Such little, puny things are words in rhyme:
Poor feeble loops and strokes as frail as hairs;
You see them printed here, and mark their chime,
And turn to your more durable affairs.
Yet on such petty tools the poet dares
To run his race with mortar, bricks and lime,
And draws his frail stick to the point, and stares
To aim his arrow at the heart of Time.
Intangible, yet pressing, hemming in,
This measured emptiness engulfs us all,
And yet he points his paper javelin
And sees it eddy, waver, turn, and fall,
And feels, between delight and trouble torn,
The stirring of a sonnet still unborn.
_Leslie Nelson Jennings_
Leslie Nelson Jennings was born in 1891 at Ware, Massachusetts. When
he was five years old, he moved to California, where he has lived
ever since. For a short term, he worked on a newspaper but ill
health forced him to discontinue this work and drove him to the
hills.
Jennings’s work is still in a formative stage. His lyrics, while
personal in theme, are full of the manner and music of several of
his contemporaries. His sonnets, like those of David Morton, show
Jennings at his best; they are quiet but never dull reflections of
loveliness.