Part 9

And some day, all of the world that beats And cries at my door, shall see A thousand moon-leaves sprout from my thatch On a marvellous white Moon-tree! Then each shall have moons to his heart's desire: Apples of silver and pearl: Apples of orange and copper fire, Setting his five wits aswirl. And then they will thank me, who mock me now: "Wanting the Moon is he!" Oh, I'm off to the mountain after the Moon, Ere she falls from the dead fir-tree!

WARNING

You must do nothing false Or cruel-lipped or low; For I am Conn the Fool, And Conn the Fool will know.

I went by the door When Patrick Joyce looked out. He did not wish for me Or any one about.

He thought I did not see The fat bag in his hand. But Conn heard clinking gold, And Conn could understand.

I went by the door Where Michael Kane lay dead. I saw his Mary tie A red shawl round her head.

I saw a dark man lean Across her garden-wall. They did not know that Conn Walked by at late dusk-fall.

You must not scold or lie, Or hate or steal or kill, For I shall tell the wind That leaps along the hill;

And he will tell the stars That sing and never lie; And they will shout your sin In God's face, bye and bye.

And God will not forget, For all He loves you so.-- He made me Conn the Fool, And bade me always know!

STORM DANCE

The water came up with a roar, The water came up to me. There was a wave with tusks of a boar, And he gnashed his tusks on me. I leaned, I leapt, and was free. He snarled and struggled and fled. Foaming and blind he turned to the sea, And his brothers trampled him dead.

The water came up with a shriek, The water came up to me. There was a wave with a woman's cheek, And she shuddered and clung to me. I crouched, I cast her away. She cursed me and swooned and died. Her green hair tangled like sea-weed lay Tossed out on the tearing tide.

Challenge and chase me, Storm! Harry and hate me, Wave! Wild as the wind is my heart, but warm, Sudden and merry and brave. For the water comes up with a shout, The water comes up to me. And oh, but I laugh, laugh out! And the great gulls laugh, and the sea!

_Fannie Stearns Davis_

DIRGE FOR A DEAD ADMIRAL

What woman but would be Rid of thy mastery, Thou bully of the sea?

No more the gray sea's breast Need answer thy behest; No more thy sullen gun Shall greet the risen sun, Where the great dreadnaughts ride The breast of thy cold bride; Thou hast fulfilled thy fate: Need trade no more with hate!

Nay, but I celebrate Thy long-to-be-lorn mate, Thy mistress and her state, Thy lady sea's lorn state. She hath her empery Not only over thee But o'er _our_ misery.

Hark, doth she mourn for thee?

Nay, what hath she of grief? She knoweth not the leaf That on her bosom falls, Thou last of admirals!

Under the winter moon She singeth that fierce tune, Her immemorial rune; Knoweth not, late or soon, Careth not Any jot For her withholden boon To all thy spirit's pleas For infinite surcease!

If, on this winter night, O thou great admiral That in thy sombre pall Liest upon the land, Thy soul should take his flight And leave the frozen sand, And yearn above the surge, Think'st thou that any dirge, Grief inarticulate From thy bereaved mate, Would answer to thy soul Where the waste waters roll?

Nay, thou hast need of none! Thy long love-watch is done!

SPRING-SONG

Early some morning in May-time I shall awaken When the breeze blowing in at the window Shall bathe me With the delicate scents Of the blossoms of apples, Filling my room with their coolness And beauty and fragrance-- As of old, as of old, When your spirit dwelt with me, My heart shall be pure As the heart that you gave me.

A SWEETHEART: THOMPSON STREET

Queen of all streets, Fifth Avenue Stretches her slender limbs From the great Arch of Triumph, on,-- On, where the distance dims

The splendors of her jewelled robes, Her granite draperies; The magic, sunset-smitten walls That veil her marble knees;

For ninety squares she lies a queen, Superb, bare, unashamed, Yielding her beauty scornfully To worshippers unnamed.

But at her feet her sister glows, A daughter of the South: Squalid, immeasurably mean,-- But oh! her hot, sweet mouth!

My Thompson Street! a Tuscan girl, Hot with life's wildest blood; Her black shawl on her black, black hair, Her brown feet stained with mud;

A scarlet blossom at her lips, A new babe at her breast; A singer at a wine-shop door, (Her lover unconfessed).

Listen! a hurdy-gurdy plays-- Now alien melodies: She smiles, she cannot quite forget The mother over-seas.

But she no less is mine alone, Mine, mine!... Who may I be? Have _I_ betrayed her from her home? I am called Liberty!

THE OFF-SHORE WIND

The skies are sown with stars tonight, The sea is sown with light, The hollows of the heaving floor Gleam deep with light once more, The racing ebb-tide flashes past And seeks the vacant vast, A wind steals from a world asleep And walks the restless deep.

It walks the deep in ecstasy, It lives! and loves to free Its spirit to the silent night, And breathes deep in delight; Above the sea that knows no coast, Beneath the starry host, The wind walks like the souls of men Who walk with God again.

The souls of men who walk with God! With faith's firm sandals shod, A lambent passion, body-free, Fain for eternity! O spirit born of human sighs, Set loose 'twixt sea and skies, Be thou an Angel of mankind, Thou night-unfettered wind!

Bear thou the dreams of weary earth, Bear thou Tomorrow's birth, Take all our longings up to Him Until His stars grow dim; A moving anchorage of prayer, Thou cool and healing air, Heading off-shore till shoreless dawn Breaks fair and night is gone.

_Samuel McCoy_

"THE HILL-FLOWERS"

"_I will lift up mine eyes to the hills._"

I

_Moving through the dew, moving through the dew, Ere I waken in the city--Life, thy dawn makes all things new! And up a fir-clad glen, far from all the haunts of men, Up a glen among the mountains, oh my feet are wings again!_

Moving through the dew, moving through the dew, O mountains of my boyhood, I come again to you, By the little path I know, with the sea far below, And above, the great cloud-galleons with their sails of rose and snow;

As of old, when all was young, and the earth a song unsung And the heather through the crimson dawn its Eden incense flung From the mountain-heights of joy, for a careless-hearted boy, And the lavrocks rose like fountain sprays of bliss that ne'er could cloy,

From their little beds of bloom, from the golden gorse and broom, With a song to God the Giver, o'er that waste of wild perfume; Blowing from height to height, in a glory of great light, While the cottage-clustered valleys held the lilac last of night,

So, when dawn is in the skies, in a dream, a dream, I rise, And I follow my lost boyhood to the heights of Paradise. Life, thy dawn makes all things new! Hills of Youth, I come to you, Moving through the dew, moving through the dew.

II

Moving through the dew, moving through the dew, Floats a brother's face to meet me! Is it you? Is it you? For the night I leave behind keeps these dazzled eyes still blind! But oh, the little hill-flowers, their scent is wise and kind;

And I shall not lose the way from the darkness to the day, While dust can cling as their scent clings to memory for aye; And the least link in the chain can recall the whole again, And heaven at last resume its far-flung harvests, grain by grain.

To the hill-flowers clings my dust, and tho' eyeless Death may thrust All else into the darkness, in their heaven I put my trust; And a dawn shall bid me climb to the little spread of thyme Where first I heard the ripple of the fountain-heads of rhyme.

And a fir-wood that I know, from dawn to sunset-glow, Shall whisper to a lonely sea, that swings far, far below. Death, thy dawn makes all things new. Hills of Youth, I come to you, Moving through the dew, moving through the dew.

_Alfred Noyes_

EDITORIAL COMMENT

THE SERVIAN EPIC

Poetry as the inspiration of the Balkan war was the theme of a recent talk given by Madame Slavko Grouitch before the Friday Club in Chicago, and elsewhere, during her brief sojourn in her native country. Madame Grouitch was a student at the American School of Archaeology in Athens when she married the young Servian diplomat who now represents his nation in London.

According to the speaker, the Servian national songs have kept alive the heroic spirit of the people during more than four centuries of Turkish oppression. Through them each generation of the illiterate peasantry has fought once more the ancient wars, and followed once more the ancient leaders even to the final tragedy of the battle of Kossovo, where in 1377 they made their last brave stand against the Mohammedan invader. Whenever a few people assemble for a festival, some local bard, perhaps an old shepherd or soldier, a blind beggar or reformed brigand, will chant the old songs to the monotonous music of the _gusle_, while the people dance the _Kolo_.

"There are thousands of songs in the Servian epic," says Mme. Grouitch, "and each has many variants according to whether it is sung in Bosnia, Herzegovina, Montenegro, Dalmatia, Servia, Bulgaria or Macedonia; for all these political divisions are peopled by the Servian race descended from the heroes whose deeds are the theme of such unwearied narration. The bard is called the Guslar from his one-stringed instrument, whose melancholy cadence--a sighing-forth of sound--affects the emotions and increases the pathos of the words. For the story is usually sad, even when it proclaims the triumph of great deeds."

These songs invariably begin:

Once it was so; now it is told.

And they as invariably end:

From me the song; from God health to you.

A number of poems were read from Mme. Mijatovich's rather uninspired translation of the Kossovo series, published in London in 1881. Extreme simplicity and vividness characterize the old epic, which follows the hopeless struggle of the noble Czar Lazar against the foe without, and suspicions, dissensions, blunders, even treacheries, within. Certain characters stand out with the uncompromising exactness of some biblical story: the Czar himself; his over-zealous Vojvode; Milosh Obilich, whose murder of Sultan Murad precipitated the disaster; and certain haughty and passionate women, like the Empress Militza and her two daughters. Also "Marko, the King's son," whose half-mythical figure is of the race of Achilles.

"There was one thing," said Mme. Grouitch, "which the Turk could not take away from the Serb--the heavenly gift of poetry; that continued to dwell hidden in the breast of the southern Slav. His body was enslaved, but his soul was not; his physical life was oppressed, but his spiritual being remained free. In the eighteenth century Europe re-discovered the Servian national poetry, and became conscious that the race survived as well as its ideals. Then Serb and Bulgar again appeared in current history, and began to retrace the ancient boundaries.

"All the conferences of all the powers can never diminish the hopes, nor eclipse the glory of the Serb race in the minds of the Balkan peoples; because the Guslar, who is their supreme national leader, is forever telling them of that glory, and urging them to concerted action against all outside foes. It was the Guslar who led the Montenegrin Serbs from one heroic victory to another, so that 'their war annals,' as Gladstone said, 'are more glorious than those of all the rest of the world.' It was the Guslar who inspired Kara George and his heroic band of Servian peasants to keep up their battle until free Servia was born.

"Amid the roar of cannon at Lule Burgas and Monastir, I could hear the mighty voice of the Guslar reminding Serb and Bulgar that their fight was for 'the honored cross and golden liberty.' And they obeyed because it was the voice of their nation. It is this irresistible national spirit which leads their armies, and beside it the spirit of German training behind the Turk is a lifeless shadow. The Ottoman power in Europe is in ruins now, a wreck in the path of a national earthquake which the Guslar has prophesied for five hundred years. The Guslar has done his duty, and he stands today in a blaze of glory at the head of the united and victorious nations of the Balkans."

The speaker told of an impressive ceremony at the Servian legation in London. Young Servians, recalled home for military service last autumn, met there on the eve of departure. Wine being served, the minister and his young patriots rose with lifted glasses, and chanted the ancient summons of Czar Lazar to his people:

Whoever born of Serbian blood or kin Comes not to fight the Turk on Kossovo, To him be never son or daughter born, No child to heir his lands or bear his name! For him no grape grow red, no corn grow white; In his hands nothing prosper! May he live Alone, unloved! and die unmourned, alone!

_H. M._

IMAGISME[C]

Some curiosity has been aroused concerning _Imagisme_, and as I was unable to find anything definite about it in print, I sought out an _imagiste_, with intent to discover whether the group itself knew anything about the "movement." I gleaned these facts.

[Footnote C: Editor's Note--In response to many requests for information regarding _Imagism_ and the _Imagistes_, we publish this note by Mr. Flint, supplementing it with further exemplification by Mr. Pound. It will be seen from these that _Imagism_ is not necessarily associated with Hellenic subjects, or with _vers libre_ as a prescribed form.]

The _imagistes_ admitted that they were contemporaries of the Post Impressionists and the Futurists; but they had nothing in common with these schools. They had not published a manifesto. They were not a revolutionary school; their only endeavor was to write in accordance with the best tradition, as they found it in the best writers of all time,--in Sappho, Catullus, Villon. They seemed to be absolutely intolerant of all poetry that was not written in such endeavor, ignorance of the best tradition forming no excuse. They had a few rules, drawn up for their own satisfaction only, and they had not published them. They were:

1. Direct treatment of the "thing," whether subjective or objective. 2. To use absolutely no word that did not contribute to the presentation. 3. As regarding rhythm: to compose in sequence of the musical phrase, not in sequence of a metronome.

By these standards they judged all poetry, and found most of it wanting. They held also a certain 'Doctrine of the Image,' which they had not committed to writing; they said that it did not concern the public, and would provoke useless discussion.

The devices whereby they persuaded approaching poetasters to attend their instruction were:

1. They showed him his own thought already splendidly expressed in some classic (and the school musters altogether a most formidable erudition). 2. They re-wrote his verses before his eyes, using about ten words to his fifty.

Even their opponents admit of them--ruefully--"At least they do keep bad poets from writing!"

I found among them an earnestness that is amazing to one accustomed to the usual London air of poetic dilettantism. They consider that Art is all science, all religion, philosophy and metaphysic. It is true that _snobisme_ may be urged against them; but it is at least _snobisme_ in its most dynamic form, with a great deal of sound sense and energy behind it; and they are stricter with themselves than with any outsider.

_F. S. Flint_

A FEW DONT'S BY AN IMAGISTE

An "Image" is that which presents an intellectual and emotional complex in an instant of time. I use the term "complex" rather in the technical sense employed by the newer psychologists, such as Hart, though we might not agree absolutely in our application.

It is the presentation of such a "complex" instantaneously which gives that sense of sudden liberation; that sense of freedom from time limits and space limits; that sense of sudden growth, which we experience in the presence of the greatest works of art.

It is better to present one Image in a lifetime than to produce voluminous works.

All this, however, some may consider open to debate. The immediate necessity is to tabulate A LIST OF DONT'S for those beginning to write verses. But I can not put all of them into Mosaic negative.

To begin with, consider the three rules recorded by Mr. Flint, not as dogma--never consider anything as dogma--but as the result of long contemplation, which, even if it is some one else's contemplation, may be worth consideration.

Pay no attention to the criticism of men who have never themselves written a notable work. Consider the discrepancies between the actual writing of the Greek poets and dramatists, and the theories of the Graeco-Roman grammarians, concocted to explain their metres.

LANGUAGE

Use no superfluous word, no adjective, which does not reveal something.

Don't use such an expression as "dim lands _of peace_." It dulls the image. It mixes an abstraction with the concrete. It comes from the writer's not realizing that the natural object is always the _adequate_ symbol.

Go in fear of abstractions. Don't retell in mediocre verse what has already been done in good prose. Don't think any intelligent person is going to be deceived when you try to shirk all the difficulties of the unspeakably difficult art of good prose by chopping your composition into line lengths.

What the expert is tired of today the public will be tired of tomorrow.

Don't imagine that the art of poetry is any simpler than the art of music, or that you can please the expert before you have spent at least as much effort on the art of verse as the average piano teacher spends on the art of music.

Be influenced by as many great artists as you can, but have the decency either to acknowledge the debt outright, or to try to conceal it.

Don't allow "influence" to mean merely that you mop up the particular decorative vocabulary of some one or two poets whom you happen to admire. A Turkish war correspondent was recently caught red-handed babbling in his dispatches of "dove-gray" hills, or else it was "pearl-pale," I can not remember.

Use either no ornament or good ornament.

RHYTHM AND RHYME

Let the candidate fill his mind with the finest cadences he can discover, preferably in a foreign language so that the meaning of the words may be less likely to divert his attention from the movement; e.g., Saxon charms, Hebridean Folk Songs, the verse of Dante, and the lyrics of Shakespeare--if he can dissociate the vocabulary from the cadence. Let him dissect the lyrics of Goethe coldly into their component sound values, syllables long and short, stressed and unstressed, into vowels and consonants.

It is not necessary that a poem should rely on its music, but if it does rely on its music that music must be such as will delight the expert.

Let the neophyte know assonance and alliteration, rhyme immediate and delayed, simple and polyphonic, as a musician would expect to know harmony and counterpoint and all the minutiae of his craft. No time is too great to give to these matters or to any one of them, even if the artist seldom have need of them.

Don't imagine that a thing will "go" in verse just because it's too dull to go in prose.

Don't be "viewy"--leave that to the writers of pretty little philosophic essays. Don't be descriptive; remember that the painter can describe a landscape much better than you can, and that he has to know a deal more about it.

When Shakespeare talks of the "Dawn in russet mantle clad" he presents something which the painter does not present. There is in this line of his nothing that one can call description; he presents.

Consider the way of the scientists rather than the way of an advertising agent for a new soap.

The scientist does not expect to be acclaimed as a great scientist until he has _discovered_ something. He begins by learning what has been discovered already. He goes from that point onward. He does not bank on being a charming fellow personally. He does not expect his friends to applaud the results of his freshman class work. Freshmen in poetry are unfortunately not confined to a definite and recognizable class room. They are "all over the shop." Is it any wonder "the public is indifferent to poetry?"

Don't chop your stuff into separate _iambs_. Don't make each line stop dead at the end, and then begin every next line with a heave. Let the beginning of the next line catch the rise of the rhythm wave, unless you want a definite longish pause.

In short, behave as a musician, a good musician, when dealing with that phase of your art which has exact parallels in music. The same laws govern, and you are bound by no others.

Naturally, your rhythmic structure should not destroy the shape of your words, or their natural sound, or their meaning. It is improbable that, at the start, you will be able to get a rhythm-structure strong enough to affect them very much, though you may fall a victim to all sorts of false stopping due to line ends and caesurae.

The musician can rely on pitch and the volume of the orchestra. You can not. The term harmony is misapplied to poetry; it refers to simultaneous sounds of different pitch. There is, however, in the best verse a sort of residue of sound which remains in the ear of the hearer and acts more or less as an organ-base. A rhyme must have in it some slight element of surprise if it is to give pleasure; it need not be bizarre or curious, but it must be well used if used at all.

Vide further Vildrac and Duhamel's notes on rhyme in "_Technique Poetique_."

That part of your poetry which strikes upon the imaginative _eye_ of the reader will lose nothing by translation into a foreign tongue; that which appeals to the ear can reach only those who take it in the original.

Consider the definiteness of Dante's presentation, as compared with Milton's rhetoric. Read as much of Wordsworth as does not seem too unutterably dull.

If you want the gist of the matter go to Sappho, Catullus, Villon, Heine when he is in the vein, Gautier when he is not too frigid; or, if you have not the tongues, seek out the leisurely Chaucer. Good prose will do you no harm, and there is good discipline to be had by trying to write it.

Translation is likewise good training, if you find that your original matter "wobbles" when you try to rewrite it. The meaning of the poem to be translated can not "wobble."

If you are using a symmetrical form, don't put in what you want to say and then fill up the remaining vacuums with slush.

Don't mess up the perception of one sense by trying to define it in terms of another. This is usually only the result of being too lazy to find the exact word. To this clause there are possibly exceptions.

The first three simple proscriptions[D] will throw out nine-tenths of all the bad poetry now accepted as standard and classic; and will prevent you from many a crime of production.