Watch over thee, emblazoned on thy walls,
Tell me, within thy memory-hallowed halls
What chant of triumph or what war-song rings?
Thou hast known Clovis and his Frankish train,
Whose mighty hand Saint Remy’s hand did keep,
And in thy spacious vault perhaps may sleep
An echo of the voice of Charlemagne.
For God thou hast known fear, when from His side
Men wandered, seeking alien shrines and new,
But still the sky was bountiful and blue
And thou wast crowned with France’s love and pride.
Sacred thou art, from pinnacle to base;
And in thy panes of gold and scarlet glass
The setting sun sees thousandfold his face;
Sorrow and joy in stately silence pass
Across thy walls, the shadow and the light;
Around thy lofty pillars, tapers white
Illuminate, with delicate sharp flames,
The brows of saints with venerable names,
And in the night erect a fiery wall.
A great but silent fervour burns in all
Those simple folk who kneel, pathetic, dumb,
And know that down below, beside the Rhine--
Cannon, horses, soldiers, flags in line--
With blare of trumpets, mighty armies come.
Suddenly, each knows fear;
Swift rumours pass, that every one must hear,
The hostile banners blaze against the sky
And by the embassies mobs rage and cry.
Now war has come and peace is at an end.
On Paris town the German troops descend.
They are turned back, and driven to Champagne.
And now as to so many weary men,
The glorious temple gives them welcome, when
It meets them at the bottom of the plain.
At once, they set their cannon in its way.
There is no gable now, nor wall
That does not suffer, night and day,
As shot and shell in crushing torrents fall.
The stricken tocsin quivers through the tower;
The triple nave, the apse, the lonely choir
Are circled, hour by hour,
With thundering bands of fire
And Death is scattered broadcast among men.
And then
That which was splendid with baptismal grace;
The stately arches soaring into space,
The transepts, columns, windows gray and gold,
The organ, in whose tones the ocean rolled,
The crypts, of mighty shades the dwelling places,
The Virgin’s gentle hands, the Saints’ pure faces,
All, even the pardoning hands of Christ the Lord
Were struck and broken by the wanton sword
Of sacrilegious lust.
O beauty slain, O glory in the dust!
Strong walls of faith, most basely overthrown!
The crawling flames, like adders glistening
Ate the white fabric of this lovely thing.
Now from its soul rose a piteous moan,
The soul that always loved the just and fair.
Granite and marble loud their woe confessed,
The silver monstrances that Popes had blessed,
The chalices and lamps and crosiers rare
Were seared and twisted by a flaming breath;
The horror everywhere did range and swell,
The guardian Saints into this furnace fell,
Their bitter tears and screams were stilled in death.
Around the flames armed hosts are skirmishing.
The burning sun reflects the lurid scene;
The German army, fighting for its life,
Rallies its torn and terrified left wing;
And, as they near this place,
The imperial eagles see
Before them in their flight,
Here, in the solemn night,
The old Cathedral to the years to be
Showing, with wounded arms, their own disgrace.
Of Verhaeren’s school-fellows at Sainte-Barbe, one, Maurice
Maeterlinck, is already enjoying a fame which exceeds his deserts and
is not likely to endure. Georges Rodenbach, who died in 1898, wrote,
like Verhaeren, of Flemish peasants, but he gave them a romantic
glamour which has alienated critics who admire naturalistic poetry.
Stefan Zweig has little use for him, and Jethro Bithell speaks of
his “weary Alexandrines,” and says that his reputation has waned
considerably since his death. But Charles C. Clarke, of the Sheffield
Scientific School, in the course of an illuminating article on Belgian
literature, says that Rodenbach’s poems have considerable vogue in
France. From his discussion of Rodenbach I quote this felicitously
phrased paragraph:
“Morbid and mystic like his prose, Rodenbach’s poetry has a
delicacy and a silvery tone that are inimitable. Out of almost
nothing it weaves thoughts and calls up memories of wonderfully
melancholy beauty. In it water is always stagnant, giving chill
reflections of the sky through trees; lights are dim, footsteps
noiseless; rooms are repositories of reminders of the past, where
silence speaks to the heart through sad aspects. The extent to
which Rodenbach uses such notes constitutes his originality. His
skill in avoiding every common formula and his delicate choice of
metaphors seem really inspiration. No one has imitated his poems
of gray tints and muffled sounds, his mourning designs of dull
filigree, without falling into monotony and trifling. It is not
enough praise for a poet to say of him that he was unapproachable
in picturing the accessories of melancholy; but Rodenbach deserves
no more, unless it be our gratitude for preserving in literature
something of ancient Flanders which battle and flame have destroyed
beyond material restoration.”
Another school-fellow of Verhaeren, Charles Van Lerberghe, can
scarcely, I believe, be called a Catholic poet, although, like Dante
Gabriel Rossetti, whose disciple he was, his verse is filled with
Catholic symbolism. In a country like Belgium, in which nearly all the
education is Catholic, and in which nearly every poet is, at any rate
nominally, a Catholic, it is sometimes difficult to distinguish between
writers who have a genuinely devotional spirit, and those who merely
like to play with mysticism. There are, for example, the amazing poems
of Max Elskamp. He writes simple and charming poems about the Blessed
Virgin and the Christ Child, and seems, indeed, to have the hardy faith
of his Flemish ancestors. But the simplicity of his poems is not always
convincing; the reader remembers that the late William Sharpe wrote, as
“Fiona MacLeod,” poems that seemed to flame with all the piety of the
Gael. And William Sharpe was, as he took care to let the world know,
a “pagan.” The feeling that Elskamp’s interest in religion is chiefly
literary is strengthened when we learn from Mr. Bithell that most of
the sacred names in his poems have a symbolic meaning, that the Blessed
Virgin means merely “the pure woman,” and the Christ Child simply “the
delicious infancy.” Intellectual caprices like this seldom accompany
genuine devotional feeling.
But at any rate there is nothing to disgust or pain the reader in
Elskamp’s verse; whether or not he believes in the sacred personages of
whom he writes, he does not treat them irreverently. His Catholicism,
however, is not so convincing as is that of Thomas Braun and Georges
Ramaekers.
It is good to find that in Belgium, a country the literature of which
must inevitably reflect from time to time the strange fashions of
Germany and France, there has been preserved through the years the
poetry of Catholic tradition. Belgian poetry must become more and more
spiritual; the poets have seen and felt things mighty and terrible,
and they can no longer concern themselves with erotic fancies and
the nuances of their own emotions. In days to come, historians of
literature will perhaps see that on the thought of Belgium as on the
thought of all Europe, this war has had a clarifying and strengthening
effect. Good still comes from evil, sweetness from force, and honeycomb
out of the lion’s carcass. Belgium may say, in the words of one of the
truest poets of our time:
Sweet Sorrow, play a grateful part,
Break me the marble of my heart
And of its fragments pave a street
Where, to my bliss, myself may meet
One hastening with piercèd feet.
LETTERS
_To Charles Willis Thompson_
THE NEW YORK TIMES.
November 1, 1914.
Dear Charlie--
Can you lend me $1.00? I wish to go to New Brunswick, N. J. Help me to
gratify this strange whim!
J. KILMER.
* * * * *
_To Shaemas O’Sheel_
Mahwah, N. J.
My dear Shaemas--
Aline and I are heartily glad of the splendid fortune that has come
to you and Blanche. I am sure you will enjoy Washington--it’s a very
lovely city as I remember it--I was there for two days at the age of
four.
With love from Mayor Gaynor, Cale Young Rice, Alfred Noyes, Madison
Cawein, B. Russell Hertz and Harriet Monroe,
I am,
Yours,
JOYCE.
* * * * *
THE NEW YORK TIMES.
February 12, 1916.
Dear Shaemas:
I have been thinking a good deal about you for the last day or so, and
might therefore have known that a message from you was on its way. The
Minaret is a fine adventure, and God knows Washington needs adventures
more than any other city in the United States. There is some beautiful
writing and some brave and direct thinking in the copies you sent me,
and of course I enclose my subscription for a year. I’d support any
enterprise of yours, so long as it wasn’t a scheme to make the Kaiser
Mayor of Mahwah, New Jersey. I also enclose a poem, with my blessing.
But why do you let your young collaborator--I suppose he is
responsible--be so damned vindictive! No poet has any right in the
world to knock the work of another poet who is honest. Vachel Lindsey
is, in my opinion, a sincere artist, whose work sometimes--as in “The
Chinese Nightingale”--glows with genius. That is of course only my
own opinion--but it is not merely a matter of opinion, but a matter
of absolute fact, that he is an honest man, consistently serving his
ideal, earnestly endeavouring to express the beauty that is in him.
And abuse is not what he should receive from his brother poet.
However, go ahead, and good luck to you. But lay off the hammer! Poets
have enough to suffer without being castigated by other poets. Keep out
of jail, and give my love to Blanche and Patrick Wilhelm.
Yours as always,
JOYCE KILMER.
* * * * *
_To Louis Bevier, Jr._
NEW YORK TIMES.
November 28, 1916.
My dear Louis:
I am sending you by this mail a copy of my book “The Circus and Other
Essays,” which our friend Laurence has just published. I had intended
to dedicate it to your father and yourself, but I suddenly discovered
that I had never dedicated a book to my own father. So I have dedicated
this one to him, and will dedicate to your father and yourself one
of the two books coming out in the Spring--either the poems or the
interviews.
At any time you wish, I will buy you a drink.
Yours sincerely,
JOYCE KILMER.
* * * * *
_To Sara Teasdale Filsinger_
NEW YORK TIMES.
February, 1916.
Dear Sara:
I don’t know that POETRY could use a Valentine poem, but if it could
do so, it ought by all means to use it long after Valentine’s day,
for timeliness, the greatest curse of our much cursed magazines, is
certainly not one of POETRY’S vices. And how do you like it? It’s the
first free verse I’ve written since free verse made a special label for
itself--it’s a highly artificial poem, and yet passionately sincere.
I’ve quit being a critic, thank God! I resigned from the _Bookman_ and
_Book News Monthly_, and I no longer review poetry for the _Times_. I
still run the _Digest’s_ “Current Poetry” department, but that’s not
criticism, it’s just an exhibition. I merely hold up for admiration the
best poetry I can find, saying nothing about inferior stuff. And I can
do that without losing my self-respect. But criticism of poetry is no
task for an enthusiastic poet, however little he may deserve the title.
Aline is still in hospital, impatient for the new baby. She likes to
receive letters.
Yours, JOYCE.
* * * * *
_To Katherine Brégy_
THE NEW YORK TIMES,
Times Square.
November 6, 1914.
My dear Miss Brégy:
It is delightful to find on my desk this morning your letter telling me
of the honour in store for me. Of course I am reading with enjoyment
the “Opera” in _America_; how valuable a friend Catholic poetry, that
is poetry, has in you!
A verse-maker, I suppose, is an unskillful critic of his own work. But
in reply to your question, I will say that I am greatly pleased when
people like “Trees,” “Stars” and “Pennies,” when they see that “Folly”
is a religious poem, when they praise the stanza fourth from the end
of “Delicatessen,” and understand stanza three of section four of “The
Fourth Shepherd.”
Before what Miss Guiney calls my “great leap into Liberty” I published
a book of verses called “Summer of Love”; but I do not think it would
interest you; it is, for the most part, a celebration of common themes.
If you have not a copy of “Trees and Other Poems” please tell me and I
will send you one. I will send also “Summer of Love” if you wish it,
for some of the poems in it, those inspired by genuine love, are not
things of which to be ashamed, and you, understanding, would not be
offended by the others.
Your sincerely,
JOYCE KILMER.
* * * * *
May 18th, 1917.
Dear Katherine:
Naturally I’m expecting to go to the Wars, being of appropriate age
and sex. I was going to Plattsburg to try for a commission, but for
many reasons--one of them being that I didn’t want to be an officer in
charge of conscripts (the democratic bluff again! says Katherine)--I
gave up the idea. So a month ago I enlisted as a private in the Seventh
Regiment, National Guard, New York. We were reviewed by your friend
Joffre--in 1824 we were reviewed by Lafayette. We go to training camp
in a week or so--where I don’t know--and then we are mustered into
Federal service. We may be sent to France, we may be sent to Russia, or
it may be Mexico or Cuba--nobody knows.
Please come to New York and let me take you to luncheon. And give Mrs.
Coates my love.
JOYCE.
* * * * *
_To Amelia Josephine Burr_
Headquarters Company, 165th Infantry,
A. E. F., France.
My dear Josephine:
That is a magnificent piece of knitting--I am delighted to own it.
Thanks ever so much! And I will thank you ever more for your book of
poetry, which you promise to send me. I enjoyed your recent poems in
the _Outlook_--you are one of the few American poets who should be
allowed to write war songs. Your letter came up to the specifications
of the order--it was highly entertaining and therefore genuinely
appreciated. I sympathise with you in your trials in addressing camp
audiences, though I don’t know as you deserve any sympathy. I think you
have a pretty good time. And I know the audiences do.
I wouldn’t be surprised to hear of you coming over here as a nurse or
something. Nice country, nice war. I wouldn’t be back in the States
having meatless, wheatless, boozeless, smokeless days for anything. I
am a Sergeant now. I spend my time working at Regimental Headquarters
while we are in reserve, and in training and when we are in action I
am an Observer in the Regimental Intelligence Section--very amusing
work. I had a fine time during the recent activities of our regiment,
activities of which you probably read in the papers. In the dug-out I
wrote a poem I think you’ll like--“Rouge Bouquet” is its name. I expect
to remain a Sergeant (unless I’m reduced), for to get a commission I’d
have to leave the Regiment and go to a training school for several
months and then I would be sent to some regiment other than this. And
I’d rather be a sergeant in the 69th than a lieutenant in any other
outfit.
Give my love to anybody you meet who would appreciate that commodity.
And write often to
Yours,
JOYCE.
* * * * *
_To Howard W. Cook_
Headquarters Company, 165th Infantry,
A. E. F., France.
June 28, 1918.
Dear Mr. Cook:
Your letter of May 31 has just arrived. I am afraid that such
information as I can send you will reach you too late to be of use, but
anyway I’ll do what I can.
You ask first for biographical details. All this material you will
find in Who’s Who in America, except the information that I am the
father of four children, named respectively Kenton Sinclair, Deborah
Clanton, Michael Barry and Christopher.
Second, you ask for comments on myself and something about my earlier
efforts in poetry. That’s harder to answer. How can I make comments on
myself? I’ll pass up that part of the questionnaire, if I may, but I’m
willing to write about my earlier efforts in poetry. They were utterly
worthless, that is, all of them which preceded a poem called “Pennies”
which you will find in my book “Trees and Other Poems.” I want all my
poems written before that to be forgotten--they were only the exercises
of an amateur, imitations, useful only as technical training. If what I
nowadays write is considered poetry, then I became a poet in November,
1913.
Now, as to your other questions. I’ll take them in order. 1. What has
contemporary poetry already accomplished? Answer--All that poetry can
be expected to do is to give pleasure of a noble sort to its readers,
leading them to the contemplation of that Beauty which neither words
nor sculptures nor pigments can do more than faintly reflect, and to
express the mental and spiritual tendencies of the people of the lands
and times in which it is written. I have very little chance to read
contemporary poetry out here, but I hope it is reflecting the virtues
which are blossoming on the blood-soaked soil of this land--courage,
and self-abnegation, and love, and faith--this last not faith in some
abstract goodness, but faith in God and His Son and the Holy Ghost, and
in the Church which God Himself founded and still rules. France has
turned to her ancient Faith with more passionate devotion than she has
shown for centuries. I believe that America is learning the same lesson
from the war, and is cleansing herself of cynicism and pessimism and
materialism and the lust for novelty which has hampered our national
development. I hope that our poets already see this tendency and
rejoice in it--if they do not they are unworthy of their craft.
2. What is American poetry’s influence to-day? Answer--This question
I am ill-prepared to answer, but I would venture to surmise that
the extravagances and decadence of the so-called “renascence of
poetry” during the last five years--a renascence distinguished by the
celebration of the queer and the nasty instead of the beautiful--have
made the poet seem as silly a figure to the contemporary American as he
seemed to the Englishman of the eighteen-nineties, when the “æsthetic
movement” was at its foolish height.
3. What of American poetry’s future? Answer--To predict anything of
American poetry’s future requires a knowledge of America’s future,
and I am not a student of political economy. But this much I will
tell you--when we soldiers get back to our homes and have the leisure
to read poetry, we won’t read the works of Amy Lowell and Edgar Lee
Masters. We’ll read poetry, if there is any for us to read, and I hope
there will be. I believe there will.
Sincerely yours,
JOYCE KILMER.
* * * * *
_To Thomas Walsh_
Headquarters Co., 165th Infantry,
A. E. F., France.
April.
Dear Tom:
Where will you be, I wonder, when this letter reaches you? Perhaps in
the Brooklyn sanctuary (this term is here used in a purely literary
sense) reading reviews of your newest book of verse--pleasant reading
indeed, judging by those I have seen. Perhaps you will be in your
Sabine farm at Lake Hopatkong--if that is the way that strange word is
spelled. Perhaps the postman will give it to you just as you parade
away from your home, and you will take it with you to the palatial
new Columbia University Club, and glance at it over your turtle soup
and sherry and steak and mushrooms and corn and sweet potatoes and
chaveis--but I’m breaking my heart describing this meal of yours.
Soon the mess call will sound and I’ll take my aluminum meat dish and
canteen cup, and wade through the mud to the mess-line. And I’ll get a
plate of stew and some milkless tea or coffee, and I’ll stand in the
mud or sit down in the mud and consume it.
Nevertheless, it’s a nice war and I’m enjoying most of it. Our time at
the front--of which the newspapers have by this time informed you--was
a wonderful experience. I had the privilege of spending a week as
observer in the Regimental Intelligence Section--lively and interesting
work. I’d love to see you at an observation post, Tom, you’d get as
thin as I now am.
Send me your book, will you, Tom? I enjoy poetry more now than ever
before--I suppose it is because I get it so seldom. When I’m writing
verse and reviewing verse and talking about verse and to verse-makers
all the time, I have not the enthusiasm for it I have over here, where
most of the poetry is unwritten and undiscussed.
Nevertheless, it’s a nice country. I’d like to buy you a litre of red
wine--for a franc and a half--with a dash of syrup in it. Also I could
introduce you to the results of the labours of a few accomplished
cooks, some of them soldiers, some of them French women.
Fr. O’Donnell quotes you to the effect that Louis is now in this land,
or on his way hither. I hope to see him. He ought to be sent to an
Officer’s Training School soon--I think that will happen. He is the
sort of fellow who ought to have a commission. I might possibly be
allowed to go to an Officer’s Training School, but I wouldn’t do so,
because if I did so I’d be sent--whether or not I got a commission--to
some Regiment other than this. And I take no pleasure in the thought
of soldiering in a regiment of strangers. I like the crowd in this
outfit very much and would rather be a sergeant--as I am--here than be
a lieutenant in any other Regiment.
If you are ever minded to send me papers, please let them be _Times_
Book Reviews or other sheets of a decidedly literary flavour.
Occasional copies of _The Bookman_ would be welcome. I like a bit of
concentrated literature now and then.
Remember me, please, to your sisters and brothers and to any of my
other friends whom you may meet. And believe me
Always yours sincerely,
JOYCE.
* * * * *
_To Robert Cortes Holliday_
Headquarters Co., 165th Inf.,
A. E. F., France.
May 7, 1918.
Dear Bob:
I have not the time now to write you the letter I’d like to
write--chiefly about your characteristic and delightful Tarkington
book, which I greatly enjoyed and expect to enjoy during many
re-readings. What I write now is merely a note in answer to your letter
of April 12. This you will please communicate to Mr. Doran and regard
as final.
The only way I can give you any material for a book is as I am doing
now--sending you every six months or so some verses or an introspective
essay which you can syndicate and eventually turn into a book. I
sent you a prose sketch “Holy Ireland” (which represents the best
prose writing I can do nowadays), another prose sketch, and (by way
of Aline) a poem, “Rouge Bouquet,” which you ought to be able to do a
good deal with. It is probably the best verse I have written. I never
planned doing war-correspondence work--if I had I’d have come over as
a correspondent instead of as a soldier. Many circumstances, including
the censorship, the rules governing a soldier’s conduct and other
things, prevent me from trying to make a consecutive narrative now,
even if I so desired. I am a poet at present trying to be a soldier.
The experience may naturally be expected to result in a book--of some
kind, at some time. I am not going to try to “cover” the war or my
Regiment’s share in it. But the title “Here and There With the Fighting
Sixty-ninth” may probably be taken as well as any other to cover what,
if I survive, I shall probably, in the course of time, write. My days
of hack writing are over, for a time at least.
To tell the truth, I am not at all interested in writing nowadays,
except in so far as writing is the expression of something beautiful.
And I see daily and nightly the expression of beauty in action
instead of words, and I find it more satisfactory. I am a Sergeant
in the Regimental Intelligence Section--the most fascinating work
possible--more thrills in it than in any other branch except possibly
aviation. And it’s more varied than aviation. Wonderful life! But I
don’t know what I’ll be able to do in civilian life--unless I become a
fireman!
Please give my love to Stella and believe me always your affectionate
and grateful friend
JOYCE.
* * * * *
_To Reverend Edward F. Garesché, S.J._
Hq. Co., 165th Inf.,
A. E. F.
Jan. 29, 1918.
My dear Father: