Part 2

Aside from gaining in childhood this strong, practical objection to famous poetry, people achieve the deadly habit of reading metrical lines unimaginatively. After forming--generally in preparation for entering one of our great universities--the habit of blinding the inner eye, deafening the inner ear, and dropping into a species of mental coma before a page of short lines, it is difficult for educated persons to read poetry with what is known as "ordinary human intelligence."

It does not occur to them simply to listen to the nightingale. But poetry, I believe, never speaks her beauty--certainly never her scope and variety, except on the condition that in her presence one sits down quietly with folded hands, and truly listens to her singing voice.

"So for one the wet sail arching through the rainbow round the bow, And for one the creak of snow-shoes on the crust."

Many people do not like poetry, in this way, as a living art to be enjoyed, but rather as an exact science to be approved. To them poetry may concern herself only with a limited number of subjects to be presented in a predetermined and conventional manner and form. To such readers the word "form" means usually only a repeated literary effect: and they do not understand that every "form" was in its first and best use an originality, employed not for the purpose of following any rule, but because it said truly what the artist wished to express. I suppose much of the monotony of subject and treatment observable in modern verse is due to this belief that poetry is merely a fixed way of repeating certain meritorious though highly familiar concepts of existence--and not in the least the infinite music of words meant to speak the little and the great tongues of the earth.

It is exhilarating to read the pages of Pope and of Byron, whether you agree with them or not, because here poetry does speak the little and the great tongues of the earth, and sings satires, pastorals and lampoons, literary and dramatic criticism, all manner of fun and sparkling prettiness, sweeping judgments, nice discriminations, fashions, politics, the ways of gentle and simple--love and desire and pain and sorrow, and anguish and death.

The impulse which inspired, and the appreciation which endowed this magazine, has been a generous sympathy with poetry as an art. The existence of a gallery for poems and verse has an especially attractive social value in its power of recalling or creating the beautiful and clarifying pleasure of truly reading poetry in its broad scope and rich variety. The hospitality of this hall will have been a genuine source of happiness if somehow it tells the visitors, either while they are here, or after they have gone to other places, what a delight it is to enjoy a poem, to realize it, to live in the vivid dream it evokes, to hark to its music, to listen to the special magic grace of its own style and composition, and to know that this special grace will say as deeply as some revealing hour with a friend one loves, something nothing else can say--something which is life itself sung in free sympathy beyond the bars of time and space.

_E. W._

THE MOTIVE OF THE MAGAZINE

In the huge democracy of our age no interest is too slight to have an organ. Every sport, every little industry requires its own corner, its own voice, that it may find its friends, greet them, welcome them.

The arts especially have need of each an entrenched place, a voice of power, if they are to do their work and be heard. For as the world grows greater day by day, as every member of it, through something he buys or knows or loves, reaches out to the ends of the earth, things precious to the race, things rare and delicate, may be overpowered, lost in the criss-cross of modern currents, the confusion of modern immensities.

Painting, sculpture, music are housed in palaces in the great cities of the world; and every week or two a new periodical is born to speak for one or the other of them, and tenderly nursed at some guardian's expense. Architecture, responding to commercial and social demands, is whipped into shape by the rough and tumble of life and fostered, willy-nilly, by men's material needs. Poetry alone, of all the fine arts, has been left to shift for herself in a world unaware of its immediate and desperate need of her, a world whose great deeds, whose triumphs over matter, over the wilderness, over racial enmities and distances, require her ever-living voice to give them glory and glamour.

Poetry has been left to herself and blamed for inefficiency, a process as unreasonable as blaming the desert for barrenness. This art, like every other, is not a miracle of direct creation, but a reciprocal relation between the artist and his public. The people must do their part if the poet is to tell their story to the future; they must cultivate and irrigate the soil if the desert is to blossom as the rose.

The present venture is a modest effort to give to poetry her own place, her own voice. The popular magazines can afford her but scant courtesy--a Cinderella corner in the ashes--because they seek a large public which is not hers, a public which buys them not for their verse but for their stories, pictures, journalism, rarely for their literature, even in prose. Most magazine editors say that there is no public for poetry in America; one of them wrote to a young poet that the verse his monthly accepted "must appeal to the barber's wife of the Middle West," and others prove their distrust by printing less verse from year to year, and that rarely beyond page-end length and importance.

We believe that there is a public for poetry, that it will grow, and that as it becomes more numerous and appreciative the work produced in this art will grow in power, in beauty, in significance. In this belief we have been encouraged by the generous enthusiasm of many subscribers to our fund, by the sympathy of other lovers of the art, and by the quick response of many prominent poets, both American and English, who have sent or promised contributions.

We hope to publish in _Poetry_ some of the best work now being done in English verse. Within space limitations set at present by the small size of our monthly sheaf, we shall be able to print poems longer, and of more intimate and serious character, than the popular magazines can afford to use. The test, limited by ever-fallible human judgment, is to be quality alone; all forms, whether narrative, dramatic or lyric, will be acceptable. We hope to offer our subscribers a place of refuge, a green isle in the sea, where Beauty may plant her gardens, and Truth, austere revealer of joy and sorrow, of hidden delights and despairs, may follow her brave quest unafraid.

NOTES AND ANNOUNCEMENTS

In order that the experiment of a magazine of verse may have a fair trial, over one hundred subscriptions of fifty dollars annually for five years have been promised by the ladies and gentlemen listed below. In addition, nearly twenty direct contributions of smaller sums have been sent or promised. To all these lovers of the art the editors would express their grateful appreciation.

Mr. H. C. Chatfield-Taylor Mr. Howard Shaw Mr. Arthur T. Aldis Mr. Edwin S. Fechheimer Mrs. Charles H. Hamill [B]Mr. D. H. Burnham Mrs. Emmons Blaine (2) Mr. Wm. S. Monroe Mr. E. A. Bancroft Mrs. Burton Hanson Mr. John M. Ewen Mr. C. L. Hutchinson Mrs. Wm. Vaughan Moody Hon. Wm. J. Calhoun {Miss Anna Morgan {Mrs. Edward A. Leicht Mrs. Louis Betts Mr. Ralph Cudney Mrs. George Bullen Mrs. P. A. Valentine Mr. P. A. Valentine Mr. Charles R. Crane Mr. Frederick Sargent Mrs. Frank G. Logan Dr. F. W. Gunsaulus Mrs. Emma B. Hodge Mr. Wallace Heckman Mr. Edward B. Butler (2) Miss Elizabeth Ross Mrs. Bryan Lathrop Mr. Martin A. Ryerson Mrs. La Verne Noyes Mrs. E. Norman Scott (2) Mr. Wm. O. Goodman Mrs. Charles Hitchcock Hon. John Barton Payne Mr. Thomas D. Jones Mr. H. H. Kohlsaat Mr. Andrew M. Lawrence Miss Juliet Goodrich Mr. Henry H. Walker Mr. Charles Deering Mr. Jas. Harvey Peirce Mr. Charles L. Freer Mrs. W. F. Dummer Mr. Jas. P. Whedon Mr. Arthur Heun Mr. Edward F. Carry Mrs. George M. Pullman Mr. Cyrus H. McCormick (2) Mr. F. Stuyvesant Peabody Mrs. F. S. Winston Mr. J. J. Glessner {Mr. C. C. Curtiss {Mrs. Hermon B. Butler Mr. Will H. Lyford Mr. Horace S. Oakley Mr. Eames Mac Veagh Mrs. K. M. H. Besly Mr. Charles G. Dawes Mr. Clarence Buckingham Mrs. Potter Palmer Mr. Owen F. Aldis Mr. Albert B. Dick Mr. Albert H. Loeb The Misses Skinner Mr. Potter Palmer Miss Mary Rozet Smith Misses Alice E. and Margaret D. Moran {Mrs. James B. Waller {Mr. John Borden Mr. Victor F. Lawson {Mrs. H. M. Wilmarth {Mrs. Norman F. Thompson {Mrs. William Blair {Mrs. Clarence I. Peck Mr. Clarence M. Woolley Mr. Edward P. Russell Mrs. Frank O. Lowden Mr. John S. Miller Miss Helen Louise Birch Nine members of the Fortnightly Six members of the Friday Club Seven members of the Chicago Woman's Club Mr. William L. Brown Mr. Rufus G. Dawes Mr. Gilbert E. Porter Mr. Alfred L. Baker Mr. George A. McKinlock Mr. John S. Field Mrs. Samuel Insull Mr. William T. Fenton Mr. A. G. Becker Mr. Honoré Palmer Mr. John J. Mitchell Mrs. F. A. Hardy Mr. Morton D. Hull Mr. E. F. Ripley Mr. Ernest MacDonald Bowman Mr. John A. Kruse Mr. Frederic C. Bartlett Mr. Franklin H. Head Mrs. Wm. R. Linn

[Footnote B: _Deceased._]

* * * * *

Through the generosity of five gentlemen, _Poetry_ will give two hundred and fifty dollars in one or two prizes for the best poem or poems printed in its pages the first year. In addition a subscriber to the fund offers twenty-five dollars for the best epigram.

* * * * *

Mr. Maurice Browne, director of the Chicago Little Theatre, offers to produce, during the season of 1913-14, the best play in verse published in, or submitted to, _Poetry_ during its first year; provided that it may be adequately presented under the requirements and limitations of his stage.

* * * * *

We are fortunate in being able, through the courtesy of the Houghton-Mifflin Co., to offer our readers a poem, hitherto unprinted, from advance sheets of the complete works of the late William Vaughan Moody, which will be published in November. The lamentable death of this poet two years ago in the early prime of his great powers was a calamity to literature. It is fitting that the first number of a magazine published in the city where for years he wrote and taught, should contain an important poem from his hand.

Mr. Ezra Pound, the young Philadelphia poet whose recent distinguished success in London led to wide recognition in his own country, authorizes the statement that at present such of his poetic work as receives magazine publication in America will appear exclusively in _Poetry_. That discriminating London publisher, Mr. Elkin Mathews, "discovered" this young poet from over seas, and published "Personae," "Exultations" and "Canzoniere," three small volumes of verse from which a selection has been reprinted by the Houghton-Mifflin Co. under the title "Provença." Mr. Pound's latest work is a translation from the Italian of "Sonnets and Ballate," by Guido Cavalcanti.

Mr. Arthur Davison Ficke, another contributor, is a graduate of Harvard, who studied law and entered his father's office in Davenport, Iowa. He is the author of "The Happy Princess" and "The Breaking of Bonds," and a contributor to leading magazines. An early number of _Poetry_ will be devoted exclusively to Mr. Ficke's work.

Mrs. Roscoe P. Conkling is a resident of the state of New York; a young poet who has contributed to various magazines.

Miss Lorimer is a young English poet resident in Oxford, who will publish her first volume this autumn. The London _Poetry Review_, in its August number, introduced her with a group of lyrics which were criticized with some asperity in the _New Age_ and praised with equal warmth in other periodicals.

* * * * *

Miss Dudley, who is a Chicagoan born and bred, is still younger in the art, "To One Unknown" being the first of her poems to be printed.

* * * * *

_Poetry_ will acknowledge the receipt of books of verse and works relating to the subject, and will print brief reviews of those which seem for any reason significant. It will endeavor also to keep its readers informed of the progress of the art throughout the English-speaking world and continental Europe. The American metropolitan newspaper prints cable dispatches about post-impressionists, futurists, secessionists and other radicals in painting, sculpture and music, but so far as its editors and readers are concerned, French poetry might have died with Victor Hugo, and English with Tennyson, or at most Swinburne.

NOTE.--Eight months after the first general newspaper announcement of our efforts to secure a fund for a magazine of verse, and three or four months after our first use of the title _Poetry_, a Boston firm of publishers announced a forthcoming periodical of the same kind, to be issued under the same name. The two are not to be confused.

THE RALPH FLETCHER SEYMOUR COMPANY PRINTERS CHICAGO

Poetry VOL. I A Magazine of Verse NO. 2

NOVEMBER, 1912

THE PIPER

George Borrow in his _Lavengro_ Tells us of a Welshman, who By some excess of mother-wit Framed a harp and played on it, Built a ship and sailed to sea, And steered it home to melody Of his own making. I, indeed, Might write for Everyman to read A thaumalogue of wonderment More wonderful, but rest content With celebrating one I knew Who built his pipes, and played them, too: No more. Ah, played! Therein is all: The hounded thing, the hunter's call; The shudder, when the quarry's breath Is drowned in blood and stilled in death; The marriage dance, the pulsing vein, The kiss that must be given again; The hope that Ireland, like a rose, Sees shining thro' her tale of woes; The battle lost, the long lament For blood and spirit vainly spent; And so on, thro' the varying scale Of passion that the western Gael Knows, and by miracle of art Draws to the chanter from the heart Like water from a hidden spring, To leap or murmur, weep or sing.

I see him now, a little man In proper black, whey-bearded, wan, With eyes that scan the eastern hills Thro' thick, gold-rimmèd spectacles. His hand is on the chanter. Lo, The hidden spring begins to flow In waves of magic. (He is dead These seven years, but bend your head And listen.) Rising from the clay The Master plays _The Ring of Day_. It mounts and falls and floats away Over the sky-line ... then is gone Into the silence of the dawn!

_Joseph Campbell_

BEYOND THE STARS

Three days I heard them grieve when I lay dead, (It was so strange to me that they should weep!) Tall candles burned about me in the dark, And a great crucifix was on my breast, And a great silence filled the lonesome room.

I heard one whisper, "Lo! the dawn is breaking, And he has lost the wonder of the day." Another came whom I had loved on earth, And kissed my brow and brushed my dampened hair. Softly she spoke: "Oh that he should not see The April that his spirit bathed in! Birds Are singing in the orchard, and the grass That soon will cover him is growing green. The daisies whiten on the emerald hills, And the immortal magic that he loved Wakens again--and he has fallen asleep." Another said: "Last night I saw the moon Like a tremendous lantern shine in heaven, And I could only think of him--and sob. For I remembered evenings wonderful When he was faint with Life's sad loveliness, And watched the silver ribbons wandering far Along the shore, and out upon the sea. Oh, I remembered how he loved the world, The sighing ocean and the flaming stars, The everlasting glamour God has given-- His tapestries that wrap the earth's wide room. I minded me of mornings filled with rain When he would sit and listen to the sound As if it were lost music from the spheres. He loved the crocus and the hawthorn-hedge, He loved the shining gold of buttercups, And the low droning of the drowsy bees That boomed across the meadows. He was glad At dawn or sundown; glad when Autumn came With her worn livery and scarlet crown, And glad when Winter rocked the earth to rest. Strange that he sleeps today when Life is young, And the wild banners of the Spring are blowing With green inscriptions of the old delight."

I heard them whisper in the quiet room. I longed to open then my sealèd eyes, And tell them of the glory that was mine. There was no darkness where my spirit flew, There was no night beyond the teeming world. Their April was like winter where I roamed; Their flowers were like stones where now I fared. Earth's day! it was as if I had not known What sunlight meant!... Yea, even as they grieved For all that I had lost in their pale place, I swung beyond the borders of the sky, And floated through the clouds, myself the air, Myself the ether, yet a matchless being Whom God had snatched from penury and pain To draw across the barricades of heaven. I clomb beyond the sun, beyond the moon; In flight on flight I touched the highest star; I plunged to regions where the Spring is born, Myself (I asked not how) the April wind, Myself the elements that are of God. Up flowery stairways of eternity I whirled in wonder and untrammeled joy, An atom, yet a portion of His dream-- His dream that knows no end.... I was the rain, I was the dawn, I was the purple east, I was the moonlight on enchanted nights, (Yet time was lost to me); I was a flower For one to pluck who loved me; I was bliss, And rapture, splendid moments of delight; And I was prayer, and solitude, and hope; And always, always, always I was love. I tore asunder flimsy doors of time, And through the windows of my soul's new sight I saw beyond the ultimate bounds of space. I was all things that I had loved on earth-- The very moonbeam in that quiet room, The very sunlight one had dreamed I lost, The soul of the returning April grass, The spirit of the evening and the dawn, The perfume in unnumbered hawthorn-blooms. There was no shadow on my perfect peace, No knowledge that was hidden from my heart. I learned what music meant; I read the years; I found where rainbows hide, where tears begin; I trod the precincts of things yet unborn.

Yea, while I found all wisdom (being dead), They grieved for me ... I should have grieved for them!

_Charles Hanson Towne_

[Greek: CHORIKOS]

The ancient songs Pass deathward mournfully.

Cold lips that sing no more, and withered wreaths, Regretful eyes, and drooping breasts and wings-- Symbols of ancient songs Mournfully passing Down to the great white surges, Watched of none Save the frail sea-birds And the lithe pale girls, Daughters of Okeanos.

And the songs pass From the green land Which lies upon the waves as a leaf On the flowers of hyacinth; And they pass from the waters, The manifold winds and the dim moon, And they come, Silently winging through soft Kimmerian dusk, To the quiet level lands That she keeps for us all, That she wrought for us all for sleep In the silver days of the earth's dawning-- Proserpine, daughter of Zeus.

And we turn from the Kuprian's breasts, And we turn from thee, Phoibos Apollon, And we turn from the music of old And the hills that we loved and the meads, And we turn from the fiery day, And the lips that were over-sweet; For silently Brushing the fields with red-shod feet, With purple robe Searing the flowers as with a sudden flame, Death, Thou hast come upon us.

And of all the ancient songs Passing to the swallow-blue halls By the dark streams of Persephone, This only remains: That in the end we turn to thee, Death, That we turn to thee, singing One last song.

O Death, Thou art an healing wind That blowest over white flowers A-tremble with dew; Thou art a wind flowing Over long leagues of lonely sea; Thou art the dusk and the fragrance; Thou art the lips of love mournfully smiling; Thou art the pale peace of one Satiate with old desires; Thou art the silence of beauty, And we look no more for the morning; We yearn no more for the sun, Since with thy white hands, Death, Thou crownest us with the pallid chaplets, The slim colorless poppies Which in thy garden alone Softly thou gatherest.

And silently; And with slow feet approaching; And with bowed head and unlit eyes, We kneel before thee: And thou, leaning towards us, Caressingly layest upon us Flowers from thy thin cold hands, And, smiling as a chaste woman Knowing love in her heart, Thou sealest our eyes And the illimitable quietude Comes gently upon us.

_Richard Aldington_

TO A GREEK MARBLE

[Greek: Photnia, photnia], White grave goddess, Pity my sadness, O silence of Paros.

I am not of these about thy feet, These garments and decorum; I am thy brother, Thy lover of aforetime crying to thee, And thou hearest me not.

I have whispered thee in thy solitudes Of our loves in Phrygia, The far ecstasy of burning noons When the fragile pipes Ceased in the cypress shade, And the brown fingers of the shepherd Moved over slim shoulders; And only the cicada sang.

I have told thee of the hills And the lisp of reeds And the sun upon thy breasts,

And thou hearest me not, [Greek: Photnia, photnia], Thou hearest me not.

_Richard Aldington_

AU VIEUX JARDIN.

I have sat here happy in the gardens, Watching the still pool and the reeds And the dark clouds Which the wind of the upper air Tore like the green leafy boughs Of the divers-hued trees of late summer; But though I greatly delight In these and the water-lilies, That which sets me nighest to weeping Is the rose and white color of the smooth flag-stones, And the pale yellow grasses Among them.

_Richard Aldington_

UNDER TWO WINDOWS

I. AUBADE

The dawn is here--and the long night through I have never seen thy face, Though my feet have worn the patient grass at the gate of thy dwelling-place.

While the white moon sailed till, red in the west, it found the far world-edge, No leaflet stirred of the leaves that climb to garland thy window ledge.

Yet the vine had quivered from root to tip, and opened its flowers again, If only the low moon's light had glanced on a moving casement pane.

Warm was the wind that entered in where the barrier stood ajar, And the curtain shook with its gentle breath, white as young lilies are;