Part 1

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A TREE WITH A BIRD IN IT:

A SYMPOSIUM OF CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN POETS ON BEING SHOWN A PEAR-TREE ON WHICH SAT A GRACKLE

BY MARGARET WIDDEMER

AUTHOR OF "FACTORIES," "THE OLD ROAD TO PARADISE," "CROSS CURRENTS," ETC.

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY WILLIAM SAPHIER

NEW YORK HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY

COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY, INC.

PRINTED IN THE U. S. A. BY THE QUINN & BODEN COMPANY RAHWAY, N. J.

THIS IS DEDICATED WITH MY FORGIVENESS IN ADVANCE TO THE POETS PARODIED IN THIS BOOK AND THE POETS NOT PARODIED IN THIS BOOK

FOREWORD

By the Collator

A little while since, I had the fortune to live in a house, outside of whose windows there grew a pear-tree. On the branches of this tree lived a green bird of indeterminate nature. I do not know what his real name was, but the name, to quote our great exemplar Lewis Carroll, by which his name was _called_ was the Grackle. He seemed perfectly willing to be addressed thus, and accordingly was.

Aside from watching the Pear-Tree and the Grackle, my other principal occupation that winter was watching the Poetry Society of America now and then at its monthly meetings. It occurred to me finally to invite such members of it as cared to come, following many good examples, to an outdoor symposium under the tree. The result follows.

Margaret Widdemer.

P.S.--The tree died.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PAGE Foreword: By the Collator v Jessie B. Rittenhouse _Resignation_ 3 Edwin Markham _The Bird with the Woe_ 4 Witter Bynner _The Unity of Oneness_ 7 Amy Lowell _Oiseaurie_ 8 Edgar Lee Masters _Imri Swazey_ 9 Edwin Arlington Robinson _Rambuncto_ 10 Robert Frost _The Bird Misunderstood_ 12 Carl Sandburg _Chicago Memories_ 13 Edith M. Thomas _Frost and Sandburg Tonight_ 17 Charles Hanson Towne _The Unquiet Singer_ 18 Sara Teasdale _At Autumn_ 20 Ezra Pound _Rainuv_ 21 Margaret Widdemer _The Sighing Tree_ 24 Richard Le Gallienne _Ballade of Spring Chickens_ 27 Angela Morgan _Oh! Bird!_ 29 Conrad Aiken _The Charnel Bird_ 30 Mary Carolyn Davies _A Young Girl to a Young Bird_ 34 Marguerite Wilkinson _The Rune of the Nude_ 35 Aline Kilmer _Admiration_ 37 William Rose and Stephen Vincent Benet _The Grackle of Grog_ 38 Lola Ridge _Preenings_ 42 Edna St. Vincent Millay _Tea o' Herbs_ 46 John V. A. Weaver _The Weaver Bird_ 50 David Morton _Sonnet: Trees Are Not Ships_ 52 Elinor Wylie _The Grackle Is the Loon_ 53 Leonora Speyer _A Landscape Gets Personal_ 54 Corinne Roosevelt Robinson _The Symposium Leading Nowhere_ 57 Ridgely Torrence _The Fowl of a Thousand Flights_ 59 Henry van Dyke _The Roiling of Henry_ 61 Cale Young Rice _Pantings_ 63 Bliss Carman _The Wild_ 65 Grace Hazard and Hilda Conkling _They See the Birdie_ 67 Theodosia Garrison _A Ballad of the Bird Dance of Pierrette_ 69 William Griffith _Pierrette Remembers an Engagement_ 71 Edgar Guest _Ain't Nature Wonderful!_ 72 Don Marquis _The Meeting of the Columns_ 75 Christopher Morley _The Mocking-Hoarse-Bird_ 80 Franklin Pierce Adams _To a Grackle_ 83 Thomas Augustin Daly _Carlo the Gardener_ 84 Vachel Lindsay _The Hoboken Grackle and the Hobo_ 85 Percy Mackaye } Josephine Preston Peabody } _Dies Illa: A Bird of a Masque_ 89 Isabel Fiske Conant } Arthur Guiterman _A Tree with a Bird in It: Rhymed Review_ 101

ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE Edwin Markham 5 Witter Bynner 6 Carl Sandburg 15 Margaret Widdemer 25 Conrad Aiken 31 The Benets 39 Lola Ridge 43 Edna St. Vincent Millay 47 Leonora Speyer 55 Edgar Guest 73 Don Marquis and Christopher Morley 77 Vachel Lindsay 87

A TREE WITH A BIRD IN IT

_Jessie B. Rittenhouse_

(She steps brightly forward with an air of soprano introduction.)

RESIGNATION

I look from out my window, Beloved, and I see A bird upon a pear bough, But what is that to me?

Because the thought comes icy; That bird you never knew-- It's not your bird or pear tree, And what is it to you?

_Edwin Markham_

(who, though he had to lay a cornerstone, unveil a bust of somebody, give two lectures and write encouraging introductions to the works of five young poets before catching the three-ten for Staten Island, offered his reaction in a benevolent and unhurried manner.)

THE BIRD WITH THE WOE

Poets to men a curious sight afford; Still they will sing, though all around are bored; But this wise grackle does a kinder thing; Silent he's bored, while all around him sing!

_Witter Bynner_

(Prefaced by a short baritone talk on Chinese architecture.)

THE UNITY OF ONENESS

Celia, have you been to China? There upon a mystic tree Sits a bird who murmurs Chinese Of the Me in Thee.

'Neath that tree of willow-pattern Twice seven thousand scornful go Paraphrasers and translators Of the long-deceased Li-Po:

Chinese feelings swift discerning Without all this time and fuss Let us eat that bird, thus learning Of the Him in Us!

_Amy Lowell_

(Fixing her glasses firmly on the rest of the Poetry Society in a way which makes them with difficulty refrain from writhing.)

OISEAURIE

Glunk! I toss my heels up to my head ... That was a bird I heard say glunk As I walked statelily through my extensive, expensive English country estate In a pink brocade with silver buttons, a purple passementerie cut with panniers, a train, and faced with watered silk:

But it Is dead now! (The bird) Probably putrescent And green....

I scrabble my toes ... Glunk!

_Edgar Lee Masters_

(Making a statement which you may take or leave, but convincing you entirely.)

IMRI SWAZEY

I was a shock-headed boy bringing in the laundry; Why did I try for that damn bird, anyway? I suppose I had been in the habit of aiming for the pears. But I chucked a stone, anyhow, And it ricocheted and hit my head, And as it hadn't any brains inside the stone busted it And there I was, dead. And dead with me were all the improper things I'd got out of the servants about their employers Bringing in the laundry; But the grackle sings on. Sing forever, O grackle! I died, knowing lots of things _you_ don't know!

_Edwin Arlington Robinson_

(He mutters wearily in an undertone.)

RAMBUNCTO

Well, they're quite dead, Rambuncto; thoroughly dead. It was a natural thing enough; my eyes Stared baffled down the forest-aisles, brown and green, Not learning what the marks were. Still, who learns? Not I, who stooped and picked the things that day, Scarlet and gold and smooth, friend ... smooth enough! And she's in a vault now, old Jane Fotheringham, My mother-in-law; and my wife's seven aunts, And that cursed bird that used to sit and croak Upon their pear-tree--they threw scraps to him-- My wife, too. Lord, that was a curious thing! Because--"I don't like mushrooms much," I said, And they ate all I picked. And then they died. But ... Well, who knows it isn't better that way? It's quieter, at least.... Rambuncto--friend-- Why, you're not going?... Well--it's a stupid year, And the world's very useless.... Sorry.... Still The dusk intransience that I much prefer Leaves place for little hope and less regret. I don't suppose he'd care, to stay to dine Under the circumstances.... What's life for?

_Robert Frost_

(Rather nervously, retreating with haste in the wake of Mr. Robinson as soon as he had finished.)

THE BIRD MISUNDERSTOOD

There was a grackle sat on our old pear tree-- Don't ask me why--I never did really know; But he made my wife and me feel, for really the very first time We were out in the actual country, hindering things to grow;

It gave us rather a queer feeling to hear the grackle grackle, But when it got to be winter time he got up and went thence And now we shall never know, though we watch the tree till April, Whether his curious crying ever made song or sense.

_Carl Sandburg_

(Striking from time to time a few notes on a mouth-organ, with a wonderful effect of human brotherhood which does not quite include the East.)

CHICAGO MEMORIES

Grackles, trees-- I been thinkin' 'bout 'em all: I been thinkin' they're all right: Nothin' much--Gosh, nothin' much against God, even. _God made little apples_, a hobo sang in Kankakee, Shattered apples, I picked you up under a tree, red wormy apples, I ate you.... That lets God out. There were three green birds on the tree, there were three wailing cats against a green dawn.... 'Gene Field sang, "The world is full of a number of things," 'Gene Field said, "When they caught me I was living in a tree...." 'Gene Field said everything in Chicago of the eighties. Now he's dead, I say things, say 'em well, too.... 'Gene Field ... back in the lost days, back in the eighties, Singing, colyumning ... 'Gene Field ... forgotten ... Back in Arkansaw there was a green bird, too, I can remember how he sang, back in the lost days, back in the eighties. Uncle Yon Swenson under the tree chewing slowly, slowly.... Memories, memories! There are only trees now, no 'Gene, no eighties Gray cats, I can feel your fur in my heart ... Green grackle, I remember now, Back in the lost days, back in the eighties The cat ate you.

_Edith M. Thomas_

(She tells a friend in confidence, after she is safely out of it all.)

FROST AND SANDBURG TONIGHT

Apple green bird on a wooden bough, And the brazen sound of a long, loud row, And "Child, take the train, but mind what you do-- Frost, tonight, and Sandburg too!"

Then I sally forth, half wild, half cowed, Till I come to the surging, impervious crowd, The wine-filled, the temperance, the sober, the pied, The Poets that cover the countryside!

The Poets I never would meet till tonight! A gleam of their eyes in the fading light, And I took them all in--the enormous throng-- And with one great bound I bolted along.

* * * * *

If the garden had merely held birds and flowers! But I hear a voice--they have talked for hours-- "Frost tonight--" if 'twere merely he! Half wild, half cowed, I flee, I flee!

_Charles Hanson Towne_

(Who rather begrudged the time he used up in going out to the suburbs.)

THE UNQUIET SINGER

He had been singing, but I had not heard his voice; He had been bothering the rest with song; But I, most comfortably far Within the city's stimulating jar Feeling for bus-conductors and for flats, And shop-girls buying too expensive hats, And silver-serviced dinners, And various kinds of pleasant urban sinners, And riding on the subway and the L, Had much beside his song to hear and tell.

But one day (it was Spring, when poets ride Afield to wild poetic festivals) I, innocently making calls Was snatched by a swift motor toward his tree (Alas, but lady poets will do this to thee If thou art decorative, witty or a Man) And heard him sing, and on the grass did bide. But my whole day was sadder for his words, And I was thinner Because, in spite of my most careful plan I missed a very pleasant little dinner.... In short, unless well-cooked, I don't like Birds.

_Sara Teasdale_

(Who got Miss Rittenhouse to read it for her.)

AT AUTUMN

I bend and watch the grackles billing, And fight with tears as I float by; O be a fowl for my heart's filling! O be a bird, yet never fly!

_Ezra Pound_

(Mailed disdainfully by him from anywhere but America, and read prayerfully by a committee from Chicago.)

RAINUV: A ROMANTIC BALLAD FROM THE EARLY BASQUE

... so then naturally This Count Rainuv I speak of (Certainly I did not expect you would ever have heard of him; You are American poets, aren't you? That's rather awful ... I am the only American poet I could ever tolerate ... well, sniff and pass....) Therefore ... well, I knew Rainuv. (My P. G. course at Penn, you'll remember; A little Anglo-Saxon and Basuto, But Provencal, mostly. Most don't go in for that.... You haven't, of course ... What, no Provencal? Well, of course, I know Rather more than you do. That's my specialty. But then--_Omnis Gallia est divisa_--but no matter. Not fit, perhaps you'd say, that, to be quoted Before ladies.... That's your rather amusing prudishness....) Well, this Rainuv, then, A person with a squint like a flash Of square fishes ... being rather worse than most Of the usual _literati_ Said, being carried off by desire of boasting That he knew all the mid-Victorians _Et ab lor bos amics:_ (He thought it was something to boast of.)

We'll say he said he smoked with Tennyson, And--deeper pit--_pax vobiscum_--went to vespers With Adelaide Anne Procter; helped Bob Browning elope With Elizabeth and her lapdog (said it bit him) Said he was the first man Blake told All about the angels in a pear-tree at Peckham Rye Blake drew them for him, he said; they were grackles, not angels-- (Blake's not a mid-Victorian, but you don't know better) So ... we come, being slightly irritated, to facing him down. "... And George Eliot?" we ask lightly. "_Roomed with him_," nodded Rainuv confidently, "_At college!_"... Ah, _bos amic! bos amic!_ Rainuv is a king to you.... Three centuries from now (you dead and messy) men whispering insolently (Eeni meeni mini mo...) will boast that their great-grand-uncles Were kicked by me in passing....

_Margaret Widdemer_

(Clutching a non-existent portiere with one hand.)

THE SIGHING TREE

The folk of the wood called me-- "There sits a golden bird Upon your mother's pear-tree--" But I never said a word.

The Sleepy People whispered-- "The bird is singing now." But I felt not then like leaving bed Nor listening beneath the bough.

But the wronged world beat my portals-- "Come out or be sore oppressed!" So I threw a stone at the grackle And my throbbing heart had rest.

_Richard Le Gallienne_

(Advancing with a dreamy air of there still being a Yellow Book.)

BALLADE OF SPRING CHICKENS

Spring comes--yet where the dream that glows? There only waves upon the lea A lonely pear-bough where doth doze A bird of green, and merely he: Why weave of him our poetry? Why of a Grackle need we sing? Ah, far another fowl for me-- I seek Spring Chickens in the Spring.

Though May returns, and frisking shows Her ankles through this white clad tree, Alas, old Spring's gone with the rose, Gone is all old romance and glee-- Yet still a joy remains to me-- Softly our lyric lutes unstring, Far from this Grackle we shall flee And seek Spring Chickens in the Spring!

Too soon Youth's _mss_ must close, (_Omar_) its rose be pot-pourri; What of this bird and all his woes! Catulla, I would fly to thee-- Bright bird of luring lingerie, Of bushy bob, of knees aswing, This golden task be mine in fee, To seek Spring Chickens in the Spring!

_Envoi_

Prince, let us leave this grove, pardie, A flapper is a fairer thing: Let us fare fast where such there be, And seek Spring Chickens in the Spring!

_Angela Morgan_

(Carefully lifting her Greek robe off the wet grass, and patting her fillet with one white glove, recites passionately.)

OH! BIRD!

I heard a flaming noise that screamed-- "Man, panting, crushed, must be redeemed! Man! All the crowd of him! Quiet or loud of him! Men! Raging souls of them! Heaps of them, shoals of them! Hurtling impassioned through fiery-tongued rapture! Leaping for glories all avid to capture Bounteous aeons of star-beating bliss!" I heard a voice cry, and I'm sure it said this: Though the cook said the noise was a tree and a bird ... _But I heard! Gods, I heard!_

_Conrad Aiken_

(Creeping mysteriously out of the twilight, draped in a complex.)

THE CHARNEL BIRD

Forslin murmurs a melodious impropriety Musing on birds and women dead aeons ago.... Was he not, once, this fowl, a gay bird in society? Can any one tell? ... After an evening out, who can know? Perhaps Cleopatra, lush in her inadequate wrappings, Lifted him once to her tatbebs.... Perhaps Helen of Troy Found him more live than her Paris ... a bird among dead ones.... Perhaps Semiramis ... once ... in a pink unnamable joy * * *

I tie my shoes politely, a salute to this bird in his pear-tree; ... What is a pear-tree, after all.... What is a bird? What is a shoe, or a Forslin, or even a Senlin? What is ... a what? ... Is there any one who has heard? ... What is it crawls from the kiss-thickened, Freudian darkness, Amorous, catlike ... Ah, can it be a cat? I would so much rather it had been a scarlet harlot, There is so much more genuine poetry in that....

(Note by the Collator: It was, in fact, Fluffums, the Angora cat belonging to the Jenkinses on the corner; and the disappointment was too much for Mr. Aiken, who fainted away, and had to be taken back to Boston before completing his poem, which he had intended to fill an entire book.)

_Mary Carolyn Davies_

(Impetuously, with a floppy hat.)

A YOUNG GIRL TO A YOUNG BIRD

When one is young, you know, then one can sing Of anything: One is so young--so pleasurably so-- How can one know If God made little apples, or yet pears, Or ... if God cares?

You are young, maybe, Grackle; that is why I want to cry Seeing you watch the poems that I say To-night, to-day ...

This little boy-bird seems to nod to me With sympathy: He is so young: it must be that is why ... _As young as I!_

_Marguerite Wilkinson_

(Advancing with sedate courtesy in a long-sleeved, high-necked lecture costume.)

THE RUNE OF THE NUDE

I will set my slim strong soul on this tree with no leaves upon it, I will lift up my undressed dreams to the nude and ethical sky: This bird has his feathers upon him: he shall not have even a sonnet: Until he is stripped of his last pin-plume I will sing of my mate and I!

My ancestors rise from their graves to be shocked at my soul's wild climbing (They were strong, they were righteous, my ancestors, but they always kept on their clothes) My mate is the best of all mates alive: his voice is a raptured rhyming: He chants "Come Down!" but it cannot come, either for him or those!

My ancestors pound from their ouija-board: my mate leaps in swift indignation: I must tell the world of their wonders, but I must be strong and free-- Though all sires and all mates cry out in a runic incantation, My soul shall be stripped and buttonless--it shall dwell in a naked tree!

_Aline Kilmer_

(With a certain aloofness.)

ADMIRATION

Kenton's arrogant eyes watch the Widdemer pear-tree, His thistle-down-footed sister puts out her tongue at him.... Kenton, what do you see? That yonder is only a bare tree; Come, carry Deborah home; she is gossamer-light and slim.

"Aw, mother, but I don't want to!" Kenton replies with devotion, "I've gathered you stones for the bird; come on, don't you want to throw 'em?" Ah, Kenton, Kenton, my child, who but you would have such an emotion? But in spite of it I admire you, as you'll see when you read this poem.

_The Benet Brothers_

(They sing arm in arm, Stephen Vincent having rather more to do with the verse and William Rose with the chorus. Their sister Laura is too busy looking for a fairy under the tree to add to the family contribution.)

THE GRACKLE OF GROG

It was old Yale College Made me what I am-- You oughto heard my mother When I first said damn! I put a pin in sister's chair, She jumped sky-high ... I don't know what'll happen When I come to die!

_But oh, the stars burst wild in a glorious crimson whangle,_ _There was foam on the beer mile-deep, mile-high, and the pickles were piled like seas,_ _Noeara's hair was a flapper's bob that turned to a ten-mile tangle,_ _And the forests were crowded with unicorns, and gold elephants charged up trees!_

Forceps in the dentist's chair, Razors in the lather ... Lord, the black experience I've had time to gather ... But I've thought of one thing That may pull me through-- I'm a reg'lar devil But the Devil was, too!

_There were thousands of trees with knotholed knees that kicked in a league-long rapture,_ _Birds green as a seasick emerald in a million-mile shrieking row--_ _It was sixty dollars or sixty days when the cop had made his capture...._ _But God! the bun was a gorgeous one, and the Faculty did not know!_

_Lola Ridge_

(Who apparently did not care for the suburbs.)

PREENINGS

I preen myself.... I ... Always do ... My ego expanding encompasses ... Everything, naturally....

This bird preens himself ... It is our only likeness....

Ah, God, I want a Ghetto And a Freud and an alley and some Immigrants calling names ... God, you know How awful it is.... Here are trees and birds and clouds And picturesquely neat children across the way on the grass Not doing anything Improper ... (Poor little fools, I mustn't blame them for that Perhaps they never Knew How....)

But oh, God, take me to the nearest trolley line! This is a country landscape-- I can't stand it!