_The Son__American Poetry, 1922: A Miscellany

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AMERICAN POETRY

1922

A MISCELLANY

[Illustration]

NEW YORK

HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY

HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY, INC.

PRINTED IN THE U. S. A. BY

THE QUINN & BODEN COMPANY

RAHWAY, N. J.

A FOREWORD

When the first Miscellany of American Poetry appeared in 1920,

innumerable were the questions asked by both readers and reviewers of

publishers and contributors alike. The modest note on the jacket

appeared to satisfy no one. The volume purported to have no editor, yet

a collection without an editor was pronounced preposterous. It was

obviously not the organ of a school, yet it did not seem to have been

compiled to exploit any particular phase of American life; neither

Nature, Love, Patriotism, Propaganda, nor Philosophy could be acclaimed

as its reason for being, and it was certainly not intended, as has been

so frequent of late, to bring a cheerful absence of mind to the

world-weary during an unoccupied ten minutes. Again, it was exclusive

not inclusive, since its object was, evidently, not the meritorious if

impossible one of attempting to be a compendium of present-day American

verse.

But the publisher's note had stated one thing quite clearly, that the

Miscellany was to be a biennial. Two years have passed, and with the

second volume it has seemed best to state at once the reasons which

actuated its contributors to join in such a venture.

In the first place, the plan of the _Miscellany_ is frankly imitative.

For some years now there has been published in England an anthology

entitled Georgian Poetry. The Miscellany is intended to be an American

companion to that publication. The dissimilarities of temperament, range

and choice of subjects are manifest, but the outstanding difference is

this: _Georgian Poetry_ has an editor, and the poems it contains may be

taken as that editor's reaction to the poetry of the day. The

_Miscellany_, on the other hand, has no editor; it is no one person's

choice which forms it; it is not an attempt to throw into relief any

particular group or stress any particular tendency. It does disclose the

most recent work of certain representative figures in contemporary

American literature. The poets who appear here have come together by

mutual accord and, although they may invite others to join them in

subsequent volumes as circumstance dictates, each one stands (as all

newcomers also must stand) as the exponent of fresh and strikingly

diverse qualities in our native poetry. It is as if a dozen unacademic

painters, separated by temperament and distance, were to arrange to have

an exhibition every two years of their latest work. They would not

pretend that they were the only painters worthy of a public showing;

they would maintain that their work was, generally speaking, most

interesting to one another. Their gallery would necessarily be limited;

but it would be flexible enough to admit, with every fresh exhibit,

three or four new members who had achieved an importance and an idiom

of their own. This is just what the original contributors to the

_Miscellany_ have done.

The newcomers--H. D., Alfred Kreymborg, and Edna St. Vincent

Millay--have taken their places with the same absence of judge or jury

that marks any "society of independents." There is no hanging committee;

no organizer of "position." Two years ago the alphabet determined the

arrangement; this time seniority has been the sole arbiter of

precedence. Furthermore--and this can not be too often repeated--there

has been no editor. To be painstakingly precise, each contributor has

been his own editor. As such, he has chosen his own selections and

determined the order in which they are to be printed, but he has had no

authority over either the choice or grouping of his fellow exhibitors'

contributions. To one of the members has been delegated the merely

mechanical labors of assembling, proof-reading, and seeing the volume

through the press. The absence of E. A. Robinson from this year's

_Miscellany_ is a source of regret not only to all the contributors but

to the poet himself. Mr. Robinson has written nothing since his

Collected Poems with the exception of a long poem--a volume in

itself--but he hopes to appear in any subsequent collection.

It should be added that this is not a haphazard anthology of picked-over

poetry. The poems that follow are new. They are new not only in the

sense that (with two exceptions) they cannot be found in book form, but

most of them have never previously been published. Certain of the

selections have appeared in recent magazines and these are reprinted by

permission of _The Century_, _The Yale Review_, _Poetry: A Magazine of

Verse_, _The New Republic_, _Harper's_, _Scribner's_, _The Bookman_,

_The Freeman_, _Broom_, _The Dial_, _The Atlantic Monthly_, _Farm and

Fireside_, _The Measure_, and _The Literary Review_. Vachel Lindsay's "I

Know All This When Gipsy Fiddles Cry" is a revised version of the poem

of that name which was printed in _The Enchanted Years_.

CONTENTS

_A Foreword_ _III_

AMY LOWELL

Lilacs _3_

Twenty-four Hokku on a Modern Theme _8_

The Swans _13_

Prime _16_

Vespers _17_

In Excelsis _18_

La Ronde du Diable _20_

ROBERT FROST

Fire and Ice _25_

The Grindstone _26_

The Witch of Coos _29_

A Brook in the City _37_

Design _38_

CARL SANDBURG

And So To-day _41_

California City Landscape _49_

Upstream _51_

Windflower Leaf _52_

VACHEL LINDSAY

In Praise of Johnny Appleseed _55_

I Know All This When Gipsy Fiddles Cry _66_

JAMES OPPENHEIM

Hebrews _75_

ALFRED KREYMBORG

Adagio: A Duet _79_

Die Kuche _80_

Rain _81_

Peasant _83_

Bubbles _85_

Dirge _87_

Colophon _88_

SARA TEASDALE

Wisdom _91_

Places _92_

_Twilight_ (Tucson)

_Full Moon_ (Santa Barbara)

_Winter Sun_ (Lenox)

_Evening_ (Nahant)

Words for an Old Air _97_

Those Who Love _98_

Two Songs for Solitude _99_

_The Crystal Gazer_

_The Solitary_

LOUIS UNTERMEYER

Monolog from a Mattress _103_

Waters of Babylon _110_

The Flaming Circle _112_

Portrait of a Machine _114_

Roast Leviathan _115_

JOHN GOULD FLETCHER

A Rebel _127_

The Rock _128_

Blue Water _129_

Prayers for Wind _130_

Impromptu _131_

Chinese Poet Among Barbarians _132_

Snowy Mountains _133_

The Future _134_

Upon the Hill _136_

The Enduring _137_

JEAN STARR UNTERMEYER

Old Man _141_

Tone Picture _142_

They Say-- _143_

Rescue _144_

Mater in Extremis _146_

Self-Rejected _147_

H. D.

Holy Satyr _151_

Lais _153_

Heliodora _156_

Toward the Piraeus _161_

_Slay with your eyes, Greek_

_You would have broken my wings_

_I loved you_

_What had you done_

_If I had been a boy_

_It was not chastity that made me cold_

CONRAD AIKEN

Seven Twilights _171_

_The ragged pilgrim on the road to nowhere_

_Now by the wall of the ancient town_

_When the tree bares, the music of it changes_

_"This is the hour," she says, "of transmutation"_

_Now the great wheel of darkness and low clouds_

_Heaven, you say, will be a field in April_

_In the long silence of the sea_

Tetelestai _184_

EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY

Eight Sonnets _193_

_When you, that at this moment are to me_

_What's this of death, from you who never will die_

_I know I am but summer to your heart_

_Here is a wound that never will heal, I know_

_What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why_

_Euclid alone has looked on Beauty bare_

_Oh, oh, you will be sorry for that word!_

_Say what you will, and scratch my heart to find_

BIBLIOGRAPHY _201_

AMY LOWELL

LILACS

Lilacs,

False blue,

White,

Purple,

Color of lilac,

Your great puffs of flowers

Are everywhere in this my New England.

Among your heart-shaped leaves

Orange orioles hop like music-box birds and sing

Their little weak soft songs;

In the crooks of your branches

The bright eyes of song sparrows sitting on spotted eggs

Peer restlessly through the light and shadow

Of all Springs.

Lilacs in dooryards

Holding quiet conversations with an early moon;

Lilacs watching a deserted house

Settling sideways into the grass of an old road;

Lilacs, wind-beaten, staggering under a lopsided shock of bloom

Above a cellar dug into a hill.

You are everywhere.

You were everywhere.

You tapped the window when the preacher preached his sermon,

And ran along the road beside the boy going to school.

You stood by pasture-bars to give the cows good milking,

You persuaded the housewife that her dish-pan was of silver

And her husband an image of pure gold.

You flaunted the fragrance of your blossoms

Through the wide doors of Custom Houses--

You, and sandal-wood, and tea,

Charging the noses of quill-driving clerks

When a ship was in from China.

You called to them: "Goose-quill men, goose-quill men,

May is a month for flitting,"

Until they writhed on their high stools

And wrote poetry on their letter-sheets behind the propped-up

ledgers.

Paradoxical New England clerks,

Writing inventories in ledgers, reading the "Song of Solomon" at

night,

So many verses before bedtime,

Because it was the Bible.

The dead fed you

Amid the slant stones of graveyards.

Pale ghosts who planted you

Came in the night time

And let their thin hair blow through your clustered stems.

You are of the green sea,

And of the stone hills which reach a long distance.

You are of elm-shaded streets with little shops where they sell

kites and marbles,

You are of great parks where every one walks and nobody is at home.

You cover the blind sides of greenhouses

And lean over the top to say a hurry-word through the glass

To your friends, the grapes, inside.

Lilacs,

False blue,

White,

Purple,

Color of lilac,

You have forgotten your Eastern origin,

The veiled women with eyes like panthers,

The swollen, aggressive turbans of jeweled Pashas.

Now you are a very decent flower,

A reticent flower,

A curiously clear-cut, candid flower,

Standing beside clean doorways,

Friendly to a house-cat and a pair of spectacles,

Making poetry out of a bit of moonlight

And a hundred or two sharp blossoms.

Maine knows you,

Has for years and years;

New Hampshire knows you,

And Massachusetts

And Vermont.

Cape Cod starts you along the beaches to Rhode Island;

Connecticut takes you from a river to the sea.

You are brighter than apples,

Sweeter than tulips,

You are the great flood of our souls

Bursting above the leaf-shapes of our hearts,

You are the smell of all Summers,

The love of wives and children,

The recollection of the gardens of little children,

You are State Houses and Charters

And the familiar treading of the foot to and fro on a road it knows.

May is lilac here in New England,

May is a thrush singing "Sun up!" on a tip-top ash-tree,

May is white clouds behind pine-trees

Puffed out and marching upon a blue sky.

May is a green as no other,

May is much sun through small leaves,

May is soft earth,

And apple-blossoms,

And windows open to a South wind.

May is a full light wind of lilac

From Canada to Narragansett Bay.

Lilacs,

False blue,

White,

Purple,

Color of lilac,

Heart-leaves of lilac all over New England,

Roots of lilac under all the soil of New England,

Lilac in me because I am New England,

Because my roots are in it,

Because my leaves are of it,

Because my flowers are for it,

Because it is my country

And I speak to it of itself

And sing of it with my own voice

Since certainly it is mine.

TWENTY-FOUR HOKKU ON A MODERN THEME

Again the larkspur,

Heavenly blue in my garden.

They, at least, unchanged.

How have I hurt you?

You look at me with pale eyes,

But these are my tears.

III

Morning and evening--

Yet for us once long ago

Was no division.

I hear many words.

Set an hour when I may come

Or remain silent.

In the ghostly dawn

I write new words for your ears--

Even now you sleep.

This then is morning.

Have you no comfort for me

Cold-colored flowers?

VII

My eyes are weary

Following you everywhere.

Short, oh short, the days!

VIII

When the flower falls

The leaf is no more cherished.

Every day I fear.

Even when you smile

Sorrow is behind your eyes.

Pity me, therefore.

Laugh--it is nothing.

To others you may seem gay,

I watch with grieved eyes.

Take it, this white rose.

Stems of roses do not bleed;

Your fingers are safe.

XII

As a river-wind

Hurling clouds at a bright moon,

So am I to you.

XIII

Watching the iris,

The faint and fragile petals--

How am I worthy?

XIV

Down a red river

I drift in a broken skiff.

Are you then so brave?

Night lies beside me

Chaste and cold as a sharp sword.

It and I alone.

XVI

Last night it rained.

Now, in the desolate dawn,

Crying of blue jays.

XVII

Foolish so to grieve,

Autumn has its colored leaves--

But before they turn?

XVIII

Afterwards I think:

Poppies bloom when it thunders.

Is this not enough?

XIX

Love is a game--yes?

I think it is a drowning:

Black willows and stars.

When the aster fades

The creeper flaunts in crimson.

Always another!

XXI

Turning from the page,

Blind with a night of labor,

I hear morning crows.

XXII

A cloud of lilies,

Or else you walk before me.

Who could see clearly?

XXIII

Sweet smell of wet flowers

Over an evening garden.

Your portrait, perhaps?

XXIV

Staying in my room,

I thought of the new Spring leaves.

That day was happy.

THE SWANS

The swans float and float

Along the moat

Around the Bishop's garden,

And the white clouds push

Across a blue sky

With edges that seem to draw in and harden.

Two slim men of white bronze

Beat each with a hammer on the end of a rod

The hours of God.

Striking a bell,

They do it well.

And the echoes jump, and tinkle, and swell

In the Cathedral's carved stone polygons.

The swans float

About the moat,

And another swan sits still in the air

Above the old inn.

He gazes into the street

And swims the cold and the heat,

He has always been there,

At least so say the cobbles in the square.

They listen to the beat

Of the hammered bell,

And think of the feet

Which beat upon their tops;

But what they think they do not tell.

And the swans who float

Up and down the moat

Gobble the bread the Bishop feeds them.

The slim bronze men beat the hour again,

But only the gargoyles up in the hard blue air heed them.

When the Bishop says a prayer,

And the choir sing "Amen,"

The hammers break in on them there:

Clang! Clang! Beware! Beware!

The carved swan looks down at the passing men,

And the cobbles wink: "An hour has gone again."

But the people kneeling before the Bishop's chair

Forget the passing over the cobbles in the square.

An hour of day and an hour of night,

And the clouds float away in a red-splashed light.

The sun, quotha? or white, white

Smoke with fire all alight.

An old roof crashing on a Bishop's tomb,

Swarms of men with a thirst for room,

And the footsteps blur to a shower, shower, shower,

Of men passing--passing--every hour,

With arms of power, and legs of power,

And power in their strong, hard minds.

No need then

For the slim bronze men

Who beat God's hours: Prime, Tierce, None.

Who wants to hear? No one.

We will melt them, and mold them,

And make them a stem

For a banner gorged with blood,

For a blue-mouthed torch.

So the men rush like clouds,

They strike their iron edges on the Bishop's chair

And fling down the lanterns by the tower stair.

They rip the Bishop out of his tomb

And break the mitre off of his head.

"See," say they, "the man is dead;

He cannot shiver or sing.

We'll toss for his ring."

The cobbles see this all along the street

Coming--coming--on countless feet.

And the clockmen mark the hours as they go.

But slow--slow--

The swans float

In the Bishop's moat.

And the inn swan

Sits on and on,

Staring before him with cold glass eyes.

Only the Bishop walks serene,

Pleased with his church, pleased with his house,

Pleased with the sound of the hammered bell,

Beating his doom.

Saying "Boom! Boom! Room! Room!"

He is old, and kind, and deaf, and blind,

And very, very pleased with his charming moat

And the swans which float.

PRIME

Your voice is like bells over roofs at dawn

When a bird flies

And the sky changes to a fresher color.

Speak, speak, Beloved.

Say little things

For my ears to catch

And run with them to my heart.

VESPERS

Last night, at sunset,

The foxgloves were like tall altar candles.

Could I have lifted you to the roof of the greenhouse, my Dear,

I should have understood their burning.

IN EXCELSIS

You--you--

Your shadow is sunlight on a plate of silver;

Your footsteps, the seeding-place of lilies;

Your hands moving, a chime of bells across a windless air.

The movement of your hands is the long, golden running of light from

a rising sun;

It is the hopping of birds upon a garden-path.

As the perfume of jonquils, you come forth in the morning.

Young horses are not more sudden than your thoughts,

Your words are bees about a pear-tree,

Your fancies are the gold-and-black striped wasps buzzing among red

apples.

I drink your lips,

I eat the whiteness of your hands and feet.

My mouth is open,

As a new jar I am empty and open.

Like white water are you who fill the cup of my mouth,

Like a brook of water thronged with lilies.

You are frozen as the clouds,

You are far and sweet as the high clouds.

I dare reach to you,

I dare touch the rim of your brightness.

I leap beyond the winds,

I cry and shout,

For my throat is keen as a sword

Sharpened on a hone of ivory.

My throat sings the joy of my eyes,

The rushing gladness of my love.

How has the rainbow fallen upon my heart?

How have I snared the seas to lie in my fingers

And caught the sky to be a cover for my head?

How have you come to dwell with me,

Compassing me with the four circles of your mystic lightness,

So that I say "Glory! Glory!" and bow before you

As to a shrine?

Do I tease myself that morning is morning and a day after?

Do I think the air a condescension,

The earth a politeness,

Heaven a boon deserving thanks?

So you--air--earth--heaven--

I do not thank you,

I take you,

I live.

And those things which I say in consequence

Are rubies mortised in a gate of stone.

LA RONDE DU DIABLE

"Here we go round the ivy-bush,"

And that's a tune we all dance to.

Little poet people snatching ivy,

Trying to prevent one another from snatching ivy.

If you get a leaf, there's another for me;

Look at the bush.

But I want your leaf, Brother, and you mine,

Therefore, of course, we push.

"Here we go round the laurel-tree."

Do we want laurels for ourselves most,

Or most that no one else shall have any?

We cannot stop to discuss the question.

We cannot stop to plait them into crowns

Or notice whether they become us.

We scarcely see the laurel-tree,

The crowd about us is all we see,

And there's no room in it for you and me.

Therefore, Sisters, it's my belief

We've none of us very much chance at a leaf.

"Here we go round the barberry-bush."

It's a bitter, blood-red fruit at best,

Which puckers the mouth and burns the heart.

To tell the truth, only one or two

Want the berries enough to strive

For more than he has, more than she.

An acid berry for you and me.

Abundance of berries for all who will eat,

But an aching meat.

That's poetry.

And who wants to swallow a mouthful of sorrow?

The world is old and our century

Must be well along, and we've no time to waste.

Make haste, Brothers and Sisters, push

With might and main round the ivy-bush,

Struggle and pull at the laurel-tree,

And leave the barberries be

For poor lost lunatics like me,

Who set them so high

They overtop the sun in the sky.

Does it matter at all that we don't know why?

ROBERT FROST

FIRE AND ICE

Some say the world will end in fire,

Some say in ice.

From what I've tasted of desire

I hold with those who favor fire.

But if it had to perish twice,

I think I know enough of hate

To know that for destruction ice

Is also great,

And would suffice.

THE GRINDSTONE

Having a wheel and four legs of its own

Has never availed the cumbersome grindstone

To get it anywhere that I can see.

These hands have helped it go and even race;

Not all the motion, though, they ever lent,

Not all the miles it may have thought it went,

Have got it one step from the starting place.

It stands beside the same old apple tree.

The shadow of the apple tree is thin

Upon it now; its feet are fast in snow.

All other farm machinery's gone in,

And some of it on no more legs and wheel

Than the grindstone can boast to stand or go.

(I'm thinking chiefly of the wheelbarrow.)

For months it hasn't known the taste of steel,

Washed down with rusty water in a tin.

But standing outdoors, hungry, in the cold,

Except in towns, at night, is not a sin.

And, anyway, its standing in the yard

Under a ruinous live apple tree

Has nothing any more to do with me,

Except that I remember how of old,

One summer day, all day I drove it hard,

And some one mounted on it rode it hard,

And he and I between us ground a blade.

I gave it the preliminary spin,

And poured on water (tears it might have been);

And when it almost gayly jumped and flowed,

A Father-Time-like man got on and rode,

Armed with a scythe and spectacles that glowed.

He turned on will-power to increase the load

And slow me down--and I abruptly slowed,

Like coming to a sudden railroad station.

I changed from hand to hand in desperation.

I wondered what machine of ages gone

This represented an improvement on.

For all I knew it may have sharpened spears

And arrowheads itself. Much use for years

Had gradually worn it an oblate

Spheroid that kicked and struggled in its gait,

Appearing to return me hate for hate.

(But I forgive it now as easily

As any other boyhood enemy

Whose pride has failed to get him anywhere.)

I wondered who it was the man thought ground--

The one who held the wheel back or the one

Who gave his life to keep it going round?

I wondered if he really thought it fair

For him to have the say when we were done.

Such were the bitter thoughts to which I turned.

Not for myself was I so much concerned.

Oh, no!--although, of course, I could have found

A better way to pass the afternoon

Than grinding discord out of a grindstone,

And beating insects at their gritty tune.

Nor was I for the man so much concerned.

Once when the grindstone almost jumped its bearing

It looked as if he might be badly thrown

And wounded on his blade. So far from caring,

I laughed inside, and only cranked the faster,

(It ran as if it wasn't greased but glued);

I welcomed any moderate disaster

That might be calculated to postpone

What evidently nothing could conclude.

The thing that made me more and more afraid

Was that we'd ground it sharp and hadn't known,

And now were only wasting precious blade.

And when he raised it dripping once and tried

The creepy edge of it with wary touch,

And viewed it over his glasses funny-eyed,

Only disinterestedly to decide

It needed a turn more, I could have cried

Wasn't there danger of a turn too much?

Mightn't we make it worse instead of better?

I was for leaving something to the whetter.

What if it wasn't all it should be? I'd

Be satisfied if he'd be satisfied.

THE WITCH OF COOS

_Circa 1922_

I staid the night for shelter at a farm

Behind the mountain, with a mother and son,

Two old-believers. They did all the talking.

_The Mother_

Folks think a witch who has familiar spirits

She _could_ call up to pass a winter evening,

But _won't_, should be burned at the stake or something.

Summoning spirits isn't "Button, button,

Who's got the button?" I'd have you understand.

_The Son_

Mother can make a common table rear

And kick with two legs like an army mule.

_The Mother_

And when I've done it, what good have I done?

Rather than tip a table for you, let me

Tell you what Ralle the Sioux Control once told me.

He said the dead had souls, but when I asked him

How that could be--I thought the dead were souls,

He broke my trance. Don't that make you suspicious

That there's something the dead are keeping back?

Yes, there's something the dead are keeping back.

_The Son_

You wouldn't want to tell him what we have

Up attic, mother?

_The Mother_

Bones--a skeleton.

_The Son_

But the headboard of mother's bed is pushed

Against the attic door: the door is nailed.

It's harmless. Mother hears it in the night

Halting perplexed behind the barrier

Of door and headboard. Where it wants to get

Is back into the cellar where it came from.

_The Mother_

We'll never let them, will we, son? We'll never!

_The Son_

It left the cellar forty years ago

And carried itself like a pile of dishes

Up one flight from the cellar to the kitchen,

Another from the kitchen to the bedroom,

Another from the bedroom to the attic,

Right past both father and mother, and neither stopped it.

Father had gone upstairs; mother was downstairs.

I was a baby: I don't know where I was.

_The Mother_

The only fault my husband found with me--

I went to sleep before I went to bed,

Especially in winter when the bed

Might just as well be ice and the clothes snow.

The night the bones came up the cellar-stairs

Toffile had gone to bed alone and left me,

But left an open door to cool the room off

So as to sort of turn me out of it.

I was just coming to myself enough

To wonder where the cold was coming from,

When I heard Toffile upstairs in the bedroom

And thought I heard him downstairs in the cellar.

The board we had laid down to walk dry-shod on

When there was water in the cellar in spring

Struck the hard cellar bottom. And then some one

Began the stairs, two footsteps for each step,

The way a man with one leg and a crutch,

Or little child, comes up. It wasn't Toffile:

It wasn't any one who could be there.

The bulkhead double-doors were double-locked

And swollen tight and buried under snow.

The cellar windows were banked up with sawdust

And swollen tight and buried under snow.

It was the bones. I knew them--and good reason.

My first impulse was to get to the knob

And hold the door. But the bones didn't try

The door; they halted helpless on the landing,

Waiting for things to happen in their favor.

The faintest restless rustling ran all through them.

I never could have done the thing I did

If the wish hadn't been too strong in me

To see how they were mounted for this walk.

I had a vision of them put together

Not like a man, but like a chandelier.

So suddenly I flung the door wide on him.

A moment he stood balancing with emotion,

And all but lost himself. (A tongue of fire

Flashed out and licked along his upper teeth.

Smoke rolled inside the sockets of his eyes.)

Then he came at me with one hand outstretched,

The way he did in life once; but this time

I struck the hand off brittle on the floor,

And fell back from him on the floor myself.

The finger-pieces slid in all directions.

(Where did I see one of those pieces lately?

Hand me my button-box--it must be there.)

I sat up on the floor and shouted, "Toffile,

It's coming up to you." It had its choice

Of the door to the cellar or the hall.

It took the hall door for the novelty,

And set off briskly for so slow a thing,

Still going every which way in the joints, though,

So that it looked like lightning or a scribble,

From the slap I had just now given its hand.

I listened till it almost climbed the stairs

From the hall to the only finished bedroom,

Before I got up to do anything;

Then ran and shouted, "Shut the bedroom door,

Toffile, for my sake!" "Company," he said,

"Don't make me get up; I'm too warm in bed."

So lying forward weakly on the handrail

I pushed myself upstairs, and in the light

(The kitchen had been dark) I had to own

I could see nothing. "Toffile, I don't see it.

It's with us in the room, though. It's the bones."

"What bones?" "The cellar bones--out of the grave."

* * * * *

That made him throw his bare legs out of bed

And sit up by me and take hold of me.

I wanted to put out the light and see

If I could see it, or else mow the room,

With our arms at the level of our knees,

And bring the chalk-pile down. "I'll tell you what--

It's looking for another door to try.

The uncommonly deep snow has made him think

Of his old song, _The Wild Colonial Boy_,

He always used to sing along the tote-road.

He's after an open door to get out-doors.

Let's trap him with an open door up attic."

Toffile agreed to that, and sure enough,

Almost the moment he was given an opening,

The steps began to climb the attic stairs.

I heard them. Toffile didn't seem to hear them.

"Quick!" I slammed to the door and held the knob.

"Toffile, get nails." I made him nail the door shut,

And push the headboard of the bed against it.

Then we asked was there anything

Up attic that we'd ever want again.

The attic was less to us than the cellar.

If the bones liked the attic, let them like it,

Let them _stay_ in the attic. When they sometimes

Come down the stairs at night and stand perplexed

Behind the door and headboard of the bed,

Brushing their chalky skull with chalky fingers,

With sounds like the dry rattling of a shutter,

That's what I sit up in the dark to say--

To no one any more since Toffile died.

Let them stay in the attic since they went there.

I promised Toffile to be cruel to them

For helping them be cruel once to him.

_The Son_

We think they had a grave down in the cellar.

_The Mother_

We know they had a grave down in the cellar.

_The Son_

We never could find out whose bones they were.

_The Mother_

Yes, we could too, son. Tell the truth for once.

They were a man's his father killed for me.

I mean a man he killed instead of me.

The least I could do was to help dig their grave.

We were about it one night in the cellar.

Son knows the story: but 'twas not for him

To tell the truth, suppose the time had come.

Son looks surprised to see me end a lie

We'd kept up all these years between ourselves

So as to have it ready for outsiders.

But to-night I don't care enough to lie--

I don't remember why I ever cared.

Toffile, if he were here, I don't believe

Could tell you why he ever cared himself....

She hadn't found the finger-bone she wanted

Among the buttons poured out in her lap.

I verified the name next morning: Toffile;

The rural letter-box said Toffile Lajway.

A BROOK IN THE CITY

The farm house lingers, though averse to square

With the new city street it has to wear

A number in. But what about the brook

That held the house as in an elbow-crook?

I ask as one who knew the brook, its strength

And impulse, having dipped a finger-length

And made it leap my knuckle, having tossed

A flower to try its currents where they crossed.

The meadow grass could be cemented down

From growing under pavements of a town;

The apple trees be sent to hearth-stone flame.

Is water wood to serve a brook the same?

How else dispose of an immortal force

No longer needed? Staunch it at its source

With cinder loads dumped down? The brook was thrown

Deep in a sewer dungeon under stone

In fetid darkness still to live and run--

And all for nothing it had ever done

Except forget to go in fear perhaps.

No one would know except for ancient maps

That such a brook ran water. But I wonder

If, from its being kept forever under,

These thoughts may not have risen that so keep

This new-built city from both work and sleep.

DESIGN

I found a dimpled spider, fat and white,

On a white heal-all, holding up a moth

Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth--

Assorted characters of death and blight

Mixed ready to begin the morning right,

Like the ingredients of a witches' broth--

A snow-drop spider, a flower like froth,

And dead wings carried like a paper kite.

What had that flower to do with being white,

The wayside blue and innocent heal-all?

What brought the kindred spider to that height,

Then steered the white moth thither in the night?

What but design of darkness to appal?--

If design govern in a thing so small.

CARL SANDBURG

AND SO TO-DAY

And so to-day--they lay him away--

the boy nobody knows the name of--

the buck private--the unknown soldier--

the doughboy who dug under and died

when they told him to--that's him.

Down Pennsylvania Avenue to-day the riders go,

men and boys riding horses, roses in their teeth,

stems of roses, rose leaf stalks, rose dark leaves--

the line of the green ends in a red rose flash.

Skeleton men and boys riding skeleton horses,

the rib bones shine, the rib bones curve,

shine with savage, elegant curves--

a jawbone runs with a long white slant,

a skull dome runs with a long white arch,

bone triangles click and rattle,

elbows, ankles, white line slants--

shining in the sun, past the White House,

past the Treasury Building, Army and Navy Buildings,

on to the mystic white Capitol Dome--

so they go down Pennsylvania Avenue to-day,

skeleton men and boys riding skeleton horses,

stems of roses in their teeth,

rose dark leaves at their white jaw slants--

and a horse laugh question nickers and whinnies,

moans with a whistle out of horse head teeth:

why? who? where?

("The big fish--eat the little fish--

the little fish--eat the shrimps--

and the shrimps--eat mud,"--

said a cadaverous man--with a black umbrella--

spotted with white polka dots--with a missing

ear--with a missing foot and arms--

with a missing sheath of muscles

singing to the silver sashes of the sun.)

And so to-day--they lay him away--

the boy nobody knows the name of--

the buck private--the unknown soldier--

the doughboy who dug under and died

when they told him to--that's him.

If he picked himself and said, "I am ready to die,"

if he gave his name and said, "My country, take me,"

then the baskets of roses to-day are for the Boy,

the flowers, the songs, the steamboat whistles,

the proclamations of the honorable orators,

they are all for the Boy--that's him.

If the government of the Republic picked him saying,

"You are wanted, your country takes you"--

if the Republic put a stethoscope to his heart

and looked at his teeth and tested his eyes and said,

"You are a citizen of the Republic and a sound

animal in all parts and functions--the Republic takes you"--

then to-day the baskets of flowers are all for the Republic,

the roses, the songs, the steamboat whistles,

the proclamations of the honorable orators--

they are all for the Republic.

And so to-day--they lay him away--

and an understanding goes--his long sleep shall be

under arms and arches near the Capitol Dome--

there is an authorization--he shall have tomb companions--

the martyred presidents of the Republic--

the buck private--the unknown soldier--that's him.

The man who was war commander of the armies of the Republic

rides down Pennsylvania Avenue--

The man who is peace commander of the armies of the Republic

rides down Pennsylvania Avenue--

for the sake of the Boy, for the sake of the Republic.

(And the hoofs of the skeleton horses

all drum soft on the asphalt footing--

so soft is the drumming, so soft the roll call

of the grinning sergeants calling the roll call--

so soft is it all--a camera man murmurs, "Moonshine.")

Look--who salutes the coffin--

lays a wreath of remembrance

on the box where a buck private

sleeps a clean dry sleep at last--

look--it is the highest ranking general

of the officers of the armies of the Republic.

(Among pigeon corners of the Congressional Library--they

file documents quietly, casually, all in a day's work--

this human document, the buck private nobody knows the

name of--they file away in granite and steel--with music

and roses, salutes, proclamations of the honorable

orators.)

Across the country, between two ocean shore lines,

where cities cling to rail and water routes,

there people and horses stop in their foot tracks,

cars and wagons stop in their wheel tracks--

faces at street crossings shine with a silence

of eggs laid in a row on a pantry shelf--

among the ways and paths of the flow of the Republic

faces come to a standstill, sixty clockticks count--

in the name of the Boy, in the name of the Republic.

(A million faces a thousand miles from Pennsylvania Avenue

stay frozen with a look, a clocktick, a moment--

skeleton riders on skeleton horses--the nickering high horse

laugh,

the whinny and the howl up Pennsylvania Avenue:

who? why? where?)

(So people far from the asphalt footing of Pennsylvania

Avenue look, wonder, mumble--the riding white-jaw

phantoms ride hi-eeee, hi-eeee, hi-yi, hi-yi, hi-eeee--

the proclamations of the honorable orators mix with the

top-sergeants whistling the roll call.)

If when the clockticks counted sixty,

when the heartbeats of the Republic

came to a stop for a minute,

if the Boy had happened to sit up,

happening to sit up as Lazarus sat up, in the story,

then the first shivering language to drip off his mouth

might have come as, "Thank God," or "Am I dreaming?"

or "What the hell" or "When do we eat?"

or "Kill 'em, kill 'em, the...."

or "Was that ... a rat ... ran over my face?"

or "For Christ's sake, gimme water, gimme water,"

or "Blub blub, bloo bloo...."

or any bubbles of shell shock gibberish

from the gashes of No Man's Land.

Maybe some buddy knows,

some sister, mother, sweetheart,

maybe some girl who sat with him once

when a two-horn silver moon

slid on the peak of a house-roof gable,

and promises lived in the air of the night,

when the air was filled with promises,

when any little slip-shoe lovey

could pick a promise out of the air.

"Feed it to 'em,

they lap it up,

bull ... bull ... bull,"

Said a movie news reel camera man,

Said a Washington newspaper correspondent,

Said a baggage handler lugging a trunk,

Said a two-a-day vaudeville juggler,

Said a hanky-pank selling jumping-jacks.

"Hokum--they lap it up," said the bunch.

And a tall scar-face ball player,

Played out as a ball player,

Made a speech of his own for the hero boy,

Sent an earful of his own to the dead buck private:

"It's all safe now, buddy,

Safe when you say yes,

Safe for the yes-men."

He was a tall scar-face battler

With his face in a newspaper

Reading want ads, reading jokes,

Reading love, murder, politics,

Jumping from jokes back to the want ads,

Reading the want ads first and last,

The letters of the word JOB, "J-O-B,"

Burnt like a shot of bootleg booze

In the bones of his head--

In the wish of his scar-face eyes.

The honorable orators,

Always the honorable orators,

Buttoning the buttons on their prinz alberts,

Pronouncing the syllables "sac-ri-fice,"

Juggling those bitter salt-soaked syllables--

Do they ever gag with hot ashes in their mouths?

Do their tongues ever shrivel with a pain of fire

Across those simple syllables "sac-ri-fice"?

(There was one orator people far off saw.

He had on a gunnysack shirt over his bones,

And he lifted an elbow socket over his head,

And he lifted a skinny signal finger.

And he had nothing to say, nothing easy--

He mentioned ten million men, mentioned them as having gone west,

mentioned them as shoving up the daisies.

We could write it all on a postage stamp, what he said.

He said it and quit and faded away,

A gunnysack shirt on his bones.)

Stars of the night sky,

did you see that phantom fadeout,

did you see those phantom riders,

skeleton riders on skeleton horses,

stems of roses in their teeth,

rose leaves red on white-jaw slants,

grinning along on Pennsylvania Avenue,

the top-sergeants calling roll calls--

did their horses nicker a horse laugh?

did the ghosts of the boney battalions

move out and on, up the Potomac, over on the Ohio

and out to the Mississippi, the Missouri, the Red River,

and down to the Rio Grande, and on to the Yazoo,

over to the Chattahoochee and up to the Rappahannock?

did you see 'em, stars of the night sky?

And so to-day--they lay him away--

the boy nobody knows the name of--

they lay him away in granite and steel--

with music and roses--under a flag--

under a sky of promises.

CALIFORNIA CITY LANDSCAPE

On a mountain-side the real estate agents

Put up signs marking the city lots to be sold there.

A man whose father and mother were Irish

Ran a goat farm half-way down the mountain;

He drove a covered wagon years ago,

Understood how to handle a rifle,

Shot grouse, buffalo, Indians, in a single year,

And now was raising goats around a shanty.

Down at the foot of the mountain

Two Japanese families had flower farms.

A man and woman were in rows of sweet peas

Picking the pink and white flowers

To put in baskets and take to the Los Angeles market.

They were clean as what they handled

There in the morning sun, the big people and the baby-faces.

Across the road, high on another mountain,

Stood a house saying, "I am it," a commanding house.

There was the home of a motion picture director

Famous for lavish whore-house interiors,

Clothes ransacked from the latest designs for women

In the combats of "male against female."

The mountain, the scenery, the layout of the landscape,

And the peace of the morning sun as it happened,

The miles of houses pocketed in the valley beyond--

It was all worth looking at, worth wondering about,

How long it might last, how young it might be.

UPSTREAM

The strong men keep coming on.

They go down shot, hanged, sick, broken.

They live on, fighting, singing, lucky as plungers.

The strong men ... they keep coming on.

The strong mothers pulling them from a dark sea, a great prairie, a

long mountain.

Call hallelujah, call amen, call deep thanks.

The strong men keep coming on.

WINDFLOWER LEAF

This flower is repeated

out of old winds, out of

old times.

The wind repeats these, it

must have these, over and

over again.

Oh, windflowers so fresh,

Oh, beautiful leaves, here

now again.

The domes over

fall to pieces.

The stones under

fall to pieces.

Rain and ice

wreck the works.

The wind keeps, the windflowers

keep, the leaves last,

The wind young and strong lets

these last longer than stones.

VACHEL LINDSAY

IN PRAISE OF JOHNNY APPLESEED[1]

(_Born 1775. Died 1847_)

[Footnote 1: The best account of John Chapman's career, under the name

"Johnny Appleseed," is to be found in _Harper's Monthly Magazine_,

November, 1871.]

I. ~Over the Appalachian Barricade~

[Sidenote: _To be read like old leaves on the elm tree of Time.

Sifting soft winds with sentence and rhyme_.]

In the days of President Washington,

The glory of the nations,

Dust and ashes,

Snow and sleet,

And hay and oats and wheat,

Blew west,

Crossed the Appalachians,

Found the glades of rotting leaves, the soft deer-pastures,

The farms of the far-off future

In the forest.

Colts jumped the fence,

Snorting, ramping, snapping, sniffing,

With gastronomic calculations,

Crossed the Appalachians,

The east walls of our citadel,

And turned to gold-horned unicorns,

Feasting in the dim, volunteer farms of the forest.

Stripedest, kickingest kittens escaped,

Caterwauling "Yankee Doodle Dandy,"

Renounced their poor relations,

Crossed the Appalachians,

And turned to tiny tigers

In the humorous forest.

Chickens escaped

From farmyard congregations,

Crossed the Appalachians,

And turned to amber trumpets

On the ramparts of our Hoosiers' nest and citadel,

Millennial heralds

Of the foggy mazy forest.

Pigs broke loose, scrambled west,

Scorned their loathsome stations,

Crossed the Appalachians,

Turned to roaming, foaming wild boars

Of the forest.

The smallest, blindest puppies toddled west

While their eyes were coming open,

And, with misty observations,

Crossed the Appalachians,

Barked, barked, barked

At the glow-worms and the marsh lights and the lightning-bugs,

And turned to ravening wolves

Of the forest.

Crazy parrots and canaries flew west,

Drunk on May-time revelations,

Crossed the Appalachians,

And turned to delirious, flower-dressed fairies

Of the lazy forest.

Haughtiest swans and peacocks swept west,

And, despite soft derivations,

Crossed the Appalachians,

And turned to blazing warrior souls

Of the forest,

Singing the ways

Of the Ancient of Days.

And the "Old Continentals

In their ragged regimentals,"

With bard's imaginations,

Crossed the Appalachians.

And

A boy

Blew west

And with prayers and incantations,

And with "Yankee Doodle Dandy,"

Crossed the Appalachians,

And was "young John Chapman,"

Then

"Johnny Appleseed, Johnny Appleseed,"

Chief of the fastnesses, dappled and vast,

In a pack on his back,

In a deer-hide sack,

The beautiful orchards of the past,

The ghosts of all the forests and the groves--

In that pack on his back,

In that talisman sack,

To-morrow's peaches, pears and cherries,

To-morrow's grapes and red raspberries,

Seeds and tree souls, precious things,

Feathered with microscopic wings,

All the outdoors the child heart knows,

And the apple, green, red, and white,

Sun of his day and his night--

The apple allied to the thorn,

Child of the rose.

Porches untrod of forest houses

All before him, all day long,

"Yankee Doodle" his marching song;

And the evening breeze

Joined his psalms of praise

As he sang the ways

Of the Ancient of Days.

Leaving behind august Virginia,

Proud Massachusetts, and proud Maine,

Planting the trees that would march and train

On, in his name to the great Pacific,

Like Birnam wood to Dunsinane,

Johnny Appleseed swept on,

Every shackle gone,

Loving every sloshy brake,

Loving every skunk and snake,

Loving every leathery weed,

Johnny Appleseed, Johnny Appleseed,

Master and ruler of the unicorn-ramping forest,

The tiger-mewing forest,

The rooster-trumpeting, boar-foaming, wolf-ravening forest,

The spirit-haunted, fairy-enchanted forest,

Stupendous and endless,

Searching its perilous ways

In the name of the Ancient of Days.

III. ~The Indians Worship Him, but He hurries on~

Painted kings in the midst of the clearing

Heard him asking his friends the eagles

To guard each planted seed and seedling.

Then he was a god, to the red man's dreaming;

Then the chiefs brought treasures grotesque and fair,--

Magical trinkets and pipes and guns,

Beads and furs from their medicine-lair,--

Stuck holy feathers in his hair,

Hailed him with austere delight.

The orchard god was their guest through the night.

While the late snow blew from bleak Lake Erie,

Scourging rock and river and reed,

All night long they made great medicine

For Jonathan Chapman,

Johnny Appleseed,

Johnny Appleseed;

And as though his heart were a wind-blown wheat-sheaf,

As though his heart were a new-built nest,

As though their heaven house were his breast,

In swept the snow-birds singing glory.

And I hear his bird heart beat its story,

Hear yet how the ghost of the forest shivers,

Hear yet the cry of the gray, old orchards,

Dim and decaying by the rivers,

And the timid wings of the bird-ghosts beating,

And the ghosts of the tom-toms beating, beating.

[Sidenote: _While you read, hear the hoof-beats of deer in the snow.

And see, by their track, bleeding footprints we know._]

But he left their wigwams and their love.

By the hour of dawn he was proud and stark,

Kissed the Indian babes with a sigh,

Went forth to live on roots and bark,

Sleep in the trees, while the years howled by--

Calling the catamounts by name,

And buffalo bulls no hand could tame,

Slaying never a living creature,

Joining the birds in every game,

With the gorgeous turkey gobblers mocking,

With the lean-necked eagles boxing and shouting;

Sticking their feathers in his hair,--

Turkey feathers,

Eagle feathers,--

Trading hearts with all beasts and weathers

He swept on, winged and wonder-crested,

Bare-armed, barefooted, and bare-breasted.

[Sidenote: _While you read, see conventions of deer go by.

The bucks toss their horns, the fuzzy fawns fly._]

The maples, shedding their spinning seeds,

Called to his appleseeds in the ground,

Vast chestnut-trees, with their butterfly nations,

Called to his seeds without a sound.

And the chipmunk turned a "summer-set,"

And the foxes danced the Virginia reel;

Hawthorne and crab-thorn bent, rain-wet,

And dropped their flowers in his night-black hair;

And the soft fawns stopped for his perorations;

And his black eyes shone through the forest-gleam,

And he plunged young hands into new-turned earth,

And prayed dear orchard boughs into birth;

And he ran with the rabbit and slept with the stream.

And so for us he made great medicine,

In the days of President Washington.

III. ~Johnny Appleseed's Old Age~

[Sidenote: _To be read

like faint

hoof-beats

of fawns

long gone

From respectable

pasture, and

park and

lawn,

And heartbeats

fawns that

are coming

again

When the

forest, once

more, is the

master of

men._]

Long, long after,

When settlers put up beam and rafter,

They asked of the birds: "Who gave this fruit?

Who watched this fence till the seeds took root?

Who gave these boughs?" They asked the sky,

And there was no reply.

But the robin might have said,

"To the farthest West he has followed the sun,

His life and his empire just begun."