleys of stifled delight.
Richard Butler Glaenzer, B.A. 1898, whose verses have frequently been
seen in various periodicals, collected them in _Beggar and King_,
1917. His poems cover a wide range of thought and feeling, but I like
him best when he is most whimsical, as in
COMPARISONS
Jupiter, lost to Vega's realm,
Lights his lamp from the sun-ship's helm:
Big as a thousand earths, and yet
Dimmed by the glow of a cigarette!
Mr. Glaenzer has published a number of verse criticisms of
contemporary writers, which he calls _Snapshots_. These display
considerable penetration; perhaps the following is fairly
illustrative.
CABLE
To read your tales
Is like opening a cedar-box
Of ante-bellum days,
A box holding the crinoline and fan
And the tortoise-shell diary
With flowers pressed between the leaves
Belonging to some languid _grande dame_
Of Creole New Orleans.
Benjamin R. C. Low, B.A. 1902, a practising lawyer, has published four
or five volumes of poems, including _The Sailor who has Sailed_
(1911), _A Wand and Strings_ (1913) and _The House that Was_
(1915). He is seen at his best in _These United States_,
dedicated to Alan Seeger, which appeared in the _Boston
Transcript_, 7 February, 1917. This is an original, vigorous work,
full of the unexpected, and yet seen to be true as soon as expressed.
His verses show a constantly increasing grasp of material, and I look
for finer things from his pen.
Although Mr. Low seems to be instinctively a romantic poet, he is fond
of letting his imaginative sympathy play on common scenes in city
streets; as in _The Sandwich Man_.
The lights of town are pallid yet
With winter afternoon;
The sullied streets are dank and wet,
The halted motors fume and fret,
The world turns homeward soon.
There is no kindle in the sky,
No cheering sunset flame;
I have no help from passers-by,--
They part, and give good-night; but I....
Walk with another's name.
I have no kith, nor kin, nor home
Wherein to turn to sleep;
No star-lamp sifts me through the gloam,
I am the driven, wastrel foam
On a subsiding deep.
I do not toil for love, or fame,
Or hope of high reward;
My path too low for praise or blame,
I struggle on, each day the same,
My panoply--a board.
Who gave me life I do not know,
Nor what that life should be,
Or why I live at all; I go,
A dead leaf shivering with snow,
Under a worn-out tree.
The lights of town are blurred with mist,
And pale with afternoon,--
Of gold they are, and amethyst:
Dull pain is creeping at my wrist....
The world turns homeward soon.
A poet of national reputation is William Rose Benét, who was graduated
in 1907. Mr. Benét came to Yale from Augusta, Georgia, and since his
graduation has been connected with the editorial staff of the
_Century Magazine_. At present he is away in service in France,
where his adventurous spirit is at home. He may have taken some of his
reputation with him, for he is sure to be a favourite over there; but
the fame he left behind him is steadily growing. The very splendour of
romance glows in his spacious poetry; he loves to let his imagination
run riot, as might be guessed merely by reading the names on his
books. To every one who has ever been touched by the love of a quest,
his title-pages will appeal: _The Great White Wall_, a tale of
"magic adventure, of war and death"; _Merchants from Cathay_
(1913), _The Falconer of God_ (1914), _The Burglar of the
Zodiac_ (1917). His verses surge with vitality, as in _The Boast
of the Tides_. He is at his best in long, swinging, passionate
rhythms. Unfortunately in the same measures he is also at his worst.
His most potent temptation is the love of noise, which makes some of
his less artistic verse sound like organized cheering.
But when he gets the right tune for the right words, he is
irresistible. There is no space here to quote such a rattling
ballad--like a frenzy of snare-drums--as _Merchants from Cathay_,
but it is not mere sound and fury, it is not swollen rhetoric, it is
an inspired poem. No one can read or hear it without being violently
aroused. Mr. Benét is a happy-hearted poet, singing with gusto of the
joy of life.
ON EDWARD WEBBE, ENGLISH GUNNER
He met the Danske pirates off Tuttee;
Saw the Chrim burn "Musko"; speaks with bated breath
Of his sale to the great Turk, when peril of death
Chained him to oar their galleys on the sea
Until, as gunner, in Persia they set him free
To fight their foes. Of Prester John he saith
Astounding things. But Queen Elizabeth
He worships, and his dear Lord on Calvary.
Quaint is the phrase, ingenuous the wit
Of this great childish seaman in Palestine,
Mocked home through Italy after his release
With threats of the Armada; and all of it
Warms me like firelight jewelling old wine
In some ghost inn hung with the golden fleece!
Arthur Colton, B.A. 1890, is as quiet and reflective as Mr. Benét is
strenuous. Has any one ever better expressed the heart of Chaucer's
_Troilus and Criseyde_ than in these few words?
A smile, of flowers, and fresh May, across
The dreamy, drifting face of old Romance;
The same reiterate tale of love and loss
And joy that trembles in the hands of chance;
And midst his rippling lines old Geoffrey stands,
Saying, "Pray for me when the tale is done,
Who see no more the flowers, nor the sun."
Mr. Colton collected many of his poems in 1907, under the title
_Harps Hung Up in Babylon_. He had moved from New Haven to New
York.
Allan Updegraff, who left college before taking his degree, a member
of the class of 1907, recently turned from verse to prose, and wrote
an admirable novel, _Second Youth_. He is, however, a true poet,
and any one might be proud to be the author of
THE TIME AND THE PLACE
Will you not come? The pines are gold with evening
And breathe their old-time fragrance by the sea;
You loved so well their spicy exhalation,--
So smiled to smell it and old ocean's piquancy;
And those weird tales of winds and waves' relation--
Could you forget? Will you not come to me?
See, 'tis the time: the last long gleams are going,
The pine-spires darken, mists rise waveringly;
The gloaming brings the old familiar longing
To be re-crooned by twilight voices of the sea.
And just such tinted wavelets shoreward thronging--
Could you forget things once so dear--and me?
Whatever of the waves is ceaseless longing,
And of the twilight immortality:
The urge of some wild, inchoate aspiration
Akin to afterglow and stars and winds and sea:
This hour makes full and pours out in libation,--
Could you forget? Will you not come to me?
What golden galleons sailed into the sunset
Not to come home unto eternity:
What souls went outward hopeful of returning,
This time and tide might well call back across the sea.
Did we not dream so while old Wests were burning?
Could you forget such once-dear things--and me?
From the dimmed sky and long grey waste of waters,
Lo, one lone sail on all the lonely sea
A moment blooms to whiteness like a lily,
As sudden fades, is gone, yet half-seems still to be;
And you,--though that last time so strange and stilly,--
Though you are dead, will you not come to me?
Lee Wilson Dodd, at present in service in France, was graduated in
1899, and for some years was engaged in the practice of the law. This
occupation he abandoned for literature in 1907. He is the author of
several successful plays, and has published two volumes of verse,
_The Modern Alchemist_ (1906) and _The Middle Miles_ (1915).
His growth in the intervening years will be apparent to any one who
compares the two books; there is in his best work a combination of
fancy and humour. He loves to write about New England gardens and
discovers beauty by the very simple process of opening his eyes at
home. The following poem is characteristically sincere:
TO A NEO-PAGAN
Your praise of Nero leaves me cold:
Poems of porphyry and of gold,
Palatial poems, chill my heart.
I gaze--I wonder--I depart.
Not to Byzantium would I roam
In quest of beauty, nor Babylon;
Nor do I seek Sahara's sun
To blind me to the hills of home.
Here am I native; here the skies
Burn not, the sea I know is grey;
Wanly the winter sunset dies.
Wanly comes day.
Yet on these hills and near this sea
Beauty has lifted eyes to me,
Unlustful eyes, clear eyes and kind;
While a clear voice chanted--
_"They who find
"Me not beside their doorsteps, know
"Me never, know me never, though
"Seeking, seeking me, high and low,
"Forth on the far four winds they go!"
Therefore your basalt, jade, and gems,
Your Saracenic silver, your
Nilotic gods, your diadems
To bind the brows of Queens, impure,
Perfidious, passionate, perfumed--these
Your petted, pagan stage-properties,
Seem but as toys of trifling worth.
For I have marked the naked earth
Beside my doorstep yield to the print
Of a long light foot, and flash with the glint
Of crocus-gold--
Crocus-gold!
Crocus-gold no mill may mint
Save the Mill of God--
The Mill of God!
The Mill of God with His angels in't!
Other Yale poets are W. B. Arvine, 1903, whose book _Hang Up
Philosophy_ (1911), particularly excels in the interpretation of
natural scenery; Frederick M. Clapp, 1901, whose volume _On the
Overland_ (since republished in America) was in process of printing
in Bruges in 1914, when the Germans entered the old town, and smashed
among other things, the St. Catherine Press. Just fifteen copies of
Mr. Clapp's book had been struck off, of which I own one; Donald
Jacobus, 1908, whose _Poems_ (1914) are richly meditative; James
H. Wallis, 1906, who has joined the ranks of poets with _The
Testament of William Windune_ and _Other Poems_ (1917);
Leonard Bacon, 1909, who modestly called his book, published in the
year of his graduation, _The Scrannel Pipe_; Kenneth Band, 1914,
who produced two volumes of original verse while an undergraduate;
Archibald Mac Leish, 1915, whose _Tower of Ivory_, a collection
of lyrics, appeared in 1917; Elliot Griffis, a student in the School
of Music, who published in 1918 under an assumed name a volume called
_Rain in May_; and I may close this roll-call by remarking that
those who have seen his work have a staunch faith in the future of
Stephen Vincent Benét. He is a younger brother of William, and is at
present a Yale undergraduate. Mr. Benét was born at Bethlehem,
Pennsylvania, on the twenty-second of July, 1898. His home is at
Augusta, Georgia. Before entering college, and when he was seventeen,
he published his first volume of poems, _Five Men and Pompey_
(1915). This was followed in 1917 by another book, _The Drug
Shop_. His best single production is the Cook prize poem, _The
Hemp_.
APPENDIX
_I Have a Rendezvous with Death_
The remarkably impressive and beautiful poem by Alan Seeger which
bears the above title naturally attracted universal attention. I had
supposed the idea originated with Stephen Crane, who, in his novel
_The Red Badge of Courage_, Chapter IX, has the following
paragraph:
At last they saw him stop and stand motionless. Hastening up,
they perceived that his face wore an expression telling that
he had at last found the place for which he had struggled. His
spare figure was erect; his bloody hands were quietly at his
side. He was waiting with patience for something that he had
come to meet. He was at the rendezvous. They paused and
stood, expectant.
But I am informed both by Professor F. N. Robinson of Harvard and by
Mr. Norreys Jephson O'Conor that the probable source of the title of
the poem is Irish. Professor Robinson writes me, "The Irish poem that
probably suggested to Seeger the title of his _Rendezvous_ is the
_Reicne Fothaid Canainne_ (Song of Fothad Canainne), published by
Kuno Meyer in his _Fianaigecht_ (Dublin, 1910), pp. 1-21. Seeger
read the piece at one of my Celtic Conferences, and was much impressed
by it. He got from it only his title and the fundamental figure of a
_rendezvous_ with Death, the Irish poem being wholly different
from his in general purport. Fothad Canainne makes a tryst with the
wife of Ailill Flann, but is slain in battle by Ailill on the day
before the night set for the meeting. Then the spirit of Fothad (or,
according to one version, his severed head) sings the _reicne_ to
the woman and declares (st. 3): 'It is blindness for one who makes a
tryst to set aside the tryst with death.'"
Miss Amy Lowell, however, believes that Seeger got the idea from a
French poet. Wherever he got it, I believe that he made it his own,
for he used it supremely well, and it will always be associated with
him.
At Harvard, Alan Seeger took the small and special course in Irish,
and showed enthusiasm for this branch of study. Wishing to find out
something about his undergraduate career, I wrote to a member of the
Faculty, and received the following reply: "Many persons found him
almost morbidly indifferent and unresponsive, and he seldom showed the
full measure of his powers.... I grew to have a strong liking for him
personally as well as a respect for his intellectual power. But I
should never have expected him to show the robustness of either mind
or body which we now know him to have possessed. He was frail and
sickly in appearance, and seemed to have a temperament in keeping with
his physique. It took a strong impulse to bring him out and disclose
his real capacity."
There is no doubt that the war gave him this impulse, and that the
poem _I Have a Rendezvous with Death_ must be classed among the
literature directly produced by the great struggle. After four years,
I should put at the head of all the immense number of verses inspired
by the war John Masefield's _August 1914_, Alan Seeger's _I
Have a Rendezvous with Death_, and Rupert Brooke's _The
Soldier_; and of all the poems written by men actually fighting, I
should put Alan Seeger's first.
While reading these proofs, the news comes of the death of a promising
young American poet, Joyce Kilmer, a sergeant in our army, who fell in
France, August, 1918. He was born 6 December, 1866, was a graduate of
Rutgers and Columbia, and had published a number of poems. His supreme
sacrifice nobly closed a life filled with beauty in word and deed.
INDEX
[Only important references are given; the mere mention of names is
omitted.]
Abercrombie, D.,
Adams, F. P.,
"A. E." (G. W. Russell),
personality,
a sincere mystic,
assurance,
discovery of Stephens,
influence on Susan Mitchell,
Aiken, C.,
Andrews, C. E., _From the Front_,
Arnold, M., poem on Wordsworth compared to Watson's,
Arvine, W. B.,
Aumonier, S., quotation from,
Austin, A.,
Bacon, L.,
Barker, G., production of _Dynasts_,
remark on Shaw,
Beers, H, A.,
Benét, S. V.,
Benét, W. R.,
Bishop, J. P.,
Blackwell, B. H., a publisher,
Bradley, W. A.,
Braithwaite, W. S., his anthology,
Branch, A. H., a leader,
poems,
education,
passion,
contrasted with Masters,
Bridges, R., poet-laureate,
his verse,
Brooke, R., canonized,
Gibson on,
poems,
letters,
Howland prize,
compared to De La Mare,
_The Soldier_,
Browne, T., compared to Yeats,
Browning, R., concentration,
_Pauline_,
on spiritual blessings,
lack of experience,
self-consciousness,
_Christmas Eve_,
natural poetry,
metre of _One Word More_,
_The Glove_,
Ogniben's remark,
compared to Brooke,
temperament,
contrasted with Yeats,
Masters compared to,
_Confessions_,
Burns, R., influence on democracy,
Burton, R.,
Bynner, W.,
Byron, Lord, sales of his poems,
wit compared to Watson's,
common sense,
Calderon, G., remark on Chekhov,
Campbell, J.,
Carlin, F.,
Carlyle, T.,
remark on Cromwell,
Chaucer, G.,
effect on Masefield,
Chekhov, A.,
centrifugal force,
Clapp, F. M.,
Cleghorn, S. N.,
Coleridge, S. T.,
remark on poetry,
Colton, A.,
Colum, P.,
Conrad, J.,
compared to Scott,
Cooke, E. V.,
Corbin, A.,
Crane, S.,
_Red Badge of Courage_,
Crashaw, R.,
his editor,
Davidson, J.,
test of poetry,
Davies, M. C.,
Davies, W. H.,
Davis, F. S.,
De La Mare, W.,
homage to,
poems,
compared to Hawthorne,
retirement,
_Listeners_,
Shakespeare portraits,
_Old Susan_,
_Peacock Pie_,
Dodd, L. W.,
Donne, J.,
reputation,
stimulant,
Drake, F.,
German statue to,
poem by Noyes,
Drinkwater, J.,
Egan, M. F.,
Eliot, T. S.,
Emerson, R. W.,
prophecy on poetry,
Erskine, J.,
Flecker, J. E.,
posthumous editor of,
translations,
aims,
_Oak and Olive_,
religion,
_Jerusalem_,
Fletcher, J. G.,
Foulke, W. D.,
Frost, R.,
dedication by Thomas,
poems,
theories,
outdoor poet,
realism,
tragedy,
pleasure of recognition,
Garrison, T.,
Gibson, W. W.,
homage to,
poems,
_Stonefolds_,
_Daily Bread_,
_Fires_,
_Thoroughfares_,
war poems,
_Livelihood_,
latest work,
his contribution,
Gladstone, W. E.,
eulogy by Phillips,
Glaenzer, R. B.,
Goethe, J. W.,
Flecker's translation of,
poise,
Grainger, P.,
great artist,
audacities,
Graves, R.,
Gray, T.,
on laureateship,
compared to Hodgson,
compared to Masters,
Griffis, E.,
Griffiths, W.,
Hagedorn, H.,
Hardy, T.,
a forerunner,
_Dynasts_,
idea of God,
pessimism,
thought and music,
_Moments of Vision_,
Housman's likeness to,
Hawthorne, N., compared to De La Mare.
Henley, W. E.;
compared to Thompson;
paganism;
lyrical power.
Hodgson, R.;
a recluse;
love of animals;
humour;
compared to Alice Corbin.
Hooker, B.
Housman, A. E.;
modernity;
scholarship;
likeness to Hardy;
paganism and pessimism;
lyrical power.
Hughes, R.
Hyde, D., influence.
Ibsen, H., student of the Bible.
Jacobus, D.
James, H., tribute to Brooke.
Johnson, R. U.
Keats, J., Phillips compared to;
influence on Amy Lowell;
Endymion;
Amy Lowell's sonnet on.
Kilmer, J.
Kipling, R.;
imperial laureate;
_Recessional_;
popularity;
influence on soldiers;
Watson's allusion to;
_Danny Deever_.
Landor, W. S., his violence.
Lawrence, D. H.
Ledwidge, F.
Leonard, W. E.
Lewis, C. M.
Lindsay, N. V.;
Harriet Monroe's magazine;
_Booth_;
development;
drawings;
"games";
_Congo,_
_Niagara_;
prose;
chants;
geniality;
_Esther_.
Locke, W. J., his dreams.
Low, B. R. C.
Lowell, A. L., love of liberty.
Lowell, Amy, essay on Frost;
poems;
training;
free verse;
imagism;
_Sword Blades_;
narrative skill;
polyphonic prose;
versatility;
remark on Seeger.
Lowell, P., influence on Amy.
MacDonagh, T.
Mackaye, P.;
stipend for poets;
poems.
MacLeish, A.
Macterlinck, M., compared to Yeats;
rhythmical prose.
Markham, E.
Marquis, D.
Masefield, J., homage to;
poems;
the modern Chaucer;
education;
_Dauber_;
critical power;
relation to Wordsworth;
_Everlasting Mercy_;
_Widow in the Bye Street_;
_Daffodil Fields_;
compared to Tennyson;
_August, 1914_;
lyrics;
sonnets;
_Rosas_;
novels;
general contribution;
Drinkwater's dedication;
Aiken's relation to.
Masters, E. L.;
education;
_Spoon River_;
irony;
love of truth;
analysis;
cynicism;
idealism.
Meredith, G., his poems.
Middleton, S.
Milton, J., his invocation;
Piedmont sonnet.
Mitchell, S.
Monroe, H., her magazine;
her anthology;
poems.
Moody, W. V.
Morley, J., remarks on Irishmen
and Wordsworth.
Munger, R.
Neihardt, J. G.
Nichols, R.
Nicholson, M., poems;
remark on college stories.
Noyes, A., homage to;
poems;
education;
singing power;
_Tramp Transfigured_;
his masterpiece;
child imagination;
sea poetry;
_Drake_;
_May-Tree_;
new effects;
war poems;
optimism.
O'Conor, N. J., poems;
remark on Seeger.
O'Sullivan, S.
Peabody, J. P.
Percy, W. A.
Phillips, S.;
sudden fame;
education;
_Marpessa_;
realism;
_Gladstone_;
protest against Masefleld.
Pierce, F. E.
Quarles, F., quoted.
Quiller-Couch, A., remark on
the _Daffodil Fields_.
Rand, K.
Reedy, W. M., relation to Masters.
Rice, C. Y.
Riley, J. W., remark on Henley;
"Riley Day";
remark on Anna Branch;
a conservative.
Rittenhouse, J. B.
Robinson, C. R.
Robinson, E. A.
Robinson, F. N., remark on Seeger.
Rogers, R. C.
Sandburg, C.
Santayana, G.
Sassoon, S.
Scott, W., compared to Conrad;
sales of his poems.
Seeger, A.;
Low's dedication;
source of his poem.
Service, R. W., likeness to Kipling.
Shakespeare, W., compared to Wordsworth;
compared to Masefleld;
portraits by De La Mare;
poem on by Masters.
Shaw, G. B., _Major Barbara_.
Spingarn, J., creative criticism.
Squire, J. C., introduction to
Flecker
Stephens, J.,
novels;
discovered by A. E.;
realism;
child-poetry;
power of cursing.
Stevenson, R. L.,
remark on Whitman.
Stork, C. W.
Swinburne, A. C.,
critical violence,
Lindsay's likeness to;
Lindsay's use of.
Synge, J. M.,
advice from Yeats;
works;
versatility;
bitterness;
theory of poetry;
autobiographical poems;
thoughts on death;
influence on Stephens.
Teasdale, S.
Tennyson, A.,
continued popularity of;
his invocation;
compared to Hardy;
early poems on death;
compared to Masefield,;
his memoirs;
his reserve;
quality of his poetry.
Thomas, E.
Thomas, E. M.
Thompson, F.,
compared to Henley;
religious passion;
_In No Strange Land_;
_Lilium Regis_;
Noyes's ode to;
Flecker's poem on.
Trench, H.
Underwood, J. C.
Untermeyer, L.
Updegraff, A.
Van Dyke, H.
Vaughan, H., quoted.
Vielé, H. K.
Wallis, J. H.
Watson, W.
poor start;
address in America;
_King Alfred_;
_Wordsworth's Grave_;
epigrams;
_How Weary is Our Heart_;
hymn of hate;
war poems,
_Yellow Pansy_;
Byronic wit;
_Eloping Angels_;
dislike of new poetry.
Weaving, W.
Wells, H. G.
religious position.
Whitman, W.
natural style;
_Man of War Bird_;
early conventionality;
Stevenson's remark on;
growth of reputation;
Sandburg's relation.
Whitney, H. H.
Whitsett, W. T.
Widdemer, M.
Wilcox, E. W.
Willcocks, M. P.
remark on will.
Woodberry, G. E.
Wordsworth, W.
compared to Shakespeare;
Watson's poem on;
Masefield's relations to.
Yeats, W. B.
education;
devotion to art;
his names;
love poetry;
dramas;
prose;
mysticism;
relation to Lindsay.
Younghusband, G.
remark on Kipling