Part 19

Clark is one of the few men who have lived to see their work become part of folk-lore; many of his songs having been adapted and paraphrased by the cowboys who have made them their own. A version of one of his poems (“The Glory Trail”), after wide circulation among the ranchers and cow-punchers, was printed as an example of anonymous folk-song in _Poetry; A Magazine of Verse_ under the title “High-Chin Bob”—and credited to “Author Unknown.”

_Sun and Saddle Leather_ (1915) and _Grass-Grown Trails_ (1917) are the expression of a native singer; happy, spontaneous and seldom “literary.” There is wind in these songs; the smell of camp-smoke and the colors of prairie sunsets rise from them. Free, for the most part, from affectations, Clark achieves an unusual ease in his use of the local vernacular.

THE GLORY TRAIL[44]

’Way high up the Mogollons, Among the mountain tops, A lion cleaned a yearlin’s bones And licked his thankful chops, When on the picture who should ride, A-trippin’ down a slope, But High-Chin Bob, with sinful pride And mav’rick-hungry rope.

“_Oh, glory be to me,” says he, “And fame’s unfadin’ flowers! All meddlin’ hands are far away; I ride my good top-hawse today And I’m top-rope of the Lazy J— Hi! kitty cat, you’re ours!_”

That lion licked his paw so brown And dreamed soft dreams of veal— And then the circlin’ loop sung down And roped him ’round his meal. He yowled quick fury to the world Till all the hills yelled back; The top-hawse gave a snort and whirled And Bob caught up the slack.

“_Oh, glory be to me,” laughs he. “We’ve hit the glory trail. No human man as I have read Darst loop a ragin’ lion’s head, Nor ever hawse could drag one dead Until we told the tale._”

’Way high up the Mogollons That top-hawse done his best, Through whippin’ brush and rattlin’ stones, From canyon-floor to crest. But ever when Bob turned and hoped A limp remains to find, A red-eyed lion, belly roped But healthy, loped behind.

“_Oh, glory be to me,” grunts he. “This glory trail is rough, Yet even till the Judgment Morn I’ll keep this dally ’round the horn, For never any hero born Could stoop to holler: Nuff!_’”

Three suns had rode their circle home Beyond the desert’s rim, And turned their star-herds loose to roam The ranges high and dim; Yet up and down and ’round and ’cross Bob pounded, weak and wan, For pride still glued him to his hawse And glory drove him on.

“_Oh, glory be to me,” sighs he. “He kaint be drug to death, But now I know beyond a doubt Them heroes I have read about Was only fools that stuck it out To end of mortal breath._”

’Way high up the Mogollons A prospect man did swear That moon dreams melted down his bones And hoisted up his hair: A ribby cow-hawse thundered by, A lion trailed along, A rider, ga’nt but chin on high, Yelled out a crazy song.

“_Oh, glory be to me!” cries he, “And to my noble noose! Oh, stranger, tell my pards below I took a rampin’ dream in tow, And if I never lay him low, I’ll never turn him loose!_”

THE COYOTE[45]

Trailing the last gleam after, In the valleys emptied of light, Ripples a whimsical laughter Under the wings of the night, Mocking the faded west airily, Meeting the little bats merrily, Over the mesas it shrills To the red moon on the hills.

Mournfully rising and waning, Far through the moon-silvered land Wails a weird voice of complaining Over the thorns and the sand. Out of blue silences eerily, On to the black mountains wearily, Till the dim desert is crossed, Wanders the cry, and is lost. Here by the fire’s ruddy streamers, Tired with our hopes and our fears, We inarticulate dreamers Hark to the song of our years. Up to the brooding divinity Far in that sparkling infinity Cry our despair and delight, Voice of the Western night!

_Marguerite Wilkinson_

Marguerite Ogden Bigelow was born at Halifax, Nova Scotia, November 15, 1883. She attended Northwestern University and married James G. Wilkinson in 1909.

_In Vivid Gardens_ (1911) is a mixture of original moods and derivative manners. The later _Bluestone_ (1920) is a much riper collection; a book of lyrics in which the author has made many experiments in the combination of rhythmical tunes and verbal music.

Mrs. Wilkinson is also the author of _New Voices_ (1919), a series of essays on contemporary verse, reinforced with liberal quotations from both English and American poets.

BEFORE DAWN IN THE WOODS

Upon our eyelids, dear, the dew will lie, And on the roughened meshes of our hair, While little feet make bold to scurry by And half-notes shrilly cut the quickened air.

Our clean, hard bodies, on the clean, hard ground Will vaguely feel that they are full of power, And they will stir, and stretch, and look around, Loving the early, chill, half-lighted hour.

Loving the voices in the shadowed trees, Loving the feet that stir the blossoming grass— Oh, always we have known such things as these, And knowing, can we love and let them pass?

_Harry Kemp_

Harry (Hibbard) Kemp, known as “the tramp-poet,” was born at Youngstown, Ohio, December 15, 1883. He came East at the age of twelve, left school to enter a factory, but returned to high school to study English.

A globe-trotter by nature, he went to sea before finishing his high school course. He shipped first to Australia, then to China, from China to California, from California to the University of Kansas. After a few months in London in 1909 (he crossed the Atlantic as a stowaway) he returned to New York City, where he has lived ever since, founding his own theater in which he is actor, stage-manager, playwright and chorus.

Kemp’s first book was a play, _Judas_ (1910), a reversion of the biblical figure along the lines of Paul Heyse’s _Mary of Magdala_. His first collection of poems, _The Cry of Youth_ (1914), like the subsequent volume, _The Passing God_ (1919), is full of every kind of poetry except the kind one might imagine Kemp would write. Instead of crude and boisterous verse, here is a precise and almost over-polished poetry. Kemp has, strangely enough, taken the classic formalists for his models—one can even detect the whispers of Pope and Dryden in his lines.

_Chanteys and Ballads_ (1920) is riper and more representative. The notes are more varied, the sense of personality is more pronounced.

STREET LAMPS

Softly they take their being, one by one, From the lamp-lighter’s hand, after the sun Has dropped to dusk ... like little flowers they bloom Set in long rows amid the growing gloom.

Who he who lights them is, I do not know, Except that, every eve, with footfall slow And regular, he passes by my room And sets his gusty flowers of light a-bloom.

A PHANTASY OF HEAVEN

Perhaps he plays with cherubs now, Those little, golden boys of God, Bending, with them, some silver bough, The while a seraph, head a-nod,

Slumbers on guard; how they will run And shout, if he should wake too soon,— As fruit more golden than the sun And riper than the full-grown moon,

Conglobed in clusters, weighs them down, Like Atlas heaped with starry signs; And, if they’re tripped, heel over crown, By hidden coils of mighty vines,—

Perhaps the seraph, swift to pounce, Will hale them, vexed, to God—and He Will only laugh, remembering, once He was a boy in Galilee!

_Max Eastman_

Max Eastman was born at Canandaigua, New York, January 4, 1883. Both his father and mother had been Congregationalist preachers, so it was natural that the son should turn from scholasticism to a definitely social expression. Eastman had received his A.B. at Williams in 1905; from 1907 to 1911 he had been Associate in Philosophy at Columbia University. But in the latter part of 1911, he devoted all his time to writing, studying the vast problems of economic inequality and voicing the protests of the dumb millions in a style that was all the firmer for being philosophic. In 1913, he became editor of _The Masses_ which, in 1917, became _The Liberator_.

_Child of the Amazons_ (1913) reveals the quiet lover of beauty as well as the fiery hater of injustice. The best of these poems, with many new ones, were incorporated in _Colors of Life_ (1918). This volume is a far richer collection; a record of glowing hours, steadily burning truths.

Besides Eastman’s poems and essays, he has written one of the most clarifying—and most readable—studies of the period. _Enjoyment of Poetry_ (1913) is invaluable as a new kind of text-book, the chief purpose of which, in the words of its preface, is to increase enjoyment. Eliminating the usual academic and literary classifications, Eastman accomplishes his object, which is to show that the poetic in everyday perception and conversation should not be separated from the poetic in literature.

COMING TO PORT

Our motion on the soft still misty river Is like rest; and like the hours of doom That rise and follow one another ever, Ghosts of sleeping battle-cruisers loom And languish quickly in the liquid gloom.

From watching them your eyes in tears are gleaming, And your heart is still; and like a sound In silence is your stillness in the streaming Of light-whispered laughter all around, Where happy passengers are homeward bound.

Their sunny journey is in safety ending, But for you no journey has an end. The tears that to your eyes their light are lending Shine in softness to no waiting friend; Beyond the search of any eye they tend.

There is no nest for the unresting fever Of your passion, yearning, hungry-veined; There is no rest nor blessedness forever That can clasp you, quivering and pained, Whose eyes burn ever to the Unattained.

Like time, and like the river’s fateful flowing, Flowing though the ship has come to rest, Your love is passing through the mist and going, Going infinitely from your breast, Surpassing time on its immortal quest.

The ship draws softly to the place of waiting, All flush forward with a joyful aim, And while their hands with happy hands are mating, Lips are laughing out a happy name— You pause, and pass among them like a flame.

HOURS

Hours when I love you, are like tranquil pools, The liquid jewels of the forest, where The hunted runner dips his hand, and cools His fevered ankles, and the ferny air Comes blowing softly on his heaving breast Hinting the sacred mystery of rest.

AT THE AQUARIUM

Serene the silver fishes glide, Stern-lipped, and pale, and wonder-eyed! As, through the aged deeps of ocean, They glide with wan and wavy motion. They have no pathway where they go, They flow like water to and fro, They watch with never-winking eyes, They watch with staring, cold surprise, The level people in the air, The people peering, peering there: Who wander also to and fro, And know not why or where they go, Yet have a wonder in their eyes, Sometimes a pale and cold surprise.

_Arturo Giovannitti_

Arturo Giovannitti was born in Abruzzi, Italy, January 7, 1884. He studied at the college of his native province and came to New York when he was eighteen years old. Even as a child, Giovannitti had dreamed of America and had “learned upon the knees of his mother and father to reverence, with tears in his eyes, the name of the republic.” With the dream of America as the great liberator in his heart, his first impressions were shattering. What he saw, through the eyes of the laborer, was the whiplash and legal trickery, the few ruling the many, the miseries and exploitation of the helpless. He thought of becoming a preacher, attended theological school; sought a greater outlet for his passion for democracy and became an editor; lectured, wrote pamphlets and worked continually to express “a multitude of men lost in an immensity of silence.”

Although Giovannitti has written several books in Italian, his one English volume is _Arrows in the Gale_ (1914). In an eloquent introduction to the poet’s rough music and rougher mixture of realism and rapture, Helen Keller writes, “He makes us feel the presence of toilers behind tenement walls, behind the machinery they guide.... He finds voice for his message in the sighs, the dumb hopes, the agonies and thwartings of men who are bowed and broken by the monster hands of machines.”

Several of Giovannitti’s poems are in rhyme, but his most characteristic lines move in uplifted prose poems that shape themselves vividly to their subjects. “The Cage,” with its restrained anger, and “The Walker” are typical. “The Walker,” unfortunately too long to quote in its entirety, is remarkable not only as an art-work but as a document; it is a twentieth-century “Ballad of Reading Gaol,” with an intensity and mystical power of which Wilde was incapable.

FROM “THE WALKER”

I hear footsteps over my head all night. They come and they go. Again they come and they go all night. They come one eternity in four paces and they go one eternity in four paces, and between the coming and the going there is Silence and the Night and the Infinite. For infinite are the nine feet of a prison cell, and endless is the march of him who walks between the yellow brick wall and the red iron gate, thinking things that cannot be chained and cannot be locked, but that wander far away in the sunlit world, each in a wild pilgrimage after a destined goal.

· · · · · ·

Throughout the restless night I hear the footsteps over my head. Who walks? I know not. It is the phantom of the jail, the sleepless brain, a man, the man, the Walker. One-two-three-four: four paces and the wall. One-two-three-four: four paces and the iron gate. He has measured his space, he has measured it accurately, scrupulously, minutely, as the hangman measures the rope and the gravedigger the coffin—so many feet, so many inches, so many fractions of an inch for each of the four paces. One-two-three-four. Each step sounds heavy and hollow over my head, and the echo of each step sounds hollow within my head as I count them in suspense and in dread that once, perhaps, in the endless walk, there may be five steps instead of four between the yellow brick wall and the red iron gate. But he has measured the space so accurately, so scrupulously, so minutely that nothing breaks the grave rhythm of the slow, fantastic march.

· · · · · ·

All through the night he walks and he thinks. Is it more frightful because he walks and his footsteps sound hollow over my head, or because he thinks and speaks not his thoughts? But does he think? Why should he think? Do I think? I only hear the footsteps and count them. Four steps and the wall. Four steps and the gate. But beyond? Beyond? Where goes he beyond the gate and the wall? He goes not beyond. His thought breaks there on the iron gate. Perhaps it breaks like a wave of rage, perhaps like a sudden flow of hope, but it always returns to beat the wall like a billow of helplessness and despair. He walks to and fro within the narrow whirlpit of this ever storming and furious thought. Only one thought—constant, fixed, immovable, sinister, without power and without voice.

A thought of madness, frenzy, agony and despair, a hell-brewed thought, for it is a natural thought. All things natural are things impossible while there are jails in the world—bread, work, happiness, peace, love. But he thinks not of this. As he walks he thinks of the most superhuman, the most unattainable, the most impossible thing in the world: He thinks of a small brass key that turns just half around and throws open the red iron gate.

· · · · · ·

_Eunice Tietjens_

Eunice Tietjens (née Hammond) was born in Chicago, Illinois, July 29, 1884. She married Paul Tietjens, the composer, in 1904. During 1914 and 1916 she was Associate Editor of _Poetry; A Magazine of Verse_ and went to France as war correspondent of the Chicago _Daily News_ (1917-18). Her second marriage (to Cloyd Head, the writer) occurred in February, 1920.

_Profiles from China_ (1917) is a series of sketches of people, scenes and incidents observed in the interior. Written in a fluent free verse, the poems in this collection are alive with color and personality. The succeeding _Body and Raiment_ (1919) is less integrated, more derivative and diffuse. And yet, in spite of certain obvious echoes, individual poems like “The Drug Clerk,” “The Steam Shovel” and a few others are worthy to stand beside her distinguished first volume.

THE MOST-SACRED MOUNTAIN

Space, and the twelve clean winds of heaven, And this sharp exultation, like a cry, after the slow six thousand steps of climbing! This is Tai Shan, the beautiful, the most holy.

Below my feet the foot-hills nestle, brown with flecks of green; and lower down the flat brown plain, the floor of earth, stretches away to blue infinity. Beside me in this airy space the temple roofs cut their slow curves against the sky, And one black bird circles above the void.

Space, and the twelve clean winds are here; And with them broods eternity—a swift, white peace, a presence manifest. The rhythm ceases here. Time has no place. This is the end that has no end.

Here when Confucius came, a half a thousand years before the Nazarene, he stepped, with me, thus into timelessness. The stone beside us waxes old, the carven stone that says: _On this spot once Confucius stood and felt the smallness of the world below._

The stone grows old. Eternity Is not for stones.

But I shall go down from this airy space, this swift white peace, this stinging exultation; And time will close about me, and my soul stir to the rhythm of the daily round. Yet, having known, life will not press so close, And always I shall feel time ravel thin about me. For once I stood In the white windy presence of eternity.

THE DRUG CLERK

The drug clerk stands behind the counter Young and dapper and debonair....

Before him burn the great unwinking lights, The hectic stars of city nights, Red as hell’s pit, green as a mermaid’s hair. A queer half-acrid smell is in the air. Behind him on the shelves in ordered rows With strange, abbreviated names Dwell half the facts of life. That young man knows, Bottled and boxed and powdered here, Dumb tragedies, deceptions, secret shames, And comedy and fear.

Sleep slumbers here, like a great quiet sea Shrunk to this bottle’s compass; sleep that brings Sweet respite from the teeth of pain To those poor tossing things That the white nurses watch so thoughtfully. And here again Dwell the shy souls of Maytime flowers That shall make sweeter still those poignant hours When wide-eyed youth looks on the face of love. And, for those others who have found too late The bitter fruits thereof, Here are cosmetics, powders, paints,—the arts That hunted women use to hunt again With scented flesh for bait. And here is comfort for the hearts Of sucking babes in their first teething pain. Here dwells the substance of huge fervid dreams, Fantastic, many-colored, shot with gleams Of ecstasy and madness, that shall come To some pale, twitching sleeper in a bunk. And here is courage, cheaply bought To cure a blue sick funk, And dearly paid for in the final sum. Here in this powdered fly is caught Desire more ravishing than Tarquin’s.... And at last When the one weary hope is past Here is the sole escape, The little postern in the house of breath Where pallid fugitives keep tryst with death.

All this the drug clerk knows and there he stands, Young and dapper and debonair ... He rests a pair of slender hands, Much manicured, upon the counter there And speaks: “No, we don’t carry no pomade, We only cater to the high-class trade.”

_Sara Teasdale_

Sara Teasdale was born August 8, 1884, at St. Louis, Missouri, and educated there. After leaving school, she traveled in Europe and the Near East. In 1914, she married Ernst B. Filsinger, who has written several books on foreign trade, and moved to New York City in 1916.

Her first book was a slight volume, _Sonnets to Duse_ (1907), giving little promise of the rich lyricism which was to follow. _Helen of Troy and Other Poems_ (1911) contains the first hints of that delicate craftsmanship and authentic loveliness which this poet has brought to such a high pitch. The six monologues which open the volume are splendid delineations written in a blank verse that is as musical as many of her lyrics. At times it suffers from too conscious a cleverness; the dexterity with which Miss Teasdale turns a phrase or twists her last line is frequently too obtrusive to be wholly enjoyable.

_Rivers to the Sea_ (1915) emphasizes this epigrammatic skill, but a greater restraint is here, a warmer spontaneity. The new collection contains at least a dozen unforgettable snatches, lyrics in which the words seem to fall into place without art or effort. Seldom employing metaphor or striking imagery, almost bare of ornament, these poems have the sheer magic of triumphant song. Theirs is an artlessness that is more than an art.