Part 24

Such little, puny things are words in rhyme: Poor feeble loops and strokes as frail as hairs; You see them printed here, and mark their chime, And turn to your more durable affairs. Yet on such petty tools the poet dares To run his race with mortar, bricks and lime, And draws his frail stick to the point, and stares To aim his arrow at the heart of Time.

Intangible, yet pressing, hemming in, This measured emptiness engulfs us all, And yet he points his paper javelin And sees it eddy, waver, turn, and fall, And feels, between delight and trouble torn, The stirring of a sonnet still unborn.

_Leslie Nelson Jennings_

Leslie Nelson Jennings was born in 1891 at Ware, Massachusetts. When he was five years old, he moved to California, where he has lived ever since. For a short term, he worked on a newspaper but ill health forced him to discontinue this work and drove him to the hills.

Jennings’s work is still in a formative stage. His lyrics, while personal in theme, are full of the manner and music of several of his contemporaries. His sonnets, like those of David Morton, show Jennings at his best; they are quiet but never dull reflections of loveliness.

FRUSTRATE[61]

How futile are these scales in which we weigh Pity and passion, and the spirit’s need! Words—and the veins of desperate peoples bleed! Words—and a lark, and hedges white with may! O must this rapture and this grief remain Uncaptured in our silences? And must We stand like stones, less lyrical than dust That flowers beneath the benison of rain?

And if I say, “I love you,” can you know, Save by the urgent beating of my heart, The flame that tears my baffled lips apart? Poor symbols, cracked or broken long ago, What witness can you bear that we have tried To utter Beauty when our tongues were tied!

_Maxwell Bodenheim_

Maxwell Bodenheim was born at Natchez, Mississippi, May 26, 1892. His education, with the exception of grammar school training, was achieved under the guidance of the U. S. Army, in which Bodenheim served a full enlistment of three years, beginning in 1910. For a while he studied law and art in Chicago, but his mind, fascinated by the new poetry, turned to literature. He wrote steadily for five years without having a single poem accepted. In 1918, his first volume appeared and even those who were puzzled or repelled by Bodenheim’s complex idiom were forced to recognize its intense individuality.

_Minna and Myself_ (1918) reveals, first of all, this poet’s extreme sensitivity to words. Words, under his hands, have unexpected growths; placid nouns and sober adjectives bear fantastic fruit. Sometimes he packs his metaphors so close that they become inextricably mixed. Sometimes he spins his fantasies so thin that the cord of coherence snaps and the poem frays into ragged and unpatterned ravellings. But, at his best, Bodenheim is as clear-headed as he is colorful.

In _Advice_ (1920), Bodenheim’s manner—and his mannerisms—are intensified. There is scarcely a phrase that is not tricked out with more ornaments and associations than it can bear; whole poems sink beneath the weight of their profuse decorations. Yet, in spite of his verbal exaggerations, this poetry achieves a keen if too ornate delicacy. In the realm of the whimsical-grotesque, Bodenheim walks with a light and nimble footstep.

POET TO HIS LOVE

An old silver church in a forest Is my love for you. The trees around it Are words that I have stolen from your heart. An old silver bell, the last smile you gave, Hangs at the top of my church. It rings only when you come through the forest And stand beside it. And then, it has no need for ringing, For your voice takes its place.

OLD AGE

In me is a little painted square Bordered by old shops with gaudy awnings. And before the shops sit smoking, open-bloused old men, Drinking sunlight. The old men are my thoughts; And I come to them each evening, in a creaking cart, And quietly unload supplies. We fill slim pipes and chat And inhale scents from pale flowers in the centre of the square.... Strong men, tinkling women, and dripping, squealing children Stroll past us, or into the shops. They greet the shopkeepers and touch their hats or foreheads to me.... Some evening I shall not return to my people.

DEATH

I shall walk down the road; I shall turn and feel upon my feet The kisses of Death, like scented rain. For Death is a black slave with little silver birds Perched in a sleeping wreath upon his head. He will tell me, his voice like jewels Dropped into a satin bag, How he has tip-toed after me down the road, His heart made a dark whirlpool with longing for me. Then he will graze me with his hands, And I shall be one of the sleeping, silver birds Between the cold waves of his hair, as he tip-toes on.

_Edwin Curran_

Edwin Curran was born at Zanesville, Ohio, May 10, 1892, and was educated at St. Thomas’ School in the city of his birth. After working as an unskilled laborer in various trades, he learned telegraphy in 1914 and has been employed ever since as an operator for the Pennsylvania Railroad Company.

In 1917 he printed a little paper-bound pamphlet of thirty pages (_First Poems_) with this naïve note: “Price of this book is 35 cents postpaid. Author is 25, unmarried, a beginner and needs publisher. If this volume meets expenses, another, possibly better, will be issued.” Expecting to find poetry of an absurd simplicity, one is startled to find striking images, strange pictures and (in such poems as “Soldier’s Epitaph” and “Sailing of Columbus”) lines like:

We climbed the slippery alleys of the sea

and many a lyric flash like:

The stars, like bells, flash down the silver sky ... Ringing like chimes on frozen trees, or cry Along the marble ground.

_Second Poems_ (1920) has a similar beauty mixed with banality. Both booklets are a jumble of passion, platitude, bad grammar and exaltation. Curran has absolutely no critical perceptions; he has little control over his music. For better or for worse, his mood controls him.

AUTUMN

The music of the autumn winds sings low, Down by the ruins of the painted hills, Where death lies flaming with a marvelous glow, Upon the ash of rose and daffodils. But I can find no melancholy here To see the naked rocks and thinning trees; Earth strips to grapple with the winter year— I see her gnarled hills plan for victories!

I love the earth who goes to battle now, To struggle with the wintry whipping storm And bring the glorious spring out from the night. I see earth’s muscles bared, her battle brow, And am not sad, but feel her marvelous charm As splendidly she plunges in the fight.

THE PAINTED HILLS OF ARIZONA

The rainbows all lie crumpled on these hills, The red dawns scattered on their colored sills. These hills have caught the lightning in its flight, Caught colors from the skies of day and night And shine with shattered stars and suns; they hold Dyed yellow, red and purple, blue and gold. Red roses seem within their marble blown, A painted garden chiseled in the stone; The rose and violet trickling through their veins, Where they drop brilliant curtains to the plains— A ramp of rock and granite, jeweled and brightening, Like some great colored wall of lightning!

_Edna St. Vincent Millay_

Edna St. Vincent Millay, possibly the most gifted of the younger lyricists, was born February 22, 1892, at Rockland, Maine. After a childhood spent almost entirely in New England, she attended Vassar College, from which she was graduated in 1917. Since that time she has lived in New York City. Besides her keenly individual lyrics, Miss Millay has written a quantity of short stories under various pseudonyms, has translated several songs, and has been connected with the Provincetown Players both as playwright and performer.

Although the bulk of her poetry is not large, the quality of it approaches and sometimes attains greatness. Her first long poem, “Renascence,” was the outstanding feature of _The Lyric Year_ (1912), an anthology which revealed many new names. “Renascence” was written when Miss Millay was scarcely nineteen; it remains today one of the most remarkable poems of this generation. Beginning like a child’s aimless verse it proceeds, with a calm lucidity, to an amazing climax. It is as if a child had, in the midst of its ingenuousness, uttered some terrific truth. The sheer cumulative power of this poem is surpassed only by its beauty.

_Renascence_, the name of Miss Millay’s first volume, was published in 1917. It is full of the same passion as its title-poem; here is a hunger for beauty so intense that no delight is great enough to give the soul peace. Such poems as “God’s World” and the unnamed sonnets vibrate with this rapture. Magic burns from the simplest of her lines. _Figs from Thistles_ (1920) is a far more sophisticated booklet. Sharp and cynically brilliant, Miss Millay’s craftsmanship no less than her intuition saves these poems from mere cleverness.

_Second April_ (1921) is an intensification of her lyrical gift tinctured with an increasing sadness and disillusion. Her poignant poetic play, _Aria da Capo_, first performed by the Provincetown Players in New York, was published in _The Monthly Chapbook_ (Harold Monro, England); the issue of July, 1920, being devoted to it.

GOD’S WORLD

O world, I cannot hold thee close enough! Thy winds, thy wide grey skies! Thy mists that roll and rise! Thy woods, this autumn day, that ache and sag And all but cry with colour! That gaunt crag To crush! To lift the lean of that black bluff! World, World, I cannot get thee close enough!

Long have I known a glory in it all, But never knew I this; Here such a passion is As stretcheth me apart. Lord, I do fear Thou’st made the world too beautiful this year. My soul is all but out of me,—let fall No burning leaf; prithee, let no bird call.

RENASCENCE{See Transcriber’s Note 1.}

All I could see from where I stood Was three long mountains and a wood; I turned and looked another way, And saw three islands in a bay. So with my eyes I traced the line Of the horizon, thin and fine, Straight around till I was come Back to where I’d started from; And all I saw from where I stood Was three long mountains and a wood. Over these things I could not see; These were the things that bounded me; And I could touch them with my hand, Almost, I thought, from where I stand. And all at once things seemed so small My breath came short, and scarce at all. But, sure, the sky is big, I said; Miles and miles above my head; So here upon my back I’ll lie And look my fill into the sky. And so I looked, and, after all, The sky was not so very tall. The sky, I said, must somewhere stop, And—sure enough!—I see the top! The sky, I thought, is not so grand; I ’most could touch it with my hand! And, reaching up my hand to try, I screamed to feel it touch the sky.

I screamed, and—lo!—Infinity Came down and settled over me; And, pressing of the Undefined The definition on my mind, Held up before my eyes a glass Through which my shrinking sight did pass Until it seemed I must behold Immensity made manifold; Whispered to me a word whose sound Deafened the air for worlds around, And brought unmuffled to my ears The gossiping of friendly spheres, The creaking of the tented sky, The ticking of Eternity.

I saw and heard, and knew at last The How and Why of all things, past, And present, and forevermore. The universe, cleft to the core, Lay open to my probing sense That, sick’ning, I would fain pluck thence But could not,—nay! But needs must suck At the great wound, and could not pluck My lips away till I had drawn All venom out.—Ah, fearful pawn! For my omniscience paid I toll In infinite remorse of soul. All sin was of my sinning, all Atoning mine, and mine the gall Of all regret. Mine was the weight Of every brooded wrong, the hate That stood behind each envious thrust, Mine every greed, mine every lust. And all the while for every grief, Each suffering, I craved relief With individual desire,— Craved all in vain! And felt fierce fire About a thousand people crawl; Perished with each,—then mourned for all! A man was starving in Capri; He moved his eyes and looked at me; I felt his gaze, I heard his moan, And knew his hunger as my own. I saw at sea a great fog-bank Between two ships that struck and sank; A thousand screams the heavens smote; And every scream tore through my throat. No hurt I did not feel, no death That was not mine; mine each last breath That, crying, met an answering cry From the compassion that was I. All suffering mine, and mine its rod; Mine, pity like the pity of God. Ah, awful weight! Infinity Pressed down upon the finite Me! My anguished spirit, like a bird, Beating against my lips I heard; Yet lay the weight so close about There was no room for it without. And so beneath the weight lay I And suffered death, but could not die.

Deep in the earth I rested now; Cool is its hand upon the brow And soft its breast beneath the head Of one who is so gladly dead. And all at once, and over all, The pitying rain began to fall; I lay and heard each pattering hoof Upon my lowly, thatchèd roof, And seemed to love the sound far more Than ever I had done before. For rain it hath a friendly sound To one who’s six feet underground; And scarce the friendly voice or face; A grave is such a quiet place.

The rain, I said, is kind to come And speak to me in my new home. I would I were alive again To kiss the fingers of the rain, To drink into my eyes the shine Of every slanting silver line, To catch the freshened, fragrant breeze From drenched and dripping apple-trees. For soon the shower will be done, And then the broad face of the sun Will laugh above the rain-soaked earth Until the world with answering mirth Shakes joyously, and each round drop Rolls, twinkling, from its grass-blade top. How can I bear it; buried here, While overhead the sky grows clear And blue again after the storm? O, multi-colored, multiform, Beloved beauty over me, That I shall never, never see Again! Spring-silver, autumn-gold, That I shall never more behold! Sleeping your myriad magics through, Close-sepulchred away from you! O God, I cried, give me new birth, And put me back upon the earth! Upset each cloud’s gigantic gourd And let the heavy rain, down-poured In one big torrent, set me free, Washing my grave away from me!

I ceased; and, through the breathless hush That answered me, the far-off rush Of herald wings came whispering Like music down the vibrant string Of my ascending prayer, and—crash! Before the wild wind’s whistling lash The startled storm-clouds reared on high And plunged in terror down the sky, And the big rain in one black wave Fell from the sky and struck my grave.

I know not how such things can be I only know there came to me A fragrance such as never clings To aught save happy living things; A sound as of some joyous elf Singing sweet songs to please himself, And, through and over everything, A sense of glad awakening. The grass, a tip-toe at my ear, Whispering to me I could hear; I felt the rain’s cool finger-tips Brushed tenderly across my lips, Laid gently on my sealèd sight, And all at once the heavy night Fell from my eyes and I could see,— A drenched and dripping apple-tree, A last long line of silver rain, A sky grown clear and blue again. And as I looked a quickening gust Of wind blew up to me and thrust Into my face a miracle Of orchard-breath, and with the smell,— I know not how such things can be!— I breathed my soul back into me. Ah! Up then from the ground sprang I And hailed the earth with such a cry As is not heard save from a man Who has been dead, and lives again. About the trees my arms I wound; Like one gone mad I hugged the ground; I raised my quivering arms on high; I laughed and laughed into the sky, Till at my throat a strangling sob Caught fiercely, and a great heart-throb Sent instant tears into my eyes; O God, I cried, no dark disguise Can e’er hereafter hide from me Thy radiant identity! Thou canst not move across the grass But my quick eyes will see Thee pass, Nor speak, however silently, But my hushed voice will answer Thee. I know the path that tells Thy way Through the cool eve of every day; God, I can push the grass apart And lay my finger on Thy heart!

The world stands out on either side No wider than the heart is wide; Above the world is stretched the sky,— No higher than the soul is high. The heart can push the sea and land Farther away on either hand; The soul can split the sky in two, And let the face of God shine through. But East and West will pinch the heart That cannot keep them pushed apart; And he whose soul is flat—the sky Will cave in on him by and by.

PITY ME NOT

Pity me not because the light of day At close of day no longer walks the sky; Pity me not for beauties passed away From field and thicket as the year goes by; Pity me not the waning of the moon, Nor that the ebbing tide goes out to sea, Nor that a man’s desire is hushed so soon, And you no longer look with love on me.

This have I known always: love is no more Than the wide blossom which the wind assails; Than the great tide that treads the shifting shore, Strewing fresh wreckage gathered in the gales. Pity me that the heart is slow to learn What the swift mind beholds at every turn.

I SHALL GO BACK

I shall go back again to the bleak shore And build a little shanty on the sand In such a way that the extremest band Of brittle seaweed will escape my door But by a yard or two, and nevermore Shall I return to take you by the hand; I shall be gone to what I understand And happier than I ever was before.

The love that stood a moment in your eyes, The words that lay a moment on your tongue, Are one with all that in a moment dies, A little under-said and over-sung; But I shall find the sullen rocks and skies Unchanged from what they were when I was young.

THE PEAR TREE

In this squalid, dirty dooryard, Where the chickens scratch and run, White, incredible, the pear tree Stands apart and takes the sun,

Mindful of the eyes upon it, Vain of its new holiness, Like the waste-man’s little daughter In her first communion dress.

WILD SWANS

I looked in my heart while the wild swans went over;— And what did I see I had not seen before? Only a question less or a question more; Nothing to match the flight of wild birds flying. Tiresome heart, forever living and dying! House without air! I leave you and lock your door! Wild swans, come over the town, come over The town again, trailing your legs and crying!

_Mary Carolyn Davies_

Mary Carolyn Davies was born at Sprague, Washington, and was educated in the schools at and about Portland, Oregon. At college (the University of California) she won the Emily Chamberlin Cook prize for Poetry in 1912, being the first freshman to win it. In the same year, she established another precedent by being the first woman to win the Bohemian Club prize. With the proceeds, the young poet went to New York, arriving with the remnants of her fortune—four dollars and eighty-five cents.

The long struggle with the city began. Miss Davies wrote short stories, two serials, reams of sentimental verses—anything to keep alive. She turned finally to verse, chiefly because “when the rent is due there’s no time to write a story, only verse can save one in time.”