As the tide comes tumbling in.
All life once more is a part of me,
As the tide tumbles in.
New hopes awaken beneath despair
And thoughts slip free of the sloth of care,
While beauty and love are everywhere--
As the tide comes tumbling in.
SENSE-SWEETNESS
Flowers are dancing, waves playing, pines swaying, gulls are a-swarm;
Sea and heather, sunning together, glad of the weather, with God are warm.
Flowers are dancing, clouds winging, larks singing, summer abrew--
Summer the old ecstatic passion of Life to fashion the world anew.
TIDALS
Low along the sea, low along the sea,
The gray gulls are flying, and one sail swings;
The tide is foaming in; the soft wind sighing;
The brown kelp is stretching, to the surf, harp-strings.
Low along the sea, low along the sea,
The gray gulls are flying, and one sail fades;
The tide is foaming out; the soft wind dying;
And white stars are peeping from the night's pale shades.
A SAILOR'S WIFE
Into port when the sun was setting
Rode the ship that bore my love,
Over the breakers wildly fretting,
Under the skies above.
Down to the beach I ran to meet him;
He would come as he had said:
And he came--in a sailor's coffin,
Dead! . . . . . .
O the ships of the sea! the lovers
Torn by them apart!...
The tide has nothing now to tell me,
The breakers break my heart!
TO SEA!
Give me the tiller; up with the sail!
Now let her swing to the breeze.
Out to sea with a dripping rail,
To sea, with a heart at ease!
Out of the Harbour! out of the Bay!
Out by the valiant Light,
Out by rocks where the young gulls lay--
And glad winds teach them flight!
Out of the Harbour! out of the Bay!
Out to the open sea!
O there's not in the world a way
To feel so wildly free!
So, let her quiver! So, let her leap!
So, let her dance the foam!
All life else is a narrow keep,
The sea alone is home!
GIVE OVER, O SEA!
Give over, O sea! You never shall reach Nirvana!
Your tides, like the tidal generations, ever shall rise and fall,
And your infinite waves find birth, rebirth, and billowy dissolution.
The years of your existence are unending.
The years of your unresting are forever.
The sun, who is desire, ever begets in you his passion,
And the moon is ever drawing you, with silvery soft alluring,
To surge and sway, to wander and fret, to waste yourself in foam.
So Buddha-calm shall never descend upon you.
And tho it may often seem you have found the Way,
Your tempest-sins return and quicken to wild reincarnations,
And again great life, pulsing and perilous,
Omnipotent life, that ever resurges thro the universe,
Lashes you back to striving, back to yearning, back to speech.
To utterance on all shores of the world
Of things unutterable.
Give over then, you never shall reach Nirvana!
Nor I, who am your acolyte for a moment;
Who swing a censer of fragrant words before your priestly feet,
That tread these altar-rocks, bedraped with weeds gently afloat,
And with the wild flutter of gulls wildly mysterious.
Give over and call your winds again to join you!
O chanter of deep enchantments, of uncharted litanies,
Call them and bid them say with you that life transcends retreat,
And that, in the temple of its Immanence,
There is no peace that does not spring daily from peacelessness,
And no Nirvana save in the lee of storm.
THE NUN
A lone palm leans in the moonlight,
Over a convent wall.
The sea below is waking and breaking
With a calm heave and fall.
A young nun sits at a window;
For Heaven she is too fair;
Yet even the dove of God might nest
In her bosom beating there.
A lone ship sails from the harbour:
Whom does it bear away?
Her lover who, sin-hearted, has parted
And left her but to pray?
She has no lover, nor ever
Has heard afar love's sigh.
Only the Convent's vesper vow
Has ever dimmed her eye.
For naught knows she of her beauty,
More than the palm of its peace:
And none shall cross her portal, to mortal
Desires to bend her knees.
The ways of the world have flowers,
And any who will pluck those;
But in His hand, against all harm,
God still will keep some rose.
LAST SIGHT OF LAND
The clouds in woe hang far and dim;
I look again, and lo,
Only a faint and shadow line
Of shore--I watch it go.
The gulls have left the ship and wheel
Back to the cliff's gray wraith.
Will it be so of all our thoughts
When we set sail on Death?
And what will the last sight be of life
As lone we fare and fast?
Grief and a face we love in mist--
Then night and awe too vast?
Or the dear light of Hope--like that,
Oh, see, from the lost shore
Kindling and calling "Onward, you
Shall reach the Evermore!"
THE END
On this and following pages are listed other books by Cale
Young Rice. They are all published by The Century Co., 353
Fourth Avenue, New York City.
SHADOWY THRESHOLDS
By CALE YOUNG RICE
"Cale Young Rice is far too great a pout to be acclaimed in some
partisan circles.... He is intensely American ... as authentic an artist
as Shelley or Keats.... He has the magic of Poe without that poet's
morbidity.... He is America's living master-poet."--_D. F. Hannigan (The
Rochester Post-Express)._
"This volume maintains Mr. Rice's usual high level and proves anew his
right to one of the high places among modern poets."--_Edward J. Wheeler
(Current Opinion)._
"Mr. Rice is modern in the broadest sense of that term. Many of his
poems are without rhyme and have irregular metres, but they never offend
thereby.... His place in contemporary first class company is
secure.--_The Springfield Republican._
"A volume possessing range and variety, together with a lyric quality
which distinguishes this poet, who ranks among the foremost American
writers."--_The Post-Intelligencer (Seattle)._
"Mr. Rice in his dramas is an enchanter, and to cast a spell is better
than to have uttered the most lovely lyrics--but he has done both."--_E.
A. Jonas (The Louisville Herald)._
"A new volume showing again the power and beauty of Mr. Rice's
genius."--_The Boston Globe._
"What a pleasure to take up a new book by Cale Young Rice. Here we have
variety, if ever.... If one can only own one of his books this is a good
volume to choose."--_The Galveston News._
"Cale Young Rice is a poet capable of sounding the deep imaginative
strain not only with melody, but with vigor and power of thought. This
volume will add another shining stone to his reputation."--_The San
Francisco Chronicle._
"Once more a book of the same high order as all Mr. Rice's work."--_The
Rochester Democrat-Chronicle._
"Shadowy Thresholds has as great a variety of poetic forms as any volume
of late years.... Mr. Rice illumines many phases of life, uniting in his
work the finish and romance of the older poetry with the directness that
constitutes the best merit of the new."--_The Louisville Evening Post._
_12mo. 179 pages. Price $1.50_
WRAITHS AND REALITIES
By CALE YOUNG RICE
"In the writing of lyrics Mr. Rice is unequalled by any modern poet....
One must go outside of contemporary life to find anything of similar
excellence."--_Gordon Ray Young (The Los Angeles Times)._
"A new book by Mr. Rice is always an event in American
letters...."--_The New York Tribune._
"Here, for all to read, is poetic genius spurred and wrought upon ... by
a rare and wondrous poetic inspiration.... It is like great chimes
sounding--jangled at times or overborne--but always great."--_The
Philadelphia North American._
"Mr. Rice in his narratives can tell such tales as the old ballad-makers
would have gloated over, and can make them contemporary and convincing.
He can create life tragedies or comedies in a few lines and leave the
reader with a sense of having been given a full meal of circumstance....
He is original without striving to be so, and one can never be
embarrassed by the affirmation that he has come to hold a high place
among poets of America."--_The Chicago Tribune._
"Cale Young Rice has been credited with some of the finest poetry, and
regarded as a distinguished master of lyric utterance, and this latest
volume is warrant for such approval."--_The Brooklyn Eagle._
"We find in Mr. Rice the large and elemental vision a poet must have to
serve his people when overwhelmed by elemental sorrows and passions. His
poetry is a spiritual force interpreting life in the various phases of
intellect and emotion, with a beauty of finish and sense of form that
are unerring."--_The Louisville Post._
"All that has been said of Cale Young Rice, and that is much indeed, is
justified in this latest volume."--_The San Francisco Chronicle._
"Cale Young Rice is a real poet of genuine and sincere inspiration,
never reminiscent or imitative or obvious, but singing from a full heart
his keen, meditative songs."--_The New York Times._
_12mo. 187 pages. Price $1.50_
COLLECTED PLAYS AND POEMS
By CALE YOUNG RICE
"The great quality of Cale Young Rice's work is that, amid all
distractions and changes in contemporary taste, it remains true to the
central drift of great poetry. His interests are very wide ... and his
books open up a most varied world of emotion and romance."--_Gilbert
Murray._
"The quality of Mr. Rice's work is high. It is seen at its best in his
poetic dramas, which maintain an astonishing elevation and intensity of
passion ... but his visionary and philosophical poems are nearly as
fine. He has a thorough mastery of form, yet notwithstanding the ease of
his verse it is never slipshod or mechanical."--_The Spectator
(London)._
"With variations of phrase Cale Young Rice has been described by critics
here and in America as "the most distinguished master of lyric utterance
in the New World." ... He has dramatic genius ... and is a born maker of
songs.... His later volumes confirm the judgment of those who have named
him the first and most distinctive of modern American lyrists, and one
of the world's true poets."--_F. Heath (The London Bookman)._
"Mr. Rice is an American poet whose reputation is deserved.... He has
achieved a high position as poet and dramatist, a great fertility and
variety of outlook being marked features of his work."--_The London
Times._
"Foremost among writers who have brought America into prominence in the
realm of modern thought is Mr. Cale Young Rice.... 'Collected Plays and
Poems' is one of the best offerings of verse we have had for long.
Indeed, it has real brilliance.... Mr. Rice's plays are
masterful."--_The Book Monthly (London)._
"Cale Young Rice is highly esteemed by readers wherever English is the
native speech."--_The Manchester Guardian._
"In Mr. Rice we have a voice such as America has rarely known
before."--_The Rochester (N. Y.) Post-Express._
"Mr. Rice of today is the poet who sang to us yesterday of the big,
vital things of life.... With real genius he brings to the soul a sense
of things many of us have but dimly sensed in all our years."--_The
Philadelphia Record._
"These volumes are an anthology wrought by a master hand and endowed
with perennial vitality.... This writer is the most distinguished master
of lyric utterance in the new world ... and he has contributed much to
the scanty stock of American literary fame. Fashions in poetry come and
go, and minor lights twinkle fitfully as they pass in tumultuous review.
But these volumes are of the things that are eternal in poetic
expression.... They embody the hopes and impulses of universal
humanity."--_The Philadelphia North-American._
"Mr. Rice has been hailed by too many critics as the poet of his
country, if not of his generation, not to create a demand for a full
edition of his works."--_The Hartford (Conn.) Courant._
"This gathering of his forces stamps Mr. Rice as one of the world's true
poets, remarkable alike for strength, versatility and beauty of
expression."--_The Chicago Herald (Ethel M. Colton)._
"It is with no undue repetition that we speak of the very great range
and very great variety of Mr. Rice's subject, inspiration, and mode of
expression.... The passage of his spirit is truly from deep to
deep."--_Margaret S. Anderson (The Louisville Evening Post)._
"It is good to find such sincere and beautiful work as is in these two
volumes.... Here is a writer with no wish to purchase fame at the price
of eccentricity of either form or subject."--_The Independent._
"Mr. Rice's style is that of the masters.... Yet it is one that
is distinctively American.... He will live with our great
poets."--_Louisville Herald (J. J. Cole)._
"Mr. Rice is an American by birth, but he is not merely an American
poet. Over existence and the whole world his vision extends. He is a
poet of human life and his range is uncircumscribed."--_The Baltimore
Evening News._
"Viewing Mr. Rice's plays as a whole, I should say that his prime virtue
is fecundity or affluence, the power to conceive and combine events
resourcefully, and an abundance of pointed phrases which recalls and
half restores the great Elisabethans. His aptitude for structure is
great."--_The Nation (O. W. Firkins)._
"Mr. Rice has fairly won his singing robes and has a right to be ranked
with the first of living poets. One must read the volumes to get an idea
of their cosmopolitan breadth and fresh abiding charm.... The dramas,
taken as a whole, represent the most important work of the kind that has
been done by any living writer.... This work belongs to that great world
where the mightiest spiritual and intellectual forces are forever
contending; to that deeper life which calls for the rarest gifts of
poetic expression."--_The Book News Monthly (Albert S. Henry)._
_12mo. 2 vols. Price $4.00_
The following volumes are now included in the author's
"Collected Plays and Poems," and are not obtainable
elsewhere:
At the World's Heart
"This book justifies the more than transatlantic reputation of its
author."--_The Sheffield (England) Daily Telegraph._
Porzia: A Play
"It matters little that we hesitate between ranking Mr. Rice highest as
dramatist or lyrist; what matters is that he has the faculty divine
beyond any living poet of America; his inspiration is true, and his
poetry is the real thing."--_The London Bookman._
Far Quests
"It shows a wide range of thought and sympathy, and real skill in
workmanship, while occasionally it rises to heights of simplicity and
truth, that suggest such inspiration as should mean lasting fame."--_The
Daily Telegraph (London)._
The Immortal Lure: Four Plays
"It is great art--with great vitality."--_James Lane Allen._
"Different from Paola and Francesca, but excelling it--or any of Stephen
Phillips's work--in a vivid presentment of a supreme moment in the lives
of the characters."--_The New York Times._
Many Gods
"These poems are flashingly, glowingly full of the East.... What I am
sure of in Mr. Rice is that here we have an American poet whom we may
claim as ours."--_William Dean Howells, in The North American Review._
Nirvana Days
"Mr. Rice has the technical cunning that makes up almost the entire
equipment of many poets nowadays, but human nature is more to him always
... and he has the feeling and imaginative sympathy without which all
poetry is but an empty and vain thing."--_The London Bookman._
A Night in Avignon: A Play
"It is as vivid as a page from Browning. Mr. Rice has the dramatic
pulse."--_James Huneker._
Yolanda of Cyprus: A Play
"It has real life and drama, not merely beautiful words, and so differs
from the great mass of poetic plays."--_Prof. Gilbert Murray._
David: A Play
"It is safe to say that were Mr. Rice an Englishman or a Frenchman, his
reputation as his country's most distinguished poetic dramatist would
have been assured by a more universal sign of recognition."--_The
Baltimore News._
Charles Di Tocca: A Play
"It is the most powerful, vital, and truly tragical drama written by an
American for some years. There is genuine pathos, mighty yet never
repellent passion, great sincerity and penetration, and great elevation
and beauty of language."--_The Chicago Post._
Song-Surf
"Mr. Rice's work betrays wide sympathies with nature and life, and a
welcome originality of sentiment and metrical harmony."--_Sydney Lee._
TRAILS SUNWARD
By CALE YOUNG RICE
"Cale Young Rice has written some of the finest poetry of the last
decade, and is the author of the very best poetic dramas ever written by
an American.... He is one of the few supreme lyrists ... and one of the
few remaining lovers of beauty ... who write it. One of the very few
writers of _vers libre_ who know just what they are doing."--_The Los
Angles Times._
"Another book by Cale Young Rice ... one of the few poetic geniuses this
country has produced.... In its sixty or more poems may be found the
hall mark of individuality that denotes preeminence and signalizes
independence."--_The Philadelphia North American._
"Mr. Rice attempts and succeeds in deepening the note of his singing ...
keeping its brilliant technique, its intricate verse formation, but
seeking all the while for words to interpret the profound things of
life. The music of his lines is more perfect than ever, his rhythms
fresh and varied."--_Littell's Living Age._
"Cale Young Rice's work is always simple and sincere ... but that does
not prevent him from voicing his song with passion and virility. Nearly
all his poems have elevation of thought and feeling, with beauty of
imagery and music."--_The New York Times._
"Whether the forms of this book are lyrical, narrative, or dramatic,
there is an excellence of workmanship that denotes the master hand....
And while the range of ideas is broad, the treatment of each is
distinguished by a strength and beauty remarkably fine."--_The Continent
(Chicago)._
"Mr. Rice proves the fine argument of his preface ... for this book has
in it form and beauty and a full reflection of the externals as well as
the soul of the America he loves."--_The Philadelphia Public Ledger._
"The work of this poet always demands and receives unstinted
admiration.... His is not the poetic fashion of the moment, but of all
poetic time."--_The Chicago Herald._
"In 'Trails Sunward,' Mr. Rice demonstrates as heretofore the
possibility of attaining poetic growth and originality even in the
Twentieth Century, without extremism.... Sanity linked with vitality and
breadth in art make for permanence, and one can but feel that Mr. Rice
builds for more than a day."--_The Louisville Courier Journal._
"I rarely use the term 'sublimity,' yet in touches of 'The Foreseers,'
particularly in its cavern-set opening, I should say that Mr. Rice had
scaled that eminence."--_O. W. Firkins (The Nation)._
_12mo. 150 pages. Price $1.50_
EARTH AND NEW EARTH
By CALE YOUNG RICE
"America has today no poet who answers so well the multiplex tests of
poetry as does Cale Young Rice."--_New York Sun._
"Glancing through the reviews quoted at the end of 'Earth and New Earth'
we note that we have said some very enthusiastic things in praise of the
poetry of Cale Young Rice, and yet there is not an adjective we would
withdraw. On the contrary each new volume only confirms the expectation
of the better work this writer was to produce."--_The San Francisco
Chronicle._
"This is a volume of verse rich in dramatic quality and beauty of
conception.... Every poem is quotable and the collection must appeal to
all who can appreciate the highest forms of modern verse."--_The
Bookseller (New York)._
"Any one familiar with 'Cloister Lays,' 'The Mystic,' etc., does not
need to be told that they rank with the very best poetry. And Mr. Rice's
dramas are not equaled by any other American author's.... And when those
who are loyal to poetic traditions cherished through the whole history
of our language contemplate the anemia and artificiality of
contemporaries, they can but assert that Mr. Rice has the grasp and
sweep, the rhythm, imagery and pulsating sympathy, which in wondering
admiration are ascribed to genius."--_The Los Angeles Times._
"This latest collection shows no diminution in Mr. Rice's versatility or
power of expression. Its poems are serious, keen, distinctively free and
vitally spiritual in thought."--_The Continent (Chicago)._
"Mr. Rice is concerned with thoughts that are more than timely; they
represent a large vision of the world events now transpiring ... and his
affirmation of the spiritual in such an hour establishes him in the
immemorial office of the poet-prophet.... The volume is a worthy
addition to the large amount of his work."--_Anna L. Hopper in The
Louisville Courier-Journal._
"Cale Young Rice is the greatest living American poet."--_D. F.
Hannigan, Lit. Ed. The Rochester Post-Express._
"The indefinable spirit of swift imaginative suggestion is never
lacking. The problems of fate are still big with mystery and propounded
with tense elemental dramatism."--_The Philadelphia North-American._
"The work of Cale Young Rice emerges clearly as the most distinguished
offering of this country to the combined arts of poetry and the drama.
'Earth and New Earth' strikes a ringing new note of the earth which
shall be after the War."--_The Memphis Commercial-Appeal._
_12mo. 158 pages. $1.50_
TURN ABOUT TALES
(PROSE)
By CALE YOUNG RICE and ALICE HEGAN RICE
"This volume of stories should hold its own with any collection likely
to be published this year."--_New York Post (The Literary Review)._
"American writers have been distinctive as narrators of the short story,
but few, if any, volumes of such stories have recently been published in
this country equal to 'Turn About Tales.'"--_D. F. Hannigan (The
Rochester Post-Express)._
"The gamut of the volume runs from spiritualism to the depths. It
contains something of almost anything one happens to want. Better yet,
it contains something new."--_The Boston Transcript._
"Mr. Rice has written well--so well as to justify prediction that he
will, if he elect to do so, achieve greater distinction as a short story
writer than as a poet. His 'Lowry,' 'Francella' and 'Aaron Harwood,' to
cite a few of the stories, meet the test of artistic stories.... Each
leaves an impression that will impel re-reading."--_Galveston News._
"Both writers portray, in their best vein, a consummate though
distinctive skill in analyzing and delineating human emotions and
experience."--_Buffalo Commercial._
"Those who have read Mr. Rice's poetry will find his dramatic genius
manifest in these stories."--_The Watchman, N. Y._
"Mrs. Rice's humor and pathos combine well with Mr. Rice's mastery of
diction and deep human understanding."--_Milwaukee Journal._
"Each story is notable for beauty of technique ... each has its definite
appeal."--_Louisville Evening Post (Margaret S. Anderson)._
"Each of the stories is of such finished workmanship as to make reading
of it an unadulterated pleasure."--_Baltimore Sun._
"The book is one of the best of the kind in this year's American
fiction."--_The Spectator (Portland, Ore.)_
"Mr. Rice has grappled with the constructive problems of his time, so
one finds them without surprise in this newly adopted vehicle.... Three
of his stories have a realism as relentless as Chekov's ... and it goes
without saying that his stories are technically admirable."--_Louisville
Courier-Journal._
"Mr. Rice so lives through his characters that, as Whitman says, he 'Is
that man' of whom he writes."--_Pittsburg Sun._
"The same dramatic power and beauty that mark Mr. Rice's lyrics will be
found in these prose stories."--_Cincinnati Times-Star._
"One seldom finds a book of short stories so satisfying
throughout."--_Minneapolis Journal._
_Price $1.90_