Part 5

The six poems now published were chosen from a hundred lyrics about to appear in book form. They might just as well have been any other six, for they do not represent a summit of attainment but an average.

These poems are cast, in the original, in metres perhaps the most finished and most subtle of any known to us. If you refine the art of the troubadours, combine it with that of the Pleiade, and add to that the sound-unit principle of the most advanced artists in _vers libre_, you would get something like the system of Bengali verse. The sound of it when spoken is rather like good Greek, for Bengali is daughter of Sanscrit, which is a kind of uncle or elder brother of the Homeric idiom.

All this series of a hundred poems are made to music, for "Mr." Tagore is not only the great poet of Bengal, he is also their great musician. He teaches his songs, and they are sung throughout Bengal more or less as the troubadours' songs were sung through Europe in the twelfth century.

And we feel here in London, I think, much as the people of Petrarch's time must have felt about the mysterious lost language, the Greek that was just being restored to Europe after centuries of deprivation. That Greek was the lamp of our renaissance and its perfections have been the goal of our endeavor ever since.

I speak with all seriousness when I say that this beginning of our more intimate intercourse with Bengal is the opening of another period. For one thing the content of this first brief series of poems will destroy the popular conception of Buddhism, for we in the Occident are apt to regard it as a religion negative and anti-Christian.

The Greek gave us humanism; a belief in _mens sana in corpore sano_, a belief in proportion and balance. The Greek shows us man as the sport of the gods; the sworn foe of fate and the natural forces. The Bengali brings to us the pledge of a calm which we need overmuch in an age of steel and mechanics. It brings a quiet proclamation of the fellowship between man and the gods; between man and nature.

It is all very well to object that this is not the first time we have had this fellowship proclaimed, but in the arts alone can we find the inner heart of a people. There is a deeper calm and a deeper conviction in this eastern expression than we have yet attained. It is by the arts alone that one people learns to meet another far distant people in friendship and respect.

I speak with all gravity when I say that world-fellowship is nearer for the visit of Rabindranath Tagore to London.

_Ezra Pound_

REVIEWS

_The Poems of Rosamund Marriott Watson_ (John Lane.)

This English poet, whose singing ceased a year ago, had a real lyric gift, though a very slight one. The present volume is a collection of all her poems, from the first girlish sheaf _Tares_, to _The Lamp and the Lute_, which she was preparing for publication when she died.

Through this whole life-record her poetry ripples along as smoothly and delicately as a meadow rill, with never a pause nor a flurry nor a thrill. She sings prettily of everyone, from the _Last Fairy_ to William Ernest Henley, and of everything, from _Death and Justice_ to the _Orchard of the Moon_, but she has nothing arresting or important to say of any of these subjects, and no keen magic of phrase to give her warbling that intense vitality which would win for her the undying fame prophesied by her loyal husband in his preface.

Nevertheless, her feeling is genuine, her touch light, and her tune a quiet monotone of gentle soothing music which has a certain soft appeal. Perhaps the secret of it is the fine quality of soul which breathes through these numerous lyrics, a soul too reserved to tell its whole story, and too preoccupied with the little things around and within her to pay much attention to the thinking, fighting, ever-moving world without.

* * * * *

A big-spirited, vital, headlong narrative poem is _The Adventures of Young Maverick_, by Hervey White, who runs a printing press at Woodstock, N. Y., and bravely publishes _The Wild Hawk_, his own little magazine. The poem has as many moods as _Don Juan_, which is plainly, though not tyrannically, its model.

The poem is long for these days--five cantos and nearly six hundred Spenserian stanzas. Yet the most casual reader, one would think, could scarcely find it tedious, even though the satirical passages run heavily at times. The hero is a colt of lofty Arabian lineage, and the poem becomes eloquently pictorial in setting forth his beauty:

Young Maverick in the upland pastures lay Woven as in the grass, while star-like flowers, Shaking their petals down in sweet array Dappled his flanks with gentle breathless showers. The thread green stems, tangled in bending bowers, Their pollen plumes of dust closed over him, Enwoofing through the drowse of summer hours, The pattern of his body, head and limb; His color of pale gold glowed as with sunshine dim.

The spirit of the West is in this poem, its freedom, spaciousness, strong sunshine; also its careless good humor and half sardonic fun. The race between the horse and the Mexican boy is as swift, vivid and rhythmical as a mountain stream; and the Mexican family, even to the fat old Gregorio, are characterized to the life, with a sympathy only too rare among writers of the Anglo-Saxon race.

Certain other characterizations are equally incisive, this for example:

Sometimes I peep into a modern poet Like Arthur Symons, vaguely beautiful, Who loves but love, not caring who shall know it; I wonder that he never finds it dull.

Mr. White is so profoundly a democrat, and so wholeheartedly a poet of the broad, level average American people, that both social and artistic theories sit very lightly upon him. He achieves beauty as by chance now and then, because he can not help it, but always he achieves a warm vitality, the persuasive illusion of life.

* * * * *

_The Iscariot_, by Eden Phillpotts (John Lane), is the ingenious effort of a theorist in human nature to unroll the convolutions of the immortal traitor's soul. And it is as ineffectual as any such effort must be to remould characters long fixed in literary or historic tradition. In the art of the world Judas is Judas; anyone who tries to make him over into a pattern of misguided loyalty has his labor for his pains.

The blank verse in which the monologue is uttered is accurately measured and sufficiently sonorous.

_H. M._

_Interpretations: A Book of First Poems_, by Zoë Akins (Mitchell Kennerley).

The poems in this volume are creditable in texture, revealing a conscious sense of artistic workmanship which it is a pleasure to find in a book of first poems by a young American. A certain rhythmic monotony may be mentioned as an impression gained from a consecutive reading, and a prevailing twilight mood, united, in the longer poems, with a vein of the emotionally feminine.

Two short lyrics, however, _I Am the Wind_ and _The Tragedienne_, stand apart in isolated perfection, even as the two Greek columns in the ruined theater at Arles; an impression recalled by the opening stanza of _The Tragedienne_:

Upon a hill in Thessaly Stand broken columns in a line About a cold forgotten shrine Beneath a moon in Thessaly.

This is the first of the monthly volumes of poetry to be issued by Mr. Kennerley. It awakens pleasant anticipation of those to follow.

_Lyrical Poems_, By Lucy Lyttelton. (Thomas B. Mosher.)

The twilight mood also prevails in the poems of Lucy Lyttelton, although the crest of a fine modern impulse may be traced in _A Vision_, _The Japanese Widow_, _The Black Madonna_, and _A Song of Revolution_.

"Where is Owen Griffiths?" Broken and alone Crushed he lies in darkness beneath Festiniog stone. "Bring his broken body before me to the throne For a crown.

"Oftentimes in secret in prayer he came to me, Now to men and angels I know him openly. I that was beside him when he came to die Fathoms down.

"And, Evan Jones, stand forward, whose life was shut in gloom, And a narrow grave they gave you 'twixt marble tomb and tomb. But now the great that trod you shall give you elbow room And renown."

These poems unite delicacy and strength. They convince us of sincerity and intensity of vision.

_A. C. H._

NOTES AND ANNOUNCEMENTS.

It is hardly necessary to introduce to the lovers of lyric and dramatic verse Mr. William Butler Yeats, who honors the Christmas number of _Poetry_ by his presence. A score or more of years have passed since his voice, perfect in quality, began to speak and sing in high loyalty to the beauty of poetic art, especially the ancient poetic art of his own Irish people. His influence, reinforced by the prompt allegiance of Lady Gregory, Mr. Douglass Hyde, the late J. M. Synge, and many other Irish men and women of letters, has sufficed to lift the beautiful old Gaelic literature out of the obscurity of merely local recognition into a position of international importance. This fact alone is a sufficient acknowledgment of Mr. Yeats' genius, and of the enthusiasm which his leadership has inspired among the thinkers and singers of his race.

Mr. George Sterling, of Carmel-by-the-Sea, California, is well known to American readers of poetry through his two books of verse, _Wine of Wizardry_ and _The House of Orchids_.

Mr. Clark Ashton Smith, also of California, is a youth whose talent has been acclaimed quite recently by a few newspapers of his own state, and recognized by one or two eastern publications.

Mr. John Reed, of New York, and Alice Corbin, the wife of William P. Henderson, the Chicago painter, are Americans. The latter has contributed verse and prose to various magazines. The former is a young journalist, born in 1887, who has published little verse as yet.

Rabindranath Tagore, the poet of Bengal, is sufficiently introduced by Mr. Pound's article.

BOOKS RECEIVED

_The Vaunt of Man and Other Poems_, by William Ellery Leonard. B. W. Huebsch. _Romance, Vision and Satire_: English Alliterative Poems of the XIV Century, Newly Rendered in the Original Metres, by Jessie L. Weston. Houghton Mifflin Co. _Etain The Beloved_, by James H. Cousins. Maunsel & Co. _Uriel and Other Poems_, by Percy MacKaye. Houghton Mifflin Co. _The Unconquered Air_, by Florence Earle Coates. Houghton Mifflin Co. _A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass_, by Amy Lowell. Houghton Mifflin Co. _The Lure of the Sea_, by J. E. Patterson. George H. Doran Co. _The Roadside Fire_, by Amelia Josephine Burr. George H. Doran Co. _By the Way._ Verses, Fragments and Notes, by William Allingham. Arranged by Helen Allingham. Longmans, Green & Co. _Gabriel_, A Pageant of Vigil, by Isabelle Howe Fiske. Thomas B. Mosher. _Pilgrimage to Haunts of Browning_, by Pauline Leavens. The Bowrons, Chicago. _The Wind on the Heath_, Ballads and Lyrics, by May Byron. George H. Doran. _Valley Song and Verse_, by William Hutcheson. Fraser, Asher & Co. _The Queen of Orplede_, by Charles Wharton Stork. Elkin Mathews. _Pocahontas_, A Pageant, by Margaret Ullman. The Poet Lore Co. _Poems_, by Robert Underwood Johnson. The Century Co. _Songs Before Birth_, Isabelle Howe Fiske. Thomas B. Mosher. _Book Titles From Shakespeare_, by Volney Streamer. Thomas B. Mosher. _A Bunch of Blossoms_, Little Verses for Little Children, by E. Gordon Browne. Longmans, Green & Co. _June on the Miami_, by William Henry Venable. Stewart & Kidd. _The Tragedy of Etarre_, A Poem, by Rhys Carpenter. Sturgis & Walton Co. _In Other Words_, by Franklin P. Adams. Doubleday, Page & Co. _Verses and Sonnets_, by Julia Stockton Dinsmore. Doubleday, Page & Co. _Anna Marcella's Book of Verses_, by Cyrenus Cole. Printed for Personal Distribution. _Atala_, An American Idyl, by Anna Olcott Commelin. E. P. Dutton & Co. _Spring in Tuscany_, an Authology. Thos. B. Mosher.

Poetry VOL. I A Magazine of Verse NO. 4

JANUARY, 1913

GENERAL WILLIAM BOOTH ENTERS INTO HEAVEN

(_To be sung to the tune of_ THE BLOOD OF THE LAMB _with indicated instruments_.)

[Sidenote: Bass drums]

Booth led boldly with his big bass drum. _Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?_ The saints smiled gravely, and they said, "He's come," _Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?_ Walking lepers followed, rank on rank, Lurching bravos from the ditches dank, Drabs from the alleyways and drug-fiends pale-- Minds still passion-ridden, soul-powers frail! Vermin-eaten saints with mouldy breath, Unwashed legions with the ways of death-- _Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?_

Every slum had sent its half-a-score The round world over--Booth had groaned for more. Every banner that the wide world flies

[Sidenote: Banjo]

Bloomed with glory and transcendent dyes. Big-voiced lasses made their banjos bang! Tranced, fanatical, they shrieked and sang, _Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?_ Hallelujah! It was queer to see Bull-necked convicts with that land make free! Loons with bazoos blowing blare, blare, blare-- On, on, upward through the golden air. _Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?_

[Sidenote: Bass drums slower and softer]

Booth died blind, and still by faith he trod, Eyes still dazzled by the ways of God. Booth led boldly and he looked the chief: Eagle countenance in sharp relief, Beard a-flying, air of high command Unabated in that holy land.

[Sidenote: Flutes]

Jesus came from out the Court-House door, Stretched his hands above the passing poor. Booth saw not, but led his queer ones there Round and round the mighty Court-House square. Yet in an instant all that blear review Marched on spotless, clad in raiment new. The lame were straightened, withered limbs uncurled And blind eyes opened on a new sweet world.

[Sidenote: Bass drums louder and faster]

Drabs and vixens in a flash made whole! Gone was the weasel-head, the snout, the jowl; Sages and sibyls now, and athletes clean. Rulers of empires, and of forests green!

[Sidenote: Grand Chorus--tambourines--all instruments in full blast]

The hosts were sandalled and their wings were fire-- _Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?_ But their noise played havoc with the angel-choir. _Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?_ Oh, shout Salvation! it was good to see Kings and princes by the Lamb set free. The banjos rattled, and the tambourines Jing-jing-jingled in the hands of queens!

[Sidenote: Reverently sung--no instruments]

And when Booth halted by the curb for prayer He saw his Master through the flag-filled air. Christ came gently with a robe and crown For Booth the soldier while the throng knelt down. He saw King Jesus--they were face to face, And he knelt a-weeping in that holy place. _Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?_

_Nicholas Vachel Lindsay_

WASTE LAND

Briar and fennel and chincapin, And rue and ragweed everywhere; The field seemed sick as a soul with sin, Or dead of an old despair, Born of an ancient care.

The cricket's cry and the locust's whirr, And the note of a bird's distress, With the rasping sound of the grasshopper, Clung to the loneliness Like burrs to a trailing dress.

So sad the field, so waste the ground, So curst with an old despair, A woodchuck's burrow, a blind mole's mound, And a chipmunk's stony lair, Seemed more than it could bear.

So lonely, too, so more than sad, So droning-lone with bees-- I wondered what more could Nature add To the sum of its miseries ... And _then_--I saw the trees.

Skeletons gaunt that gnarled the place, Twisted and torn they rose-- The tortured bones of a perished race Of monsters no mortal knows, They startled the mind's repose.

And a man stood there, as still as moss, A lichen form that stared; With an old blind hound that, at a loss, Forever around him fared With a snarling fang half bared.

I looked at the man; I saw him plain; Like a dead weed, gray and wan, Or a breath of dust. I looked again-- And man and dog were gone, Like wisps of the graying dawn....

Were they a part of the grim death there-- Ragweed, fennel, and rue? Or forms of the mind, an old despair, That there into semblance grew Out of the grief I knew?

_Madison Cawein_

MY LADY OF THE BEECHES

Here among the beeches Winds and wild perfume, That the twilight pleaches Into gleam and gloom, Build for her a room.

Her, whose Beauty cometh, Misty as the morn, When the wild bee hummeth, At its honey-horn, In the wayside thorn.

As the wood grows dimmer, With the drowsy night, Like a moonbeam glimmer Here she walks in white, With a firefly-light.

Moths around her flitting, Like a moth she goes; Here a moment sitting By this wilding rose, With my heart's repose.

Every bough that dances Has assumed the grace Of her form: and Fancies, Flashed from eye and face, Brood about the place.

And the water, shaken In its plunge and poise, To itself has taken Quiet of her voice, And restrains its joys.

Would that these could tell me What and whence she is; She, who doth enspell me, Fill my soul with bliss Of her spirit kiss.

Though the heart beseech her, And the soul implore, Who is it may reach her-- Safe behind the door Of all woodland lore?

_Madison Cawein_

THE WAYFARERS

Earth, I dare not cling to thee Lest I should lose my precious soul.

_'Tis not more wondrous than the fluff Within the milkweed's autumn boll._

Earth, shall my sacred essences But sink into thy senseless dust?

_The springtide takes its way with them-- And blossoms blow as blossoms must._

Earth, I swear with solemn vow, I feel a greatness in my breath!

_The grass-seed hath its dream of God, Its visioning of life and death._

_Anita Fitch_

_LES CRUELS AMOUREUX_

Two lovers wakened in their tombs-- They had been dead a hundred years-- And in the _langue_ of old Provence They spoke of ancient tears.

"_M'amour_," she called, "I've pardoned you;" (How sad her dreaming seemed to be!) "When I had kissed your dead face once Love's sweet returned to me."

"_M'amour_," he called, "it was too late." (How dreary seemed his ghostly sighs!) "Blessed the soul that love forgives," He whispered, "ere it dies."

And then they turned again and slept With must and mold in ancient way; And so they'll sleep and wake, 'tis told, Until the Judgment Day.

ENVOI

_O damoiseau et damoiselle_, Guard ye your loving while ye live! Sin not against love's sacred flame-- While yet ye may, forgive.

_Anita Fitch_

LOVE-SONGS OF THE OPEN ROAD

MORNING

The morning wind is wooing me; her lips have swept my brow. Was ever dawn so sweet before? the land so fair as now? The wanderlust is luring to wherever roads may lead, While yet the dew is on the hedge. So how can I but heed?

The forest whispers of its shades; of haunts where we have been,-- And where may friends be better made than under God's green inn? Your mouth is warm and laughing and your voice is calling low, While yet the dew is on the hedge. So how can I but go?

NOON

The bees are humming, humming in the clover; The bobolink is singing in the rye; The brook is purling, purling in the valley, And the river's laughing, radiant, to the sky!

The buttercups are nodding in the sunlight; The winds are whispering, whispering to the pine; The joy of June has found me; as an aureole it's crowned me Because, oh best belovèd, you are mine!

NIGHT

In Arcady by moonlight, (Where only lovers go), There is a pool where only The fairest roses grow.

Why are the moonlit roses So sweet beyond compare? Among their purple shadows My love is waiting there.

* * * * *

To Arcady by moonlight The roads are open wide, But only joy can enter And only joy abide.

There is the peace unending That perfect faith can know-- In Arcady by moonlight, Where only lovers go.

_Kendall Banning_

SYMPATHY

As one within a moated tower, I lived my life alone; And dreamed not other granges' dower, Nor ways unlike mine own. I thought I loved. But all alone As one within a moated tower I lived. Nor truly knew One other mortal fortune's hour. As one within a moated tower, One fate alone I knew. Who hears afar the break of day Before the silvered air Reveals her hooded presence gray, And she, herself, is there? I know not how, but now I see The road, the plain, the pluming tree, The carter on the wain. On my horizon wakes a star. The distant hillsides wrinkled far Fold many hearts' domain. On one the fire-worn forests sweep, Above a purple mountain-keep And soar to domes of snow. One heart has swarded fountains deep Where water-lilies blow: And one, a cheerful house and yard, With curtains at the pane, Board-walks down lawns all clover-starred, And full-fold fields of grain. As one within a moated tower I lived my life alone; And dreamed not other granges' dower Nor ways unlike mine own. But now the salt-chased seas uncurled And mountains trooped with pine Are mine. I look on all the world And all the world is mine.

_Edith Wyatt_

A SONG OF HAPPINESS

Ah Happiness: Who called you "Earandel"? (Winter-star, I think, that is); And who can tell the lovely curve By which you seem to come, then swerve Before you reach the middle-earth? And who is there can hold your wing, Or bind you in your mirth, Or win you with a least caress, Or tear, or kiss, or anything-- Insensate happiness?

Once I thought to have you Fast there in a child: All her heart she gave you, Yet you would not stay. Cruel, and careless, Not half reconciled, Pain you cannot bear; When her yellow hair Lay matted, every tress; When those looks of hers, Were no longer hers, You went: in a day She wept you all away.

Once I thought to give You, plighted, holily-- No more fugitive, Returning like the sea: But they that share so well Heaven must portion Hell In their copartnery: Care, ill fate, ill health, Came we know not how And broke our commonwealth. Neither has you now.

Some wait you on the road, Some in an open door Look for the face you show'd Once there--no more. You never wear the dress You danced in yesterday; Yet, seeming gone, you stay, And come at no man's call: Yet, laid for burial, You lift up from the dead Your laughing, spangled head.

Yes, once I did pursue You, unpursuable; Loved, longed for, hoped for you-- Blue-eyed and morning brow'd. Ah, lovely happiness! Now that I know you well, I dare not speak aloud Your fond name in a crowd; Nor conjure you by night, Nor pray at morning-light, Nor count at all on you: