Part 10

Within the Jersey City shed The engine coughs and shakes its head. The smoke, a plume of red and white, Waves madly in the face of night. And now the grave, incurious stars Gleam on the groaning, hurrying cars. Against the kind and awful reign Of darkness, this our angry train, A noisy little rebel, pouts Its brief defiance, flames and shouts-- And passes on, and leaves no trace. For darkness holds its ancient place, Serene and absolute, the king Unchanged, of every living thing. The houses lie obscure and still In Rutherford and Carlton Hill. Our lamps intensify the dark Of slumbering Passaic Park. And quiet holds the weary feet That daily tramp through Prospect Street. What though we clang and clank and roar Through all Passaic’s streets? No door Will open, not an eye will see Who this loud vagabond may be. Upon my crimson cushioned seat, In manufactured light and heat, I feel unnatural and mean. Outside the towns are cool and clean; Curtained awhile from sound and sight They take God’s gracious gift of night. The stars are watchful over them. On Clifton as on Bethlehem The angels, leaning down the sky, Shed peace and gentled dreams. And I-- I ride, I blasphemously ride Through all the silent countryside. The engine’s shriek, the headlight’s glare, Pollute the still nocturnal air. The cottages of Lake View sigh And sleeping, frown as we pass by. Why, even strident Paterson Rests quietly as any nun. Her foolish warring children keep The grateful armistice of sleep. For what tremendous errand’s sake Are we so blatantly awake? What precious secret is our freight? What king must be abroad so late? Perhaps Death roams the hills to-night And we rush forth to give him fight. Or else, perhaps, we speed his way To some remote unthinking prey. Perhaps a woman writhes in pain And listens--listens for the train! The train, that like an angel sings, The train, with healing on its wings. Now “Hawthorne!” the conductor cries. My neighbor starts and rubs his eyes. He hurries yawning through the car And steps out where the houses are. This is the reason of our quest! Not wantonly we break the rest Of town and village, nor do we Lightly profane night’s sanctity. What Love commands the train fulfils, And beautiful upon the hills Are these our feet of burnished steel. Subtly and certainly I feel That Glen Rock welcomes us to her And silent Ridgewood seems to stir And smile, because she knows the train Has brought her children back again. We carry people home--and so God speeds us, wheresoe’er we go. Hohokus, Waldwick, Allendale Lift sleepy heads to give us hail. In Ramsey, Mahwah, Suffern, stand Houses that wistfully demand A father--son--some human thing That this, the midnight train, may bring. The trains that travel in the day They hurry folks to work or play. The midnight train is slow and old But of it let this thing be told, To its high honor be it said, It carries people home to bed. My cottage lamp shines white and clear. God bless the train that brought me here!

_Smart Set_ _Joyce Kilmer_

THE LAST DEMAND

Life, you have bruised me and chilled me; Fate, you have jeered at my pain; Dreams, you have mocked while you thrilled me--so I turn to the battle again. Love, you have blessed me and led me; the lips that have kissed you, you smite; Hope, you have urged me and fled me--but left is the joy of the fight!

Never was I a coward! Now must I prove my worth. World, I will give you my courage; not tears but a hard-bought mirth. Work of my hands I grant you, labor and toil of brain, But heart and soul shall be wanting--for they are dead of pain! Forward! A fight to the death, then! Life is a sorry jest. Ahead! To the thick of tumult! Fate is a fool at the best. Courage! The war gods are greatest! Love is a false, fair light.

To arms! For Dreams are frail bubbles, and Hope but a song in the night. World, I cast down the gauntlet, for you were made to defy! Own me a foe for your mettle! Ah, fighting let me die! Love, Hope and Dreams I give you; Life I fling at your feet; I will drink to the dregs of the bitter--for once I had tasted of sweet! Of one last taunt I shall rob you; stern, I will claim my due; One recompense you shall give me, balm I will snatch from you. ’Tis neither Fame nor Glory--toys to break and regret; _I demand to conquer Memory! I demand that I--forget._

_The Smart Set_ _Faith Baldwin_

GODSPEED!

THE SOUL SPEAKS:

“Body o’ mine--and must I lay thee low? So long I have looked out from thy dear eye! Ears that have brought me song, and willing hands, And feet that carried me to pleasant fields-- Shall dust claim all, and must I say good-bye? Godspeed!”

THE BODY SPEAKS:

“Sister o’ mine--I go from whence I came, Perchance to bloom again, or if required, When time is ripe, to house another soul. Thou art more wise than I, yet recketh not, Oh, soul o’ mine, that I at last am tired! Godspeed!”

_Southern Woman’s Magazine_ _Jane Belfield_

AT THE END OF THE ROAD

This is the truth as I see it, my dear, Out in the wind and the rain: They who have nothing have little to fear,-- Nothing to lose or to gain. Here by the road at the end o’ the year, Let us sit down and drink of our beer, Happy-Go-Lucky and her Cavalier, Out in the wind and the rain.

Now we are old, hey, isn’t it fine, Out in the wind and the rain? Now we have nothing, why snivel and whine? What would it bring us again? When I was young I took you like wine, Held you and kissed you and thought you divine-- Happy-Go-Lucky, the habit’s still mine, Out in the wind and the rain.

Oh, my old Heart, what a life we have led, Out in the wind and the rain! How we have drunken and how we have fed! Nothing to lose or to gain. Cover the fire now; get we to bed. Long is the journey and far has it led. Come, let us sleep, lass, sleep like the dead, Out in the wind and the rain.

_The Bellman_ _Madison Cawein_

PATH FLOWER

A red-cap sang in Bishop’s wood, A lark o’er Golder’s lane, As I the April pathway trod Bound west for Willesden.

At foot each tiny blade grew big And taller stood to hear, And every leaf on every twig Was like a little ear.

As I too paused, and both ways tried To catch the rippling rain,-- So still, a hare kept at my side His tussock of disdain,--

Behind me close I heard a step, A soft pit-pat surprise, And looking round my eyes fell deep Into sweet other eyes;

The eyes like wells, where sun lies too, So clear and trustful brown, Without a bubble warning you That here’s a place to drown.

“How many miles?” Her broken shoes Had told of more than one. She answered like a dreaming Muse, “I came from Islington.”

“So long a tramp?” Two gentle nods, Then seemed to lift a wing, And words fell soft as willow-buds, “I came to find the Spring.”

A timid voice, yet not afraid In ways so sweet to roam, As it with honey bees had played And could no more go home.

Her home! I saw the human lair, I heard the hucksters bawl, I stifled with the thickened air Of bickering mart and stall.

Without a tuppence for a ride, Her feet had set her free. Her rags, that decency defied, Seemed new with liberty.

But she was frail. Who would might note That trail of hungering That for an hour she had forgot In wonder of the Spring.

So shriven by her joy she glowed It seemed a sin to chat. “A tea-shop snuggled off the road;” Why did I think of that?

Oh, frail, so frail! I could have wept,-- But she was passing on, And I but muddled “You’ll accept A penny for a bun?”

Then up her little throat a spray Of rose climbed for it must; A wilding lost till safe it lay Hid by her curls of rust;

And I saw modesties at fence With pride that bore no name; So old it was she knew not whence It sudden woke and came;

But that which shone of all most clear Was startled, sadder thought That I should give her back the fear Of life she had forgot.

And I blushed for the world we’d made, Putting God’s hand aside, Till for the want of sun and shade His little children died; And blushed that I who every year With Spring went up and down, Must greet a soul that ached for her With “penny for a bun!”

Struck as a thief in holy place Whose sin upon him cries, I watched the flowers leave her face, The song go from her eyes.

Then she, sweet heart, she saw my rout, And of her charity A hand of grace put softly out And took the coin from me.

A red-cap sang in Bishop’s wood, A lark o’er Golder’s lane; But I, alone, still glooming stood, And April plucked in vain;

Till living words rang in my ears And sudden music played: _Out of such sacred thirst as hers The world shall be remade._

Afar she turned her head and smiled As might have smiled the Spring, And humble as a wondering child I watched her vanishing.

_Atlantic Monthly_ _Olive Tilford Dargan_

THE GOD-MAKER, MAN

Nevermore Shall the shepherds of Arcady follow Pan’s moods as he lolls by the shore Of the mere, or lies hid in the hollow; Nevermore Shall they start at the sound of his reed fashioned flute;

Fallen mute Are the strings of Apollo, His lyre and his lute; And the lips of the Memnons are mute Evermore;

And the gods of the North,--are they dead or forgetful, Our Odin and Baldur and Thor? Are they drunk, or grown weary of worship and fretful, Our Odin and Baldur and Thor?

And into what night have the Orient deities strayed? You swart gods of the Nile, in dusk splendors arrayed, Brooding Isis and sombre Osiris, You were gone ere the fragile papyrus That bragged you eternal decayed.

The avatars But illumine their limited evens And vanish like plunging stars; They are fixed in the whirling heavens No firmer than falling stars; Brief lords of the changing soul, they pass Like a breath from the face of a glass, Or a blossom of summer blown shalloplike over The clover And tossed tides of grass.

Sink to silence the psalms and the pæans, The shibboleths shift, and the faiths, And the temples that challenged the æons Are tenanted only by wraiths; Swoon to silence the cymbals and psalters, The worship grow senseless and strange, And the mockers ask, “Where be thy altars?” Crying, “Nothing is changeless--but Change!” Yea, nothing seems changeless, but Change. And yet, through the creed wrecking years, One story forever appears:

The tale of a City Supernal-- The whisper of Something eternal-- A passion, a hope and a vision That people the silence with Powers; A fable of meadows Elysian Where Time enters not with his Hours;-- Manifold are the tale’s variations, Race and clime ever tinting the dreams. Yet its essence, through endless mutations, Immutable gleams.

Deathless, though godheads be dying, Surviving the creeds that expire, Illogical, reason defying, Lives that passionate, primal desire; Insistent, persistent, forever Man cries to the silences, “Never Shall Death reign the lord of the soul, Shall the dust be the ultimate goal-- I will storm the black bastions of Night! I will tread where my vision has trod, I will set in the darkness a light, In the vastness, a god!”

As the skull of the man grows broader, so do his creeds; And his gods they are shaped in his image, and mirror his needs; And he clothes them with thunders and beauty, He clothes them with music and fire. Seeing not, as he bows by their altars, That he worships his own desire; And mixed with his trust there is terror, And mixed with his madness is ruth, And every man grovels in error, Yet every man glimpses a truth.

For all of the creeds are false, and all of the creeds are true; And low at the shrines where my brothers bow, there will I bow too; For no form of a god, and no fashion Man has made in his desperate passion But is worthy some worship of mine; Not too hot with a gross belief, Nor yet too cold with pride, I will bow me down where my brothers bow, Humble, but open eyed.

_Evening Sun_ _Don Marquis_

THE BEST POETRY OF 1914

I. TEN BOOKS OF POETRY FOR A SMALL LIBRARY.

[* Certain volumes of new poetry and collected editions are drawn to the individual reader’s notice by an asterisk employed to indicate special poetic distinction.]

* _The East I Know. By Paul Claudel. Translated from the French by Teresa Frances and William Rose Benét._ (Yale University Press: $1.25 net.) A volume of prose poems by one of the greatest poets living in the world to-day. Although Paul Claudel is unknown to English readers, his influence is the strongest shaping force there is on the young poetry of most European countries. This volume is as much of a literary event as the publication of John Synge’s first volume in this country. I know of no living writer of whom we may more confidently predict immortality for his work. The present volume reveals the soul of China in wonderful strophes, and though perhaps the slightest of Claudel’s books, is the volume by which Claudel may be most fittingly introduced to the American public. If any reader can set down this volume without realizing that a great new force in literature and life has been born into the world, he is incapable of imaginative appreciation.

* _The Single Hound: Poems of a Lifetime. By Emily Dickinson._ (Little, Brown, & Co.: $1.25 net.) A new volume by one of the world’s great spiritual artists, which contains much poetry that is imperishable as an integral part of American literature. With Blake’s naked uncompromising vision, and his absorption in the eternal shadows of mortality, she has a personal and fragrant beauty of feeling and expression which is unique and incomparable. Her verses are like flashes of lightning illumining the chaos of our material existence. _The Single Hound_ is the rich legacy of a great spiritual imagination. There are few books in American poetry of which we can more confidently predict immortality.

* _Collected Poems. By Norman Gale._ (Macmillan: $1.50 net.) The poet’s choice of the lyrics and longer poems by which he wishes to be definitely remembered. Indispensable to every library. No poet since the Elizabethans has managed to convey such an infectious joy into pastoral poetry, and the best of these poems are permanent treasure trove for the anthologist. Such a volume as this would alone dignify a season.

* _Georgian Poetry. Edited by E. M._ (Putnam: $1.50 net.) A superb collection of representative poems by the younger English writers who have won their reputation in the last four or five years. This book, which has gone through nine English editions already, should meet with as great success in this country. Here, and here only, will you find the authentic younger singers adequately represented by hitherto unpublished work. If this volume introduces Rupert Brooke and Lascelles Abercrombie to America, it will have done our literature a service great enough to justify its publication.

* _The Congo and Other Poems. By Vachel Lindsay._ (Macmillan: $1.25 net.) A new volume of verse by Mr. Lindsay, whose first book was the most significant publication in American poetry last year. While this book does not mark an advance, many of the poems written to be chanted aloud fully sustain the poet’s reputation, and the volume is graced with a selection of the best and less strident of the _Rhymes to be Traded for Bread._ As the poetic interpreter of the Middle West, Mr. Lindsay is performing a great social service, as well as a great service to poetry by bringing it into the homes and hearts of the people. _The Firemen’s Ball_ and _I Heard Immanuel Singing_ have qualities of permanence, and in the former Mr. Lindsay has perfected a new medium of poetic expression. But we are in danger of losing sight of Mr. Lindsay’s more delicate talent by virtue of which he is preëminently a poet

* _The Present Hour: A Book of Poems. By Percy MacKaye._ (Macmillan: $1.25 net.) The poems dealing with the present war reaffirm Mr. MacKay’s authority of utterance, and the best of the sonnets surpass William Watson’s “The Purple East.” But it is in “Fight” and “School” that the poet has at last found himself and invented a medium admirably fitted to express what he desires. These two poems have all the distinction of Masefield with the originality and shrewdness of New England feeling, and a homeliness which is unique in contemporary poetry. The volume includes many poems of occasion, all adequate, and in the case of “Goethals” and one or two others, noble. So far, Mr. MacKaye’s best volume of poems.

* _The Complete Poems of S. Weir Mitchell._ (Century Co.: $2.00 net.) The definitive edition of Dr. Mitchell’s poetry revised according to his final wishes. It should serve to make known to the present generation the graceful contemplative poetry of that rival to America’s other distinguished physician-poet, Dr. Holmes. Dr. Mitchell’s poems of occasion at their best are equal to the best of Dr. Holmes, while his “Ode to a Lycian Tomb” surpasses “The Chambered Nautilus.” It is one of the anomalies of literature that Dr. Mitchell’s novels have so long overshadowed his poetry. In this volume the best of his dramatic work is included, and “Drake” is a play of poetic distinction in its way. The volume may rest pleasantly with its peers on the same library shelf with the poems of Longfellow and Holmes. It is the harvest of sixty years devoted to poetry.

* _Songs for the New Age. By James Oppenheim._ (Century Co.: $1.25 net.) The most significant volume of new poetry of the year 1914, as Vachel Lindsay’s _General William Booth Enters Into Heaven_ was the most significant volume of 1913. With more self-conscious art than Whitman, in the verse form which Whitman was once thought to have perfected, Mr. Oppenheim sings the joys and sorrows of the race now and to come. The vision of these poems is swift and sure: their philosophy, mature and American. If there is one volume of verse this year which we might safely recommend to every American man and woman who has not read poetry before, it is this book, where they will find their dreams and strivings sung and interpreted in a book which has qualities of greatness. The form of these poems is so difficult to shape perfectly that Mr. Oppenheim’s technical achievement can only be characterized as masterly. The volume is the only one in which the use of “polyrhythmic verse” can claim complete justification since _Leaves of Grass_, and its art is as individual as its matter. _Songs for the New Age_ may reaffirm much of Whitman, but they do not echo him. The volume will prove more and more satisfying with each rereading. And its message to the American people may not pass unheeded.

* _The Grand Canyon, and Other Poems. By Henry Van Dyke._ (Scribner: $1.25 net.) Poetry of the quality familiar to Dr. Van Dyke’s readers, and fully equal to the poetry in his earlier volumes. To the more serious poems are added several delightfully humorous poems of occasion, among which _Ars Agricolaris_ is a classic of its kind.

* _The Flight, and Other Poems. By George Edward Woodberry._ (Macmillan $1.25 net.) Mr. Woodberry’s finest volume of verse, in which he gives expression to many moods of intellectual beauty and a philosophy of the ideal akin to Shelley. It contains one lyric, _Comrades_, absolutely peerless and worthy to be set beside Browning’s _The Guardian Angel_, if it does not surpass it. These poems are the fruit of a ripe culture and a passionate idealism thoroughly American in its voicing of its message. One of the most completely satisfying volumes of the year.

II. TWENTY-FIVE BOOKS OF POETRY FOR A LARGER LIBRARY.

_The List of ten books printed above and the following fifteen titles:_--

* _In Deep Places. By Amelia Josephine Burr._ (Doran: $1.00 net.) Fine dramatic monologues and narrative poems, which represent a great advance over Miss Burr’s previous book. _Jehane_ is a worthy sequel to _The Haystack in the Floods_ by William Morris. _Allah is With the Patient_ and other narrative poems are related in a blank verse of firm yet varied texture. Miss Burr’s dramatic imagination interprets Italy and England in human terms, and travel has afforded her lyric opportunities to which she has responded sensitively and well. With this volume Miss Burr has come to stay.

* _The Little King. By Witter Bynner._ (Kennerley: $.60 net.) A stark one-act play in verse of swift sure dramatic nerve about the little son of Marie Antoinette. With great economy of material and vivid historic imagination, Mr. Bynner has made _The Little King_ human and poignant in his brief little tragedy.

* _Earth Deities, and Other Rhythmic Masques. By Bliss Carman and Mary Perry King._ (Kennerley: $1.50 net.) Four masques of earth with Mr. Carman’s old familiar lyric quality directed into fresh and living channels. Each of them would afford a rare delight to an audience, particularly if accompanied by the rhythmic dances which have been designed for them by Mary Perry King.

* _Poetical Works. By Edward Dowden. In two volumes._ (Dutton: $4.00 net.) A permanent and integral part of English literature. It is gratifying to find tardy justice done at last to the merits of the late Professor Dowden as a poet. Those who care for the work of Mr. Woodberry will find the same qualities in Dowden’s poetry, but in a larger and more authoritative voice. Moreover, he is one of the great nineteenth century sonneteers. His many hymns to intellectual beauty have not an undistinguished line in them, and as a lyric poet his singing quality is infectious. This is the first edition of his poems since 1876, and contains many which have never been collected before. The second volume is a pleasant translation of Goethe’s, _The West Eastern Divan_. It will not greatly interest admirers of Prof. Dowden’s work, and should be sold separately.

* _Borderlands and Thoroughfares. By Wilfrid Wilson Gibson._ (Macmillan: $1.25 net.) Mr. Gibson’s fourth volume in three years. Though not equal to his earlier books, it will well repay the lover of poetry. The first section, entitled _Borderlands_ consists of three dramatic dialogues in free verse which aim with some success to be simple, sensuous, and passionate. _Hoops_ is one of Mr. Gibson’s most satisfactory poems. The second section, entitled _Thoroughfares_ comprises shorter poems, many of which are dramatic monologues, and of these _Solway Ford_ and _The Gorse_ represent Mr. Gibson’s best. As we have said elsewhere, Mr. Gibson’s art “satisfies our æsthetic emotions and fulfils our social needs.”