Part 20

_Love Songs_ (1917) is a collection of Miss Teasdale’s previous melodies for the _viola d’amore_ together with several new tunes. The new poems emphasize the way in which this poet achieves a direct enchantment without verbal subtleties. They also emphasize their superiority to the earlier love lyrics that were written in a mood of literary romance, of artificial moonlit roses, languishing lutes, balconies, passionate guitars—a mood that was not so much erotic as Pierrotic.

_Flame and Shadow_ (1920) is by far the best of her books. Here the beauty is fuller and deeper; an almost mystic radiance plays from these starry verses. Technically, also, this volume marks Miss Teasdale’s greatest advance. The words are chosen with a keener sense of their actual as well as their musical values; the rhythms are much more subtle and varied; the line moves with a greater naturalness. Beneath the symbolism of poems like “Water Lilies” and “The Long Hill,” one is conscious of a finer artistry, a more flexible speech that is all the lovelier for its slight (and logical) irregularities.

Besides her own books, Miss Teasdale has compiled an anthology, _The Answering Voice_ (1917), comprising one hundred love lyrics by women.

NIGHT SONG AT AMALFI[46]

I asked the heaven of stars What I should give my love— It answered me with silence, Silence above.

I asked the darkened sea Down where the fishermen go— It answered me with silence, Silence below.

Oh, I could give him weeping, Or I could give him song— But how can I give silence My whole life long?

SPRING NIGHT[47]

The park is filled with night and fog, The veils are drawn about the world, The drowsy lights along the paths Are dim and pearled.

Gold and gleaming the empty streets, Gold and gleaming the misty lake, The mirrored lights like sunken swords, Glimmer and shake.

Oh, is it not enough to be Here with this beauty over me? My throat should ache with praise, and I Should kneel in joy beneath the sky. O beauty, are you not enough? Why am I crying after love With youth, a singing voice, and eyes To take earth’s wonder with surprise? Why have I put off my pride, Why am I unsatisfied,— I, for whom the pensive night Binds her cloudy hair with light,— I, for whom all beauty burns Like incense in a million urns? O beauty, are you not enough? Why am I crying after love?

I SHALL NOT CARE[48]

When I am dead and over me bright April Shakes out her rain-drenched hair, Though you should lean above me broken-hearted, I shall not care.

I shall have peace, as leafy trees are peaceful When rain bends down the bough; And I shall be more silent and cold-hearted Than you are now.

THE LONG HILL[49]

I must have passed the crest a while ago And now I am going down— Strange to have crossed the crest and not to know, But the brambles were always catching the hem of my gown.

All the morning I thought how proud I should be To stand there straight as a queen, Wrapped in the wind and the sun with the world under me— But the air was dull, there was little I could have seen.

It was nearly level along the beaten track And the brambles caught in my gown— But it’s no use now to think of turning back, The rest of the way will be only going down.

WATER LILIES[50]

If you have forgotten water-lilies floating On a dark lake among mountains in the afternoon shade, If you have forgotten their wet, sleepy fragrance, Then you can return and not be afraid.

But if you remember, then turn away forever To the plains and the prairies where pools are far apart, There you will not come at dusk on closing water lilies, And the shadow of mountains will not fall on your heart.

TIRED

If I shall make no poems any more, There will be rest, at least, so let it be, Time to look up at golden stars and listen To the long mellow thunder of the sea. The year will turn for me, I shall delight in All animals, and some of my own kind; Sharing with no one but myself the frosty And half ironic musings of my mind.

_Gladys Cromwell_

Gladys Cromwell was born November 28, 1885, in New York City. She was educated in New York private schools and lived abroad a great deal. “Her life,” writes Anne Dunn, “was little indented by outer events, being wholly of the mind and spirit.” She was most at home in the world within herself, sensitive and—to the final, tragic degree—self-effacing.

In January, 1918, Gladys and Dorothea, her twin-sister, enrolled in the Canteen Service of the Red Cross, sailed for France and were stationed at Châlons. Both girls worked unremittingly for eight months. It was only at the end of their desperate labors that they gave way to hopelessness, believing their efforts futile and the whole world desolate. Signs of a mental breakdown show in their diaries as early as October. “After the armistice,” writes Anne Dunn in her biographical note which serves as an appreciative epilogue to Gladys Cromwell’s _Poems_, “they showed symptoms of nervous prostration; but years of self-control and consideration for others made them conceal the black horror in which they lived, the agony through which they saw a world which, they felt, contained no refuge for beauty or quiet thought. And when, on their way home, they jumped from the deck of the _Lorraine_ it was in response to a vision that promised them fulfilment and peace.” After their death, which occurred January 19, 1919, the French Government awarded the two sisters the Croix de Guerre.

_Gates of Utterance_ (1915) has something more than the usual “promise.” But the best of Miss Cromwell’s work can be found in her posthumously published _Poems_ (1919), which, in 1920, received the yearly prize offered by the Poetry Society of America, dividing the honor with Neihardt’s _The Song of Three Friends_. Her most significant poems betray that attitude to life which was at the heart of her tragedy—a preoccupation that was a mixture of fascination and fear. Her lines, never mediocre, are introspective and fraught with serious concern—the work of a frailer and unsmiling Emily Dickinson. Several of the best of her delicate songs, like the two lyrics quoted, tremble on the verge of greatness.

THE CROWNING GIFT[51]

I have had courage to accuse; And a fine wit that could upbraid; And a nice cunning that could bruise; And a shrewd wisdom, unafraid Of what weak mortals fear to lose.

I have had virtue to despise The sophistry of pious fools; I have had firmness to chastise; And intellect to make me rules To estimate and exorcise.

I have had knowledge to be true; My faith could obstacles remove; But now my frailty I endue. I would have courage now to love, And lay aside the strength I knew.

THE MOULD[52]

No doubt this active will, So bravely steeped in sun, This will has vanquished Death And foiled oblivion.

But this indifferent clay, This fine, experienced hand So quiet, and these thoughts That all unfinished stand,

Feel death as though it were A shadowy caress; And win and wear a frail Archaic wistfulness.

_Ezra Pound_

Ezra (Loomis) Pound was born at Hailey, Idaho, October 30, 1885; attended Hamilton College and the University of Pennsylvania; and went abroad, seeking fresh material to complete a thesis on Lope de Vega, in 1908. After visiting Spain on a roundabout journey to England, where he took up his residence and where he has lived ever since, Pound halted for a while in Italy. It was there, in Venice, to be precise, that Pound’s first book, _A Lume Spento_ (1908), was printed. The following year Pound went to London and the chief poems of the little volume were incorporated in _Personæ_ (1909), a small collection containing some of Pound’s finest work.

Although the young American was a total stranger to the English literary world, his book made a definite impression on critics of all shades and tastes. Edward Thomas, one of the most careful appraisers, wrote “the beauty of it is the beauty of passion, sincerity and intensity, not of beautiful words and images and suggestions.... The thought dominates the words and is greater than they are.” Another critic (Scott James) placed the chief emphasis on Pound’s metrical innovations, saying, “At first the whole thing may seem to be mere madness and rhetoric, a vain exhibition of force and passion without beauty. But as we read on, these curious meters seem to have a law and order of their own.”

_Exultations_ (1909) was printed in the autumn of the same year that saw the appearance of _Personæ_. It was received with even greater cordiality; a new force and freedom were manifest in such poems as “Sestina: Altaforte,” “Ballad of the Goodly Fere,” “Francesca” and “Histrion.”

In both of these books there was evident Pound’s erudition—a familiarity with mediæval literature, Provençal singers, Troubadour ballads—that, later on, was to degenerate into pedantry and become hard and dry. Too often in his later work, Pound seems to be more the archaeologist than the artist, digging with little energy and less enthusiasm. _Canzoni_ (1911) and _Ripostes_ (1912) both contain much that is sharp and living; they also contain the germs of desiccation and decay. Pound began to scatter his talents; to start movements which he quickly discarded for new ones; to spend himself in poetic propaganda for the Imagists and others (see Preface); to give more and more time to translation (_The Sonnets of Guido Cavalcanti_ appeared in 1912) and arrangements from the Chinese (_Cathay_, paraphrased from the notes of Ernest Fenollosa, was issued in 1915); to lay the chief stress on _technique_, shades of color, verbal _nuances_. The result was a lassitude of the creative faculties, an impoverishment of emotion. In the later books, Pound begins to suffer from a decadence which appraises the values in life chiefly as æsthetic values. And this decadence expresses itself in a weariness, a sterility of the imagination. Real feeling becomes rarer in his work and the poet descends to flashy trivialities, vagaries of assertion or sheer _bravado_ of expression—wasting much of his gift in a mere tilting at convention.

But though this is true of a great quantity of his recent work, though he often seems a living anachronism, drawing life not from life itself but only from books, many of the poems in _Lustra_ (1917) yield a hard brightness. The influence of Browning and the pre-Raphaelites is less pronounced and reflections of his earlier energy stand out with a peculiar brilliance.

Too special to achieve permanence, too intellectual to become popular, Pound’s contribution to his age should not be underestimated. He was a pioneer in the new forms; he fought dullness wherever he encountered it; under his leadership the Imagists became not only a group but a protest; he helped to make many of the paths which a score of unconsciously influenced poets tread with such ease and nonchalance. Much of his poetry gesticulates instead of speaking, a great portion of his art is poetry in pantomime. And yet, without Pound, American poetry would scarcely have been the many-voiced, multi-colored thing that it is.

A GIRL

The tree has entered my hands, The sap has ascended my arms, The tree has grown in my breast Downward, The branches grow out of me, like arms. Tree you are, Moss you are, You are violets with wind above them. A child—so high—you are; And all this is folly to the world.

A VIRGINAL

No, no! Go from me. I have left her lately. I will not spoil my sheath with lesser brightness, For my surrounding air has a new lightness; Slight are her arms, yet they have bound me straitly And left me cloaked as with a gauze of aether; As with sweet leaves; as with a subtle clearness. Oh, I have picked up magic in her nearness To sheathe me half in half the things that sheathe her.

No, no! Go from me. I have still the flavour, Soft as spring wind that’s come from birchen bowers. Green come the shoots, aye April in the branches, As winter’s wound with her sleight hand she staunches, Hath of the trees a likeness of the savour: As white their bark, so white this lady’s hours.

BALLAD FOR GLOOM

For God, our God is a gallant foe That playeth behind the veil.

I have loved my God as a child at heart That seeketh deep bosoms for rest, I have loved my God as a maid to man— But lo, this thing is best:

To love your God as a gallant foe that plays behind the veil; To meet your God as the night winds meet beyond Arcturus’ pale.

I have played with God for a woman, I have staked with my God for truth, I have lost to my God as a man, clear-eyed— His dice be not of ruth.

For I am made as a naked blade, But hear ye this thing in sooth:

Who loseth to God as man to man Shall win at the turn of the game. I have drawn my blade where the lightnings meet But the ending is the same: Who loseth to God as the sword blades lose Shall win at the end of the game.

For God, our God is a gallant foe that playeth behind the veil. When God deigns not to overthrow hath need of triple mail.

Δωρια

Be in me as the eternal moods of the bleak wind, and not As transient things are— gaiety of flowers. Have me in the strong loneliness of sunless cliffs And of gray waters. Let the gods speak softly of us In days hereafter, the shadowy flowers of Orcus Remember thee.

IN A STATION OF THE METRO

The apparition of these faces in the crowd; Petals on a wet, black bough.

_Louis Untermeyer_

Louis Untermeyer was born October 1, 1885, in New York City, where he has lived, except for brief sojourns in Maine and New Jersey, ever since. His education was sketchy; his continued failure to comprehend algebra and geometry kept him from entering college. His one ambition was to become a composer. At sixteen he appeared as a pianist in semi-professional circles; at seventeen he entered his father’s jewelry manufacturing establishment, of which he became designer and factory manager.

Untermeyer’s first volume was _The Younger Quire_ (1911), a twenty-four-page burlesque of an anthology (_The Younger Choir_). It was issued anonymously and only one hundred copies were printed. Later in the same year, he published a sequence of some seventy lyrics entitled _First Love_ (1911) in which the influences of Heine, Henley and Housman were not only obvious but crippling. With the exception of about eight of these songs, the volume is devoid of character and, in spite of a certain technical facility, wholly undistinguished.

It was with _Challenge_ (1914), now in its fourth edition, that the author first spoke in his own idiom. Although the ghost of Henley still haunts some of these pages, poems like “Summons,” “Landscapes” and “Caliban in the Coal Mines” show “a fresh and lyrical sympathy with the modern world.... His vision” (thus the Boston _Transcript_) “is a social vision, his spirit a passionately energized command of the forces of justice.”

_Challenge_ was succeeded by _These Times_ (1917), evidently an “interval” book which, lacking the concentration and unity of the better known collection, sought (not always successfully) for larger horizons. Certain poems (like “Swimmers,” “The Laughers” and the colloquial sonnets) stand out, but as a whole it has neither the energy of his earlier nor the surety of his later work. _The New Adam_ (1920) is a more satisfactory unit; here the varied passions are fused in a new heat.

Besides this serious poetry, Untermeyer has published two volumes of critical parodies, “_—— and Other Poets_” (1917) and _Including Horace_ (1919)—paraphrases of the Latin bard as various classic and modern poets might have rendered him. He has also printed a strict metrical translation of three hundred and twenty-five _Poems of Heinrich Heine_ (1917); a volume of prose criticism, _The New Era in American Poetry_ (1919); and two text-books. He was one of the Associate Editors of _The Seven Arts_ (1916-17) and has lectured at various universities in the Eastern States.

SUMMONS

The eager night and the impetuous winds, The hints and whispers of a thousand lures, And all the swift persuasion of the Spring, Surged from the stars and stones, and swept me on ... The smell of honeysuckles, keen and clear, Startled and shook me, with the sudden thrill Of some well-known but half-forgotten voice. A slender stream became a naked sprite, Flashed around curious bends, and winked at me Beyond the turns, alert and mischievous. A saffron moon, dangling among the trees, Seemed like a toy balloon caught in the boughs, Flung there in sport by some too-mirthful breeze ... And as it hung there, vivid and unreal, The whole world’s lethargy was brushed away; The night kept tugging at my torpid mood And tore it into shreds. A warm air blew My wintry slothfulness beyond the stars; And over all indifference there streamed A myriad urges in one rushing wave ... Touched with the lavish miracles of earth, I felt the brave persistence of the grass; The far desire of rivulets; the keen, Unconquerable fervor of the thrush; The endless labors of the patient worm; The lichen’s strength; the prowess of the ant; The constancy of flowers; the blind belief Of ivy climbing slowly toward the sun, The eternal struggles and eternal deaths— And yet the groping faith of every root! Out of old graves arose the cry of life; Out of the dying came the deathless call. And, thrilling with a new sweet restlessness, The thing that was my boyhood woke in me— Dear, foolish fragments made me strong again; Valiant adventures, dreams of those to come, And all the vague, heroic hopes of youth, With fresh abandon, like a fearless laugh, Leaped up to face the heaven’s unconcern. ...

And then—veil upon veil was torn aside— Stars, like a host of merry girls and boys, Danced gaily ’round me, plucking at my hand; The night, scorning its stubborn mystery, Leaned down and pressed new courage in my heart; The hermit-thrush, throbbing with more than Song, Sang with a happy challenge to the skies; Love and the faces of a world of children Swept like a conquering army through my blood. And Beauty, rising out of all its forms, Beauty, the passion of the universe, Flamed with its joy, a thing too great for tears, And, like a wine, poured itself out for me To drink of, to be warmed with, and to go Refreshed and strengthened to the ceaseless fight; To meet with confidence the cynic years; Battling in wars that never can be won, Seeking the lost cause and the brave defeat.

CALIBAN IN THE COAL MINES

God, we don’t like to complain We know that the mine is no lark— But—there’s the pools from the rain; But—there’s the cold and the dark.

God, You don’t know what it is— You, in Your well-lighted sky— Watching the meteors whizz; Warm, with the sun always by.

God, if You had but the moon Stuck in Your cap for a lamp, Even You’d tire of it soon, Down in the dark and the damp.

Nothing but blackness above, And nothing that moves but the cars. ... God, if You wish for our love, Fling us a handful of stars!

SWIMMERS

I took the crazy short-cut to the bay; Over a fence or two and through a hedge, Jumping a private road, along the edge Of backyards full of drying wash it lay.

I ran, electric with elation, Sweating, impetuous and wild For a swift plunge in the sea that smiled, Quiet and luring, half a mile away. This was the final thrill, the last sensation That capped four hours of violence and laughter: To have, with casual friends and casual jokes, Hard sport, a cold swim and fresh linen after ... And now, the last set being played and over, I hurried past the ruddy lakes of clover; I swung my racket at astonished oaks, My arm still tingling from aggressive strokes. Tennis was over for the day— I took the leaping short-cut to the bay.

Then the swift plunge into the cool, green dark— The windy waters rushing past me, through me; Filled with a sense of some heroic lark, Exulting in a vigor clean and roomy. Swiftly I rose to meet the feline sea That sprang upon me with a hundred claws, And grappled, pulled me down and played with me. Then, tense and breathless in the tightening pause When one wave grows into a toppling acre, I dived headlong into the foremost breaker; Pitting against a cold and turbulent strife The feverish intensity of life.

Out of the foam I lurched and rode the wave, Swimming, hand over hand, against the wind; I felt the sea’s vain pounding, and I grinned Knowing I was its master, not its slave. Oh, the proud total of those lusty hours— The give and take of rough and vigorous tussles With happy sinews and rejoicing muscles; The knowledge of my own miraculous powers, Feeling the force in one small body bent To curb and tame this towering element.