*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 63265 ***

Transcriber’s Note

Table of Contents added by Transcriber.

ANTHOLOGY OF
MAGAZINE VERSE
FOR 1913

Including the Magazines
and the Poets *_** A Review

BY
WILLIAM STANLEY BRAITHWAITE

Author of “The House of Falling Leaves,”
“The Book of Elizabethan Verse,” etc.

* _* *

ISSUED BY
W. S. B.
CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS

Thomas Todd Co., Printers
14 Beacon Street, Boston, Mass.

TO THE POETS OF AMERICA
SINGING TODAY
THE SOUL OF THEIR COUNTRY
TRUTH, BEAUTY, BROTHERHOOD
THEIR NAMES ARE TORCHES

	Page
Introduction	v
Hymn to Demeter, by Louis V. Ledoux	1
Over the Wintry Threshold, by Bliss Carman	2
In April, by Margaret Lee Ashley	3
May Is Building Her House, by Richard Le Gallienne	3
In a Forgotten Burying-ground, by Ruth Guthrie Harding	4
Wind, by Fannie Stearns Davis	5
The Speckled Trout, by Madison Cawein	5
Trees, by Joyce Kilmer	7
In the Hospital, by Arthur Guiterman	7
Love of Life, by Tertius van Dyke	8
God’s Will, by Mildred Howells	8
On the Birth of a Child, by Louis Untermeyer	9
To a Child Falling Asleep, Robert Alden Sanborn	9
A Roman Doll, by Agnes Lee	12
Sappho, by Sara Teasdale	13
Of Moira Up the Glen, by Edward J. O’Brien	16
Morning Glories, by John G. Neihardt	17
Lest I Learn, by Witter Bynner	18
Later, by Willard Huntington Wright	18
The Old Maid, by Sara Teasdale	19
Departure, by John Hall Wheelock	20
An Adieu, by Florence Earle Coates	20
Heart’s Tide, by Ethel M. Hewitt	21
Waiting, by Charles Hanson Towne	22
Desiderium, by Richard Le Gallienne	22
Human, by Richard Burton	23
The Ghost, by Hermann Hagedorn	23
A Mountain Gateway, by Bliss Carman	24
Perugia, by Amelia Josephine Burr	25
Ghosts, by Marguerite Mooers Marshall	27
St. John and the Faun, by George Edward Woodberry	28
School, by Percy MacKaye	30
The Marvelous Munchausen, by William Rose Benét	34
Train-mates, by Witter Bynner	38
The Kallyope Yell, by Nicholas Vachel Lindsay	39
Thanksgiving For Our Task, by Shaemas OSheel	43
A Likeness, by Willa Sibert Cather	46
The Field of Glory, by Edwin Arlington Robinson	48
Rich Man, Poor Man—, by Francis Hill	49
The Sin Eater, by Ruth Comfort Mitchell	50
Night-sentries, by George Sterling	52
The Swordless Christ, by Percy Adams Hutchison	54
What of the Night?, by Willard Huntington Wright	55
A Threnody, by Louis V. Ledoux	57
November, by Mahlon Leonard Fisher	61
Salutation, by Ruth Sterry	62
Here Lies Pierrot, by Richard Burton	62
List of “Distinctive Poems,” Their Authors, and the Magazines in Which They Appeared	64
The “Best Poems” Chosen from the “Distinctive” List	69
Titles and Authors of All Poems Appearing in the Seven Magazines For 1918	71
Index of First Lines	99

INTRODUCTION

Poetry is one of the realities that persist. The façade and dome of palace and temple, the monuments of heroes and saints, crumble before the ruining breath of time, while the Psalms last. So when another year passes and we sum up our achievements, there is no achievement more vital in registering the soul of a people than its poetry. But in all things that men do, their relationship is objective except those things in which art, religion, love, and nature express their influence through the private thoughts and feelings of men. These four things are the realities, all the others are symbols. And the essence of art, as well as religion and love and nature, is a conscious and mysterious thing, called Poetry. And men will find, if they will only stop to look, that at the bottom of all this poetry, no matter what the theme or the particular artistic shaping, there is something with which they are familiar, because in their own souls there has been an unceasing mystery which they find named in the magic utterance of some lonely and neglected maker of verses.

The poetry in the magazines for this past year has been of a general high standard. The long poems have been well sustained, and there has been a larger quantity of pure lyric pieces than in the past two or three years. The influence of Masefield has shown itself in American verse, notably in the two long poems by Harry Kemp, “The Harvestvi Hand” and “The Factory.” One of the noblest poems of the year is Henry van Dyke’s “Daybreak in the Grand Cañon of Arizona,” which breathes a fine national spirit, full of reverence for the greatness with which the American destiny is symbolized in the natural grandeur of our country. Mr. Markham has a long narrative in “The Shoes of Happiness,” full of his visionary and spiritual promptings. And in “The Vision of Gettysburg” Mr. Robert Underwood Johnson reflects also the national spirit with particular significance.

The poetry of the year in volumes has not been as ample as last year. The three poets who have aroused most discussion are the Bengali poet Tagore, who brought to the Western world in “Gitanjali” a spiritual message full of mystic but exalted idealism; Francis Thompson, the great Catholic poet, because of the publication of his collected works; and Robert Bridges, who, by his appointment to the English laureateship, became known to a large number of readers who had hitherto been unfamiliar with his very perfect and delicate gift of lyric beauty. Of American poets the volumes by Fannie Stearns Davis, William Rose Benét, Josephine Preston Peabody, Margaret Root Garvin, and George Edward Woodberry are the most significant. The most important book of poems of the year by an American poet, however, is that of Nicholas Vachel Lindsay, “General William Booth Enters into Heaven and Other Poems.” Here is a man with a big vision, with a fine originality, and an art that is particularly his own. There has been no “Lyric Year” this autumn, but a littlevii volume that serves in some sense its purpose is Miss Jessie B. Rittenhouse’s “Little Book of Modern Verse,” which is intended to represent the quality of contemporary American verse.

I want to call attention to a poet who has not yet presented himself except through an occasional magazine piece, but who has written two of the finest sonnets in American poetry. Last year I reprinted, in my annual summary, Mr. Mahlon Leonard Fisher’s “As an Old Mercer,” and pronounced that an achievement which could hardly be surpassed. But in the sonnet “November,” which is reprinted in this book, Mr. Fisher has done, I believe, something that is even greater. It must rank with Lizette Woodworth Reese’s “Tears” and Longfellow’s “Nature” as the best sonnets that have been accomplished by American poets. I have known one competent judge and lover of poetry to declare that not since Keats’ “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer” and Miss Reese’s “Tears” has there appeared so fine a sonnet in English poetry. The man who has written “November” has added something to American poetry that cannot be too highly estimated.

Another poet who has enriched the magazines this year, after a period of silence, is Mr. Edwin Arlington Robinson, and in “The Field of Glory” we are under the spell once more of that characteristic magic with which he is endowed alone among American poets.

As in former years, in my annual summary in the Boston Transcript, I have examined the contents of the leading American monthly magazines.viii I originally started, nine years ago, when the first summary appeared, with these six: The Atlantic, Harper’s, Scribner’s, Century, Lippincott’s, and McClure’s. Later I turned to The Forum. The poetry in McClure’s during the two years previous to the beginning of the present year had fallen off; the magazine would reprint occasionally verses from the books of accomplished but little known English and Irish poets, which, with the small amount of space that it devoted to verse, left but little chance of encouragement to native singers. This year I have included The Smart Set, which, under the new editorship of Mr. Willard Huntington Wright, himself a poet of considerable attainment, has been the means of offering the public a high and consistent standard of excellence in the verse it printed.

To the six magazines, namely, Harper’s, Scribner’s, Century, Forum, Lippincott’s, and The Smart Set, I have added this year a weekly, The Bellman. West of New York it is the best edited and most influential periodical published. Indeed, it is widely read in the East. In its pages three of the younger American poets of distinctive achievement have been presented. Though the late Arthur Upson had published some two or three books of verse before The Bellman was established, yet it was practically the first American magazine to print his work. Amelia J. Burr made her first considerable poetic appearance in The Bellman, and the best work, the sonnets that have placed Mr. Mahlon Leonard Fisher in the forefront of contemporary American, or English, sonnet writers, appeared inix this same publication. As last year, I have winnowed from other magazines distinctive poems for classification and notice, one each from The Outlook, The Independent, the North American Review, Poetry, A Magazine of Verse; three from the Poetry Journal and three from the Yale Review.

* * * * *

The poems published during the year in the seven representative magazines I have submitted to an impartial critical test, choosing from the total number what I consider the “distinctive” poems of the year. From the distinctive pieces are selected eighty-one poems, to which are added five from the other magazines not represented in the list of seven, making a total of eighty-six, which are intended to represent what I call an “Anthology of Magazine Verse for 1913.”

By a further process of elimination, similar to that of previous years, I have made another selection of forty poems which for one reason or another in the purpose of this estimate seem to stand grouped above the others.

The medium of magazine publication, towards which some critics, and some poets too (a fact which can hardly be justified), and a considerable portion of the reading public have a disparaging opinion, is deserving of better repute for the general high quality of poetic art that is published. Not many years ago it was a favorite exercise of the reviewer, when noticing the average book of verse which happened to include selections reprinted from various magazines, to term the work “magazinable,” or the poet a “magazine poet.” Even poetsx who detested being called “minor” poets preferred that rather vague and indiscriminate distinction, rather than the unrespectable “magazinable.”

Quoting what I have written in previous years, to emphasize the methods which guided my selections, the reader will see how impartial are the tests by which the distinctive and best poems are chosen: “I have not allowed any special sympathy with the subject to influence my choice. I have taken the poet’s point of view, and accepted his value of the theme he dealt with. The question was: How vital and compelling did he make it? The first test was the sense of pleasure the poem communicated; then to discover the secret or the meaning of the pleasure felt; and in doing so to realize how much richer one became in a knowledge of the purpose of life by reason of the poem’s message.”

In one hundred and twenty-one numbers of these seven magazines I find there were published during 1913 a total of 506 poems. The total number of poems printed in each magazine, and the number of the distinctive poems are: Century, total 58, 30 of distinction; Harper’s, total 57, 29 of distinction; Scribner’s, total 45, 30 of distinction; Forum, total 53, 27 of distinction; Lippincott’s, total 66, 21 of distinction; The Bellman, total 53, 25 of distinction; The Smart Set, total 169, 49 of distinction.

Following the text of the poems making the anthology in this volume, I have given the titles and authors of all the poems classified as the distinctive, published in the magazines for the year, only excepting those that are included in the anxithology; in addition I give a list of all the poems and their authors in the one hundred and twenty-one numbers of the magazines examined, for the purpose of a record which readers and students of poetry will find useful.

I wish to acknowledge my indebtedness and thanks to the editors of Scribner’s Magazine, Harper’s Magazine, The Forum, The Century Magazine, The Outlook, Lippincott’s Magazine, The Bellman, The Independent, The Smart Set, the Yale Review, Poetry, A Magazine of Verse; and to the publishers of these magazines, including The Poetry Journal, for the permission kindly given to reprint in this volume the text of the poems making the “Anthology of Magazine Verse for 1913.” To the authors of these poems I am equally indebted and grateful for their willingness to have me reprint their work in this form. Since their appearance in the magazines and before the close of the year when the contents of this volume was made up, two poems herein included appeared in the original volumes of their authors. For the use of William Rose Benét’s “The Marvelous Munchausen” I have also to thank The Century Co., publishers of “Merchants of Cathay,” in which volume it appears. As far as I know, only three of the poems here included are to come out immediately in books by their authors. The last four stanzas of “A Threnody,” by Mr. Louis V. Ledoux, are reprinted by permission of the editor of Scribner’s Magazine, and the rest of the poem is published in advance, by permission of Messrs. G. P. Putnam’s Sons, from a volume of Mr. Ledoux’sxii poems, which is also to include the “Hymn to Demeter” from “A Sicilian Idyl,” they are to issue in January, under the title of “The Shadow of Ætna.” The two selections by Mr. Richard Burton, “Here Lies Pierrot” and “Human”; the two by Willard Huntington Wright, “What of the Night?” and “Later”; the one by George Edward Woodberry, “St. John and the Faun”; and the two by Richard Le Gallienne, “May is Building Her House” and “Desiderium” (which while this Introduction is being written has come out in Mr. Le Gallienne’s volume, “The Lonely Dancer and Other Poems,” John Lane Co.), are also being issued immediately in forthcoming volumes. If there are any others I do not know of them, and in which case I would gladly give credit, so I trust any omission of such will be charged to ignorance rather than intention. I wish it to be understood that the privilege extended me so courteously, by both the authors and the magazines, to print the poems in this volume, does not in any sense restrict the authors in their rights to print the poems in volumes of their own.

A significant fact which the poetry in this volume must bring to the reader’s mind in considering American poetry of today is, that these selections have been published for the first time during the current year. Our poetry needs, more than anything else, encouragement and support, to reveal its qualities. The poets are doing satisfying and vitally excellent work, and it only remains for the American public to do its duty by showing a substantial appreciation.

xiii

Lastly, I wish to thank the Boston Transcript for the privilege of reprinting material in this book which originally appeared in the columns of that paper.

Cambridge, December, 1913. W. S. B.

HYMN TO DEMETER
From “A Sicilian Idyl”

Weave the dance, and raise again the sacred chorus;

Wreathe the garlands of the spring about the hair;

Now once more the meadows burst in bloom before us,

Crying swallows dart and glitter through the air.

Glints the plowshare in the brown and fragrant furrow;

Pigeons coo in shady coverts as they pair;

Come the furtive mountain folk from cave and burrow,

Lean, and blinking at the sunlight’s sudden glare.

Bright through midmost heaven moves the lesser Lion;

Hide the Hyades in ocean caverns hoar;

Past the shoulders of the sunset flames Orion,

Following the sisters seaward evermore.

Gleams the east at evening, lit by low Arcturus;

Out to subtle-scented dawns beside the shore,

Yet a little and the Pleiades will lure us:

Weave the dance and raise the chorus as of yore.

Far to eastward up the fabled gulf of Issus,

Northward, southward, westward, now the trader goes,

Passing headlands clustered yellow with narcissus,

Bright with hyacinth, with poppy, and with rose.

Shines the sea and falls the billow as undaunted,

Past the rising of the stars that no man knows,

Sails he onward through the islands siren-haunted,

Till the clashing gates of rock before him close.

Kindly Mother of the beasts and birds and flowers,

Gracious bringer of the barley and the grain,

Earth awakened feels thy sunlight and thy showers;

Great Demeter! Let us call thee not in vain;

Lead us safely from the seed-time to the threshing,

Past the harvest and the vineyard’s purple stain;

Let us see thy corn-pale hair the sunlight meshing,

When the sounding flails of autumn swing again.

Yale Review Louis V. Ledoux

OVER THE WINTRY THRESHOLD

Over the wintry threshold

Who comes with joy today,

So frail, yet so enduring,

To triumph o’er dismay?

Ah, quick her tears are springing,

And quickly they are dried,

For sorrow walks before her,

But gladness walks beside.

She comes with gusts of laughter,—

The music as of rills;

With tenderness and sweetness,

The wisdom of the hills.

Her hands are strong to comfort,

Her heart is quick to heed;

She knows the signs of sadness,

She knows the voice of need;

There is no living creature,

However poor or small,

But she will know its trouble,

And hearken to its call.

Oh, well they fare forever,

By mighty dreams possessed,

Whose hearts have lain a moment

On that eternal breast.

Smart Set Bliss Carman

IN APRIL

If I am slow forgetting,

It is because the sun

Has such old tricks of setting

When April days are done.

The soft spring sunlight traces

Old patterns—green and gold;

The flowers have no new faces,

The very buds are old!

If I am slow forgetting—

Ah, well, come back and see

The same old sunbeams petting

My garden-plots and me.

Come smell the green things growing,

The boxwood after rain;

See where old beds are showing

Their slender spears again.

At dusk, that fosters dreaming—

Come back at dusk and rest,

And watch our old star gleaming

Against the primrose west.

Harper’s Margaret Lee Ashley

MAY IS BUILDING HER HOUSE

May is building her house. With apple blooms

She is roofing over the glimmering rooms;

Of the oak and the beech hath she builded its beams,

And, spinning all day at her secret looms,

With arras of leaves each wind-swayed wall

She pictureth over, and peopleth it all

With echoes and dreams,

And singing of streams.

May is building her house. Of petal and blade,

Of the roots of the oak is the flooring made,

With a carpet of mosses and lichen and clover,

Each small miracle over and over,

And tender, traveling green things strayed.

Her windows, the morning and evening star,

And her rustling doorways, ever ajar

With the coming and going

Of fair things blowing,

The thresholds of the four winds are.

May is building her house. From the dust of things

She is making the songs and the flowers and the wings;

From October’s tossed and trodden gold

She is making the young year out of the old;

Yea! out of winter’s flying sleet

She is making all the summer sweet,

And the brown leaves spurned of November’s feet

She is changing back again to spring’s.

Harper’s Richard Le Gallienne

IN A FORGOTTEN BURYING-GROUND

Eternal in the brooding of the old Norwegian spruces

I hear the wistful tenderness of loves They used to know,

And in the swelling wood-notes that the eager springtide looses

Sobs again Their heart-break from the Springs of Long Ago:

And sometime, thro’ the silence, with the April shadows lying

Aslant the solemn acre where I take my dreamless rest,

Perhaps the stifled need of You my heart was ever crying

Will find its way across the years—to stir a stranger’s breast!

The Poetry Journal Ruth Guthrie Harding

WIND

The Wind bows down the poplar trees,

The Wind bows down the crested seas;

And he has bowed the heart of me

Under his hand of memory.

O heavy-handed Wind, who goes

Hurting the petals of the rose;

Who leaves the grasses on the hill

Broken and pallid, spent and still!

O heavy-handed Wind, who brings

To me all echoing ancient things:

Echoing sorrow and defeat,

Crying like mourners, hard to meet!

The Wind bows down the poplar trees

And all the ocean’s argosies;

But deeper bends the heart of me,

Under his hand of memory.

Harper’s Fannie Stearns Davis

THE SPECKLED TROUT

With rod and line I took my way

That led me through the gossip trees,

Where all the forest was asway

With hurry of the running breeze.

I took my hat off to a flower

That nodded welcome as I passed;

And, pelted by a morning shower,

Unto its heart a bee held fast.

A head of gold one great weed tossed,

And leaned to look when I went by;

And where the brook the roadway crossed

The daisy kept on me its eye.

And when I stooped to bathe my face,

And seat me at a great tree’s foot,

I heard the stream say, “Mark the place:

And undermine it rock and root.”

And o’er the whirling water there

A dragonfly its shuttle plied,

Where wild a fern let down its hair,

And leaned to see the water’s pride—

A speckled trout. The spotted elf,

Whom I had come so far to see,

Stretched out above a rocky shelf,

A shadow sleeping mockingly.

* * * * *

And I have sat here half the day

Regarding it. It has not stirred.

I heard the running water say—

“He does not know the magic word.

“The word that changes everything,

And brings all Nature to his hand:

That makes of this great trout a king,

And opes the way to Faeryland.”

The Bellman Madison Cawein

TREES

I think that I shall never see

A poem lovely as a tree.

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest

Against the sweet earth’s hungry breast;

A tree that looks at God all day

And lifts her leafy arms to pray;

A tree that may in summer wear

A nest of robins in her hair;

Upon whose bosom snow has lain;

Who intimately lives with rain.

Poems are made by fools like me,

But only God can make a tree!

Poetry, A Magazine of Verse Joyce Kilmer

IN THE HOSPITAL

Because on the branch that is tapping my pane

A sun-wakened leaf-bud, uncurled,

Is bursting its rusty brown sheathing in twain,

I know there is Spring in the world.

Because through the sky-patch whose azure and white

My window frames all the day long

A yellow-bird dips for an instant of flight,

I know there is Song.

Because even here in this Mansion of Woe

Where creep the dull hours, leaden-shod,

Compassion and Tenderness aid me, I know

There is God.

Scribner’s Arthur Guiterman

LOVE OF LIFE

Love you not the tall trees spreading wide their branches,

Cooling with their green shade the sunny days of June?

Love you not the little bird lost among the leaflets,

Dreamily repeating a quaint, brief tune?

Is there not a joy in the waste windy places;

Is there not a song by the long dusty way?

Is there not a glory in the sudden hour of struggle?

Is there not a peace in the long quiet day?

Love you not the meadows with the deep lush grasses;

Love you not the cloud-flocks noiseless in their flight?

Love you not the cool wind that stirs to meet the sunrise;

Love you not the stillness of the warm summer night?

Have you never wept with a grief that slowly passes;

Have you never laughed when a joy goes running by?

Know you not the peace of rest that follows labor?—

You have not learnt to live then; how can you dare to die?

Scribner’s Tertius van Dyke

GOD’S WILL

God meant me to be hungry,

So I should seek to find

Wisdom, and truth, and beauty,

To satisfy my mind.

God meant me to be lonely,

Lest I should wish to stay

In some green earthly Eden

Too long from heaven away.

God meant me to be weary,

That I should yearn to rest

This feeble, aching body

Deep in the earth’s dark breast.

Harper’s Mildred Howells

ON THE BIRTH OF A CHILD

Lo—to the battle-ground of Life,

Child, you have come, like a conquering shout,

Out of a struggle—into strife;

Out of a darkness—into doubt.

Girt with the fragile armor of Youth,

Child, you must ride into endless wars,

With the sword of protest, the buckler of truth,

And a banner of love to sweep the stars....

About you the world’s despair will surge;

Into defeat you must plunge and grope—

Be to the faltering, an urge;

Be to the hopeless years, a hope!

Be to the darkened world a flame;

Be to its unconcern a blow—

For out of its pain and tumult you came,

And into its tumult and pain you go.

The Independent Louis Untermeyer

TO A CHILD FALLING ASLEEP

Over the dim edge of sleep I lean,

And in her eyes’ illimitable grey distances,

Look down into the shadow-tinted space,—

The cloudy air of sleep,—

To see the rose-lit petal of a Child’s fair soul

Seek dreamily the farther gloom,

Where waking eyes may follow her no more.

One more last time her lids are lifted,

And in her look I read a wistful fare-thee-well;

Her spirit waves a twinkling white hand,

Her bark is out upon the sea of dream,—

The calm, grey sea, full and immovably established,

That drinks the river of my love, without o’erflowing,

Nor ever gives my image back to me.

When o’er the sun-swept land

Murmuring twilight spread her dusky tent,

A Stranger passed before our friendly sun,—

Between the dark and dawn,—

A Stranger whom we love but never see.

And as she came and cast her blue benignant shadow over all,

She set a silver trumpet to her lips,

And blew a note that thrilled in Children’s hearts;

Because in little hearts the echo-fairies love to play,

Roaming the scented meadows there,

Where Love has been and sown the amaranthine flowers,

Out of whose pristine cups are born the singing stars.

And as the first free rainbow bubble sailed,

Launched by the Stranger with the silver pipe,

Upon the listening air;

As first the hollow note

Kissed the sweet lips and died of happiness,

The little Child unfurled her sails.

I stood there on the very verge of sleep,

And called to her,

And Love’s own self had deigned to wait within my heart,

(Because I kept it always fit for Childish guests)

And would have given welcome had she stayed.

But then I saw the eyelids close,

And knew that Azrael who championed her soul,

Had shut the gates lest I should see

More than my life could bear.

Yet I had seen her go,

And sight no more could hold of Beauty’s wine.

I had seen the fair face flush,

As the soft curtains of the tinted west,

Are drawn before the temple of the Night,

When the day-worn Sun has passed within;

Had seen the little body, whitely gowned,

Folded within its nest;

Had caught the last light kiss

Before the lips lay still;

And I had looked into the cool grey deep,

Where Sleep received the rose-leaf soul of her,

And bore it out upon her gentle waters.

Into the night I passed,

Where on the mellow bosom of the west,

Floated the flame-lit shell of Hesperus;

And as I stayed with hallowed breath,

The soul of fire fell over the rim of night:

And then I knew the soul of her I loved,

Had heard the last clear call,

The low Elysian chant of Hesperus,

And loving me had borne the love I gave,

Out and beyond and over all the ends of earth,

And where the altar flame of Venus burned,

Had laid the gift and breathed her Childhood’s prayer.

The Poetry Journal Robert Alden Sanborn

A ROMAN DOLL
(In a Museum)

How an image of paint and wood

Leaped to her life with a love’s control,

Struck the chords of her motherhood,

Passionate little mother-soul!

Fair to her sight were the stolid eyes,

Dear to her toil the robes empearled.

She crooned it the ancient lullabies,

She gathered it close from the outer world.

They watched together, as Nero’s pyres

Fed the haze of a hundred fires.

Me in her fresh young arms she bore.

See, I am small,

Only a doll.

But I keep her kiss forevermore.

Long and lonely the toy has lain.

One by one into time’s abyss

Years have dropped as the drops of rain.

Yet the cycles have left us this!

O red-lipped mother, O mother sweet,

Today a sister has heard you call,

Your heart is beating in her heart-beat.

I saw her weep o’er the crumbling doll.

She knew, she knew! You had lived and smiled!

You had loved your dream, little Roman child!

Me in her fresh young arms she bore.

See, I am small,

Only a doll.

But I keep her kiss forevermore.

The Poetry Journal Agnes Lee

SAPPHO

Midnight, and in the darkness not a sound;

So, with hushed breathing, sleeps the autumn night.

Only the white immortal stars shall know,

Here in the house by the low-lintelled door,

How for the last time I have lit the lamp.

I think you are not wholly careless now,

Walls, that have sheltered me so many an hour,

Bed, that has brought me ecstasy and sleep,

Floors, that have borne me when a gale of joy

Lifted my soul and made me half a god.

Farewell; across the threshold many feet

Shall pass, but never Sappho’s feet again.

Girls shall come in whom love has made aware

Of all their swaying beauty—they shall sing,

But never Sappho’s voice like golden fire

Shall seek for heaven thro’ your echoing rafters;

There shall be sparrows bringing back the spring

Over the long blue meadows of the sea,

And south wind playing on the reeds of rain,

But never Sappho’s whisper in the night,

Never her love-cry when the lover comes.

Farewell, I close the door and make it fast.

* * * * *

The little street lies meek beneath the moon,

Running, as rivers run, to meet the sea.

I too go seaward and shall not return.

Oh, garlands on the door-posts that I pass,

Woven of asters and of autumn leaves,

I make a prayer for you: Cypris, be kind,

That every lover may be given love.

I shall not hasten lest the paving-stones

Should echo with my sandals and awake

Those who are warm beneath the cloak of sleep;

Lest they should rise and see me and should say:

“Whither goes Sappho lonely in the night?”

Whither goes Sappho? Whither all men go,

But they go driven, straining back with fear,

And Sappho goes as lightly as a leaf

Blown from brown autumn forests to the sea.

* * * * *

Here on the rock Zeus lifted from the waves,

I shall await the waking of the dawn,

Lying beneath the weight of dark as one

Lies breathless till the lover shall awake.

And with the sun, the sea shall cover me;

I shall be less than the dissolving foam,

Murmuring and melting on the ebbing tide.

I shall be less than spindrift, less than shells—

And yet I shall be greater than the gods;

For destiny no more can bow my soul

As rain bows down the watch-fires on the hills.

Yea, if my soul escape, it shall aspire

Toward the white heaven as flame that has its will.

I go not bitterly, not dumb with grief,

Not broken by the ache of love—I go

As one grown tired lies down and hopes to sleep.

Yet they shall say: “It was for Cercolas—

She died because she could not bear her love.”

They shall remember how we used to walk

Here on the cliff beneath the oleanders,

In the long limpid twilight of the spring,

Looking toward Khios where the amber sky

Was pierced by the faint arrow of a star.

How should they know the wind of a new beauty

Sweeping my soul had winnowed it with song?

I have been glad tho’ love should come or go,

Happy as trees that find a wind to sway them,

Happy again when it has left them rest.

Others shall say: “Grave Dica wrought her death.”

She would not lift her lips to take a kiss,

Or ever lift her eyes to take a smile.

She was a pool the winter paves with ice,

That the wild hunter in the hills must leave

With thirst unslaked in the brief southward sun.

Ah, Dica, it is not for thee I go.

And not for Phaon, tho’ his ship lifts sail

Here in the windless harbor, for the south.

Oh, darkling deities that guard the Nile,

Watch over one whose gods are far away;

Egypt, be kind to him—his eyes are deep.

Yet they are wrong who say, it was for him.

How should they know that Sappho lived and died

Faithful to love, not faithful to the lover,

Never transfused and lost in what she loved,

Never so wholly loving nor at peace.

I asked for something greater than I found,

And every time that love has made me weep,

I have rejoiced that love could be so strong;

For I have stood apart and watched my soul

Caught in the gust of passion, as a bird

With baffled wings against the dusty whirlwind

Struggles and frees itself to find the sky.

* * * * *

It is not for a single god, I go.

I have grown weary of the winds of heaven.

I will not be a reed to hold the sound

Of whatsoever breath the gods may blow,

Turning my torment into music for them.

They gave me life—the gift was bountiful,

I lived with the swift singing strength of fire,

Seeking for beauty as a flame for fuel,

Beauty in all things and in every hour.

The gods have given life, I gave them song;

The debt is paid and now I turn to go.

The breath of dawn blows the stars out like lamps,

There is a rim of silver on the sea.

As one grown tired, who hopes to sleep, I go.

Scribner’s Sara Teasdale

OF MOIRA UP THE GLEN

It’s little that I’d care for the glories of Ireland,

Waiting for the shadows to gather in the glen,

Come the time of darkness, sitting by the hearth-light,

Whispering with bated breath for fear the little men

Should catch us and spell us to serve them for a year’s time,

Toiling and moiling within a faëry snare.

I’m thinkin’ ’twould be fearsome in the gray misty strangeness.—

’Tis hiding we’ll be in the clear free air!

The sunlight above us, and willow hedge for shelter,

A tangle of soft things to rustle by the stream,

Where Moira, my white dove, whose beauty is my sorrow,

Would sit with me and travel on the long bright dream,

Travel with the water from the mountain to the meadow,

Down across the lowlands and gaily to the sea,

Out beyond the breakers to the shimmer of a far line

Poised and trembling within the heart of me.

What shall I murmur to coax the dream of beauty

Out from the shadows to welcome in the dawn?

How shall I sing it that she may know the glory,

Know it and come by the first flush of morn?

The moonlight is dark light, ’tis fear I’m after feelin’,

The fairies should be in it and steal her heart away,

A goblet for their feasting, they’d drain it and fill it

With dreams of a far world beyond the light of day.

It’s God’s light I’m wanting, and Moira to see it,

See it and tremble with the love of God,

And seeing it she’d turn, and look within my own eyes,

And wonder at the vision transforming a sod

Into worshipful silence and thought that is living,

Burning, and shaped by the warmth of its fire

To a chalice of tears and of laughter for singing

The lovely unfolding of dream-purged desire.

Smart Set Edward J. O’Brien

MORNING GLORIES

Distant as a dream’s flight,

Lay an eerie plain,

Where the weary moonlight

Swooned into a moan;

Wailing after dead seed

Came the ghost of rain.

There was I, a wild weed,

Growing all alone.

Like a doubted story,

Came the thought of day;

God and all His glory

Lingered otherwhere,

Busy with the spring thrill

Many dreams away.

Could a little weed’s will

Fling so far a prayer?

Lo, the sudden wonder!

(Is a prayer so fleet?)

From the desert under,

Morning glories grew;

Twined me, bound me

With caressing feet;

Wove song ’round me—

Pink, white, blue!

As a fog is rifted

By the eager breeze,

Darkness broke and lifted,

Tossing like a sea!

Lo, the dawn was flowering

Through the maple trees!

Oh, and you were showering

Kisses over me!

Smart Set John G. Neihardt

LEST I LEARN

Lest I learn, with clearer sight,

Such beauty cannot be—

Tie a bandage, pull it tight,

Blind me, I would not see!

Lest I learn, with clearer will,

Such wonder cannot be—

Oh, kiss me nearer, nearer still,

And make a fool of me!

Smart Set Witter Bynner

LATER

I went to the place where my youth took birth

In the slow, round kiss of an amorous girl,

When sonnets and lace were the measure of earth,

When death was forgotten and life was a whirl.

I addled my brain with the memories flown

Of Heatherby Kaiser and Muriel Moore;

I thought of the women and men I had known,—

The glittering eyes and the bolt on the door—

The warm, gray walls and the odor of musk,

The wine, the piano, the glistening feet,

The eyes grown hazy like shadows at dusk,

The minstreling music that rose from the street.

I thought of Elise with her soft, gold hair;

And the buttonhook hung from the chandelier.

The spirit of passionate youth had been there—

But somehow the dream of it wasn’t quite clear,

For the place had been altered; the walls were red,

And the woodwork was stained with a desolate brown;

And they told me a woman had lain in the bed

For a year and a half with the curtains down.

Smart Set Willard Huntington Wright

THE OLD MAID

I saw her in a Broadway car,

The woman I might grow to be;

I felt my lover look at her

And then turn suddenly to me.

Her hair was dull and drew no light,

And yet its color was as mine;

Her eyes were strangely like my eyes,

Tho’ love had never made them shine.

Her body was a thing grown thin,

Hungry for love that never came;

Her soul was frozen in the dark,

Unwarmed forever by love’s flame.

I felt my lover look at her

And then turn suddenly to me—

His eyes were magic to defy

The woman I shall never be.

The Forum Sara Teasdale

DEPARTURE

The twilight is starred,

The dawn has arisen;

Light breaks from the east

And Song from her prison.

Faint odors and sounds

The west-wind discloses

Of laughter and birds,

Of singing and roses.

It is time to be gone—

Day scatters the gloom;

But here at my side,

But still in the room,

Like the angel of life,

Too kind to depart,

You hang at my lips,

You hang at my heart!

The Forum John Hall Wheelock

AN ADIEU

Sorrow, quit me for a while!

Wintry days are over;

Hope again, with April smile,

Violets sows and clover.

Pleasure follows in her path,

Love itself flies after,

And the brook a music hath

Sweet as childhood’s laughter.

Not a bird upon the bough

Can repress its rapture,

Not a bud that blossoms now

But doth beauty capture.

Sorrow, thou art Winter’s mate,

Spring cannot regret thee;

Yet, ah, yet—my friend of late—

I shall not forget thee!

Harper’s Florence Earle Coates

HEART’S TIDE

I thought I had forgotten you,

So far apart our lives were thrust!

’Twas only as the earth forgets

The seed the sower left in trust.

’Twas only as the creeks forget

The tides that left their hollows dry;

Or as the home-bound ship forgets

Streamers of seaweed drifting by.

My heart is earth that keeps untold

The secret of the seeds that sleep.

My thoughts are chalices of sand;

Your memory floods them and I weep.

Harper’s Ethel M. Hewitt

WAITING

I thought my heart would break

Because the Spring was slow.

I said, “How long young April sleeps

Beneath the snow!”

But when at last she came,

And buds broke in the dew,

I dreamed of my lost love,

And my heart broke, too!

Harper’s Charles Hanson Towne

DESIDERIUM

Face in the tomb, that lies so still,

May I draw near,

And watch you sleep and love you,

Without word or tear?

You smile, your eyelids flicker;

Shall I tell

How the world goes that lost you?

Shall I tell?

Ah, love, lift not your eyelids;

’Tis the same

Old story that we laughed at,

Still the same.

We knew it, you and I,

We knew it all:

Still is the small the great,

The great the small;

Still the cold lie quenches

The flaming truth,

And still embattled age

Wars against youth.

Yet I believe still in the ever-living God

That fills your grave with perfume,

Writing your name in violets across the sod,

Shielding your holy face from hail and snow;

And, though the withered stay, the lovely go.

No transitory wrong or wrath of things

Shatters the faith—that each slow minute brings

That meadow nearer to us where your feet

Shall flutter near me like white butterflies—

That meadow where immortal lovers meet,

Gazing forever in immortal eyes.

Smart Set Richard Le Gallienne

HUMAN

Weighed down by grief, o’erborne by deep despair,

She lifted up white arms to heaven and prayed

That day for death; she made a mighty prayer

Beside her dear one gently to be laid.

And standing thus, it flashed across her mind

How she must make a seemly silhouette

Against the sky, her figure sharply lined

Upon the westering sunlight, black as jet.

Smart Set Richard Burton

THE GHOST

One whom I loved and never can forget

Returned to me in dream, and spoke with me,

As audibly, as sweet familiarly

As though warm fingers twined warm fingers yet.

Her eyes were bright and with great wonder wet

As in old days when some strange, swift decree

Brought touch-close love or death; and sorrow-free

She spoke as one long purged of all regret.

I heard, oh, glad beyond all speech, I heard,

Till to my lips the flaming query flashed:

How is it—over there? Then, quite undone,

She trembled; in her deep eyes like a bird

The gladness fluttered, and as one abashed

She shook her head bewildered, and was gone.

Scribner’s Hermann Hagedorn

A MOUNTAIN GATEWAY

I know a vale where I would go one day,

When June comes back and all the world once more

Is glad with summer. Deep with shade it lies,

A mighty cleft in the green bosoming hills,

A cool, dim gateway to the mountains’ heart.

On either side the wooded slopes come down,

Hemlock and beech and chestnut; here and there

Through the deep forest laurel spreads and gleams,

Pink-white as Daphne in her loveliness—

That still perfection from the world withdrawn,

As if the wood gods had arrested there

Immortal beauty in her breathless flight.

Far overhead against the arching blue

Gray ledges overhang from dizzy heights,

Scarred by a thousand winters and untamed.

The road winds in from the broad riverlands,

Luring the happy traveler turn by turn,

Up to the lofty mountains of the sky.

And where the road runs in the valley’s foot,

Through the dark woods the mountain stream comes down,

Singing and dancing all its youth away

Among the boulders and the shallow runs,

Where sunbeams pierce and mossy tree trunks hang,

Drenched all day long with murmuring sound and spray.

There, light of heart and footfree, I would go

Up to my home among the lasting hills,

And in my cabin doorway sit me down,

Companioned in that leafy solitude

By the wood ghosts of twilight and of peace.

And in that sweet seclusion I should hear,

Among the cool-leafed beeches in the dusk,

The calm-voiced thrushes at their evening hymn—

So undistraught, so rapturous, so pure,

It well might be, in wisdom and in joy,

The seraphs singing at the birth of time

The unworn ritual of eternal things.

Smart Set Bliss Carman

PERUGIA

For the sake of a weathered gray city set high on a hill

To the northward I go,

Where Umbria’s valley lies mile upon emerald mile

Outspread like a chart.

The wind in her steep, narrow streets is eternally chill

From the neighboring snow,

But linger who will in the lure of a southerly smile,

Here is my heart.

Wrought to a mutual blueness are mountains and sky,

Intermingling they meet;

Little gray breathings of olive arise from the plain

Like sighs that are seen,

For man and his Maker harmonious toil, and the sigh

Of such labor is sweet,

And the fruits of their patience are vistas of vineyards and grain

In a glory of green.

No wind from the valley that passes the casement but flings

Invisible flowers.

The carol of birds is a gossamer tissue of gold

On a background of bells.

Sweetest of all, in the silence the nightingale sings

Through the silver-pure hours,

Till the stars disappear like a dream that may never be told,

Which the dawning dispels.

Never so darkling the alley but opens at last

On unlimited space;

Each gate is the frame of a vision that stretches away

To the rims of the sky.

Never a scar that was left by the pitiless past

But has taken a grace,

Like the mark of a smile that was turned upon children at play

In a summer gone by.

Many the tyrants, my city, who held thee in thrall.

What remains of them now?

Names whispered back from the dark through a portal ajar,

They come not again.

By men thou wert made and wert marred, but, outlasting them all,

Is the soul that is thou—

A soul that shall speak to my soul till I, too, pass afar,

And perchance even then.

Century Amelia Josephine Burr

GHOSTS

They call you cold New England,

But underneath your snow

Is blood as red as roses

That in your gardens blow.

The God that lights your forests

With torch of cardinal flower,

Forbids that ever the Puritan

Escape his crimson hour.

The flame that skims brown furrows—

The scarlet tanager’s breast,

Is sign to preacher and ploughman

Of dreams that haunt their rest.

When witch and warlock perished

By fagot, scaffold and tree,

Their tortures slew their bodies

But set their spirits free!

In freedom gliding, gloating,

Through the haunts their children claim

The swollen ghosts of the wicked

Grow fat on new-wrought shame.

The old, sweet evil lingers,

The demon of uncontrol,

And madness creeps and crouches

In every haggard soul.

And he who held moon revels

In Salem forests deep,

Well loves his hypocrite servants

Nor seeks to spoil their sleep.

They call you cold New England—

But surely even your snow

Is drift not of ice but of ashes,

To guard the flames below!

Smart Set Marguerite Mooers Marshall

ST. JOHN AND THE FAUN

I

O blest Imagination!

Bright power beneath man’s lid,

That in apparent beauty

Unveils the beauty hid!

In the gleaming of the instant

Abides the immortal thing;

Our souls that voyage unspeaking

Press forward, wing and wing;

From every passing object

A brighter radiance pours;

The Lethe of our daily lives

Sweeps by eternal shores.

II

On the deep below Amalfi,

Where the long roll of the wave

Slowly breathed, and slipped beneath me

To gray cliff and sounding cave,

Came a boat-load of dark fishers,

Passed, and on the bright sea shone;

There, the vision of a moment,

I beheld the young St. John.

At the stern the boy stood bending

Full his dreaming gaze on me;

Inexorably spread between us

Flashed the blue strait of the sea;

Slow receding,—distant,—distant,—

While my bosom scarce drew breath,—

Dreaming eyes on my eyes dreaming

Holy beauty without death.

III

In the cloudland o’er Amalfi,

Where with mists the deep ravine

Like a cauldron smoked, and, clearing,

Showed, far down, the pictured scene,

Capes and bays and peaks and ocean,

And the city, like a gem,

Set in circlets of pale azure

That her beauty ring and hem,—

Once, returning from the chasm

By the mountain’s woodland way,

Underneath the oak and chestnut

Where I loved to make delay,

(And dark boys and girls with faggots

Would pass near on that wild lawn,

And at times they brought me rosebuds),

There one day I saw a faun.

The wood was still with noontide,

The very trees seemed lone,

When from a neighboring thicket

His moon-eyes on me shone,

Motionless, and bright, and staring,

And with a startled grace;

As nature, wildly magical

Was the beauty of his face;

And as some gentle creature

That, curious, has fear,

Dumb he stood and gazed upon me,

But did not venture near;

And I moved not, nor motioned,

Nor gave him any sign,

Nor broke the momentary spell

Of the old world divine.

IV

Love, with no other agent

Save communion by the eye,

Evoked from those bright creatures

Our secret unity;

There, flowering from old ages,

Hung on time’s blossoming stem

All that fairest was in me

Or loveliest in them;

And truly it was happiness

Unto a poet’s heart

To find that living in his breast

Which is immortal art.

The Forum George Edward Woodberry

SCHOOL

I

Old Hezekiah leaned hard on his hoe

And squinted long at Eben, his lank son.

The silence shrilled with crickets. Day was done,

And, row on dusky row,

Tall bean poles ribbed with dark the gold-bright afterglow.

Eben stood staring: ever, one by one,

The tendril tops turned ashen as they flared.

Still Eben stared.

O, there is wonder on New Hampshire hills,

Hoeing the warm, bright furrows of brown earth,

And there is grandeur in the stone wall’s birth,

And in the sweat that spills

From rugged toil its sweetness; yet for wild young wills

There is no dew of wonder, but stark dearth,

In one old man who hoes his long bean rows,

And only hoes.

Old Hezekiah turned slow on his heel.

He touched his son. Thro’ all the carking day

There are so many littlish cares to weigh

Large natures down, and steel

The heart of understanding. “Son, how is’t ye feel?

What are ye starin’ on—a gal?” A ray

Flushed Eben from the fading afterglow:

He dropped his hoe.

He dropped his hoe, but sudden stooped again

And raised it where it fell. Nothing he spoke,

But bent his knee and—crack! the handle broke,

Splintering. With glare of pain,

He flung the pieces down, and stamped upon them; then—

Like one who leaps out naked from his cloak—

Ran. “Here, come back! Where are ye bound—you fool?”

He cried—“To school!”

II

Now on the mountain morning laughed with light—

With light and all the future in her face,

For there she looked on many a far-off place

And wild adventurous sight,

For which the mad young autumn wind hallooed with might

And dared the roaring mill-brook to the race,

Where blue-jays screamed beyond the pine-dark pool—

“To school!—To school!”

Blackcoated, Eben took the barefoot trail,

Holding with wary hand his Sunday boots;

Harsh catbirds mocked his whistling with their hoots;

Under his swallowtail

Against his hip-strap bumping, clinked his dinner pail;

Frost maples flamed, lone thrushes touched their lutes;

Gray squirrels bobbed, with tails stiff curved to backs,

To eye his tracks.

Soon at the lonely crossroads he passed by

The little one-room schoolhouse. He peered in.

There stood the bench where he had often been

Admonished flagrantly

To drone his numbers: now to this he said good-bye

For mightier lure of more romantic scene:

Good-bye to childish rule and homely chore

Forevermore!

All day he hastened like the flying cloud

Breathless above him, big with dreams, yet dumb.

With tightened jaw he chewed the tart spruce gum,

And muttered half aloud

Huge oracles. At last, where thro’ the pine-tops bowed

The sun, it rose!—His heart beat like a drum.

There, there it rose—his tower of prophecy:

The Academy!

III

They learn to live who learn to contemplate,

For contemplation is the unconfined

God who creates us. To the growing mind

Freedom to think is fate,

And all that age and after-knowledge augurate

Lies in a little dream of youth enshrined:

That dream to nourish with the skilful rule

Of love—is school.

Eben, in mystic tumult of his teens,

Stood bursting—like a ripe seed—into soul.

All his life long he had watched the great hills roll

Their shadows, tints and sheens

By sun- and moonrise; yet the bane of hoeing beans,

And round of joyless chores, his father’s toll,

Blotted their beauty; nature was as naught:

He had never thought.

But now he climbed his boyhood’s castle tower

And knocked. Ah, well then for his after-fate

That one of nature’s masters opened the gate,

Where like an April shower

Live influence quickened all his earth-blind seed to power.

Strangely his sense of truth grew passionate,

And like a young bull, led in yoke to drink,

He bowed to think.

There also bowed their heads with him to quaff—

The snorting herd! And many a wholesome grip

He had of rivalry and fellowship.

Often the game was rough,

But Eben tossed his horns and never balked the cuff;

For still through play and task his Dream would slip—

A radiant Herdsman, guiding destiny

To his degree.

IV

Once more old Hezekiah stayed his hoe

To squint at Eben. Silent, Eben scanned

A little roll of sheepskin in his hand,

While, row on dusky row,

Tall bean poles ribbed with dark the gold-pale afterglow.

The boy looked up: here was another land!

Mountain and farm with mystic beauty flared

Where Eben stared.

Stooping, he lifted with a furtive smile

Two splintered sticks, and spliced them. Nevermore

His spirit would go beastwise to his chore

Blinded, for even while

He stooped to the old task, sudden in the sunset’s pile

His radiant Herdsman swung a fiery door,

Thro’ which came forth with far-borne trumpetings

Poets and kings,

His fellow conquerors: there Virgil dreamed,

There Cæsar fought and won the barbarous tribes,

There Darwin, pensive, bore the ignorant gibes,

And One with thorns redeemed

From malice the wild hearts of men: there surged and streamed

With chemic fire the forges of old scribes

Testing anew the crucibles of toil

To save God’s soil.

So Eben turned again to hoe his beans,

But now, to ballads which his Herdsman sung,

Henceforth he hoed the dream in with the dung,

And for his ancient spleens

Planting new joys, imagination found him means.

At last old Hezekiah loosed his tongue:

“Well, boy, this school—what has it learned ye to know?”

He said: “To hoe.”

The Forum Percy MacKaye

THE MARVELOUS MUNCHAUSEN

The snug little room with its brazier fire aglow,

And Piet and Sachs and Vroom—all in the long ago,—

Oh, the very long ago!—o’er their pipes and hollands seen;

And on the wall the man-o’-war, and firelight on the screen!

Their flowered, bulging waistcoats that wrinkle when they chuckle;

The baron, much-mustachioed, and gay with star and buckle,

And bristling in a uniform as scarlet as his cheeks,

With choker lace beneath his chin, and splendid, yellow breeks!

The smoke drifts blue, and bluer through that window, all abreeze,

Are glinting sky and glistening sea beyond the Holland quays.

Blue tiles, red bricks, the bustling wharves, with color’s oriflamme;

Starched caps and rosy-posy cheeks—the girls of Amsterdam!

The snug little room with its brazier fire aglow!

Oh, listen, will he tell them, as he told them long ago,—

Oh, very long ago, a-laughing in his sleeve!—

The marvelous Munchausen, with the fables I believe?

* * * * *

“When I had sown the Turkey beans that reachéd to the moon,

And lifted all Westminster in the sling from my balloon

(Swung over the Atlantic,

They peered from windows, frantic),

When, eagle-back, I’d scanned the pole in broad, eternal noon,

“In Queen Mab’s chariot I ventured on the sea.

’Twas like a mammoth hazelnut, with matchless orrery

A-sparkle on its ceiling,

With planet systems wheeling

And giddy comets sizzling all about the head o’ me.

“The nine bulls drew it, as stout as those of Crete,

And all were shod with horrid skulls that clattered on their feet.

Rich banners waved behind ’em,

While on their backs, to mind ’em,

Postilion crickets chirruped them, all chirping loud and sweet.

“Ghost of the Cape I warn you of, for he is bottle-blue.

We split his Table Mountain. He gibbered and he flew.

The bulls straight showed disfeature

With gazing on the creature,

Stampeding in their harness when I gave the view-halloo.

“Though wrecked on Egypt’s obelisks, disaster I defied,

And harnessed Sphinx, the emperor’s gift, to tow an ark as wide

As great Westminster;

With beau and bell and spinster,

And cleric, clerk, and coronet all tête-à-tête inside.

“‘Good folk, we sail for Africa,’ said I to all my train.

‘When bold Munchausen leads you forth, what laggard dares remain

In slippered ease, uncaring

To share my deeds of daring?’

Their cheers amazed my modesty, and more had made me vain.

“‘The sultan’s bees I’ve shepherded. I’ve hornpiped at Marseilles,

Where gulped me down, well nigh to drown, the liveliest of whales.

I’m riskiest of riskers,

But, blow my grizzled whiskers!’

I cried, ‘May jackals gnaw my bones if now Munchausen fails!’

“By night the lions roared at us. By day the simoons came

And swept across our caravan in sandy clouds of flame;

But naught dismayed our temper, or

The genial Afric emperor

Had missed my handsome greeting, to his long-abiding shame.

“The people of the Mountains of the Moon I wined and dined.

I reigned at Gristariska when His Majesty declined.

Reforms I wrought untiring,

With Gog and Magog squiring,

And Frosticos, my bosom friend, who lent a legal mind.

“For last superb achievement,—bright tears may Envy shed!—

I built a bridge, from Africa to distant England spread:

No edifice of fable,

Nay, not the Tower of Babel,

Surpassed its mammoth glory in the heavens overhead.

“So back across its noble arch my retinue and I

Advanced with blaring trumpets through the regions of the sky.

Clouds lingered to enwreathe us,

Earth’s kingdoms far beneath us,

And martial music cheered our march from all the birds that fly.”

* * * * *

The snug little room with its brazier fire aglow,

And Piet and Sachs and Vroom all sleeping long ago,—

Oh, so very long ago!—and, chuckling in his sleeve,

Still, o’er the slumbering table,

Drone-droning on his fable,

The marvelous Munchausen, with the stories I believe!

Century William Rose Benét

TRAIN-MATES

Outside hove Shasta, snowy height on height,

A glory; but a negligible sight,

For you had often seen a mountain-peak

But not my paper. So we came to speak.

A smoke, a smile,—a good way to commence

The comfortable exchange of difference!—

You a young engineer, five feet eleven,

Forty-five chest, with football in your heaven,

Liking a road-bed newly built and clean,

Your fingers hot to cut away the green

Of brush and flowers that bring beside a track

The kind of beauty steel lines ought to lack,—

And I a poet, wistful of my betters,

Reading George Meredith’s high-hearted Letters,

Joining betweenwhile in the mingled speech

Of a drummer, circus-man, and parson, each

Absorbing to himself—as I to me

And you to you—a glad identity!

After a while when the others went away,

A curious kinship made us want to stay,

Which I could tell you now; but at the time

You thought of baseball teams and I of rhyme,

Until we found that we were college men

And smoked more easily and smiled again;

And I from Cambridge cried, the poet still:

“I know your fine Greek Theatre on the hill

At Berkeley!” With your happy Grecian head

Upraised, “I never saw the place,” you said.

“Once I was free of class, I always went

Out to the field.”

Young engineer,

You meant as fair a tribute to the better part

As ever I did. Beauty of the heart

Is evident in temples. But it breathes

Alive where athletes quicken airy wreaths,

Which are the lovelier because they die.

You are a poet quite as much as I,

Though differences appear in what we do,

And I an athlete quite as much as you.

Because you half-surmised my quarter-mile

And I your quatrain, we could greet and smile.

Who knows but we shall look again and find

The circus-man and drummer, not behind

But leading in our visible estate,

As discus-thrower and as laureate?

Yale Review Witter Bynner

THE KALLYOPE YELL

[Loudly and rapidly with a leader, College yell fashion]

I

Proud men

Eternally

Go about,

Slander me,

Call me the “Calliope.”

Sizz . . . . .

Fizz . . . . .

II

I am the Gutter Dream,

Tune-maker, born of steam,

Tooting joy, tooting hope.

I am the Kallyope,

Car called the Kallyope.

Willy willy willy wah HOO!

See the flags: snow-white tent,

See the bear and elephant,

See the monkey jump the rope,

Listen to the Kallyope, Kallyope, Kallyope!

Soul of the rhinoceros

And the hippopotamus

(Listen to the lion roar!)

Jaguar, cockatoot,

Loons, owls,

Hoot, Hoot.

Listen to the lion roar,

Listen to the lion R-O-A-R!

Hear the leopard cry for gore,

Willy willy willy wah HOO!

Hail the bloody Indian band,

Hail, all hail the popcorn stand,

Hail to Barnum’s picture there,

People’s idol everywhere,

Whoop, whoop, whoop, WHOOP!

Music of the mob am I,

Circus day’s tremendous cry:—

I am the Kallyope, Kallyope, Kallyope!

Hoot toot, hoot toot, hoot toot, hoot toot,

Willy willy willy wah HOO!

Sizz, fizz . . . . .

III

Born of mobs, born of steam,

Listen to my golden dream,

Listen to my G-O-L-D-E-N D-R-E-A-M!

Whoop whoop whoop whoop WHOOP!

I will blow the proud folk low,

Humanize the dour and slow,

I will shake the proud folk down,

(Listen to the lion roar!)

Popcorn crowds shall rule the town—

Willy willy willy wah HOO!

Steam shall work melodiously,

Brotherhood increase.

You’ll see the world and all it holds

For fifty cents apiece.

Willy willy willy wah HOO!

Every day a circus day.

What?

Well, almost every day.

Nevermore the sweater’s den,

Nevermore the prison pen.

Gone the war on land and sea

That aforetime troubled men.

Nations all in amity,

Happy in their plumes arrayed

In the long bright street parade.

Bands a-playing every day.

What?

Well, almost every day.

I am the Kallyope, Kallyope, Kallyope!

Willy willy willy wah HOO!

Hoot, toot, hoot, toot,

Whoop whoop whoop whoop,

Willy willy willy wah HOO!

Sizz, fizz . . . . .

IV

Every soul

Resident

In the earth’s one circus tent!

Every man a trapeze king

Then a pleased spectator there.

On the benches! In the ring!

While the neighbors gawk and stare

And the cheering rolls along.

Almost every day a race

When the merry starting gong

Rings, each chariot on the line,

Every driver fit and fine

With the steel-spring Roman grace.

Almost every day a dream,

Almost every day a dream.

Every girl,

Maid or wife,

Wild with music,

Eyes a-gleam

With that marvel called desire:

Actress, princess, fit for life,

Armed with honor like a knife,

Jumping thro’ the hoops of fire.

(Listen to the lion roar!)

Making all the children shout

Clowns shall tumble all about,

Painted high and full of song

While the cheering rolls along,

Tho’ they scream,

Tho’ they rage,

Every beast

In his cage,

Every beast

In his den

That aforetime troubled men.

V

I am the Kallyope, Kallyope, Kallyope,

Tooting hope, tooting hope, tooting hope, tooting hope;

Shaking window-pane and door

With a crashing cosmic tune,

With the war-cry of the spheres,

Rhythm of the roar of noon,

Rhythm of Niagara’s roar,

Voicing planet, star and moon,

Shrieking of the better years.

Prophet-singers will arise,

Prophets coming after me,

Sing my song in softer guise

With more delicate surprise;

I am but the pioneer

Voice of the Democracy;

I am the gutter-dream,

I am the golden dream,

Singing science, singing steam.

I will blow the proud folk down,

(Listen to the lion roar!)

I am the Kallyope, Kallyope, Kallyope,

Tooting hope, tooting hope, tooting hope, tooting hope,

Willy willy willy wah HOO!

Hoot toot, hoot toot, hoot toot, hoot toot,

Whoop whoop, whoop whoop,

Willy willy willy wah HOO!

Sizz .....

Fizz .....

The Forum Nicholas Vachel Lindsay

THANKSGIVING FOR OUR TASK

The sickle is dulled of the reaping and the threshing-floor is bare;

The dust of night’s in the air.

The peace of the weary is ours:

All day we have taken the fruit and the grain and the seeds of the flowers.

The ev’ning is chill,

It is good now to gather in peace by the flames of the fire.

We have done now the deed that we did for our need and desire:

We have wrought our will.

And now for the boon of abundance and golden increase,

And immurèd peace,

Shall we thank our God?

Bethink us, amid His indulgence, His terrible rod?

Shall we be as the maple and oak,

Strew the earth with our gold, giving only bare boughs to the sky?

Nay, the pine stayeth green while the Winter growls sullenly by,

And doth not revoke

For soft days or stern days the pledge of its constancy.

Shall we not be

Also the same through all days,

Giving thanks when the battle breaks on us, in toil giving praise?

O Father who saw at the dawn,

That the folly of Pride would be the lush weed of our sin,

There is better than that in our hearts, O enter therein,

A light burneth, though wan

And weak be the flame, yet it gloweth, our Humility!

Ah, how can it be

Trimmed o’ the wick,

And replenished with oil to burn brightly and golden and quick?

For deep in our hearts

We wish to be thankful through lean years and fat without change,

Knowing that here Thou hast set for the spirit a range:

We would play well our parts,

Making America throb with the building of souls and the glory of good;

Yea, and we would,

And before the last Autumn we will

Build a temple from ocean to ocean where deeds never still

Melodiously shall proclaim

Thanksgiving forever that Thou hast set here to our hand

So wondrous a mystical harvest, that Thou dost demand

Sheaves bound in Thy name,

Yea, supersubstantial sheaves of strong souls that have grown

Fain to be known

As the corn of Thine occident field:

O Yielder of All, can America worthily thank Thee till such be her yield?

In the mellowing light

Of the goldenest days that precede the gray days of the year,

We sing Thee our harvesting song and we pray Thee to hear,

In the midst of Thy might:

Labor is given to us,

Let us give thanks!

Power worketh through us,

Let us give thanks!

Not for what we have

(So might speak a slave),

Not for the garnering,

Gratefully we sing,

But for the mighty thing

We must do, travailing!

For our task and for our strength;

For the journey and its length;

For our dauntless eagerness;

For our humbling weariness;

For these, for these, O Father,

Let us give thanks!

For these, O Mighty Father,

Take Thou our thanks!

The Forum Shaemas OSheel

A LIKENESS
Portrait Bust of an Unknown, Capitol, Rome

In every line a supple beauty—

The restless head a little bent—

Disgust of pleasure, scorn of duty,

The unseeing eyes of discontent.

I often come to sit beside him,

This youth who passed and left no trace

Of good or ill that did betide him,

Save the disdain upon his face.

The hope of all his House, the brother

Adored, the golden-hearted son,

Whom Fortune pampered like a mother;

And then—a shadow on the sun.

Whether he followed Cæsar’s trumpet,

Or chanced the riskier game at home

To find how favor played the strumpet

In fickle politics at Rome;

Whether he dreamed a dream in Asia

He never could forget by day,

Or gave his youth to some Aspasia,

Or gamed his heritage away;

Once lost, across the Empire’s border

This man would seek his peace in vain;

His look arraigns a social order

Somehow entrammelled with his pain.

“The dice of gods are always loaded”;

One gambler, arrogant as they,

Fierce, and by fierce injustice goaded,

Left both his hazard and the play.

Incapable of compromises,

Unable to forgive or spare,

The strange awarding of the prizes

He had no fortitude to bear.

Tricked by the forms of things material—

The solid-seeming arch and stone,

The noise of war, the pomp imperial,

The heights and depths about a throne—

He missed, among the shapes diurnal,

The old, deep-travelled road from pain,

The thoughts of men which are eternal,

In which, eternal, men remain.

Ritratto d’ignoto; defying

Things unsubstantial as a dream—

An Empire, long in ashes lying—

His face still set against the stream.

Yes, so he looked, that gifted brother

I loved, who passed and left no trace,

Not even—luckier than this other—

His sorrow in a marble face.

Scribner’s Willa Sibert Cather

THE FIELD OF GLORY

War shook the land where Levi dwelt,

And fired the dismal wrath he felt,

That such a doom was ever wrought

As his, to toil while others fought;

To toil, to dream—and still to dream,

With one day barren as another;

To consummate, as it would seem,

The dry despair of his old mother.

Far off one afternoon began

The sound of man destroying man;

And Levi, sick with nameless rage,

Condemned again his heritage,

And sighed for scars that might have come,

And would, if once he could have sundered

Those harsh, inhering claims of home

That held him while he cursed and wondered.

Another day, and then there came,

Rough, bloody, ribald, hungry, lame,

But yet themselves, to Levi’s door,

Two remnants of the day before.

They laughed at him and what he sought;

They jeered him, and his painful acre;

But Levi knew that they had fought,

And left their manners to their Maker.

That night, for the grim widow’s ears,

With hopes that hid themselves in fears,

He told of arms, and featly deeds,

Whereat one leaps the while he reads,

And said he’d be no more a clown,

While others drew the breath of battle.

The mother looked him up and down,

And laughed—a scant laugh with a rattle.

She told him what she found to tell,

And Levi listened, and heard well

Some admonitions of a voice

That left him no cause to rejoice.

He sought a friend, and found the stars,

And prayed aloud that they should aid him;

But they said not a word of wars,

Or of a reason why God made him.

And who’s of this or that estate

We do not wholly calculate,

When baffling shades that shift and cling

Are not without their glimmering;

When even Levi, tired of faith,

Beloved of none, forgot by many,

Dismissed as an inferior wraith,

Reborn may be as great as any.

The Outlook Edwin Arlington Robinson

RICH MAN, POOR MAN—

Oh, joy that burns in Denver tavern!

The lights, the drink, the ceaseless play!

A kingdom, dull within a cavern,

Across the boards he flings away.

Then night that falls on either mountain

(Ah, bitter black it falls between);

But he, like water to its fountain,

Is come again where life runs clean.

So Death shall find him, delving, peering.

Still silver rock, still golden sand.

He weeps to hear the magpies’ jeering,

But he is back in his own land.

Lippincott’s Francis Hill

THE SIN EATER

I

Hark ye! Hush ye! Margot’s dead!

Hush! Have done wi’ your brawling tune!

Danced, she did, till the stars grew pale;

Mother o’ God, an’ she’s gone at noon!

Sh-h ... d’ye hear me?—Margot’s dead!

Sickened an’ drooped an’ died in an hour!

(Bring me th’ milk an’ th’ meat an’ bread.)

Drooped, she did, like a wilted flower.

Come an’ look at her, how she lies,

Little an’ lone, and like she’s scared....

(She lost her beads last Friday week,

Tore her Book, an’ she never cared.)...

Eh, my lass, but it’s winter, now—

You that ever was meant for June,

Your laughing mouth an’ your dancing feet—

An’ now you’re done, like an ended tune.

Where’s that woman? Ah, give it me quick,

Food at her head an’ her poor, still feet....

There’s plenty, fool! D’ye think the wench

Had so many sins for himself to eat?

Take up your cloak an’ hand me mine....

Are we fetchin’ him? Eh, for sure!

An’ you’ll come with me for all your quakes,

Clear to his cave across the moor!

—Margot, dearie, don’t look so scared,

It’s no long while till your peace begins!

What if you tore your Book, poor lamb?

I’m bringin’ you one will eat your sins!

II

It’s a blood-red sun that’s sinkin’....

Ohooo, but the marshland’s drear!

Woman, for why will you be shrinkin’?

I’m tellin’ you there’s nought to fear.

What if the twilight’s gloomish

An’ th’ shadows creep an’ crawl?—

Woman, woman, here’ll be th’ cave!

Stand by me close till I call!

“Sin Eater! Devil Cheater!”

(Eh, it echoes hollowly!)

“Margot’s dead at Willow Farm!

Shroud your face and follow me!”

III

One o’ th’ clock ... two o’ th’ clock....

This night’s a week in span!

Still he crouches by her side....

Devil ... ghost ... or man?...

IV

Woman, never cock’s crow sounded sweet before!

Set the casement wide ajar, fasten back the door!

Eh, but I be cold an’ stiff, waitin’ for th’ dawn;

Fetch me flowers—jessamine—see, the food is gone....

Light enough to see her now.... Mary! How her face

Shines on us like altar fires, now she’s sure o’ grace!

Never mind your Book, my lamb, never mind your beads,

There’s th’ Gleam before you now, follow where it leads.

V

Tearful peace and gentle grief

Brood on Willow Farm:

Margot, sleeping in her flowers,

Smiles, secure from harm:

In a cave across the moor,

Dank and dark within,

Moans the trafficker in souls,

Freshly bowed with sin.

Smart Set Ruth Comfort Mitchell

NIGHT-SENTRIES

Ever as sinks the day on sea or land,

Called or uncalled, you take your kindred posts.

At helm and lever, wheel and switch, you stand,

On the world’s wastes and melancholy coasts.

Strength to the patient hand!

To all, alert and faithful in the night,

May there be Light!

Now roars the wrenching train along the dark;

How many watchers guard the barren way

In signal-towers, at stammering keys, to mark

The word the whispering horizons say!

To all that see and hark—

To all, alert and faithful in the night,

May there be Light!

On ruthless streets, on byways sad with sin—

Half-hated by the blinded ones you guard—

Guard well, lest crime unheeded enter in!

The dark is cruel and the vigil hard,

The hours of guilt begin.

To all, alert and faithful in the night,

May there be Light!

Now storms the pulsing hull adown the sea:

Gaze onward, anxious eyes, to mist or star!

Where foams the heaving highway blank and free?

Where wait the reef, the berg, the cape, the bar?

Whatever menace be,

To all, alert and faithful in the night,

May there be Light!

Now the surf-rumble rides the midnight wind,

And grave patrols are on ocean edge.

Now soars the rocket where the billows grind,

Discerned too late, on sunken shoal or ledge.

To all that seek and find,

To all, alert and faithful in the night,

May there be Light!

On lonely headlands gleam the lamps that warn,

Star-steady, or ablink like dragon-eyes.

Govern your rays, or wake the giant horn

Within the fog that welds the sea and skies!

Far distant runs the morn:

To all, alert and faithful in the night,

May there be Light!

Now glow the lesser lamps in rooms of pain,

Where nurse and doctor watch the joyless breath,

Drawn in a sigh, and sighing lost again.

Who waits without the threshold, Life or Death?

Reckon you loss or gain?

To all, alert and faithful in the night,

May there be Light!

Honor to you that guard our welfare now!

To you that constant in the past have stood!

To all by whom the future shall avow

Unconquerable fortitude and good!

Upon the sleepless brow

Of each, alert and faithful in the night,

May there be Light!

Harper’s George Sterling

THE SWORDLESS CHRIST
Vicisti, Galilee

Aye, down the years, behold, he rides,

The lowly Christ, upon an ass;

But conquering? Ten shall heed the call,

A thousand idly watch him pass:

They watch him pass, or lightly hold

In mock lip-loyalty his name:

A thousand—were they his to lead!

But meek, without a sword, he came.

A myriad horsemen swept the field

With Attila, the whirlwind Hun:

A myriad cannon spake for him,

The silent, dread Napoleon.

For these had ready spoil to give.

Had reeking spoil for savage hands;

Slaves, and fair wives, and pillage rare:

The wealth of cities: teeming lands.

And if the world, once drunk with blood,

Sated, has turned from arms to peace,

Man hath not lost his ancient lusts;

The weapons change; war doth not cease.

The mother in the stifling den,

The brain-dulled child beside the loom,

The hordes that swarm and toil and starve,

We laugh, and tread them to their doom.

They shriek, and cry their prayers to Christ;

And lift wan faces, hands that bleed:

In vain they pray, for what is Christ?

A leader—without men to lead.

Ah, piteous Christ, afar he rides:

We see him, but the face is dim.

We, that would leap at crash of drums,

Are slow to rise and follow him.

The Forum Percy Adams Hutchison

WHAT OF THE NIGHT?

What of the night

And the eventual silences?

Art thou not cold with the knowledge of decay

And the uncompromising reaches of the earth?

What of the night

When the tune falters and the blood chills?

When thou art one with the grass

And the underbrush of the world,

Wilt thou forget the names of flowers,

The rhythm of song and the lips, still balmy with the breasts of women?

When thou and the fog on the hilltop are as brother and sister,

Wilt thou forget utterly the ways of men,

The clash of swords and the sting of wine,

The dim horizons and the grace of girls?

When thou art alone eternally

What of the night?

Where will God be

When thou art swathed in silence;

When the wreckage of dreams has crushed thee

And the lust for springtimes dissolved thee?

Wilt thou have visions only of the dawn

And autumn sunsets?

Will the memory of women’s faces haunt thy grave?

Will the odor of blue flowers find thy dust?

When thou art choking on the calm indifference of youth

And the everlasting beauty of trees,

Wilt thou dream only of the June,

The love of women and the great democracy of men?

When thou hast fought and failed,

And thy brow has withered laurelless,

And thy name has been effaced by the insatiable winds,

And thou hast gone out at the Western gate

To join the laggards of the dead,

Wilt thou crave only the withheld success,

The transitory fame of twilight years?

Will thy soul cry out only for the song,

The red dawn and the glad triumph of love?

Wilt thou indeed forget the days of pain,

The ineffectual prayers,

The lies of time and the bitterness of defeat?

Or, remembering these things,

Wilt thou forget the hands of women and the rude love of men,

And be glad of thy dark quietude?

When thou art part of the impending gloom,

I deem that life will seem to thee

In no such wise,—

But rather thou wilt dream it as a whole;

Not as a song, nor yet a broken bell;

But all that thou hast been—the great tears,

The rain, the kisses and the flutes,

The old sorrows and the hills at dawn,

Much laughter and much grief and the stern fight.

And thou shalt know how all of life is gain—

The gold of youth, the gray defeat of age—

How in the soul’s inharmony there lies

The incoherent unity of things.

The Forum Willard Huntington Wright

A THRENODY
In Memory of the Destruction of Messina By Earthquake

Sicilian Muse! O thou who sittest dumb

Amid the sodden fields and ways forlorn,

Where once the herdsmen singing, watched their kine

Breast-deep in fragrance, odorous eve and morn;

Stranger to thee, yet led by love I come,

A suppliant sable-stoled, to mix with thine

My tears, and at thy shrine

Kindle a funeral torch for Sicily:

Give not the suppliant’s prayer the meed of blame!

Scorn not the stranger’s proffered oil and wine!

O thou from whom the heavenly madness came,

When Orpheus hymning struck his golden lute,

And stirred old memories in Persephone,

While all the lonely shades in hell stood mute

To watch the still-beloved Eurydice

Borne lightly upward on the silver surge

To Enna’s flowery verge;—

Spirit august! Child of Mnemosyne!

With reverence and true humility

I break before thy feet my careless flute,

And wait upon my lips thy touch of flame:

Begin, Sicilian Muse! Begin the dirge!

O race unmindful of the Destinies!

The dread Euminides

Or Mœræ old, sent from Earth’s inmost core

A tremor, warning blindly ye who, blind,

See not the sleepless doom that evermore

Has watched your tragic shore

Since lost sea-rovers shaded first their eyes

To spy the riches of your waving store,

And grated up your sands with doubtful keel.

The startled jungle growled above its young;

The Arctic foxes snuffed the scentless wind;

But ye who knew yourselves a fated race,

That gods have loved and gods to hate exposed,

Though black the death clouds over Ætna hung,

Forgot the anguish in Pompeii’s face,

Beneath her half-drawn winding sheet disclosed;

Forgot white Lisbon’s doom, nor called to mind—

In pleasant Zancle taking noonday ease—

How, from its ashes by the western seas

A stricken Phœnix rises, stone and steel.

Fresh as her Poro flowers at early dawn,

When over Hybla’s hills the yellow bees

From aromatic blossoms shake the dew;

Fair as the maiden ere by dark Fate drawn,

She saw the wide earth yawn

Before the thunderous horses, and the strong

Arm of Aïdes crushed her gathered flowers;

So fresh, so fair, amid her storied seas,

She who remains through changes æon-long

A greater Helen wooed with sword and song,

Of mightier victors bride and battle prize,

Lay lapped in peace, when swift from Hades driven,

Upward the death-king came; the earth was riven,

And through the darkness rang her children’s cries.

Now Scylla unto fierce Charybdis calls,

While on the water spreads a crimson stain;

Now Galatea sobs in Ocean’s halls,

And vengeful Polyphemus laughs again.

The Nereids now in oozy caverns hide,

Where sea-kings of the old Æolian shore

Watch sunken argosies forevermore,

And tell their tales of dread Poseidon’s hate;

While dimly from the far, ensanguined tide

Patient Odysseus furrowed once of yore,

A glint of daylight through the darkness falls

On swaying helmets, tumbled bronze and gold,

On broidered vestments stiff and Tyrian dyed.

There hide they; but the sea-kings keep their state,

Telling of ancient dooms and deaths of old,

Nor know they how beside the darkened strait

And up the slopes of olive, vine and grain,

The dryads wail a land left desolate.

Wail thou, great Muse, the dear Sicilian land!

Now greater grief is thine than when of old

Young Adon in the Cyprian’s arms lay cold,

And Daphnis’ years were told.

Take thou the lyre from Time’s enfeebled hand;

Hushed is the music of Empedocles,

Of splendid Pindar, pure Simonides,

Bion and Moschus and Theocritus,

And those who unto us

Nameless, yet live as human memories.

Hushed is the last of all that laurelled band,

Hushed, or on Charon’s strand

Urging in vain petition dolorous,

To pass where Pan, his boyish pipings done,

Stands wistful, while the nymphs, by fear made bold,

Cling with their long lithe arms about his knees.

Wail thou, great Muse! or loose from Acheron

Some worthy bearer of the singing bough

Whose madness whirls me now

On melting wings too near the southern sun.

Yet why for aught on earth should grief be loud,

Since all that is, is born to pass away?

Hero and maiden to the urn are vowed,

And beauty saves not when the debt falls due;

Apollo with the darker gods has died,

And Gæa at the last shall be as they.

O Helen of the soul! O golden isle!

By beauty doomed, by beauty sanctified,

Thou too canst not abide,

But like all else shalt last a little while—

A little longer than the falling spray—

Then pass as planet dust or gaseous cloud,

To build new cosmos, gnawed by new decay.

Earth’s senseless atoms ever clasp and whirl,

Unclasp again to form in mazes new;

And ever on the white cliff stands some girl

With dead eyes gazing on the sailless blue.

Earth’s roses die, but still the rose lives on,

The song survives the swift Leucadian leap;—

A dream of immortality is ours.

Where golden Daphnis in the morning shone,

Fresh sprung from Helicon,

New shepherds singing lead their careless sheep

Above the graves of Athens, Carthage, Rome,

Vandals and Moslems, and strange Northern Powers

That filled their destined hours,

And fed in turn the rich Sicilian loam,

Building, like coral insects from the deep,

Enchanted islands that till earth is gone,

Swept back to chaos in the atom swirl,

Shall be the seeker’s light, the spirit’s home.

Though Ætna crumble and the dark seas rise

Sowing the uplands with their sterile brine,

Still shall the soul descry with wistful eyes

Sicilian headlands bright with flower and fruit;

Still shall she hear, though all earth’s lips be mute,

Sicilian music in the morning skies.

Yea, deep within the heart of man it lies,

This visioned island bright with old romance,

A race inheritance

Of rest and joy and faith in things divine,

That shall endure awhile through change and chance,

And have the meaning of a childhood shrine,

Remembered when the faith of childhood dies.

Now fails the song, and down the lonely ways

The last low echoes die upon the breeze.

I lay my lyre upon the moveless knees

Of her who by the hollow roadway stays,

In anguish waiting for her children slain

That shall not come again

With springtime, leading the new lambs to graze.

They come no more; but while o’er hill and plain

The twilight darkens, and the evening rose

Aloft on Ætna glows,

Silent she sits amid the sodden leas,

With eyes that level on the ocean haze

Their unobserving stare, as seaward gaze

The eyes of stolid caryatides.

Scribner’s Louis V. Ledoux

NOVEMBER

Hark you such sound as quivers? Kings will hear,

As kings have heard, and tremble on their thrones;

The old will feel the weight of mossy stones;

The young alone will laugh and scoff at fear.

It is the tread of armies marching near,

From scarlet lands to lands forever pale;

It is a bugle dying down the gale;

It is the sudden gushing of a tear.

And it is hands that grope at ghostly doors;

And romp of spirit children on the pave;

It is the tender sighing of the brave

Who fell, ah! long ago, in futile wars;

It is such sound as death; and, after all,

’Tis but the forest letting dead leaves fall.

The Bellman Mahlon Leonard Fisher

SALUTATION

Did you choose the journey, friend?

No, nor I;

But to make it cheerfully,

Let us try.

When the day is dark, I pray,

Sing a song to cheer the way,

For tomorrow we will be

One day nearer to the sea.

Did you choose the journey, friend?

No, nor I;

But we know the end will come

By and by.

All today we bear the load

Up the weary winding road,

But tomorrow we may be

At the Inn in company.

The Independent Ruth Sterry

HERE LIES PIERROT

The moon’s ashine; by many a lane

Walk wistful lovers to and fro;

It must be like old days again;

How they do love! Here lies Pierrot.

She loved me once, did Columbine.

It sets my dusty heart aglow

Merely to lie and dream how fine

Her semblance was,—Here lies Pierrot!

Her perfumed presence, silks and lace,

Did madden men and wrought them woe;

For me alone her witching grace.

Where is she now? Here lies Pierrot.

We two walked once beneath the moon—

Yellow it hung, and large and low—

And listened to the tender tune

Of nightingales,—Here lies Pierrot!

Our foolish vows of passion shook

The very stars, they trembled so.

How it comes back, her soft, shy look,

Now I am dead! Here lies Pierrot!

These other men and maids, who stroll

Through moonlit poplar trees arow,

Does each play the enchanted rôle

We phantoms played? Here lies Pierrot!

O joy, that I remember yet

Sweet follies of the long ago!

Dear heaven, I would not quite forget!

The moon’s ashine; Here lies Pierrot!

Scribner’s Richard Burton

LIST OF “DISTINCTIVE POEMS,” THEIR AUTHORS, AND THE MAGAZINES IN WHICH THEY APPEARED

Century—
A Light Bearer. Marion Couthouy Smith.
Unmasked. Madison Cawein.
Robert Browning. Margaret Widdemer.
Will’s Counsellor. Charles Wharton Stork.
Song of the Open Land. Richard Burton.
Along the Road. Robert Browning Hamilton.
A Prayer. Louis Untermeyer.
Charms. William Rose Benét.
Deep Water Song. John Reed.
Not Yet. Katharine Lee Bates.
The Double Crowning. Amelia Josephine Burr.
Vermont. Sarah N. Cleghorn.
To a Scarlet Tanager. Grace Hazard Conkling.
To the Experimenters. Charles Badger Clark, Jr.
My Conscience. James Whitcomb Riley.
The Little People. Amelia Josephine Burr.
For a Blank Page. Austin Dobson.
A Message from Italy. Margaret Widdemer.
The Gentle Reader. Arthur Davison Ficke.
Submarine Mountains. Cale Young Rice.
The Last Faun. Helen Minturn Seymour.
Ritual. William Rose Benét.
Emergency. William Rose Benét.
The Mother. Timothy Cole.
Perugia. Amelia Josephine Burr.
To Elsa, with a volume of the “Arabian Nights.” Grace Hazard Conkling.
The Carpenter’s Son. Sara Teasdale.
Sarvachraddên. Leonard Bacon.
The Shoes of Happiness. Edwin Markham.
Twilight Mystery. Madison Cawein.
Harper’s—
Presage. Richard Le Gallienne.
The Festa. George Edward Woodberry.
Panthea. Richard Le Gallienne.
The Upland. Henry A. Beers.
In April. Margaret Lee Ashley.65
Waiting. Charles Hanson Towne.
May is Building Her House. Richard Le Gallienne.
The Sea Hounds. Dora Sigerson Shorter.
The Marble House. Ellen M. H. Gates.
Loss. Jessie B. Rittenhouse.
An Adieu. Florence Earle Coates.
The Deep Places. Amelia Josephine Burr.
The Seer. Alan Sullivan.
This is Her Garden. Mildred Howells.
Folk-Song. Louis Untermeyer.
September Rain. Charles Hanson Towne.
Heart’s Tide. Ethel M. Hewitt.
The Wanderer. John Masefield.
Wind. Fannie Stearns Davis.
The Mother. Fannie Stearns Davis.
By the Curb. James Stephens.
God’s Will. Mildred Howells.
On a Bright Winter Day. W. D. Howells.
A Secret. Florence Earle Coates.
Ghosts. Fannie Stearns Davis.
Out of It All. Edith M. Thomas.
Words. Ernest Rhys.
The Telegram. Thomas Hardy.
A Winter Reverie. James Stephens.
Scribner’s
Return. Curtis Hidden Page.
Old Portraits Revisited. Sarah Cleghorn.
The Old Remain. Madison Cawein.
To Lie in the Lew. Margaret Vandegrift.
The Secret. John Hall Wheelock.
The Exile. Thomas Nelson Page.
At Ease on Lethe’s Wharf. Helen Coale Crew.
Discords. C. A. Price.
In the Hospital. Arthur Guiterman.
The Jail. Sarah Cleghorn.
Song for a Child. Stark Young.
Here Lies Pierrot. Richard Burton.
Himself He Cannot Save. M. A. De Wolfe Howe.
The River. Sara Teasdale.
Love of Life. Tertius van Dyke.
Daybreak in the Grand Canyon of Arizona. Henry van Dyke.
A Threnody. Louis V. Ledoux.
La Preciosa. Thomas Walsh.66
The Song of Love. E. Sutton.
Sonnet. R. Henniker Heaton.
No Night There. William Hervey Woods.
In a Monastery Garden. Marjorie L. C. Pickthall.
In the Old Pasture. Harriet Prescott Spofford.
The Ghost. Hermann Hagedorn.
Gran’ Boule. Henry van Dyke.
A Likeness. Willa Sibert Cather.
Sappho. Sara Teasdale.
The Dead Forerunner. C. W.
The Grief. Theodosia Garrison.
The Enchantment. Laurence C. Hodgson.
The Forum—
What of the Night? Willard Huntington Wright.
The Italian Dead March. Shaemas OSheel.
The Girl Who Went to Ailey. Arthur Stringer.
Copper Mountain. Edwin D. Schoonmaker.
The Republic. Madison Cawein.
The Factory. Harry Kemp.
Earth’s Deities. Bliss Carman.
St. John and the Faun. George Edward Woodberry.
The Ring Fighters. Francis Hill.
Journey. Edna St. Vincent Millay.
The Swordless Christ. Percy Adams Hutchison.
Shipwreck. Hermann Hagedorn.
The City That Will Not Repent. Nicholas Vachel Lindsay.
The Old Maid. Sara Teasdale.
Evening on Brooklyn Bridge. Allan Updegraff.
Mother-Heart. Anna Spencer Twitchell.
Departure. John Hall Wheelock.
A Prayer for Beauty. Witter Bynner.
School. Percy Mackaye.
Off Viareggio. Chester Allyn Reed.
In the Maternity Ward. Florence Earle Coates.
The Kallyope Yell. Nicholas Vachel Lindsay.
Birth. Frances Gregg.
For Those Dear Dead. Elaine Goodale Eastman.
Crossroads. Louis V. Ledoux.
Thanksgiving for Our Task. Shaemas OSheel.
Point Bonita. Witter Bynner.
Lippincott’s—
The Common Road. Jane Belfield.
Quatrain. Charles Wharton Stork.67
The True Prophet. Richard Kirk.
Of Melodies Unheard. Mahlon Leonard Fisher.
The Neighbor. Marguerite O. B. Wilkinson.
A New Friend, An Old Friend. Madison Cawein.
I Heard a Voice. Florence Earle Coates.
The Inn. Mary Eleanor Roberts.
Of an Artist. Charles Wharton Stork.
Rich Man, Poor Man—. Francis Hill.
The Cry of Man-Heart. J. B. E.
In Remembrance. Florence Earle Coates.
Troubadour Song. Frederick H. Martens.
Discontent. Frederick H. Martens.
Immutabilis. Mahlon Leonard Fisher.
Half the World Between Us. Mary Coles Carrington.
The Jew in America. Felix N. Gerson.
“Magnas Nugas.” Louise Ayres Garnett.
The Maid of the Ghetto. Herman Scheffauer.
The Coming of the King. Susie M. Best.
The Conqueror. Eleanor Duncan Wood.
The Bellman—
Lie Awake Songs. Amelia Josephine Burr.
Where Dives Lived. Mahlon Leonard Fisher.
As in the Beginning. M. E. Buhler.
In Memoriam. Herbert J. Hall.
Breaking the Road. Lewis Worthington Smith.
The Fairy Tree. Ethel Barstow Howard.
Folly. Joyce Kilmer.
Richard Wagner. Agnes Lee.
Fra Angelico. Richard Burton.
In Cool, Green Haunts. Mahlon Leonard Fisher.
Pompeii at Dusk. Arthur Stringer.
The Migrant. Theresa V. Beard.
In the Cornfield. Joseph Warren Beach.
St. Alexis. Joyce Kilmer.
The Return. Mahlon Leonard Fisher.
Mediæval. Florence Earle Coates.
Children of the Night. Amelia Josephine Burr.
The Guardian Deeps. Ruth Shepard Phelps.
The Blind Gypsy. Kenneth Rand.
The Shadow. Madison Cawein.
The Speckled Trout. Madison Cawein.
Petruchio’s Wife. Amelia Josephine Burr.
November. Mahlon Leonard Fisher.
68
Christmas Downtown. Richard Burton.
After an Ice-Storm. Amelia Josephine Burr.
Smart Set—
The Voice of Nemesis. John G. Neihardt.
The Adventurer. Gordon Johnstone.
Heartbroken. Harry Kemp.
A Song. Lisette Woodworth Reese.
The Outcast. Arthur Stringer.
The Rack. George Sterling.
A Ballade of Too Much Beauty. Richard Le Gallienne.
Lyrics of Spring. Bliss Carman.
In the Cool of the Evening. Witter Bynner.
Morning-Glories. John G. Neihardt.
Two Songs. John Hall Wheelock.
Syrinx. Bliss Carman.
The Laboratory. Ludwig Lewisohn.
Ballade of Youth to Swinburne. Orrick Johns.
Later. Willard Huntington Wright.
Songs of Summer. Bliss Carman.
Au Marigny. Royal Craig.
Memory. Naomi Lange.
Woman the Mystical. John Hall Wheelock.
To a Young Poet Who Killed Himself. Joyce Kilmer.
Ghosts. Marguerite Mooers Marshall.
The Sin Eater. Ruth Comfort Mitchell.
Enough. Sara Teasdale.
Song. John Hall Wheelock.
The Harvest Hand. Harry Kemp.
A Greek Lover of Queen Maeve. Eleanor Rogers Cox.
Humming Birds. Arthur Stringer.
Human. Richard Burton.
The Great Carousal. Louis Untermeyer.
A Woman of the Streets. Charles Hanson Towne.
A Ballad to a Friend. Richard Le Gallienne.
Challenge. Louis Untermeyer.
A Mountain Gateway. Bliss Carman.
Violets. D. H. Lawrence.
Rain in the Night. John Vance Cheney.
Lest I Learn. Witter Bynner.
After Parting. Sara Teasdale.
Kisses in the Train. D. H. Lawrence.
The Dotage of Duns Scotus. Donn Byrne.
Desiderium. Richard Le Gallienne.69
The Rainbow Chaser. Kenneth Rand.
The Mowers. D. H. Lawrence.
In the Market Place. George Sterling.
Winter. Sara Teasdale.
The Shadow. Witter Bynner.
Then and Now. Richard Burton.
Song Against Women. Willard Huntington Wright.
Fifty Years Spent. Maxwell Struthers Burt.
Of Moira Up the Glen. Edward J. O’Brien.

THE “BEST POEMS” CHOSEN FROM THE “DISTINCTIVE” LIST

A Likeness. Willa Sibert Cather.
Ghosts. Marguerite Mooers Marshall.
November. Mahlon Leonard Fisher.
Perugia. Amelia Josephine Burr.
God’s Will. Mildred Howells.
The Swordless Christ. Percy Adams Hutchison.
The Field of Glory. Edwin Arlington Robinson.
Love of Life. Tertius van Dyke.
Thanksgiving for Our Task. Shaemas OSheel.
Trees. Joyce Kilmer.
In the Hospital. Arthur Guiterman.
Night-Sentries. George Sterling.
Of Moira Up the Glen. Edward J. O’Brien.
On the Birth of a Child. Louis Untermeyer.
Rich Man, Poor Man—. Francis Hill.
In a Forgotten Burying-Ground. Ruth Guthrie Harding.
A Mountain Gateway. Bliss Carman.
Wind. Fannie Stearns Davis.
What of the Night? Willard Huntington Wright.
Heart’s Tide. Ethel M. Hewitt.
May is Building Her House. Richard Le Gallienne.
An Adieu. Florence Earle Coates.
A Threnody. Louis V. Ledoux.
Over the Wintry Threshold. Bliss Carman.
Waiting. Charles Hanson Towne.
The Ghost. Hermann Hagedorn.
School. Percy MacKaye.70
Lest I Learn. Witter Bynner.
Human. Richard Burton.
Desiderium. Richard Le Gallienne.
Hymn to Demeter. Louis V. Ledoux.
Departure. John Hall Wheelock.
The Sin Eater. Ruth Comfort Mitchell.
The Kallyope Yell. Nicholas Vachel Lindsay.
Train-Mates. Witter Bynner.
The Marvelous Munchausen. William Rose Benét.
The Old Maid. Sara Teasdale.
Later. Willard Huntington Wright.
Sappho. Sara Teasdale.
To a Child Falling Asleep. Robert Alden Sanborn.
St. John and the Faun. George Edward Woodberry.
In April. Margaret Lee Ashley.
In the Cool of the Evening. Witter Bynner.
Shipwreck. Hermann Hagedorn.
Vermont. Sarah N. Cleghorn.
The Little People. Amelia Josephine Burr.
Winter. Sara Teasdale.
The Dotage of Duns Scotus. Donn Byrne.
Memory. Naomi Lange.
A Ballad of Too Much Beauty. Richard Le Gallienne.
Morning Glories. John G. Neihardt.
The Adventurer. Gordon Johnstone.
A Secret Florence. Earle Coates.
Out of It All. Edith M. Thomas.
Ghosts. Fannie Stearns Davis.
The Mother. Fannie Stearns Davis.
My Conscience. James Whitcomb Riley.
The Festa. George Edward Woodberry.
Of an Artist. Charles Wharton Stork.
Of Melodies Unheard. Mahlon Leonard Fisher.
I Heard a Voice. Florence Earle Coates.
Along the Road. Robert Browning Hamilton.
The Double Crowning. Amelia Josephine Burr.
Deep Water Song. John Reed.
To Elsa, with a volume of the “Arabian Nights.” Grace Hazard Conkling.
Song for a Child. Stark Young.
The River. Sara Teasdale.
La Preciosa. Thomas Walsh.
The Song of Love. E. Sutton.
The Dead Forerunner. 71C. W.
Here Lies Pierrot. Richard Burton.
The Girl Who Went to Ailey. Arthur Stringer.
Mother-Heart. Anna Spencer Twitchell.
God’s World. Edna St. Vincent Millay.
Soft Is Spring over Grand Pré. Bliss Carman.
A Woman of the Streets. Charles Hanson Towne.
The Republic. Madison Cawein.
Woman the Mystical. John Hall Wheelock.
Daybreak in the Grand Cañon of Arizona. Henry van Dyke.
The Shoes of Happiness. Edwin Markham.
The Wanderer. John Masefield.
The Harvest Hand. Harry Kemp.
The Factory. Harry Kemp.
Gran’ Boule, a Seaman’s Tale of the Sea. Henry van Dyke.
The Vision of Gettysburg. Robert Underwood Johnson.
The Anvil of Souls. William Rose Benét.

TITLES AND AUTHORS OF ALL POEMS APPEARING IN THE SEVEN MAGAZINES FOR 1918

CENTURY

January—
A Light-Bearer. Marion Couthouy Smith.
Unmasked. Madison Cawein.
Sleep. Katharine French.
Robert Browning. Margaret Widdemer.
Semele. Grace Denio Litchfield.
February—
Will’s Counsellor. Charles Wharton Stork.
Song of the Open Land. Richard Burton.
Along the Road. Robert Browning Hamilton.
A Prayer. Louis Untermeyer.
March—
Charms. William Rose Benét.
Deep Water Song. John Reed.
Where Am I While I Sleep? Grace Denio Litchfield.
Not Yet. Katharine Lee Bates.
The Double Crowning. Amelia J. Burr.
72
April—
The Rear-Guard. Leonard Bacon.
The Temple of Aphrodite. Alfred Noyes.
Winter-Sleep. Edith M. Thomas.
Vermont. Sarah N. Cleghorn.
The Lingering Snow. Harriet Prescott Spofford.
The Voice of the Dove. George Sterling.
May—
A Last Message. Grace Denio Litchfield.
To a Scarlet Tanager. Grace Hazard Conkling.
To the Experimenters. Charles Badger Clark, Jr.
The Young Heart in Age. Edith M. Thomas.
The Wine of Night. Louis Untermeyer.
June—
Off Capri. Sara Teasdale.
At the Closed Gate of Justice. James D. Corrothers.
To Alfred Noyes. Edwin Markham.
Finis. William H. Hayne.
Invulnerable. William Rose Benét.
July—
My Conscience. James Whitcomb Riley.
House-without-Roof. Edith M. Thomas.
Sierra Madre. Henry van Dyke.
Prayers for the Living. Mary W. Plummer.
The Little People. Amelia Josephine Burr.
Beauty in Eden. Alfred Noyes.
The High Tide at Gettysburg. Will H. Thompson.
For a Blank Page. Austin Dobson.
Maurice Maeterlinck. Stephen Phillips.
August—
A Double Star. Leroy Titus Weeks.
A Message from Italy. Margaret Widdemer.
The Marvelous Munchausen. William Rose Benét.
Wingèd Victory. Victor Whitlock.
To a Royal Mummy. Anna Glen Stoddard.
September—
The Gentle Reader. Arthur Davison Ficke.
Submarine Mountains. Cale Young Rice.
The Last Faun. Helen Minturn Seymour.
Ritual. William Rose Benét.
73
October—
The Beggar. James W. Foley.
Emergency. William Rose Benét.
The Mother. Timothy Cole.
November—
Perugia. Amelia Josephine Burr.
To Elsa. Grace Hazard Conkling.
Ex Oriente. R. H. Titherington.
December—
The Carpenter’s Son. Sara Teasdale.
Sarvachraddên. Leonard Bacon.
Silence and Night. Ednah Proctor Clarke.
The Shoes of Happiness. Edwin Markham.
Twilight Mystery. Madison Cawein.

HARPER’S

January—
Presage. Richard Le Gallienne.
At Evening. B. MacArthur.
Transients. Theodosia Garrison.
February—
Moonshine. George Harris, Jr.
The Festa. G. E. Woodberry.
Night-Sentries. George Sterling.
Ruth. Samuel McCoy.
March—
Panthea. Richard Le Gallienne.
The Upland. Henry A. Beers.
Transit. Anna McClure Sholl.
Sunrise in New York. Alan Sullivan.
In the Night-Watches. James B. Kenyon.
Pine-trees. Jennie Coker Lea.
April—
“Sweet, When Life Is Done.” Anne Bunner.
Immensity. Harriet Prescott Spofford.
A Folk-Song. Margaret Widdemer.
In April. Margaret Lee Ashley.
Waiting. Charles Hanson Towne.
May—
The Dreamers. Theodosia Garrison.
The Common Lot. Lisette Woodworth Reese.
May is Building Her House. Richard Le Gallienne.
74
June—
The Sea Hounds. Dora Sigerson Shorter.
The Marble House. Ellen M. H. Gates.
The Old House. Ethel Augusta Cook.
Loss. Jessie B. Rittenhouse.
July—
In a Rose Garden. Amory Hare Cook.
An Adieu. Florence Earle Coates.
The Deep Places. Amelia Josephine Burr.
With the Daisies. James Stephens.
The Seer. Alan Sullivan.
August—
This Is Her Garden. Mildred Howells.
Day and Night. James Stephens.
When. Ellen M. H. Gates.
Folk-Song. Louis Untermeyer.
Summer in the City. Charles Hanson Towne.
September—
The Voice. Albert Bigelow Paine.
September Rain. Charles Hanson Towne.
Heart’s Tide. Ethel M. Hewitt.
The Wanderer. John Masefield.
Wind. Fannie Stearns Davis.
Chanson à Danser. Louise Morgan Sill.
October—
The First Year. Ellen M. H. Gates.
The Mother. Fannie Stearns Davis.
By the Curb. James Stephens.
God’s Will. Mildred Howells.
November—
To the Cuckoo. Henrietta Anne Huxley.
On a Bright Winter Day. W. D. Howells.
Flower of Life. Charlotte Wilson.
A Secret. Florence Earle Coates.
Ghosts. Fannie Stearns Davis.
All Souls. Edith M. Thomas.
December—
Out of It All. Edith M. Thomas.
The Voice. Louise Morgan Sill.
Words. Ernest Rhys.
Understanding. Anna Alice Chapin.75
The Telegram. Thomas Hardy.
A Winter Reverie. James Stephens.

SCRIBNER’S

January—
Awakening. Julia C. R. Dorr.
Forget Me Not. Oliver Herford.
On Her Saint’s Day. E. Sutton.
Return. Curtis Hidden Page.
February—
The Hour When Love Repays. Ann Devoore.
March—
The Rocket. Louise Saunders Perkins.
Old Portraits Revisited. Sarah N. Cleghorn.
Winter Flowers. Ruth Draper.
The Old Remain. Madison Cawein.
April—
“To Lie in the Lew.” Margaret Vandegrift
The Shadowy City Looms. Lloyd Mifflin.
Petronius Arbiter. James B. Kenyon.
In the Heart of the Swamp. William Hamilton Hayne.
May—
Song. Julia C. R. Dorr.
The Secret. John Hall Wheelock.
The Exile. Thomas Nelson Page.
June—
“At Ease on Lethe Wharf.” Helen Coale Crewe.
Discords. C. A. Price.
The Catch. John Kendrick Bangs.
July—
In the Hospital. Arthur Guiterman.
The Jail. Sarah N. Cleghorn.
Song for a Child. Stark Young.
August—
Here Lies Pierrot. Richard Burton.
“Himself He Cannot Save.” M. A. DeWolfe Howe.
The River. Sara Teasdale.
Love of Life. Tertius van Dyke.
The Hill-Born. Maxwell Struthers Burt.
76
September—
Daybreak in the Grand Canyon of Arizona. Henry van Dyke.
A Threnody. Louis V. Ledoux.
“The Rest Is Silence.” William H. Hayne.
La Preciosa. Thomas Walsh.
The Song of Love. E. Sutton.
Sonnet R. Henniker Heaton.
October—
No Night There. William Hervey Woods.
The Choice. Julia C. R. Dorr.
November—
In a Monastery Garden. Marjorie L. C. Pickthall.
In the Old Pasture. Harriet Prescott Spofford.
The Ghost. Hermann Hagedorn.
December—
“Gran’ Boule.” Henry van Dyke.
The Minster Statue on Christmas Eve. Benjamin R. C. Low.
A Likeness. Willa Sibert Cather.
Sappho. Sara Teasdale.
The Way to Inde. L. Brooke.
The Dead Forerunner. C. W.
The Grief. Theodosia Garrison.
Enchantment. Laurence C. Hodgson.

THE FORUM

January—
What of the Night? Willard Huntington Wright.
“Feuerzauber.” Louis Untermeyer.
Two Poems. Herbert Kaufman.
The Italian Dead March. Shaemas OSheel.
February—
The Girl Who Went to Ailey. Arthur Stringer.
Copper Mountain. Edwin Davies Schoonmaker.
Sea-Child. Hildegarde Hawthorne.
Love’s Constancy. Charles L. Buchanan.
March—
The Republic. Madison Cawein.
Where is David, The Next King of Israel? Nicholas Vachel Lindsay.
The Factory. Harry Kemp.
77
April—
Earth Deities. Bliss Carman.
Mary. Victor Starbuck.
St. John and the Faun. G. E. Woodberry.
May—
Tiger. Witter Bynner.
The Common Road. Martin Schütze.
The Ring Fighters. Francis Hill.
Journey. Edna St. Vincent Millay.
June—
The Swordless Christ. Percy Adams Hutchison.
The Rivals. Scudder Middleton.
Shipwreck. Hermann Hagedorn.
July—
God’s World. Edna St. Vincent Millay.
The City That Will Not Repent. Nicholas Vachel Lindsay.
The Old Maid. Sara Teasdale.
August—
Moods at May-Dawn. John Helston.
Poems. Allan Updegraff.
Song Primitive. Francis Hill.
Mother-Heart. Anna Spencer Twitchell.
September—
The Voice of the Lord. E. D. Schoonmaker.
Reverie. Zoë Akins.
Departure. John Hall Wheelock.
A Prayer for Beauty. Witter Bynner.
A City Morning. Edith Wyatt.
Out from Lynn. Lewis Worthington Smith.
October—
School. Percy MacKaye.
Prithee, Strive Not. Harry Kemp.
Off Viareggio. Chester Allyn Reed.
In the Maternity Ward. Florence Earle Coates.
The Poet of the Slums. Frank E. Hill.
November—
The Kallyope Yell. Nicholas Vachel Lindsay.
Birth. Frances Gregg.
For Those Dear Dead. Elaine Goodale Eastman.
Crossroads. Louis V. Ledoux.
78
December—
Thanksgiving for Our Task. Shaemas OSheel.
Pont Royal. Joseph Warren Beach.
Whispers. Lyman Bryson.
Point Bonita. Witter Bynner.
To An Old Friend. Arthur Davison Ficke.
The Dead Soul. Beatrice Redpath.

LIPPINCOTT’S

February—
The Common Road. Jane Belfield.
Quatrain. Charles Wharton Stork.
The Blind. Faith Baldwin.
Dreams. Arthur Wallace Peach.
Life. Harold Susman.
March—
“If a Lad Love a Lass.” Arthur Wallace Peach.
The True Prophet. Richard Kirk.
Of Melodies Unheard. Mahlon Leonard Fisher.
Rapture. George Platt Waller, Jr.
The Neighbor. Marguerite O. B. Wilkinson.
Lines for a Sun-Dial. Harvey M. Watts.
April—
The Smaller Voice. Richard Kirk.
A New Friend, An Old Friend. Madison Cawein.
The Oak That Fell This Morning. Jane Belfield.
Bestowal. J. B. E.
I Heard a Voice. Florence Earle Coates.
I Wonder Is There Laughter? Ethel M. Colson.
The Old House. Marie V. Caruthers.
May—
The Seasons of the Heart. Edward Wilbur Mason.
A Birthday. William Stanley Braithwaite.
The Inn. Mary Eleanor Roberts.
Of An Artist. Charles Wharton Stork.
June—
June. Charles Hanson Towne.
Rich Man, Poor Man—. Francis Hill.
The Cry of Man-Heart. J. B. E.
The Cherished. Arthur Wallace Peach.
Solitude. J. J. O’Connell.
79
July—
Gettysburg. H. Percival Allen.
In Remembrance. Florence Earle Coates.
Symbols. Arthur Wallace Peach.
Sympathy. Ella Sollenberger.
If You Knew—. Ethel Hallett Porter.
Troubadour Song. Frederick H. Martens.
At Dawn. Grace E. Mott.
August—
Discontent. Frederick H. Martens.
Immutabilis. Mahlon Leonard Fisher.
In Exile. James B. Kenyon.
An Idyl. Carolyn Wells.
Half the World Between Us. Mary Coles Carrington.
The Jew in America. Felix N. Gerson.
The Cosmic Thrall. Jane Belfield.
Doubt. Margaret Louise Loudon.
September—
The Poet to His Love. Norma Bright Carson.
Mother-of-Pearl. Mary Eleanor Roberts.
Supreme Moments. Charles Hanson Towne.
Ripples. Thomas Grant Springer.
Return. Nancy Byrd Turner.
October—
Benedicite. W. J. Lampton.
The Hour. Sara Teasdale.
Heritage. Ella Morrow Sollenberger.
Your Way and Mine. Richard Kirk.
Quatrain. Mary Eleanor Roberts.
November—
Color Notes. Charles Wharton Stork.
Unattainable. Reginald Wright Kauffman.
To Two Bereaved. Richard Kirk.
A Violin. Clinton Scollard.
“Magnas Nugas.” Louise Ayres Garnett.
The Maid of the Ghetto. Herman Scheffauer.
December—
The Witch-Moon. Charlotte Wilson.
Starlight. Ethel Hallett Porter.
The Coming of the King. Susie M. Best.
The Conqueror. Eleanor Duncan Wood.
Christmas Eve. Caroline Giltinan.

THE BELLMAN

Cantiga. Thomas Walsh.
Forbidden Wisdom. Ethel Talbot Scheffauer.
I That Have Lived. C. T. Ryder.
Lie Awake Songs. A. J. Burr.
Tarpaulin Cove. Henry Adams Bellows.
Where Dives Lived. Mahlon Leonard Fisher.
Whither Away. Lewis Worthington Smith.
At the Winter Solstice. M. E. Buhler.
Ballade of Lent. Arthur Adams.
As in the Beginning. M. E. Buhler.
On the Drive. Charles Badger Clark, Jr.
Two Houses. Agnes Lee.
In Memoriam. Herbert J. Hall.
The Night Herder. Charles Badger Clark, Jr.
Breaking the Road. Lewis Worthington Smith.
The Fairy Tree. Ethel Barstow Howard.
Folly. Joyce Kilmer.
Richard Wagner. Agnes Lee.
To Sappho Dead. Florence Earle Coates.
Tintagel. Hamilton Fish Armstrong.
Fra Angelico. Richard Burton.
Songs We May Not Sing. Barr Moses.
Ludwig of Bavaria. Amelia Josephine Burr.
In Cool, Green Haunts. Mahlon Leonard Fisher.
Pompeii at Dusk. Arthur Stringer.
Wind at Night. Ethel Talbot Scheffauer.
The Migrant. Theresa V. Beard.
In the Cornfield. Joseph W. Beach.
Lesbia. Henry Adams Bellows.
Lie Awake Song. Amelia Josephine Burr.
St. Alexis. Joyce Kilmer.
En Rapport. Alice McCray Walther.
Two Partings. Reginald Wright Kauffman.
The Return. Mahlon Leonard Fisher.
Medieval. Florence Earle Coates.
Vigil. Richard Burton.
Children of the Night. Amelia J. Burr.
The Guardian Deeps. Ruth Shepard Phelps.
Empire. William Rose Benét.
Phantom Shoal. J. Donald Adams.
The Blind Gypsy. Kenneth Rand.
The Shadow. Madison Cawein.
The Speckled Trout. Madison Cawein.81
Stories. Lewis Worthington Smith.
Petruchio’s Wife. Amelia J. Burr.
November. Mahlon Leonard Fisher.
Christmas Downtown. Richard Burton.
After an Ice-Storm. Amelia J. Burr.

THE SMART SET

January—
The Voice of Nemesis. John G. Neihardt.
This White December Morning. Gordon Johnstone.
Christmas Eve. Florence Wilkinson.
The Other Side. Guy Templeton.
When Pierrot Passes. Theodosia Garrison.
A Ballade of Hope. Brian Bellasis.
The Land of Dreams-Come-True. Frank Stephens.
Why? E. Graves Mabie.
Theory and Practice. Walt Mason.
I Commute. Mrs. J. L. O’Connell.
February—
To My Valentine. Glenn Ward Dresbach.
The Adventurer. Gordon Johnstone.
Rain and Sunshine. Charles F. Lummis.
Mine Utmost Hour. Charles Hanson Towne.
The Harmony of the Spheres. Blanche Elisabeth Wade.
Two of a Kind. Eunice Ward.
The Isle of Truth. John Kendrick Bangs.
Maiden Lane. Louis Untermeyer.
Vagabondage. Katherine Williams Sinclair.
Young Maidens Early Dead. Gertrude Huntington McGiffert.
March—
Her Home-Coming. James B. Kenyon.
The Old Boulevardier. Reginald Wright Kauffman.
Heartbreak. Harry Kemp.
A Song. Lisette Woodworth Reese.
The Mad Sea King. Harrold Skinner.
Guerdons. Arthur Wallace Peach.
Gray Hours. Mrs. John Schwartz.
The Outcast. Arthur Stringer.
Gipsy Blood. Martha Haskell Clark.
Les Corbeaux. Philéas Lebesgue.
82
April—
The Rack. George Sterling.
Tell Me. Edgar Saltus.
April Song. Willard Huntington Wright.
A Ballad of Too Much Beauty. Richard Le Gallienne.
Regrets. H. E. Zimmerman.
At Dawn You Go. Eleanor Walsh.
Lyrics of Spring. Bliss Carman.
Faith. Archibald Sullivan.
In the Cool of the Evening. Witter Bynner.
Morning Glories. John G. Neihardt
Two Songs. John Hall Wheelock.
Into Arcady. Marsh K. Powers.
Spring in Japan. Louis Untermeyer.
May—
Syrinx. Bliss Carman.
Challenge. John Hall Wheelock.
A Spring Afternoon. Louis Untermeyer.
Union Square. Witter Bynner.
The Laboratory. Ludwig Lewisohn.
Ballade of Youth to Swinburne. Orrick Johns.
“My Country, ’Tis of Thee.” Irvin S. Cobb.
Broadway. Sara Teasdale.
Black and White. K. B. Boynton.
A Cabaret Dancer. Zoë Akins.
Later. Willard Huntington Wright.
Etre Poète. Georges Boutelleau.
June—
Songs of Summer. Bliss Carman.
Nocturne. Edward Heyman Pfeiffer.
Yesterdays. Reginald Wright Kauffman.
A Ballad of Saint Vitus. George Sylvester Viereck.
Au Marigny. Royal Craig.
Memory. Naomi Lange.
Woman the Mystical. John Hall Wheelock.
The Chill of Death. Paul Scott Mowrer.
Carnival Night. Philip Markhall.
Drought. Lisette Woodworth Reese.
To a Young Poet Who Killed Himself. Joyce Kilmer.
“Lilith.” Louis Untermeyer.
Prayer. Sara Teasdale.
Ghosts. Marguerite Mooers Marshall.
83
July—
The Sin Eater. Ruth Comfort Mitchell.
Servant Girl and Grocer’s Boy. Joyce Kilmer.
Enough. Sara Teasdale.
Thanks. Louis Untermeyer.
Song. John Hall Wheelock.
The Harvest Hand. Harry Kemp.
Lyric. Gerald Dinwiddie.
Daphne. Bliss Carman.
The Monks at Choir Time. Florence Wilkinson.
The Poor Little Lady. Allan Updegraff.
The Summons. Reginald Wright Kauffman.
A Greek Lover of Queen Maeve. Eleanor Rogers Cox.
A Desert Song. Clinton Scollard.
Bachelors. René Laidlaw.
The Happy Man. Jane Almard.
Humming Birds. Arthur Stringer.
Romance. Arthur Ketchum.
August—
The Master Mariner. George Sterling.
The Song of the Wheat. C. L. Marsh.
Human. Richard Burton.
Home-Coming. Norreys Jephson O’Conor.
Breath. Witter Bynner.
The Bartender. Joyce Kilmer.
The Great Carousal. Louis Untermeyer.
The Wine Press. Theodore Lynch FitzSimons.
Without Inconstancy. Harry Kemp.
Sea Longing. Sara Teasdale.
The Crickets. Henry Eastman Lower.
Serenade. J. W. Wood.
L’Ame des Choses. Florian-Parmentier.
Wail of a Waitress. Ethel M. Kelley.
September—
Poems. Ezra Pound.
Heart of the World. Maxwell Struthers Burt.
The Three Hermits. William Butler Yeats.
A Woman of the Streets. Charles Hanson Towne.
A Ballad to a Friend. Richard Le Gallienne.
Challenge. Louis Untermeyer.
A Mountain Gateway. Bliss Carman.
Fellow Travelers. Achmed Abdullah.
The Close. C. Hilton-Turvey.84
The Stage Entrance. Frederick Lovelace Macon.
The Shadow of Aspiration. Robert Haven Schauffler.
A Day. Arthur Wallace Peach.
Violets. D. H. Lawrence.
An Old House. Samuel McCoy.
Naples. Charmy.
Rain i’ the Night. John Vance Cheney.
Lest I Learn. Witter Bynner.
October—
After Parting. Sara Teasdale.
October. Bliss Carman.
Kisses in the Train. D. H. Lawrence.
To Certain Poets. Joyce Kilmer.
“Phasellus Ille.” Ezra Pound.
The Dotage of Duns Scotus. Donn Byrne.
Desiderium. Richard Le Gallienne.
Love. Skipwith Cannell.
The Rainbow Chaser. Kenneth Rand.
November—
The Mowers. D. H. Lawrence.
At Dayfall in the Streets of Samarcand. Clinton Scollard.
In the Market Place. George Sterling.
The Enemy. Louisa Fletcher Tarkington.
Autumnal. Madison Cawein.
A Dead One. Witter Bynner.
Portrait d’Une Femme. Ezra Pound.
Poppies. W. G. Tinckom-Fernandez.
The Victor. Louis Untermeyer.
Winter. Sara Teasdale.
Fairy Gold. Richard Le Gallienne.
Dedication. Willard Huntington Wright.
The Ballet. K. B. Boynton.
December—
Dance of the Sunbeams. Bliss Carman.
The Shadow. Witter Bynner.
Zenia. Ezra Pound.
Then and Now. Richard Burton.
Song against Women. Willard Huntington Wright.
Song. K. B. Boynton.
Fifty Years Spent. Maxwell Struthers Burt.
Of Moira Up the Glen. Edward J. O’Brien.
The Last Monster. George Sterling.

INDEX OF FIRST LINES

	PAGE
Aye, down the years, behold, he rides.
Percy Adams Hutchison		54
Because on the branch that is tapping my pane.
Arthur Guiterman		7
Did you choose the journey, friend?
Ruth Sterry		62
Distant as a dream’s flight.
John G. Neihardt		17
Eternal in the brooding of the old Norwegian spruces.
Ruth Guthrie Harding		4
Ever as sinks the day on sea or land.
George Sterling		52
Face in the tomb, that lies so still.
Richard Le Gallienne		22
For the sake of a weathered gray city set high on a hill.
Amelia J. Burr		25
God meant me to be hungry.
Mildred Howells		8
Hark ye! Hush ye! Margot’s dead.
Ruth Comfort Mitchell		50
Hark you such sound as quivers? Kings will hear.
Mahlon Leonard Fisher		61
How an image of paint and wood.
Agnes Lee		12
I know a vale where I would go one day.
Bliss Carman		24
I saw her in a Broadway car.
Sara Teasdale		19
I think that I shall never see.
Joyce Kilmer		7
I thought I had forgotten you.
Ethel M. Hewitt		21
I thought my heart would break.
Charles Hanson Towne		22
I went to the place where my youth took birth.
Willard Huntington Wright		1886
If I am slow forgetting.
Margaret Lee Ashley		3
In every line a supple beauty.
Willa Sibert Cather		46
It’s little that I’d care for the glories of Ireland.
Edward J. O’Brien		16
Lest I learn, with clearer sight.
Witter Bynner		18
Lo—to the battle-ground of Life.
Louis Untermeyer		9
Love you not the tall trees spreading wide their branches.
Tertius van Dyke		8
May is building her house. With apple blooms.
Richard Le Gallienne		3
Midnight, and in the darkness not a sound.
Sara Teasdale		13
O blest Imagination.
George Edward Woodberry		28
Oh, joy that burns in Denver tavern.
Francis Hill		49
Old Hezekiah leaned hard on his hoe.
Percy MacKaye		30
One whom I loved and never can forget.
Hermann Hagedorn		23
Outside hove Shasta, snowy height on height.
Witter Bynner		38
Over the dim edge of sleep I lean.
Robert Alden Sanborn		9
Over the wintry threshold.
Bliss Carman		2
Proud men.
Nicholas Vachel Lindsay		39
Sicilian Muse! O thou who sittest dumb.
Louis V. Ledoux		57
Sorrow, quit me for a while.
Florence Earle Coates		20
The moon’s ashine; by many a lane.
Richard Burton		62
The sickle is dulled of the reaping and the threshing-floor is bare.
Shaemas OSheel		43
The snug little room with its brazier fire aglow.
William Rose Benét		3487
The twilight is starred.
John Hall Wheelock		20
The Wind bows down the poplar trees.
Fannie Stearns Davis		5
They call you cold New England.
Marguerite Mooers Marshall		27
War shook the land where Levi dwelt.
Edwin Arlington Robinson		48
Weave the dance, and raise again the sacred chorus.
Louis V. Ledoux		1
Weighed down by grief, o’erborne by deep despair.
Richard Burton		23
What of the night?
Willard Huntington Wright		55
With rod and line I took my way.
Madison Cawein		5

Transcriber’s Notes

Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling variations were were not changed.

Simple typographical errors were corrected.

Poems are shown here as they appeared in the original book. Some of them appear elsewhere with different words or punctuation.

When it was not clear whether or not new stanzas began on new pages, Transcriber did not add stanza breaks.

*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 63265 ***

ANTHOLOGY OF MAGAZINE VERSE FOR 1913

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

HYMN TO DEMETER From “A Sicilian Idyl”

OVER THE WINTRY THRESHOLD

IN APRIL

MAY IS BUILDING HER HOUSE

IN A FORGOTTEN BURYING-GROUND

WIND

THE SPECKLED TROUT

TREES

IN THE HOSPITAL

LOVE OF LIFE

GOD’S WILL

ON THE BIRTH OF A CHILD

TO A CHILD FALLING ASLEEP

A ROMAN DOLL (In a Museum)

SAPPHO

OF MOIRA UP THE GLEN

MORNING GLORIES

LEST I LEARN

LATER

THE OLD MAID

DEPARTURE

AN ADIEU

HEART’S TIDE

WAITING

DESIDERIUM

HUMAN

THE GHOST

A MOUNTAIN GATEWAY

PERUGIA

GHOSTS

ST. JOHN AND THE FAUN

I

II

III

IV

SCHOOL

I

II

III

IV

THE MARVELOUS MUNCHAUSEN

TRAIN-MATES

THE KALLYOPE YELL

I

II

III

IV

V

THANKSGIVING FOR OUR TASK

A LIKENESS Portrait Bust of an Unknown, Capitol, Rome

THE FIELD OF GLORY

RICH MAN, POOR MAN—

THE SIN EATER

I

II

III

IV

V

NIGHT-SENTRIES

THE SWORDLESS CHRIST Vicisti, Galilee

WHAT OF THE NIGHT?

A THRENODY In Memory of the Destruction of Messina By Earthquake

NOVEMBER

SALUTATION

HERE LIES PIERROT

LIST OF “DISTINCTIVE POEMS,” THEIR AUTHORS, AND THE MAGAZINES IN WHICH THEY APPEARED

THE “BEST POEMS” CHOSEN FROM THE “DISTINCTIVE” LIST

TITLES AND AUTHORS OF ALL POEMS APPEARING IN THE SEVEN MAGAZINES FOR 1918

CENTURY

HARPER’S

SCRIBNER’S

THE FORUM

LIPPINCOTT’S

THE BELLMAN

THE SMART SET

INDEX OF FIRST LINES

Transcriber’s Notes

ANTHOLOGY OF
MAGAZINE VERSE
FOR 1913

HYMN TO DEMETER
From “A Sicilian Idyl”

A ROMAN DOLL
(In a Museum)

A LIKENESS
Portrait Bust of an Unknown, Capitol, Rome

THE SWORDLESS CHRIST
Vicisti, Galilee

A THRENODY
In Memory of the Destruction of Messina By Earthquake