Class. 'PS35'35' Book,. CoBTightN^ •Xo/t?/ S^ ^/^ CDPJflUGHT DEPOSIT. SHADOWY THRESHOLDS SHADOWY THRESHOLDS BY CALE YOUNG RICE AUTHOR OF "WRAITHS AND REALITIES." "COLLECTED PLAYS AND POEMS," ETC. NEW YORK THE CENTURY CO. 1919 ', 1919. Two poems in this volume, also, appeared in a former volume which will not be republished. vii viii PREFACE with the " ultra-moderns " — whose extremism in poetry makes as dull reading as academicism itself. As dull, that is, to those " moderns " who hold that art freedom and finality no more spring from ex- cesses than from conservatism. Who believe, on the contrary, that only a selective liberalism offers both the repose and unrest necessary to permanently interesting creativeness. In calling attention to this, as I do, and to the fact that the creed of " no standards " seems self- destructive, I am not to be construed as opposing free verse movements. Such verse I have ever used — though not the unimpassioned, unimagina- tive, insufficiently rhythmical prose kinds, and not with the belief that it is a substitute for inspira- tion. Neither it, however, nor any quality of poetry old or new has any necessary bearing upon the assertion that " judging poetry is nine-tenths a matter of preference, not of applying standards." That assertion being merely a denial of all author- itativeness in criticism, inevitably destroys any PREFACE ix worth in its own practice — except such as comes from the mere pleasure of expressed opinions. This would be admitted, but there is more. The tone of the " no standards " criticism rarely indi- cates that its adherents really believe themselves incapable of giving the reader permanent guidance or of exacting faith from him. On the contrary, an intolerant confidence in its rightness makes it impatient of all " preference " save its own. Prac- ticers of it, therefore, are not only given an op- portunity for expressing their personal equation, but find in it a shelter for much " preference " aris- ing in friendship, enmity, or ambitious desire to boost the particular kind of verse they themselves write. Further examination of the assertion cannot be attempted here, but this much concerning its ori- gin can be said. Preference is fundamental in all judgment, as faith — according to Mr. Balfour's famous argument — is the foundation of all be- lief. Most people, for example, prefer the beau- X PREFACE tiful to the ugly, the true to the false, the noble to the base. But since times come when conventional imitations of the beautiful cause revolt to the ugly; when banality brings craving for the new, though it be false; or when the uninspiredly noble leads to choice of the decadent — the cry easily rises that no standards of judging poetry really exist. These revolts are not surprising, and are often of value. What is surprising is that so many fail to see that the measure of our artistic sincerity and intelligence is not determined by revolt alone, but by the things to which we revolt — and by what we are willing to destroy. Art may depend on ex- asperation rather than inspiration to break its bonds, but exasperation is not inspiration. Only those extremists who take it to be so will ask us to believe that any prose dullness or absurdity artic- ulated into lines and strung unlyrically before us makes something wholly important in poetry — something no permanent standards can judge. The second assertion that poetry cannot be sat- PREFACE xi isfactorily defined is not confined to the ultra-raod- emists, though frequently used by them and other coterie critics in defending everything they choose to call poetry. Our inability, however, to arrive at a definition of poetry that will be as satisfac- tory as any other definition in this relative world seems due to several confusions. The first of these is that some of us, instead of seeking to make our definition a scientific de- limitation, make it a panegyric. When Keats calls sweet peas beautiful flowers " on tiptoe for a flight," he is not defining sweet peas, but magically prais- ing them. So the recent prize poem defining poetry " a magic light that springs from the deep soul of things " is likewise praise — charming but not de- finitive. Again, some demand that a definition shall be a touchstone enabling us to tell unfailingly what lines are poetry. This is like asking that a definition of gold should contain the name of the acid that detects its pureness. xii PREFACE Yet others, forgetting that all things are condi- tional, and that each must be defined in tlie unde- fined terms of others, ask for an absolute defini- tion. Only a satisfactor>' working definition is re- quired. Finally, many do not realize that the main ob- ject of our definition is to distinguish poetry from prose, on the one hand, and from mere verse on the other. Or, if they do, they assert that, since all people through all time do not agree as to just what things are poetry, no satisfactory definition is possible. Yet experts should be able to define poetry as satisfactorily as other experts define stones or stars — provided they only seek a def- inition which is a descriptive delimitation of that art from any other with which it may be con- fused. If these conclusions are right there is no reason why poetry experts should not as unanimously ac- cept a working definition of poetn' as experts in other fields accept other definitions. I offer there- PREFACE xiii fore this analysis of poetry and a consequent defini- tion: Poetry on its formal side is an art of rhythm, metrical or unmetrical. This rhythm must differ from prose rhythm by being more lyrically or meas- uredly organized. So much is shown by its division into line-lengths, and by the fact that some prose has so many of poetry's other qualities that mere division into line-lengths will suffice to give it the additional lyric value which enables us to say it is poetry. This, however, is not the case with much so-called " polyphonic prose " which is merely camouflaged by rhymes, color-adjectives, and oc- casional metrical rhythms into a resemblance of poetry; as other prose is camouflaged into seeming poetry by being shredded into free verse. On the other hand, and from the side of sub- stance, there are many qualities — of imagination, passion, charm, etc. — which make poetry when they are embodied in a sufficiently musical rhythm. The degree of originality, felicity, or intensity of xiv PREFACE these qualities, and of their rh}ihra, determines the worth of the poetry. For unless any lines in question possess some of these qualities in a meas- ure so rare as to appeal to the real poetry ex- perts of the generations, they must drop into the class of mere verse. Nor does this principle fail if the supposed poetry experts of any generation fail to estimate a Shakespeare — as has happened; or if any promi- nent one or number of them prefer a Pope, as did B}ron, to a Wordsworth, Slielle}', or Keats. The critics of any generation may be right in their esti- mate of a poem, but only the continued survival of its lines for the experts of other generations suf- fices to give them final standing. A definition of poetr}', then, which will describe and delimit it from prose, on the one hand, and from mere verse, on the other, must take all this into consideration. It must, in addition, for brev- ity's sake, find a common term which will be in- clusive of the many different qualities poetry may PREFACE XV possess. Such a definition — though doubtless a better can be framed — I here offer as adequate. Poetry is the expression of our experience in emotional word-rhythms more lyrically measured or organized than those of prose, and having some permanency of appeal not possessed by mere verse. Whether this definition be accepted or not, one thing is clear. We must get rid of the " twilight zone " around poetry in which irresponsible criti- cism can ambush mere likes and dislikes. This can be done by the common-sense recognition that judg- ing poetry is not " nine-tenths a matter of prefer- ence." For although poets may transcend, or critics repeal, the laws of criticism of their predecessors, they can never abrogate the fundamental perma- nent standards of judging true poetic literature. Rareness of rhythm — just now stressed as if it were the whole of inspiration — and of passion, imagination, etc., are immemorial standards of judging, and to them all critics must, and invari- ably do, appeal. PREFACE II Another source of the critical confusion of both today and yesterday has been due, it seems to me, to the failure of critics to comprehend the funda- mental relationships of realism, classicism, and ro- manticism — and the subvarieties of each. For that impressionism, symbolism, mysticism, idealism, transcendentalism, futurism, imagism, etc., are but varieties of these three fundamental divisions of poetry, or of other literature, can easily be shown. An investigation of literary history would re- veal, I fancy, that revolts against realism tend to pass through classicism to romanticism — and the circle is completed by the revolt from romanticism back to realism. This latter is a phenomenon we have recently been experiencing in the reaction against " Victorianism " — which is regarded as de- caying romanticism. A revolt from romanticism — or classicism — to realism is usually thought of as " a return to na- PREFACE xvii ture," or to " the things of everyday life." This return, however, if put psychologically, means es- sentially a return to a literature of the senses. For realism is most largely concerned with the senses and sense-observation of life, A revolt from realism to classicism means that the sensuous has become dull and unsatisfying, and that poets and public want more of the litera- ture of the mind and soul. A revolt from classicism to romanticism can like- wise only mean that writers are no longer finding the things of the mind and soul sufficiently stim- ulating to the poetic faculty. Therefore they reach out into the marvels, mysteries, and wonders that surround life — even into the supernatural or cos- mically unknown. If realism is thus the literature of the senses, it is easy to see that impressionism, futurism, and imagism are but minor forms of it. Impression- ism is the literature of sense impressions that are evanescent or atmospheric. Imagism is but static xviii - PREFACE impressionism stripped of atmosphere and subjec- tivity. Futurism but a clamor for sense impres- sions that are " primitive " or brutally real. In like manner transcendentalism and idealism are but sublimated forms of classicism; and the kin- ship of symbolism and mysticism to romanticism becomes manifest. Symbolists either wish to ex- press life mysteriously — " in a way that cannot be analyzed " the French Symbolists put it; or to express the mysteries of life under certain forms or symbols that will give them a suggestive concrete- ness. Mystics, on the other hand, are but romantics who mount out of sense, mind, and soul to some transcendent unity with the universe or God. That this analysis is correct must, I believe, be admitted. With its critical recognition we should be better able to comprehend the need or value of changing from any one of these " isms " to another and the defects literary minds are likely to fall into in making the change. Mere rebels, for ex- ample, would not so easily be able to shout or PREFACE xix cackle as if by merely rebelling they had laid the egg from which all future criticism and creation must proceed. Rebels with a real variant of any " ism " could get a hearing without going through the confused process of overestimation and conse- quent underestimation at the hands of the academ- ics. Finally, we should recognize that all " new- nesses " in poetry are but variants of these three fundamental forms, and so be able more quickly to place them. Ill For a basis from which to make comparisons of poets one word more may, perhaps, be added here. Every poet who is called by any considerable num- ber of reviewers a foremost, or the foremost, poet of his country is naturally a mark for criticism by those poet-critics who aspire to his place. Or if criticism fails, to a boycott of silence — on the theory that an enemy who has achieved should not be advertised. And especially is this the case if such a XX PR£FACE poet be an advocate of the full freedom of poetry as against the narrow autocracy of any *' ism " which the aspirants happen to be riding. As this kind of critici m is manifestly worthless, if not discreditable, I will venture to suggest an analytical comparative test that has served to re- strain my o\Mi judgments, and that is at least uni- versal of application. I have believed that poetry without fundamental vitality is bloodless; without passion, fleshless; with- out spirit, nerveless; and without thought, spineless. I have believed that without direct natural speech it is cramped or crippled; without true musical rhythm, destitute of grace; without imagination, shorn of beauty; and without charm, of that lure which springs, perhaps, from a blending of some of these qualities — or of all. Great poetr}', therefore, it is evident, must pos- sess many of these attributes, and the greatest at times seems to combine all. Which of them, on the other hand, any particular " ism " lacks, may easily TREFACE xxi be determined by those who care to make the analysis.^ 1 The formula quoted in this discussion that poetry criti- cism is " nine-tenths a matter of preference " comes from Mr. Louis Untermeyer, uhose critics have amply pointed out the uses to which he puts it. Mr. Untermeyer offers no definition of v.hat poetry is — that might limit his " pref- erences " too much. But as he has espoused the Heine tem- perament, revolutionary socialism, the theory of Synge that poetry must become " brutal," and a belief that Whitman is the only poet whom the poet of the future should imi- tate, it is not difficult to estimate the comparative value of his judgments, preferences, and exclusions in the field of the twentieth century's poetry. That he adulates, also, the kind of verse he seeks to write, is of course intelligible. It may be, as has been said, that Mr. Untermeyer is merely incapable of conceiving finality in poetry. Or, perhaps, as has been averred, it is the congenital poison of self-interest, partizanships and malice which vitiates his " preferences." In ajiy case it has become evident to many that these prefer- ences are as raw as the raw material which he usually judges to be permanent poetry, and that his judgments are rarely trustworthy, even in the sphere of his obsession, except when they follow the opinions of otliers. In making these strictures, however, I must tell the reader that Mr. Untermeyer is acridly opposed to any praise given work I have done. To retaliate in kind on his own verse would, of course, be the usual thing to do. But the present- day practice certain poets have of reviewing the books of their friends or enemies seems to me more than questionable. How far any such poet-reviewer is sincere, or how far he becomes, by omissions or commissions, that most con- xxii PREFACE temptible of literary parasites, a petty thief of poetic repu- tations, is impossible to determine. But as there is no law compelling a critic to give credit to good work, nor any to prevent malicious attacks on it, the temptation is mani- fest. Consequently the spirit of telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, of both friend and foe, is rare with these poet-critics. And that of course is the basis of any criticism worthy the name. CONTENTS PAGE A Poet's CnaDHOOD 3 I First Steps 3 II The Unseen 3 III Birth 4 IV Fire 5 V Travel 5 VI Woman 6 VII Crime 7 VIII The Grave 7 IX Church 8 X School 9 XI Glory 9 XII Transplanted 10 XIII Nostalgia 11 XIV Caste 11 XV Poetry 12 XVI CHttD-LOVE 13 XVII Tragedy 13 XVIII The Broken Heart 14 XIX God IS Flnitude 16 The Colonel's Story 18 Peace Triumphant! 24 Thresholds 27 Mh-licent Passes 29 xxiii xxiv CONTENTS PAGE The Broken Wings of the Ye.\rs 34 SEA-HO.\RDrNGS 36 Wanting the Moon 39 K'U-KlANG 41 The Old Pioneers 43 A Florida Interlude 45 Naquita 4S After Their Parting 51 I-ife"s Answer 53 Her Hero 54 An Aviator's Mother 56 Winter Floods 58 Dawn-Bliss 60 Fair Florida 62 To a Suicide 64 I Know Your Heart, O Sea ! 66 Nox Mirabilis 69 Flutterers 71 Ships and the Sea 72 Imperturbable , . 74 A Traveller, Looking Back 75 A Chance Enchantment 7S Herat 80 A Mohammedan to the ;Moon S2 A Priest's Song S4 Nipponese S5 A Word's Magic 86 A Charji to Bring Children 88 Hearts to Mend 89 Hunger 91 Judgment 93 My Neighbor 94 Chant Terrestrl-u, 97 CONTENTS XIV rAGE An Interior 99 The Courtesan . '. , 100 The Sisters 101 His Dream 103 Mistress Imitortal 104 To Richard W. Knott 106 Clairvoyance 109 Nigiitward 110 A Florida Boating Song Ill Unfathomable 113 An Evening Etching 114 A Heart's Cry 115 A Modern Stoic 117 Paths 118 Need of Storm 120 Moments 122 I A Greek Dying 122 II A Chinese Poet 122 III Divination 123 IV Moments 124 V A Pagan's Creed 124 VI Youth 125 A Modern Chantey 126 Songs to A. H. R 127 I Free 127 II Sthl! 128 III Calls 129 IV The Old Need 129 V When 130 To the Afternoon Moon, at Sea 133 ins'jbstantiaiities 135 The Herding 136 Full Tide 138 xxvi CONTENTS PAGE On the Maine Coast 140 Seance 142 Overworn 143 Extreme Unction 145 A War Winter 147 To America at War 149 Storm and Lull 150 To President Wilson 153 Thanksgwing, 1918 155 A Revolutionist's Despair 156 A Mother's Dirge 157 Poet and People 158 Said Chang Wu 161 To Poets Who Despond 163 Young April 165 Old Love and New 166 Vanquished 168 A Gambler's Guess at It 169 The Chime-Master's Song 170 Resurgen'ce 171 The Greater Patience 173 After the Symphony % . . . . 174 SHADOWY THRESHOLDS A POET'S CHILDHOOD I FIRST STEPS A country village, night . . . A child stealing from home Along a lone plank sidewalk, Where stars and the eyes of cattle Stared tliro the darkness at him; And where the whisper of trees Was conscience — till he had reached His father's store, and fallen Sobbing, tho triumphant, Into his fatlier's arms. II THE UNSEEN What was the meaning of it, " Total eclipse of the sun." 3 A POET'S CHILDHOOD Whispered about with terror? A shadow fell on the apples That scented the noonday orchard. And the child, too, M'as lifted To gaze thro a smoked glass at it. And tho he only saw The glass — not the moon's ghost Haunting the sun's vastness — Awes invisible swept him. Ill BIRTH He swung, on tlie porch, in the rain, At his grandmother's, near. They had sent him there; for the doctor Had said he would bring him a sister From a secret hollow stump Somewhere in tlie owl-kept woods. They came for him, and showed him A little red sightless thing So new to the world that he fled — A POET'S CHILDHOOD Being too near, himself, To the Nescience whence it came. IV FIRE \^^ith stolen matches they did it, He and his elder brother And the boy in the house beyond them. The hayloft door was open, And climbing they kindled the hay, For the peril of seeing it burn — Kindled and beat it out Each time . . . till sudden the air Was a frenzy of flame about them. How many a time since then Has he played with the peril of fire! ■ V TRAVEL He went at last on a journey With one of his father's drivers — Miles and miles, high-seated 6 A POET'S CHILDHOOD On a hogshead of tobacco. All day the waggon bore them B}' fields and bogg>' bottoms To the market — the end of tlie world. And the next day, returning, Thro saddened woods at twilight, He heard the whippoorwill. And knew the first lone longing For things never to be. VI WOMAN A travelling photographer, Tenting, came to the village. And with him, glad and golden, His little daughter of four. The boy, swept by a charm As old as the garden of Eden, Forgot the promised boon Of the camera's image of him For his image fondly shaped. A POET'S CHILDHOOD And henceforth to be sought, In the shining eye of an Eve. VII CRIME Election day — August, The town thronged with tlie country, And first-pluckt watermelons Ripe to the heart with redness. Money to spend — and so A saloon door flung open, A rind flicked at a passer, A curse, a blade flashing, Then blood, the stain of the ages, On stones that seemed to the boy The altar of murdered Abel. VIII THE GRAVE From a negro hut, glowing With supper fire at twilight, A mournful melody floated 8 A POET'S CHILDHOOD To the boy, " I may be gone! I too, O Lord, tomorrow. In cold earth may be lying, Down in a lonesome graveyard . . * O Lord . . . how long! " The first sad wtchery was it Of death to the boy . . . " How long! " IX CHURCH He had only heard its bell, A far sweet quaver, calling Across the night or the morning; Or seen its shuttered whiteness, With legs of brick to stand on, And bonneted with a cupola — Like the spinster of his dread. They took him — and he heard . . . And, years thereafter, hearkened . . . But now he only worships Outside it, like the bell. A POET'S CHILDHOOD X SCHOOL " Two times two arc four "... Did the grass and trees know figures? " Three times four are twelve "... Had the brook to count its ripples? He did not know: and }-et So wise to him were the words It murmured, that all books For many a Spring thereafter Seemed but as prisons to punish Eyes made for the hills and heavens. XI GLORY A sorghum mill, grinding . . . To the back of the horse that turned it The boy lifted, exultant — A dream come true at last. Grinding, griiiding, grinding . . . 10 A POET'S CHILDHOOD Till he tired of the height's loneness, Of glory — that is only The going around in a circle Above the talk and the laughter. Tired . . . and yet thro the years Has mounted his dream, to grind. XII TRANSPLANTED He was to move to the city! The garden fruits were gathered And sold; house things uprooted. The stage-coach, made of mud And creaks, took the boy in it — He little knew how far! The train, a marvellous terror, Swept the woods backward from it. The boat, on the flood of the River, Paused — and the boy walked forth From its ark to an earth of strangeness. A POET'S CHILDHOOD 11 XIII NOSTALGIA Houses, houses, houses: And one, lonely among them. His father's, reached in the twilight. The boy wanted a barn And cows tinkling the meadow; But instead came clamor of firebells And of fire engines shrieking . . . Then a new hungering knowledge Of things irrevocable, Whose name is Nevermore. XIV CASTE He sat on his gate gazing . . . And the church steeple opposite Was the highest thing in the world. But the Sunday-arrayed children, Who passed in snowy linen, 12 A POET'S CHIT.DHOOD With ties and sashes flowing, Laughed at his rustic dress. He sat ... and the curse of caste That has shrivelled all church steeples Shrunk his too — and sullied All high wonder in him. XV POETRY A rainy day and the room Of the Public School crowded. Faces strange and alien From lands of the Pole and Teuton. A teacher pale and fragile. The name of the " great " Longfellow. Then words, " The vine still clings To the mouldering wall." Sadness: And the poet in him aching For the first time to be bom. A POET'S CHILDHOOD 13 XVI CHILD-LOVE At the corner she lived, the girl Who had taken his part when laughter At the village clothes he wore Was tossed at him by the others. Beautiful, lithe and free She was, brave and ready To follow him into perils. And he gave her his heart — nor knows Today if the love of a child, A youth, or a man, is divinest. XVII TRAGEDY Summer days — and the day For a picnic into the woods. The tinkling mule-car took them, The girl, joy-bright, beside him. And all day he was her hero. 14 A POETS CHILDHOOD While daringly she followed — Leaping, as they returned, Once and again from the car, Leaping — at last to fall Beneath blind wheels — that taught him How little love is to death. XVIII THE BROKEN HEART They took her away in the hearse, While he stood by, forgotten — Yet never more to forget. The water-plug on the corner. That once was a seat of dreams. Where he had waited for her. Was left unclaimed to the others. For now he had found the way To the immemorial pools Of healing — the heart's pools Of Silence and Solitude. A POET'S CHILDHOOD 15 XIX GOD He ran far in the moonlight, Alone, gladly alone, Playing at " Hare and Hounds "; And, after the hounds were baffled, Turned, moon-quieted, home. He sank on the grass and his gaze Floated far up the steeple, Up, then endlessly on — Till sudden it touched Infinity, Unfathomable — and God. FIXITUDE I One ruby, amid a diamond spray of stars, The coast light flashes; The tide plashes. Across a mile of bay-sweet land the moon Comes soon: She has lost half of her lustre and looks old. A cricket, finitude's incarnate cry, And the infinite waters with their hushless sigh Are the two sounds The night has: Eacli in eternal wistfulne.ss abounds. II I have wakened out of my sleep because I too Am wistful, Tristeful; 16 FINITUDE 17 Because I know that half of me is gone, And that all frailty cries in the cricket's tone. I have wakened out of my sleep to watch and listen. For what? To sec for a moment universes glisten; To wonder and want — and go to sleep again, And die, And be forgot. THE COLONEL'S STORY No, no, my friend; there is an agony Not to be exorcised out of the world By any voice of hope. — But I will tell you. The Soiiia was sailing without lights — Bearing three hundred souls — and without bells; For she hud reached the " Zone," where the Hun sharks With their torpedo tongues could spit death at us Out of the inky sea-hells where they hid. On the main deck we stood, in a wind-shelter, — My wife, and by us a pale girl whose eyes Had all disaster in them. And my thought was, " I hope to God the moon is shut so deep In cloud-murk there in the East that hurricanes 18 THE COLONEL'S STORY 19 Can't blow her out of it." For in the Zone The moon had come to mean only betrayal, And now, if ever, was her wanton chance. The slipping water soaked with soulless dark Fell under and around us shudderingly, Yet somehow brought an anxious hopefulness. "We 're making twenty knots," I said; and felt Our bow cut thro the tangle of the waves As if the No Man's Sea ahead of us Would soon be crossed; and I, out to rejoin My regiment, could set my wife safe somewhere, And help again to stab that curst Amphibian, Autocracy — whose spawn in the sea gave it A terror greater than infinitude's. For God knows, with the woman that one loves Aboard a ship, and only a cloud perhaps Between the Hun's shark eyes and sure escape From the black icy fathoms that would choke her. There 's little left within a man but nerves. So when I drew her closer into the shelter, 20 THE COLONELS STORY Out of the sheering wind, tlie life belt She wore seemed like a coffin in that sepulchre Of night and sea. And when the other, there, With the disaster eyes and pallid face, Turned it toward us, I was shaken as if The moon had suddenly walked out of her shroud With phosphorescent purpose to reveal us. But on we plunged and tumbled, till at last The blank monotonous sink and swell lulled me To faith. And I was only thinking softly Of her — my wife's — first kiss on a summer night Under the moonlit laurels of our home. When came a cry from that wan girl gazing Frozenly on the sea — where the moon now Indeed was pointing at us pallidly A death-path. And my throat was gripped by it, That clutching cry, as if the glacial depths Down under us already had risen up. So starting toward the slipping rail I called, " What is it? where? " For, tense as a clairvoyant, THE COLONEL'S STORY 21 With eyes that seemed to feel under the tide The stealthy peril stalking us, she stood there. After a moment's gazing I too saw — What she foresensed — destruction seething to us. "The boats!" I cried, "the rafts!" And stum- bled back Over the streaming deck to her I loved. Then the shock came, as if the sea's wild heart Had broken under us, and ripped the entrails. The human hundreds out of our vessel's hold, To strew the foam with mania and despair, With shrieks strangled by wind and wave and terror. And thro that floating, mangled, blind confusion, Where hands reached at the infinite then sank. Where faces clung to wreckage as to eternity, I sought for her who shared my life's voyage, Who had been my heart's helmswoman; and who now, 22 THE COLONEL'S STORY Wrecked with me, swirled, too, in the torn wa- ters . . . And soon I saw her, still by that wan girl, Tossed on a watery omnipotence. Blind with brine I swam for her — as the moon, Her treachery done, again got to a cloud. Flung back by every wave, I fought; beating Against them as against God. And soon, somehow, Had reached to a limp body on the surge. Limp and strange — but living . . . and not drowned ! Then seeing a raft near, I struggled onward, Gulping the sea and being gulped by it. But finding arms at last that drew my burden And me from horror to half-swooning safety. I could have died, I think, of the relief. But the moon came again, nakedly out. As if to see what she had done. Then I, Bending over the form that I had fought for, THE COLONEL'S STORY 23 And chafing it, saw . . . not her I loved! Infinite Cruelty, not her I loved! . . , But that pale girl, with the eyes of all disaster. Oh, yes, I raved, and said God was a Hun, A Kaiser, of a Universe that loathed him. And back, too, would have leapt, into the waves. But the same hands that saved were ready to hold me. PEACE TRIUMPHANT! (November, 1918) Earth, Mother Earth, do you feel light flowing, Peace-light, waited so vainly and long? Feel the great blood-eclipse guiltily going, Swept from your face by a tide too strong? Over your rim is the bright flood rilling, Singing thro air, and under the seas. Never since birth was such a beam-spilling. Never such warmth, such healing and ease! Wildly it wraps you; and oh, your children Open their heart-gates to the glad rays! Blood-gloom there was, and blindness and hating, Now there is wonder, relief and amaze. Earth, Mother Earth, it will loose away from you, Pestilence, famine, horror and pain. 24 PEACE TRIUMPHANT 25 Cleanse, and of loathed inhumanity calm you, Giving your veins well-being again! Sleep shall come back to your cities, chalets, To ships in the night when the watch-bell sounds; Sleep, the one opiate soothing Nature Sleeplessly pours upon mortal wounds. Sleep in the night and peace in the morning! Under their cool, strong febrifuge, Soon shall you swing again, thro clear ether, Hopeful — tho the price paid be huge ! Swathingly, too, shall delight surge back to you ! For, like an incantation divine, News that the Slaughter-Sway, so black to you, Ceases, shall run to your heart like wine. Visions shall steal to your breast, ecstatic: Fathers again, by a fond home fire; Lovers, in green lanes meeting to murmur To the white stars their starry desire! Visions of cities that rise, from ruin. Proud to have given their life for a Gleam; 26 PEACE TRIUMPHANT Lordlier rise, in glory and story, Over the grave of War's last dream ! Yes, Mother Earth, you have suffered; but sorrow Has brought you at last what it alone can. Races you had, that raged; but tomorrow Men on your sphere shall behold but man. Nations you had, — all strifefully claiming Food at your breast, and place in your arms, Isles that bejewelled you, and broad empire Over your lesser children-swarms. Nations you had; but now to one nation Fast they are merging — ready to say. For the first time, there is but one mother Of men — to be cherished by them alway ! THRESHOLDS Each moment is a threshold, each day and hour and year, Of what has been, of what shall be, of what shall disappear. And thro them slips the Universe, with still or throbbing tread, From the mystery of the living, to the mystery of the dead. Each moment is a threshold, that leads invisibly To grief that glooms, joy that looms, to dull satiety. We pass to them with passion, and out of them with peace. And all the way is struggle, or rapture — and re- lease. 27 28 THRESHOLDS Each moment is a threshold, to Being's House of Breath, Or to the void, silence-cloyed, in Being's House of Death; But all we know of either in these words has been said, " Today we 're with the living, tomorrow with the dead." Each moment is a threshold, but God is in the House, God too, we think, somehow to link the Morrows with the Nows. Or if He is not, marvel ! For man himself is God, Seeing a world that should be, within a soulless clod. MILLICENT PASSES Don't let him be my pall bearer, don't let him! . . Yes, do! For I have loved . . . only him! But him ! . . . give me the morphia . . . And so Altho I did, then, marry the other, That half-man, half-squirrel in the cage Of his small ego spun by smug conceit. The man I love must bear me to the grave — At the coffin's head, upon the left side, That he may know how heavy my heart was. — What a life! what . . , what a life! And I was beautiful! . . . give me the morphia . . With brow and lips and eyes made to delight, And with such joy to ripple in my laughter, You have said so yourself, as only the lark Winging can take the heart with — such wild joy: Yet all so vain to hold him that I loved! 29 30 MILLICENT PASSES — And why, why, I ask . . , appeaselessly ! Another woman has, and he is happy, Breathing in life as if it were a fragrance: While I for ten years watched that spinning cage Of the other whom I loathed — that squirrel soul, Which could not fancy why my heart grew bitter, And why I wanted to tear the sky to pieces And strangle the world in it; or why I pined, Altho all saw ray love ... of one who now Shall help — but that! — to lay me under earth. But that ! . . . And yet, let him : on the left side. Where my dead heart with woe will be so heavy That it shall weight him down remembering. — What a life! what . . . what a life! A childhood torn by temper, rapture, tears j A girlhood by delirious ideals. Love — a happy day or two in the woods, The enchanted woods of it, thro which we pass And find our peace, or wander and are lost. Knowledge, then, that bliss is brevity. Then marriage to that other, at whose side MILLICENT PASSES 31 In the bed of earth I now must go to lie . . . Tho it is false, I say ! . . . give me the morphia . . . That I first broke his heart, as mine is broken, And sent him there ! False ! ... He but wore out, Spinning within his little ego-cage Of glib desires, that led to vanity: A cage so wearisome that when I lie In the earth by him and feel it spinning round, I shall scream out to God, if God there be, To let me forth, to set me free of him: For the shame of couching there will be so much That should the other send me death-flowers, And the wreaths of them touch me, even thro The coffin . . . they will wither, if they are lilies. Before the funeral words are spent. But if . . . If they are roses, and one is not white. Lay them upon my breast . . . give me the morphia. — What a life! What . . . what a death! Yet I could sing once — and was beautiful ! — Sing! . . . melodies blossomed at my lips. But were birds, too, ill-mated, they would cease 32 MILLICENT PASSES In time to sing, they too — and boughs become As bare of music as my breast of peace . . . Which he I love will never cease to know, For still he loves music ! , . . And when he bears me Out of those doors, will hear, perhaps, the strains Of that great funeral march — Chopin's, I played him — Sounding within his soul's deep sadnesses — Hear, but only, only as if for another. Unless he feels my dead heart's heaviness. — It is too much ! too much ! , . . give me the morphia . . . Not merely I should die, but all the living. All earth's abortive millions should lie down And say, " Whoever made us, God or Chance, Has but mismade us! " Then tliere would not surge That crying out for love that never comes, True-mated love for all: which of all things Can keep faith's universe from falling apart, And prove God is the mystery that binds it. MILLICENT PASSES 33 Yet he I loved ... he that I love, believes: So I too must not pass from life unpraying. Our Father, which art in Heaven . . . give me the morphia . . . THE BROKEN WINGS OF THE YEARS You have broken the wings of the years, O Death! Because they were all too swift with joy. They fly no more from breath to breath Of happiness by, but trail and cloy. They fly no more — as the golden plover Flies, from the tundra's icy hover, Far, far south, with never a pause. To palmy zones of the Panamas. You have broken the wings of the years — alas! So now their pinions, shaped to soar, Can only falteringly pass, With no goal left on any shore. They flutter along from hour to hour With no nest left in any bower: Migrants ever from care to care, Coming no whence to go no where! 34 THE BROKEN WINGS OF THE YEARS 35 You have broken the wild wings of the years. No more they weather the gales of woe, But sink — sodden with sorrow's tears, Or veer with all despairs that blow. Too often out of the misty welter Of doubt do they in vain seek shelter; Too, too often fold with the night In sleep unfain of any light! SEA-HOARDINGS My heart is open again and the sea flows in, It shall fill with a summer of mists and winds and clouds and waves breaking, Of gull-wings over the green tide, of the surf's drenching din. Of sudden horizon-sails that come and vanish, phantom-thin. Of arching sapphire skies, deep and unaching. I shall lie on the rocks just over the weeds that drape The clear jiea-pools, where birth and death in the sunny ooze are teeming. Where the crab in quest of booty sidles about, a sullen shape, 36 SEA-HOARDINGS 37 Where tlie snail creeps and the mussel sleeps with wary valves agape, Where life is too grotesque to be but seeming. And tlie swallow shall weave my dreams with threads of flight, A shuttle with silver breast across the warp of the waves gliding; And an isle far out shall be a beam in the loom of my delight, And the pattern of every dream shall be a rapture bathed in light — Its evanescence a beauty most abiding. And the sunsets shall give sadness all its due, They shall stain the sands and trouble the tides with all the ache of sorrow. They shall bleed and die with a beauty of mean- ing old yet ever new, They shall bum with all the hunger for things that hearts have failed to do, They shall whisper of a gold that none can borrow. 38 SEA-HOARDINGS And the stars shall come and build a bridge of fire For the moon to cross the boundless sea, with never a fear of sinking. They shall teach me of the magic things of life never to tire, And how to renew, when it is low, the lamp of my desire — And how to hope, in the darkest deeps of thinking. WANTING THE MOON " Don't cry, don't cry for the moon ! " Her restive heart would croon; Her restive heart of delights and fears, Of laughter tangled amid her tears,. *' Don't cry for the moon! " For she wanted the moon herself; wanted The shimmering moon of wealth and love, The moon of rank and fame that haunted The heavens above her. She wanted the moon, and so would sing To any, with odd caprice, " Don't cry ! Don't cry for the moon! " — betraying Her own appeaseless sigh. " Don't cry, don't cry for the moon! " It broke her peace at last. 39 40 WANTING THE MOON It broke her mind and it broke her heart, And she died in a place that is set apart For the moon-criers — who do not know That the moon 's for none — only its glow ; Only its even radiance, cast On all, with aimless art. K'U-KIANG Because the sun like a Chinese lantern Set in a temple of clouds tonight, I was back in K'u-Kiang! Because in a temple of dragon clouds, As if with incense misty red, It hung there over the rim of the sea, I was back in a narrow street, Where amber faces pass all day, Going to pay, going to pray, Going tlie same old human way They have gone for a thousand years, men say, In K'u-Kiang. And I heard the coolie cry for his fare, I heard the merchant praise his ware 41 42 K'U-KIANG Of bronze and porcelain set to snare, In K'u-Kiang! I saw strange streaming signs in black With gold and crimson on their back — Opiate signs in an opiate street; Where the slip and patter of felt-shod feet Is old as the sun; And the temple door As cool and dark as the night. And where dim lanterns, swinging there, As a lure to human grief and care, Half reveal and half conceal The ancestral gloom of the gods, I saw all this with sudden pang, As if by hashish swept or bhang, Because the sun, like a Chinese lantern, Set in a temple of clouds! THE OLD PIONEERS The frontiers freeze before us, Now youth is left behind, Tho once they ever lured us To braver vaster valley-lands. The ice of them is round us, A hope-arresting rind; Our feet must travel slower, And slower thaw the mind. The frontiers freeze before us, The dead leaves shiver round us. Our breath is less within us, The way is hard to find. The frontiers freeze before us: They once were blossoming With faith and virid vision Like faery and enchanted lands, 43 44 THE OLD PIONEERS The bliss of youth was on us, And every dream could bring Such ardency as melted All fear that fate could fling. The frontiers freeze before us, The sun sets sooner round us, The night is darker in us, Our hearts forget to sing. The frontiers freeze before us. And will not melt again. But ever shut us closer Within the narrow bounds of them. So now there 's only left us The half-way things of men, The staked claim kept securely, The aims that all may ken. The frontiers freeze before us, The long wait now is on us, Until death's frontier calls us To pass the final fen. A FLORIDA INTERLUDE (Naples-on-the-Gulf) I Behind me lie the Everglades, The mystic grassy Everglades, Where the moccasin and the Seminole glide In secret silent Indian ways. Before me lies the Gulf, The cup of blue bright tropic waters. Held to the parched lips of the South To cool and quench its thirst. Behind me lie the Everglades, Before me lies the Gulf, Which the sunset soon shall change to wine, A Eucharist for the longing soul. 45 46 A FLORIDA INTERLUDE Its rim of land shall be transformed To Mexic opal and chrysoprase, And then shall come the moon As calm as a thought of Christ. As calm as a thought of Christ — Over the cup's sand-rim enchased With palm and pine, Floridian friends, Saying their twilight litanies; While homeward flies the heron To his island cypress in the swamp. Which Spanish mosses drape and the moon Silverly soothes to peace, II Behind me lie the Everglades, Where the bittern wails to the moon's face. Peace is gone as I wake And memory in me wails From the primal swamp, Heredity, Wlicnce I have come with all the desires A FLORIDA INTERLUDE 47 Of creeping, walking, flying things, To creep or walk or fly. With all the desires of the earth-creatures; Yet with a want transcendent, A want that comes with the glimmer of stars And pierces to ray heart. A want of the life I have not known, Of the life unknowable, In the Everglades of the Universe Where the Great Spirit glides. NAQUITA " Naquita," he said, " Naquita, But one thing do I ask: Bear my dust to the wide plains And scatter it to the four winds, That it may ride the mesas, The buttes and the red arroyas, And not be shut in a small tomb, An inn for all comers — Whose host, tlie harrowing worm, Sets no fare fortli at all, Save for himself, but silence." And so I took his body Of death-made alabaster And bore it, in obedience. To the place of cruel burning. 4S NAQUITA 49 I gave his lips to a flame Stronger than any passion, And his eyes, that held wide heaven And all eternity for me. And I went back to the mesas — Bearing the world — and God — In a little urn of dust. And then — oh hunger of love ! — I was stricken and could not do it. " If I scatter his dust," I said, " I scatter my soul to madness. For if his heart were blowing On the windy buttes and mesas My heart would follow after. But here in a grief-gray urn I still can hear it beating, I still can clasp it to me. He still must wait to ride! " For a little while must wait, Till the flame shall take me too, so NAQUITA And our twin dusts commingled On the swift mount of the wind Shall follow all trails that flesh Can never, never follow. Yes, over the Plains hurtle Afar, flame-wedded atoms: Till the last wind shall cease, And dust no more be dust, And life and death be one." AFTER THEIR PARTING (A Woman Speaks) You know that rock on a rocky coast, Where the moon came up, a ruined ghost, Distorted until her shape almost Seemed breaking? Came up like a phantom silently And dropped her shroud on the red night sea, Then walked, a spectral mystery, Unwaking ? You know how, sudden, there came a change. When she had left the sea's low range, Its lurid crimson, stark and strange, Behind her? How, sudden, her silver self shone thro, 51 52 AFTER THEIR PARTING Tranquilly free of the earth's stained hue, And found a way where the clouds were few To bind her? You know this? Then go back some day, When I have gone the moonless way, To that dark rock whereon we lay And waited; And when the moon has arisen free, Your soiling doubt shall fall from me, And eased of unrest your heart shall be, And sated. LIFE'S ANSWER A stroke of lightning stabbed the storm-black sea, As if it sought the heart of Life thereunder, And meant to put an end to it utterly; — Then came thunder — Wildly applauding thunder. Riven with fear the foam-crests ran before it, Hissed by the rain and beaten down to darkness. A gull rose out of the murk with wings that tore it — Life's answer to the storm's terrible starkness. 53 HER HERO " There 's not a flower of April but shall ring me A wedding hell," her bridal heart said, " A wxdding bell of bliss when he comes home. And if they bring me His name among the dead, I shall not go in grief — only but in pride rh:i{ ho shrank not, but as a hero died! " So to her task she bent; till, it befell: They brought her his name, set to the brief kncll, " Somewhere in France, dead." And tho a shell of burning anguish Shattered her soul's trenches, Her pride tremorless towered,. 54 HER HERO 55 Vet there in France, at tlic grey break of dawn, A firing-squad, with faces fixt and drawn, Had only set her " hero " against a wall And, at a comnund . . . sliot him, for a coward. AN AVIATOR'S MOTHER I wake in the night, And sudden my eyes grope, High thro the dark of the battle-fields, For the place where he is flying Thro thin perilous ether. In cold dizzy heights Over the foe I see him, His soaring plane in a swirl of clouds hidden, And he, my little boy, Who once crawled at my feet, Nor dared to take three steps across my chamber, He the eagle soul of it! Ah yes, I see and hear him, There in the earthless chill, Witli iron talons ready 56 AN AVIATOR'S MOTHER 57 To release swift bombs on sleeping Rhine cities. And tho I know That some of them may fall On simple homes where children dream As once he dreamt beside me, I cry him on thro the sky's sickening hazard — That Freedom may not perish, And a myriad mart}T mother -hearts In the years to come be wakened By the high whirring wings that mean destruction. I cry him on! And yet how terrible That out of the nest even the young must spring To be — thus — Humanity's wild war-eagles I WINTER FLOODS Half under the flood are the trees by the river, The wind is not happy, The branches shiver, The dark ice-floes are hurrying down Like heaps of heavy death. The hills, bro^vn-hazed, with the trees treniblc, The sun is dazed And the clouds dissemble. Spent is my trust, and longing rust My heart with every breath. Half under the flood are tlie trees — and in them Crows that scold At the skies and din them. Worn is the wind and writhen tlie waves With the trouble of tales he tells. 58 WINTER FLOODS 59 A skiff unmoored from its cove is skirling, Oarless and aimless, Mutely whirling — Even as thoughts, unmoored in me, On a tide that mystery swells. Half under the flood are the trees — and bushes Drowned deep In the drift that pushes. Out of them whirrs, migrant again, The wild duck's watery wing. " Swift to the South ! " my heart cries after Her strained flight With a strained laughter. For I am chilled, I am winter-filled. An exile far frwn the Spring! DAWN-BLISS ( Naples-on-the-Gulf) I went out at da^^-n, Pelicans were fishing, Big-beaked, gre)' and brown; Little waves were swishing. Clouds creamed the sky, As shells creamed the shore; Wild aery hues of beauty Round seemed to pour! I went out at dawn, Pelicans were floating, Big beaks on their breasts; Up the sun came boating. "Ship ahoy!" I cried, 60 DAWN-BLISS . 61 To his golden sail. Bliss-winds of beauty in me Broke — to a gale! I went out at dawn, Pelicans were winging. Palms waved passion plumes, Beach sands were singing. Stripped, save of strength, I plunged into the sea And swam, till the bliss of beauty Died away in me. FAIR FLORIDA O sweet is the earth in Florida, The darkies croon all winter in the clearing. The wind sighs a day-long cheery Ah! A sound in the palms worth hearing. And the sun there never seems to hurry, The night never comes too soon, And easy from the heart slips worry. When the moon comes stealing there, the moon, When the moon comes stealing in Florida ! The gold of the orange in Florida Hangs round and ripe all winter in the clearing. And rarely the soul breathes a weary Ah! For little has the world worth fearing. The firefly summers in December, 62 FAIR FLORIDA 63 And toil, there, is never too long, And the heart all day can remember How the moon comes stealing with a song, How the moon comes stealing in Florida 1 TO A SUICIDE How did you like your grave last night, Did you sleep well, my friend? There was cover enough for you, I know, For over the earth was laid the snow; And only a while did the wind blow. Or the trees bend. How (lid you like the grave you made. To slip into from life? Had it the quiet that you sought? The silence, free of sound and thought? The isolation undistraught By the old strife? And was it empty, as you believed, Of sense, of soul, of God? 64 TO A SUICIDE 65 Was there no reckoning — or rue ? Were you with all at last quite thro? Nothing to want? nothing to do? Only the clod? Or was there Something there which bade You rise and walk afar? Out of the shroud, out of the flesh, Out of the earth's soul-tripping mesh, Rise and start with strength afresh On a new star ? That were impossible, you thought — Sure but of sleeping well. Yet while a bud awakes in May, While darkness blossoms into day, While life seems more than atom-sway, Who can tell ? I KNOW YOUR HEART, O SEA! I know your heart, O Sea! You are tossed with cold desire to flood earth ut- terly; You run at the cliffs, you fling wild billows at beaches, You reach at islands with fingers of foam to crum- ble them; Yes, even at mountain tops you shout your purpose Of making the earth a shoreless circle of waters! I know your surging heart! Tides mighty and all^contemptuous rise within it. Tides spurred by the wind to champ and charge and thunder — - Tho the sun and moon rein them — At the troubling land, the breeding-place •£ mortals, 66 I KNOW YOUR HEART, O SEA ! 67 Of men who arc ever transmuting life to spirit, And ever taking your salt to savor their tears. I know your tides, I know them! *' Down," they rage, " with the questing of men, and crying ! With their continents — cradles of grief and de- spair! Better entombing waters for them, better our deeps imfathomed, Where birth is soulless, life goalless, death toll-less for all, And where dark ooze enshrouds past resurrection! " Ah yes, I know your heart ! I have heard it raving at coast-lights set to reveal you, I liave watched it foam at ships that souglit to defy you, I have seen it straining at cables that cross you, bearing whispers hid to you, 68 I KNOW YOUR HEART, O SEA! Or heaving at waves of the air that tell your hur- ricanes. I know, I know your heart! Men you will sink, and shores will sing; but a shore shall be man's forever, From whence his lighthouse soul shall signal the Infinite, Whose fleets go by, star after star, bearing their unknown burden To a Port which only eternity shall determine! NOX MIRABILIS I wonder if earth is led at night by spirits, That swim in space before it, As was our ship that night on the Red Sea, When dolphins swam in the phosphorescent bow- wash, With a beauty of body-motion more than earthly, And lured us on, with a lithe and ghostly radiance, In and out and under, magically; And when stars hung so humid in the heavens As to make their soft immeasurable spaces Seem but another phosphorescent sea, With the pointed bow of the moon-boat pushing thro them? I wonder if earth is beautifully led so? For if it be, I will ask of destiny 69 TO NOX MIRABILIS To let me, when I am changed into a spirit, Swim at its bow, shaking a luminous sense Of mystery and etliereal magic back To those who have taken passage from tlie port Of Birth, thro tlie Red Sea of Life, to Death. FLUTTERERS In the moist flowing midnight of our garden Does the firefly, who lights, there, its sundial, Of time's silent mystic numbers know? As little as do we of heaven's dial, Which faint eternal star-flies enkindle With constellated wandering and glow! At our mute open window does the grey moth, Who beats toward a warm sense of brightness, Conceive the vastity of life's desire? Less tlian do we — whom love's elusive urgence Ever allures with wings of want to flutter Toward Life's unappeasive blossom-fire I 71 SHIPS AND THE SEA I have been thinking of ships and the sea again, Ships and the sea! Of flooding surf and joy to be free again, Fever- free. I have been thinking of white foam blowing, Of gulls dipping, of tides flowing, I have been longing for winds past knowing To wing by me ! I have been thinking of white sails vanishing On the blithe blue, Till from my heart their beauty is banishing Care's harsh hue. Till I can hear in the wave's far ringing The changeless, charmed, ineffable singing 72 SHIPS AND THE SEA 73 Of Life, the siren immortal, flinging Spells ever new. I have been thinking of ships and the moon again, Ships and the stars! Of swinging bows and a world in tune again, Of tall spars That point toward ports that are dreams — till wak- ing At dawn there comes, on the glad gaze breaking, Ultimate peace from a green palm shaking By coral bars. IMPERTURBABLE Three times the fog rolled in today, a silent shroud, From which the breakers ran like ghosts, moaning and tumbling. Three times a startled sea-bird cried aloud, On the wind stumbling. But I cast my net witli never a fear, tho wraiths in me And birds of wild unrest were stirring and starting and crying. For I knew that under the sway of every sea There is calm lying. 74 A TRAVELLER, LOOKING BACK My heart was sick to see them In all their mingled wonder, The Orient lands and peoples, And so at last — I went. And now I 'm like a lover Whose first love long has faded, Yet who would give all glory To feel its fire unspent. To feel, as then, dawn hueing The snows of Fugiyama To immaterial ruby, Then to a priestly white. To watch the amber evening, With crimson sun setting, Along the walls and towers That gave Pekin its might. 75 76 A TRAVELLER. LOOKING BACK To see the first palm swaying In strange Kualalumpur, To hear the wind-bells tinkle On stranger Shwe-Dagohn. To watch along Sumatra The Bay of Bengal counting Its fevered pulsing surf-beat With timeless undertone. To gaze, then, where Benares, With ghats and temples shining, With saints and yogi surging Resounds to Vedic h>'mns; Where Taj Mahal's three bubbles Blown magic on the morning Bewitch the road to Agra, That in enchantment swims, And, last, behold the Sphinx smile To Egypt and Sahara, Or the eternal tenting Of Pharaoh's pyramids. A TRAVELLER, LOOKING BACK 77 Or, down the Mount of Olives, Toward the Gate called Golden, Watch how the Slavic pilgrim So reverently thrids. To see — as once I saw them ! . . , Ah, not in any faring To phantom-far Sumatra, To Shwe-Dagohn or Taj, Shall I again recapture The first keen quivering magic That for a mystic season Made all else seem mirage. A CHANCE ENCHANTMENT In far-off China I heard it, As we paused by a city of the desert, Whose hosts of sand, blown ever by the wind, Climbed high over crenelated battlements That had beaten off Genghis Khan. And it fell upon the air there softly, A low eerie Orient tinkle . . . And I never shall know from whence it came. From what strange thing with what strange name: But even as a dewdrop catches the sky It seemed to have caught the vast numb cry Of the ancient sorrow of China. It seemed to have caught, in a single tone, A sorrow, a beauty, an alien moan That never will let my heart alone "8 A CHANCE ENCHANTMENT 79 Till the sands of time sweep over it. In far-off China I heard it, Where the desert winds go by! HERAT The city of Herat Has five great gates; The Kandahar, the Hutab-chak, The Malik and Irak; And on the east the Kushk Gate, Thro which the sun came, "When Herat was a splendor And not a ruin's name. The city of Herat Has four great walls, For caravans and strange bazaars, For mosques and tall minars, For sepulchres of saints and khans In gardens strewn with streams — 80 HERAT SI Whose names are now forgotten, Or but as dreams of dreams. The city of Herat Is one mile square, But one — yet all the bales of fate Have entered in its every Gate, Have crowded in its four walls And gone the ways of time; And now Herat knows only That it has been sublime. A MOHAMMEDAN TO THE MOON It is well, oh houri of Allah, That you draw an aery veil Of silver over your face, Lest I should gaze too long At a beauty overstrong, And so become unfitted For a mere human place. It is well that, in His harem, You lean from a lattice of stars I never can hope to climb. For were I lifted near To your loveliness, I fear My soul would seek to ravish You from Him, O Sublime! 82 A MOHAMMAD AN TO THE MOON 83 It is well, oh houri of Allah! And so I do but pray That you tell Him this for me: That never within the sky, His palace, do I espy Your shape, without adoring In you His deity! A PRIEST'S SONG (India) Mango wood and deodar wood And sandalwood and aloe wood Are sweet and good to make incense For any temple shrine; And crystal from the camphor tree Distilled, with rose and patchouli; But better than these are simple thoughts Of hearts that are divine — Of hearts that look on life and say With fragrant pity night or day, " My brother's grief and woe, I know, Are, even as well, mine! " 84 NIPPONESE A dim inleted coast Where pine-trees tend on temples That look out over the sea For the sun 's coming and moon 's going, For wind and rain and snow, Whose elemental voices worship Thro the encircling year. And out on the sea a sampan Floating, as if awaiting To bear away from the temples The pleadings of the importunate. The incense of their yearnings, The offerings of their toil and pain, The flowing of their tears. 85 A WORD'S MAGIC Do you remember Etajima, And how, upon a moon- fogged sea, As ghostl}^ as ever a tide shall be, We passed an island silently? And how a low voice in the gloom Of the temple pine-trees leaning there Said say on ar a to one somewhere Unseen in the shadow-haunted air? Just sayonara: but it seemed The soul of all farewells that night, The sigh of all withdrawn delight, The sound of love's last rapture-rite. And now, after long years, it comes Again from isles of memory 86 A WORD'S MAGIC 87 To bring once more to birtli in me The breath of all lost witchery. Yes, one low word of parting, now Echoing, thro the fog of years, Has touched my heart with beauty's tears, And youth thro all things reappears. A CHARM TO BRING CHILDREN (Egypt, 100 A. D.) Take twelve leaves of the male palm And write on each the name of a god. Wed each leaf to a lotus bloom And bind the twain to a bulrush rod. Walk with the stem betwixt your breasts By the flooding Nile when the young moon shows, Shadowy-pregnant, over the night. Then — making the sign of Horus — Thrice to the left and thrice to the right — Call to the wind of the Desert, Great is the lady Isis! 88 HEARTS TO MEND Said the warm South Wind, *' Have you any hearts to mend? I have salt from the sea, I have solder from the sun, I can make them good as new, (Have you any hearts to mend?) They shall hold again the dew Of youth when I am done ! " Have you any hearts to mend? I have come from the South, And a heart that is sad Or asunder with the years, I can make as good as new, (Have you any hearts to mend?) Hearts rent with fate or rue, Hearts torn with throbbing fears? 89 90 HEARTS TO MEND " I can heal them all again. I have salt from the sea, I have solder from the sun For the broken or the worn. I can make them good as new, (Have you any hearts to mend?) I 've the skill of dreams come true For the wretchedest who mourn! HUNGER The million twigs of the trees are black, against the gray of the twilight. Only the slender moon is alive and slips thro them away. All else is wintry numb, All else is wintry dumb, For even the squirrel knows that he cannot dig his earth-hid store, So hard is the frost; but keeps to his hole and does not peep from the door. I alone am hunting food — for my soul, in the faded sky-light, I alone walk with the moon till she glides behind the day. Food, and want of love, are the never-ending needs that haunt us, 91 92 HUNGER Love I have and food — but the mind and heatt and soul are strange. Their hungers sweep from afar; They crave a dream or a star; They crave a food that neither winter nor spring nor autumn hold, That words can never, in all the worlds where speech has bloomed, unfold. Nor shall an eternity have satieties enough to daunt us, Life's inexhaustible mystery still will make our hunger range. JUDGMENT (During a BUzzard) Today the City has put on ermine And sits in the court of its thoughts To judge if the Wind, whose icy dagger Is piercing the life of the poor, Is chief of the cold conspirators In league with the felon, Death. And the sentence is: Not guiUy, Tho word newly has come Of a child bitterly frozen At a mother's milkless breast. For the City, judging, knows That not the Wind, but itself, And itself alone is the murderer. 93 MY NEIGHBOR I did not know my neighbor. Two back yards And an alley were the gulf that lay between us. His face across that gulf I had not seen; Only his lighted windows sent towards My window all his wonted ways of living, Dull, as they seemed; perhaps a little mean. He was no more to me than shapes that give A shadowy human fringe to thought's existence. He could have died and I should not have missed More than his movements, vague and fugitive. — Then came the crashing horror of his fate. He had walked there with passions in him burning Such as made (Edipus of the gods learn To count no man, till death, as fortunate ; He had grown plants within his kitchen garden While tragedy grew in him desolate: 94 MY NEIGHBOR 95 Grew till he could no more its twine retard, But tangled in the tendrils that wound fiery About his heart — the tendrils of desire — Had cried aloud, and then, with lips set hard — Had gone to a drab rendezvous of sin To meet again his mistress, whom in frenzy He fancied false to him; as passion when Remorseful will; and told her she had been For the last time a lure and should no longer Be let to live and snare the lust of men. And so, tho her eyes pled against the wrong, Had kissed her, cursed her, shot her — then, sore weeping, Himself: meaning to put all sin to sleep Past any pain's distress, however strong. — But in this too had failed ; for even as she Did death prove but a weak perfidious wanton, Turning the bullet from his brain aslant Into his eyes that never more shall see. So doubly now in prison lies my neighbor, In that of blindness and of felony. 96 MY NEIGHBOR Which ended what, you see, was like a play For me — since two back yards and one small alley Sufficed for a gulf, an infinite interval, Between men made by God in the same way. CHANT TERRESTRIAL How old on the spheral earth is man ? How long was it ere a sudden thought Severed him from his brother-beasts, Taught him to walk, Taught him to talk? How old is he on the spheral earth? How old shall he be when earth is cold And gives to the dead moon ray for ray Of blue chill phosphorescent mould? How old on the spheral earth is man? Does he a thousand earths in space Inhabit, and, uncertain why, Face to the sky, Face, and die? How old is he on the spheral earth ? 97 98 CHANT TERRESTRL\L How old shall he be when time has rolled Across Creation's birth-expanse The last star life and death enfold ? AN INTERIOR Because you cannot sit with me And read a book when night has come, But press your hands upon your breast And give your eyes to all unrest. Because at windows and at doors You glance, and wait the least wind-tap Of pines against the prescient pane, And if it does not come are fain. Suddenly starting from your chair. To go and see what may be there, — I know that you can only care For that which is not anywhere. For that which calls without a voice, For that which moves witliout a shape, For that which wills without a choice ; For passion that is yet escape. 99 THE COURTESAN I sell my body to all men, Even the priest has purchased it, With such an ecstasy, I swear, As he denies the Infinite. No crucifix has ever known Such kisses as my lips enthrone. And since I can from thence divine That men, who are the " sons of God," Most worship at the flesh's shrine, I can be sure, beyond distrust, Of one truth more. That God is Lust. 100 THE SISTERS Three tall chimneys out of my window rise, Like the Fates, tlie daughters of Night, With the smoky tangle of their hair about them. In the grey sky or tlie blue sky, In sun or rain or snow, They stand, blended together, shadowing human destiny. For one rises above the making of cradles, And one above the weaving of worldly raiment, And one, darkly apart, above the sad shaping of coffins For the frailty of those whose thread of life is shorn, 101 102 THE SISTERS Who are cut off swiftly, suddenly, And shrouded under the lasting garment of earth. Three tall chimneys out of ray window rise. Round them the city is born and lives and dies. HIS DREAM I saw a dead man yesterday With a dream frozen upon his lips. Like one made of immortal clay He lay: As if a vision vast and dim Had touched the heart and soul of him, As might the wings of seraphim In flight. Yet the one vision of his life Had only been, I found, To earn, by an unceasing strife, Ten dollars weekly for his wife! 103 MISTRESS IMMORTAL Ah, little moon ! When I see you there Enceinte in the West, Bearing a promise Of light to be, I know all lovers That beauty lures Have been, somehow, Your paramours. Little moon! For softly you enter The chambers of all Or meet them silverly In the wood — Where leaves, little poets 104 MISTRESS IMMORTAL 105 Of the green trees, Are ever inspired By every breeze. . . . Or on the streets you accost them. And then there is nothing To do, if lonely, But give their passion To you only; To you, little moon, Little girl moon, Who lure all hearts — You only! TO RICHARD W. KNOTT {December 27, 1917) Dead, you are dead, my friend? Is all your being hushed ? Your mind of torrent might, Your heart of hot insight? Dead? Never again To fight as a man with men? Your soul so swiftly flushed Now into silence crushed? Dead? This is the end? No rising more at dawn To fling tense phrase and thought Onto the page, and on? No rising up to flash, 106 TO RICHARD W. KNOTT 107 Out over the questing throng, The word that should be penned, The warning brave and strong? Dead? and the city round Now muffles low your name? Some with affection's knell, Some with regret or blame? Some with a lie, yet all With deep-enforced respect For a strength none could neglect? For a freedom none could tame? Dead? Oh, I am hurt, Who loved you, fought you, praised. I am hurt, and all amazed, And dazed, bitterly dazed. For friendship knows that death Will come, yet calls it crazed When one beloved is glazed So swiftly by its breath. 108 TO RICHARD W. KNOTT Yes, I am hurt, hurt, And numbly know the loss, And how death's dreadest blow Comes ajter the grave's woe. For where shall I find years Again such ties to twine As bound your ways to mine? I shall not — well I know! Yet peace: your task is done. Full-hearted to the last. Citizen, lover, friend. Your laurels are amassed. Citizen, hater, foe. Thinker and scholar, go! And let who has not failed. Nor ever humanly ailed, Nor once a false hope hailed, Small honor to you show! CLAIRVOYANCE The clock, like a heart, beating in the night darkness, Is filling the house with the pale flow of time, That pulses plangently thro the thick silence Into each hall and chamber . . . And seems to waken the shadowy past And the voice of vanished voices, And the laughter of them and the sorrowing sighs and tears. And, like a clock, my heart is filling you, O body-house of me. With the flow of years that are gone: In every vein calling to life again Grey memory shapes vanished from sense and soul ; And out of the Nowhere softly strangely assembling Vain vibrances and voices of Nevermore. 109 NIGHTWARD The crake cries lone on the brink of the bog, The heron mounts from the mists of the pool, The time for the owl to see draws near, The time for the bat to flit in the cool. The stars grow ripe for the moon to reap. The hour of the moth is the hour of thought. Why is a leaf that lifts, and is still. With a sense of infinite sadness fraught? no A FLORIDA BOATING SONG Down thro Florida keys, From island, to island! DovvTi thro Florida keys, Where mangrove roots dip in the seas! A myriad tangled roots From each palmetto byland, Oyster-encrusted roots mid which The heron wades in the shallow shades! Down thro Florida keys, Around them, between them, Thro low green Florida keys, So low they scarce seem born of the seas! Where pouchy pelicans roost On cypresses that lean them Out over the idle lap of the tide That comes and goes with balmy flows! Ill 112 A FLORIDA BOATING SONG Down thro Florida keys, Thro mazes on mazes Of ripple-encircled keys, Where sun and wind play as they please! Where the eaglet, high in air, Or the wild white, ibis, dazes Eyes that follow them up the blue, As the heart would do, the heart too! Down thro Florida keys I 'm going, I 'm going ! Thro low green Florida keys And greener glades of Florida seas! And this is all I know, That all in the world worth knowing Is joy like that of the tarpon's leap In air divine with the warm sunshine! UNFATHOMABLE On all the seas of space New worlds forever come, And old forever go, With mystic ebb and flow. On all the seas of life, There is such wax and wane Of mystery and pain As make us deeply know, — That not God's very self Can fathom the Universe: To Him as unto us It is incredulous. Such vastity it has That His infinitude Can only thro it brood And ask why it is thus. 113 AN EVENING ETCHING Little rivers at twilight, Little wintry rivers, Running between brown trees With mistletoed branches; Catching dark shivery shadows Of boughs into your bosoms, And a pale silvery star Between burnt clouds of gold . . ^ Little lowly rivers, How sad your spirit shimmers ! All the land's rainy loneliness Is running in your flow; While farm-lights faintly quiver And brown hills freeze about you And the music of the sheep-bells Falls silent in the fold. 114 A HEART'S CRY I think of mountains In lonely shapelessness Under the twilight Of far countries. I think of the drop Of precipices Thro deathly thousands Of feet of darkness, I think of the torrents That shatter the silence With tortured turbulence Far down in them. Yes, and of glooms, Of granite chasms, IIS 116 A HEART'S CRY Where God Himself, God even, is lonely! And then I moan . . . For never a spot Has earth as lonely. As is my heart ! Never a torrent Torturing silence And cutting thro granite, As grief thro me! Never a gulf So deep with terror, As sudden remembrance That you are dead ! A MODERN STOIC Questions scuttle across his brain And gnaw like rats at his heart, Gnaw — as if it were cheese. For philosophy can not trap them, Its doors spring open again. And forgetfulness is futile, Since cracks of memory come in it. And the golden bars of love are weak, Too weak to shut them out. So scornfully he endures The feeding of each doubt, With a dull, silent sense Of a deeply accepted universe; And waits till his heart, withered with age, Is left to dry indifference. 117 PATHS Crashing in my hand The bay as I pass, Drinking in its fragrance With the sea's scent, While gull-wings write Poems white and fast On the blue sky That is soft with content; Crushing in my hand The bay and the juniper, WHiile I record Each line the gulls ^y^ite, I go by the sea path Down to the sea's edge, I go by heart paths Deep into delight. 118 PATHS 119 Simj)Ie is my joy As the little sandpiper's, Who follows beside me With silvery song; Blither than the breeze, That skims great billows Nor knows how deej) Is their flov/ — or strong. Simple is my joy, A sunny sense-sweetness, Full of bird-bliss, Bay-warmlh, spray-leap. Mysteries there are And miseries beneath it, But sunk, like wrecks, Far down in the deep. NEED OF STORM ( Naples-on-the-Gulf ) On the green floor of the Gulf the wind is walking, Printing it Avith invisible feet; The tide is talking. Purple and grey the horizon walls them round With purpler clouds. They wander in it like guests gently astray In a house deep mystery shrouds. I do not know the speech of the tide, For too articulate have become my years : Beauty brings only words, not breathless tears. So the young heron fishing there in the foam On the sand's edge, 120 NEED OF STORM 121 Would once have taken my spirit far, far home To the infinite, when he vanished thro the gloam. But now I am left behind on the beach — a shell That no more knows the wonder of the sea's swell, Or more than the empty echo of its knell. To sea then, Life, wildly to sea with a storm Sweep me again. From the smooth dull beach of custom where I lie. That I may feel once more The swaying surge of passion thro me swarm ! MOMENTS 1 A GREEK, DYING (B.C. 400) Come nearer, Charon . . . I cannot step so far, into your boat. For I shall need some breath to say farewell To her you waft me from, Ere death sets us afloat. II A CHINESE POET (By the Whang-Ho) Today the lightest breeze Takes tribute from the trees. Golden leaves flutter down, Crimson leaves, purple, brown, On the tide, past the town . . . 122 MOMENTS 123 Down ! I walk along the shore, Like many gone before, And sadly ask, What matters it, One leaf, or life, more? Ill DIVINATION I gaze deeply into the sky's crystal, Longing to read the years. I see clouds swirling there ... A bird quiver across them . . . Then out of them, falling, an autumn leaf. The cloud-swirl I have known; The quivering bird have been; Am I the falling leaf? . . . 124 MOMENTS IV MOMENTS A crow caws, On the pine tops, In the sun. Silence. Eternity seems begun. Again the caw, Where the pine tops And sky blend. Shrillness. Eternity seems to end. V .\ PAGAN'S CREED 1 will not boast, for the wanton Gods are strong, And the Fates have many a secret ambush laid, Yet to myself alone will I belong, And of mvself alone will be afraid ! MOMENTS 125 VI YOUTH Gazing into a crystal of joy-dew Youth sees all heaven shining for it, blue, Till clouds begin to pass in darkling strife, Then the dew falls, and, lo, it sees — life! A MODERN CHANTEY All around the world I have heard tides soughing, Under pine or palm, over rock, reef or sand; North, East, or South, where the night 's quick at snuffing The candle of the day out, with an creepy hand! All around the world ! And I hope to God I '11 never Fossilize on a shore, or rot in a town. Evolution in the brine began, the wise assever. Let it end when men no more in ships to sea go do^Mi. Chorus: Wfien no more Men no more In ships to sea go down! 126 SONGS TO A. H. R. I FREE were your heart not wide, dear, And were your soul not high, And were not both so deep, too, Deep as the April sky, 1 should not find love freedom, But know a need to range All heaven and hell — a prisoner Pining for space and change. But since there 's depth within you To hang my moon and stars, Since I have not to beat vain wings Against offending bars, 127 12S SONGS TO A. H R. I find all other spaces That lie beyond our love Are prison — all alluring worlds Below me or above. II STILL! Glassed in the sea The gulls glide past, Boats swing at anchor, Full is the tide — Full as my heart, Now waking at dawn, Of love for you Who sleep at my side! All thro a night Of soft moon-fall Thus have you slept With tidal breath. Wake, oh awaken, SONGS TO A. II. R. 129 The darkness is gone, Light, that is love. Still masters death! Ill CALLS Bird calls bird in deeps of the woodland, Love calls love in deeps of the heart- Over green meads we go to the music Out of the glad May earth a-start. Cloud calls cloud to dance on the skylands, Dream calls dream to dance in our eyes. So it has been with a million lovers, So it shall be, till the last love dies. IV THE OLD NEED Tonight I saw the new moon, while the vesper bells were ringing, A slender silver breath it seemed, swung on the April skies. 130 SONGS TO A. H. R. Soft apple blossoms under it in white throngs were springing, And blossom-thoughts of you within my heart be- gan to rise. I saw the moon, I heard the bells, I felt the silver rapture Of stars that soon would blossom on the purple tree of night. But from a Universe in bloom I only sought to capture Soft-petalled words — but three — to tell again love's vernal might. V WHEN Some night we shall come here For the last time, Hear the last whippoorwill, Watch the last firefly, See the last hill SONGS TO A. H. R. 1^1 Die into the darkneSvS, Ere is made the moon. Some night we shall came here . , . Shall it be soon? Some night we shall come here, Then — never more. One of us shall have gone, Over earth's last hill, Infinitely on: Out into a Vastness Whence a lesser glow Even than the firefly's Back to us can flow. Some night we shall come here, Then the one left Shall not dare hark again, Or upon stars gaze, But shrink, bereft, 132 SONGS TO A. H. R, Backward from the heartbreak Hid in memory. Some night we shall come here . . . When shall it be? TO THE AFTERNOON MOON, AT SEA Take care, O wisp of a moon, Vague on the sunny blue above the sea, Or the gull flying across you Will pierce your veil-thin shape with his sharp wing ! Take care, or the wind will wilt you, As he does the clouds snowily drifting by you, And diffuse you over the sky, a silvery mist, To give more cool to the day! Take care, so near the horizon, Or a phantom skipper, one who has long been drowned. Will reach above it and seize you And make you his sail to circle the world forever.' 133 134 TO THE AFTERNOON MOON, AT SEA Take care, take care! for frailty Is the prey of the strong, and you, a wraith of it, Have }-et a long while to go before nightfall Brings you to sure effulgence ! INSUBSTANTIALITIES A misty moonlit sky, a moonlit sea, A soul moonlit, the misty soul of me, And nothing else but a sigh of misty air And a firefly like a drop of phosphor-dew Hung on the humid dimness — then, not there. All is a dissolution and a dream, A world that is not but can only seem, A world of mist distilled from moonlit space And insubstantial save to an earthless soul That in moonlight can find a biding-place. 135 THE HERDING Quietly, quietly in from the fields Of the grey Atlantic the billows come, Like sheep to the fold. Shorn by the rocks of fleecy foam. They sink on the brown seaweed at home; And a bell, like that of a bellwether, Is scarcely heard from the buoy — Save when they suddenly stumble together, In herded hurrying joy, Upon its guidance — then soft music From it is tolled. Far out in the murk that follows them in Is heard the call of the fog-horn's voice, Like a shepherd's — low. And the strays as if waiting it seem to pause 136 THE HERDING 137 And lift their heads and listen — because It is sweet from wandering ways to be driven, When we have fearless breasts, When all that we strayed for has been given, When no want molests Us more — no need of the tide's ebbing And tide's flow. FULL TIDE Sea-scents, wild-rose scents, Bay and barberry too, Drench the wind, the Maine wind, That gulls are dipping thro, With soft hints, sweet hints, With lull, lure and desire; Witli memory-wafts and mysteries. And all the ineffable histories Made when the sea and land meet, And tlie sun lends nuptial fire. Sea-foam, and dream-foam. And which is which, who knows, When all day long the heart goes out To every wave that blows, That blossoms on the bright tide, 138 FULL TIDE 139 Then sheds a shimmering crest And yields its tossing place to one Whose blooming is as quickly done — For beauty is ever swift — begot Of rapture and unrest. Sea-deeps, and soul-deeps, And where shall faith be found If not within the heart's beat Or in the surging sound Of the sea, which is the earth's heart, Beating with tireless might; Beating — tho but a tragedy Life seems on every land and sea; Beating to bring all breath, somehow, Out of despair's blight. ON THE MAINE COAST The rocks, lean fingers of the land, Reach out into the sea And cool themselves, all day long, In the tide drippingly. They catch the seaweed in them And the starfish on their tips, And gulls that light And the swift flight Of swallows skimming grey and white And sometimes sunken ships. The moon, God's perfect silver. With which He pays the world For toil and quest and day's unrest, Is washed on them and swirled. And avidly they seize it, 140 ON THE MAINE COAST 141 Then let it slip away, Only again And yet again To grasp at it — as eager men At joy no hand can stay. SEANCE Hovering wings of terns Over the rock-pools flutter, For the tide, ebbed far out. Seems to stumble and stutter; Seems like a spirit lost, Unable to come again Back to the wonted ways and days Of ever- wanting men. And the moon, a medium Trance-pale, is laying her light Over its surge — till, lo. It turns from the deep and night. And the spirit-word it brings Is the message of all time, That doubt is only the ebb of faith. Which ever reflows sublime! 142 OVERWORN " Shall I ever sleep again? " he said, in the night- time. " Health is gone, hope gone, and joy is looking back at me! Looking with forgetful eyes at a dear delight-time, Ere the slug of age, and of slow despair's blight, Had trailed, thro my heart, disillusion's sullen slime ! " Shall I ever sleep again? My life 's a weary hour- glass. That empties, and turns again, and empties, with- out cease, WTiile leaf, then snow, falls, and April bud and flower pass Around the heavy sands of it, that only have the power 143 144 OVERWORN To sigh, every grain of them that slips thro me, 'Alas!' " Shall I ever sleep again ? Ah yes, I am but tired now, Overborne, overworn, with reaching or regret. And hope's hue, sleep's dew, that in the murk are mired now, Will rise thro my heart again until it io inspired To rest above tlie cry of the when, why and how! " EXTREME UNCTION {In a French Hospital) 1917 " Is Anyone there in Heaven ? " She asked, with her eyes on a star. " Is Anyone there to hear me? I am Jeanne Marie Cinquemars, Is Anyone tliere? I am dying, And since death may end all, I would only know " — she listened — '* If France shall live or fall ! " Is Anyone there? I have given, Or lost, all a woman can. And now I am dying — ravished By one who once was a man. 145 146 EXTREME UNCTION Is Anyone there to hear me? Then let my enemy Be shriven — but me never If France dies utterly! " A WAR WINTER {1917-1918) Like unaccoutred armies on the hill The trees stand shivering in the wintry chill. The crows fly to them, couriers of ill, Saying each field is ice, and every rill. And the wind hurls A blast of death With every breath. The sky pours down a wheeling white barrage Of hail and snow; and a grey camouflage Of gloom is sent — a creeping cold mirage Of the bleak night That hides wild hosts In dark outposts. 147 14« A WAR WINTER Twilight is settling like the death of God Upon an earth that 's but a frozen clod, And that a deeper pall of snow will sod, Burying deep All trace of Him, From rim to rim. TO AMERICA AT WAR O my America, I could avow None ever had a country till this hour, When men have found within their hearts the power, Fighting for more than country, to endow The souls of Liberty, half-born till now. With strength to link the patriot's lesser plea Unto the larger of Humanity — Which sees at last that war must end, and how! Fight, then, the fight for Freedom, as of old, And even more for Union I For, apart, Nations will ever stab each to the heart, And Freedom for a pottage mess be sold. Fight for the greatest flag ever unfurled, For one to encompass you — and all the world ! 149 STORM AND LULL (During the Great Battles of July, 1918) Last night the sea was lashed by rain And swept by fog — as were the fields Of battle by fierce shell and gas — But now wide calm has come to pass. The lighthouse, listless, white, and lone, Stands on the foreland sterilely, As if it never would need again To bleed its warning ray to men : Stone does it seem, and only stone. The clouds hang on the sky as still As windless, rainless tatters can, Empty of aim and void of stress. Of memory and forgetfulness. 150 STORM AND LULL 151 Neutral upon a sea and sky That have declared neutralit) To every warring element, They do not even seem forespcnt, Nor fain either to live or die. There is a gull somewhere a-wing And smoke on the horizon line, To tell me hunger is not dead Or life put utterly to bed. In the blue coma of the sea And air they seem a karma, left By the old world to recreate Another — that shall meet its fate — And pass on to heredity. And even as I gaze the strange Reincarnation has begun, The wind has swept away the sun, The calm is like a dream undone. The lighthouse lowers, the waves glance 152 STORM AND LULL With a new birth-cry, and I feel Life, reawakened to its fate From a brief moment's opiate, Surge on to victory in France! TO PRESIDENT WILSON (October, 1918) Wood row Wilson, master of patience, Master of silence, master of speech; Master amid tlie world's war-frenzy Of clear wisdom's inward reach; Watcher of raging civilizations Till the one righteous hour arrives When you can speak for all nations, Great is your guidance now that shrives Both friend and foe of base soul-gyves! Woodrow Wilson, lofty listener At the great heart of Destiny; Hearing above all feverous hatred Justice breathing what should be; 153 154 TO PRESIDENT WILSON Still for a peace that shall not perish Stand — for if ever a Providence Comes from the Universe to nourish Men in their woe, and lead them hence, Near us now is its Immanence! THANKSGIVING, 1918 Gray flights of cloud pour from the North, But khakied leaves, skirling, Are swept by the wind forward, Or leap high up at the branches As if with a last desire for life, Ere beaten down in the forest They lie — to be blown away into brooks or hollows. Then lo, I am giving thanks — As cloud and wind cease — That now our khakied lads in the far Argonne No longer are leaping up to fall forward, And be beaten down in the bloody mire and tangle Of the Forest's undergrowth, But are glowing with victory-warmth in Luxem- bourg! 155 A REVOLUTIONIST'S DESPAIR (During the Bolshevik Reign of Terror) Wanton, and more than wanton, is this world, That can debauch all virtues of the soul ; Ravage the fairest dreem ever unfurled By Faith; of virgin Hope take any toll- That with hot hands of rioting can rape Freedom, until anarchic and unclad, She stalks, over restraint, a shameless shape, Murderous and licentious, sheerly mad. That even of Humanity's pure bride. Pity, can make a bitter prostitute, Ready to entertain Revenge and Loot When she has seen a people crucified. Yes, ready even to force, at their pain-call, Her sister virtues like herself to fall ! 156 A MOTHER'S DIRGE Hurry, O gulls, across the sunset. Hurry off to your far sea-home! Cr\- as you fly, nor ever once let Night take you, and wild sea-gloam (For the wind and tide are rising!) Wilder darkness has overtaken Me: no wings had I to escape Death, whose breath as a pall was shaken Over my boy's sweet soldier shape (While the battle-tide was rising!) 157 POET AND PEOPLE Farid, the Sufi poet, the maker of attar of roses, Was seized by a soldier of Genghis, whose hordes ravished the East; Was set for sale in the market; and heard the cry to the buyers, " Who gives me a thousand dirhams? who covets a poet-priest ? " And answer came, from a passer, a scomer of mys- tery-mongers, A shah for whom a rose was a rose, and the soul of it but dust, " I buy him, to keep ray dung-hill, his Allah-lays to find there; For says he not that Allah in all things must be — must?" 158 rOET AND PEOPLE 159 " Take him! " the captor answered.— But " Hold! " Farid cried proudly, Swept by a sense immortal, song oft thro him had sent. Then, as his exaltation compelled his captor's won- der, " A fairer bid will follow! " — The passer mocking went. "Then who, who bids for the poet?" — Again a passer answered, "I! ... A bundle of fodder!" . . . Farid was flung from pride, From faith that he was immortal. And so to the soldier said he, " Take it, for I am worthless. Allah in me has died." *' Lying dog of a rhymster, die too, then ! " raged the captor. 160 POET AND PEOPLE And down at his feet struck him, with scurrile scimitar. — So does the world, in passing, its poets blindly slaughter; So do its poets, doubting, fall ever from their star. SAID CHANG WU Said Chang Wu, in his need, " Kings are of a godly breed, Surely of a godly breed, In China! For the last of Kubla's line, Kubla with successors nine To his throne of Kaan-Bali, Is the idiot, Toghon Timur. '* Hira four hundred million bow to. Humbly bow and kow-tow to. As he sits, solemnly, In exalted idiocy, On his throne at Kaan-Bali; As he sits and takes tribute, Gold, jade and ruby stones, 161 162 SAID CHANG WU Broken hearts and broken bones, On a dais built to be Tartar, eternally, From Yenking to the Yellow Sea. " Aye, most surely," murmured Chang, In his need, " Kings are of a godly breed In China!" TO POETS WHO DESPOND Sailing west, ever west, Columbus suing his anxious quest Saw dawns come and days go, Dawns and days, how many and slow, Nor ever a land sighted ! Then a dawn came, when on the air He saw bird-wings around him, fair And full of promise of a new world Where his ship's wings could rest, furled, And his dream's faith be righted! And so, poets, even so With us it is, long do we go Sailing the seas of lone desire Nor ever, ever seeming nigher The land of a new vision! 163 164 TO POETS WHO DESPOND Then sudden the wings of thought are stirred Before us, like that promise-bird, And soon we know Ave are near the shore Of a song that never was sung before — A song frOTQ lands elysianJ YOUNG APRIL April leaf-led; hills flower-spread; And the little day-moon right up over heed! April bee-strewn; bird and brook tune; And right up the blue the little day-moon! April as far as the last hills are, And every flower in her lap a star! April a-swoon with the sky's clear boon, And, for her soul, the little day-moon I 16S OLD LOVE AND NEW Last night shut in from wind and wet, And seeking somehow to forget How rain brings wanting or regret, We toyed, half-wistful, with the planchette. First there was nothing; then it said That you had come back from the dead, And that you knew how I had wed Another — put her in your stead. Reproach I looked for, then, from you; And so, between old love and new, I wondered which my heart would do, Choose living rose or buried rue. But no reproach — if you were there, Touching my heart with the sweet air 166 OLD LOVE AND NEW 167 Of Strangeness I had thought so fair In all our years of joy or care — No word's reproach or jealousy Slipped thro the table's spiritry; Tho where your arms were wont to be Hers softly throbbing clung to me. No! But all free of bitterness You only said with the old stress, " Do you remember Inverness And the bluebells? " — no more nor less. And yet too much! For all night long Amid the wind's half-moan, half song, I heard bluebells in a bent throng Toll sadly! I have done you wrong! More wrong, being untrue and slack, Than I can know ! For you may lack Immortal love . . . The thought is rack. Would that again I had you back! VANQUISHED Out upon you, mockingbird, how can I sing That life 's but a sorry thing, a stale thing, and flat, A bitterness, a barrenness, a dry and desert spring, While your heart is rilling a note as pure as that ! Out upon you, optimist, wild philosopher. So sweet in unreason, so irresistible, That my darkest logic dissolves to but a blur. And I swear that Nature of bliss alone is full. 168 A GAMBLER'S GUESS AT IT What are the stars but dice of God Flung on the night's uncertain sod ? What is the stake He lays \vith Fate But whether Life 's for love or hate ? What if He loses to the Foe? Forfeit we — and He — must go. What if He wins? Security For all thro all eternity. 169 THE CHIME-MASTER'S SONG My heart is a bell, and joy beats in it, A bell, moulded By hands sublime, And hung to sound, for one brief minute, High on a beam Of the towers of Time. My heart is a bell, and Life can ring it, When love bids. Or at beauty's call; With such wonder can sway and swing it That its Maker Is heard in all ! 170 RESURGENCE I was content, O Sea, to be free for a space from striving, Content as the brown weed is, at rest on rocks in the sun, When the salt tide is out, and the surf no more is riving At its roots, or swirling and bidding it sway where the white waves run. I was content — with life, and love, and a little over; A little achieved of the much that is given to men to do. But now with your tidal strife do you come again, vain rover, And tell of vastitudes to be sailed, or sounded, anew. 171 172 RESURGENCE Now again do you surge. And the fathomless tides of thinking. Of wanting , waiting, despairing — or daring — with you come. The inner tides of the soul, that had ebbed with slumberous shrinking. But now are bursting again, thro the caves of it long numb. So vainly I lie on the cliff with the blissful Blue above me And listless sated gulls afloat below on the swells. For I am soothless, sateless, because of desires that shove me Out and away with the winds, on quests no distance quells ! THE GREATER PATIENCE The passionless and imperceptible drifting Of clouds that come where no wind seems to be, That rise as if some need of earth were lifting Them on, to bring her fields fertility. Is like this moving thro the soul of me Of thoughts that seem of some magnetic need At the heart of life to come, and drop their dew, And bring the fruitful words that men call true. What is it you would tell me, O great skies? That imperceptible is God's intent? Coming as if its quest were never meant, Yet bringing forth such fruit as never dies? And do you therefore vow the impatient weave But doubt; the patient only can believe? 173 AFTER THE SYMPHONY The last finale had crashed, A surging shower of iridescent vibrance. And as the musicians sighed and rose To drift away thro the night, Their tired instruments, glinting no longer, Catching no longer enchanted rhythms Into their breasts of wood and brass^ Were laid away in case and cover, Husht. The violins slept; With rhythm-dreams flitting along their fibres. The flute with an aria Lingering yet at its vents, Like a disembodied soul at earthly haunts, Lay still; 174 AFTER THE SYMPHONY 175 And still lay the clarionet and sad oboe In the leathern dark that swathed them. Then I heard speaking, Started, I think, by a viola, " How much Beethoven has said in his Fifth ! Had he but told us a little more The meaning of all life's Minors Would surely be open to us! " A piccolo sighed, "Perhaps." To which a cello mourned reply, " No; you forget Tchaikowsky! Chords cannot plumb the ultimate meaning of sorrow. The * Pathetique ' is poof that grief and wrong Are discord-atoms, element-powers, That enter all being darkly. Resolve them away, we may, Ever into the Major, 176 AFTER THE SYMPHONY But ever, as mist to moors, they return, Blindly to brew their bane. Meanings are but illusions that vanislj, Mysteries only abide! " " Then," said a blunt bass-viol, " Illusions are better, tho briefer! Bach, with his clarity, for me! The strong crisp creed of a fugue. Free of all doublings, achings, searchings, Sure at last of completion! " " And of immortality too? " asked an oboe, With reedy quaver. " Would indeed it were so! . . . Would we could round life off To a circle of perfection! " " But since we cannot," rang a horn, " For wishes are not wonders, Why do we whine of meaning and mystery! AFTER THE SYMPHONY 177 What do these matter! Power is all! Strength to shout to the heavens That we are masters of them As long as we breathe of earth. For Death and the Dead are equals — both are dead! » From the drums a volley echoed, " Both are dead ! " Whereon was hushing, But not ceasing; No more peace or ceasing Than follows the rattle of clods on a cof&n. For all waited the word of their leader, The violin, whose voice reverbs The hope and despair of the world. And softly it began, . . . As if the thronging memories Of a thousand symphonies stirred it: Of allegros that ran like youth 178 AFTER THE SYMPHONY Before slow-aging adagios; Of scherzos, that dissolved in the anns Of funeral strains, to be borne away On the solemn hearse of silence; Softly it began, . . . " We play but ill, comrades, And blind to the Score's beauty. Else neither meaning nor mystery Would overmuch trouble us! Great joy can only come to the griever, Great grief, to the rejoicer. So only they who are resonant With both, and who sound harmonies That waken harmonics infinite, Only they play well ! Be the clef what it may, then. Be the time brave or broken. There is a rhythm alwheres Of mingled Major and Minor For those with soul to seize it ! " AFTER THE SYMPHONY 179 An interval followed Of silverly murmured assent: Not even the blare-begetting horn broke it. Then slow sleep muted all to oblivion. THE END WRAITHS AND REALITIES By CALE YOUNG RICE "In the writing of lyrics Mr. Rice is unequalled by any modern poet. . . . One must go outside of contemporary life to find anything of similar excellence." — Gordon Ray Young (The Los An- geles Times.) "A new book by Mr. Rice is always an event in American letters. . . . We may, perhaps, have gotten beyond the point of regarding him as the one poet of America, but we can never fail to respond to his clear upspringing song." — The New York Tribune. "Here, for all to read, is poetic genius spurred and wrought upon ... by a rare and wondrous poetic inspiration. ... It is like great chimes sounding — jangled at times or overborne — ^but al- ways great." — The Philadelphia North American. "Mr. Rice in his narratives can tell such tales as the old balladmakers would have gloated* over, and can make them contemporary and convincing. He can create life tragedies or comedies in a few lines and leave the reader with a sense of having been given a full meal of circumstance. . . . He is original without striving to be so, and one can never be embarrassed by the affirmation that he has come to hold a 'high place among poets of America." — The Chicago Tribune. "Cale Young Rice has been credited with some of the finest poetry, and regarded as a distin- guished master of lyric utterance, and this latest volume is warrant for such approval." — Thie Brooklyn Eagle. "We find in Mr. Rice the large and elemental vision a poet must have to serve his people when overwhelmed by elemental sorrows and passions. His poetry is a spiritual force interpreting life in the various phases of intellect and emotion, with a beauty of finish and sense of form that are un- erring." — The Louisville Post. "All that has been said of Cale Young Rice, and that is much indeed, is justified in this latest volume." — The San Francisco Chronicle. "Mr. Rice has no superior as a lyric poet any- where, and this volume will add yet more to the fame of our really great poet." — A. T. Robertson (The Baptist World). "Cale Young Rice is a real poet of genuine and sincere inspiration, never reminiscent or imitative or obvious, but singing from a full heart his keen, meditative songs." — The New York Times. 12mo. 187 pages. Price $1.25 At all bookstores Published by THE CENTURY CO. 353 Fourth Avenue New York City SONGS TO A. H. R. By CALE YOUNG RICE "Mr. Rice of to-day is the poet who sang to us yesterday of the big, vital things of life. . . . With real genius he brings to the soul a con- sciousness of the strength of things many of us have but dimly sensed in all our years. . . . 'Songs to A. H. R.' maintains the ardor of imagination as v/ell as delicacy and vigor of sentiment which ever mark his work." — The Philadelphia Record. "The sentiment of this volume is of the strong spiritual type richly deserving the name of love songs." — The Springfield Republican. "There is no absence of felicity in these songs —they possess an undeniable singing quality. Mr. Rice's poetic mood is sustained in the key of a fine fresh faith, and he has embodied it in verse of«a finished texture." — The Dial. "These songs are to be put in a place by them- selves in modern verse." — The Rochester Demo- crat. "These poems are so beautiful and satisfying that they can be read again and again." — The Portland Oregonian. "They range through many forms of the one divine emotion. Each is worthy of its name, and the volume, breathing with purity and tenderness, bums with a spiritual flame." — Margaret Steele Anderson (The Louisville Post). "Spiritual in tone, lyrical in expression, they are songs that reveal new dimensions of this poet's virtuosity and skill." — The Philadelphia Press. "Mr.. Rice writes with the buoyant rhythmic uprush of a younger age — the passion of these songs is not the dark flower upon which Pippa breaks in Browning's poem^ but its tranquillity does not lessen its depth." — The New York Times. "Spiritual and beautiful love songs . . . bring- ing a breath of the upper air of love. and reaffirm- ing one's faith in its permanence." — Jessie B. Rittenhouse (The Bookman). "Many of these songs are so perfectly sponta- neous that art had no share in them ... or their art. is so subtle and fine as to make them seem wholly spontaneous." — The London Bookman. 16mo. 48 pages. Price $L00 At all bookstores Published by THE CENTURY CO. 353 Fourth Avenue New York City Trails Sunward By CALE YOUNG RICE Cale Young Rice has written some of the finest poetry of the last decade, and is the author of the very best poetic dramas ever written by an American. . . . He is one of the few supreme lyrists . . . and one of the few remaining lovers of beauty . . . who write it. One of the very few writers of vers litre who know just what they are doing. — The Los Angeles Times. Another book by Cale Young Rice . . . one of the few poetic geniuses this country has produced. ... In its sixty or more poems may be found the hall mark of individuality that denotes preemi- nence and signalizes independence. — The Phila- delphia North American. Mr. Rice attempts and succeeds in deepening the note of his singing . . . keeping its brilliant tech- nique, its intricate verse formation, but seeking all the while for words to interpret the profound things of life. The music of his lines is more per- fect than ever, his rhythms fresh and varied. — Littell's Living Age. Cale Young Rice's work is always simple and sin- cere . . . but that does not prevent him from voicing his song with passion and virility. Nearly all his poems have elevation of thought and feel- ing, with beauty of imagery and music. — The New York Times. Readers familiar with Cale Young Rice's previous work realize that he ranks with the very best modern poets. — The New Orleans Times-Pica' yune. Whether the forms of this book are lyrical, nar- rative, or dramatic, there is an excellence of work- manship that denotes the master hand. . . . And while the range of ideas is broad, the treatment of each is distinguished by a strength and beauty re- markably fine. — The Continent (Chicago). Mr. Rice proves the fine argument of his preface . . . for this book has in it form and beauty and a full reflection of the externals as well as the soul of the America he loves. — The Philadelphia Public Ledger. The work of this poet always demands and re- ceives unstinted admiration. . . . His is not the poetic fashion of the moment, but of all poetic time. — The Chicago Herald. In "Trails Sunward," Mr. Rice demonstrates as heretofore the possibility of attaining poetic growth and originality, even in the Twentieth Century, without extremism. . . . Sanity linked with vitality and breadth in art make for per- manence, and one can but feel that Mr. Rice builds for more than a day. — The Louisville Courier Journal. I rarely use the term "sublimity," yet in touches of "The Foreseers," particularly in its cavern-set opening, I should say that Mr. Rice had scaled that eminence. — O. W. Firkins (The Nation). 12mo, ISO pages $1.25 net At all bookstores Published by THE CENTURY CO. 353 Fourth Ave., New York City EARTH AND NEW EARTH By CALE YOUNG RICE Cale Young Rice — like Alfred Noyes — may be ex- celled by a contemporary here and there in one requirement of his art, but both poets excel in comprehensiveness of view and both are geniuses of the robust order — voluminous producers. Given qualit3% sustained and wide ranging com- position is a fair test of poetic power. — The New York Sun. Glancing thru the reviews quoted at the end of "Earth and New Earth" we note that we have said some very enthusiastic things in praise of the poetry of Cale Young Rice, and yet there is not an adjective we would withdraw. On the con- trary each new volume only confirms the expecta- tion of the better work this writer was to pro- duce. — The San Francisco Chronicle. This is a volum.e of verse rich in dramatic quality and beauty of conception . . . Every poem is quotable and the collection must appeal to all whd can appreciate the highest forms of modern verse. — The Bookseller {New York). Any one familiar with "Qoister Lays," "The Mystic," etc., does not need to be told that they rank with the very best poetry. And Air. Rice's dramas are not equaled by any other American author's. . . . And when those who are loyal to poetic traditions cherished through the whole his- tory of our language contemplate the anemia and artificiality of contemporaries, they can but assert that Mr. Rice has the grasp and sweep, the rhythm, imagery and pulsating sympathy, which in wondering admiration are ascribed to genius. — The Los Angeles Times. The Collected Plays and Poems OF CALE YOUNG RICE The great quality of Cale Young Rice's work is that, amid all the distractions and changes of con- temporary taste, it remains true to the central drift of great poetry. His interests are very wide . . . and his books open up a most varied world of emotion and romance. — Gilbert Murray. These volumes are an anthology wrought by a master hand and endowed with perennial vitality. . . . This writer is the most distinguished master of lyric utterance in the new world . . . and he has contributed much to the scanty stock of Amer- ican literary fame. Fashions in poetry come and go, and minor lights twinkle fitfully as they pass in tumultuous review. But these volumes are of the things that are eternal in poetic expression. . . . They embody the hopes and impulses of uni- versal humanity. — The Philadelphia North Amer- ican. Mr. Rice has been hailed by too many critics as the poet of his country, if not of his generation, not to create a demand for a full edition of his works. — The Hartford (Conn.) Courant. This gathering of his forces stamps Mr. Rice as one of the world's true poets, remarkable alike for strength, versatility and beauty of expression. — The Chicago Herald (Ethel M. Colson). Any one familiar with "Cloister Lays," "The Mystic," etc., does not need to be told that they rank with the very best poetry. And Mr. Rice's dramas are not equaled by any other American author's. . . . The admirable characteristic of his work is the understanding of life. . . . And when those who are loyal to poetic traditions cherished through the whole history of our language con- template the anemia and artificiality of contem- poraries, they can but assert that Mr. Rice has the grasp and sweep, the rhythm, imagery and pulsating sympathy, which in wondering admira- tion are ascribed to genius. — The Los Angeles Times. Mr. Rice's poetic dramas have won him highest praise. But the universality of his genius is no- where more apparent than in his lyrics. . . . For sheer grace and loveliness some of these lyrics are unsurpassed in modern poetry. — The N. E. Home- stead (Springfield, Mass.). It is with no undue repetition that we speak of the very great range and very great variety of Mr. Rice's subject, inspiration, and mode of ex- pression. . . . The passage of his spirit is truly from deep to deep. — Margaret S. Anderson (The Louisville Evening Post). In Mr. Rice we have a voice such as America has rarely known before. — The Rochester (N. Y.) Post Express. It is good to find such sincere and beautiful work as is in these two volumes. . . . Here is a writer with no wish to purchase fame at the price of eccentricity of either form or subject. — The Inde- pendent. Mr. Rice's style is that of the masters. . . . He will live with our great poets. — Louisville Herald (J. J. Cole). Mr. Rice is an American by birth, but he is not merely an American poet. Over existence and the whole world his vision extends. He is a poet of human life and his range is uncircumscribed. — The Baltimore Evening News. Viewing Mr. Rice's plays as a whole, I should say that his prime virtue is fecundity or affluence, the power to conceive and combine events resource- fully, and an abundance of pointed phrases which recalls and half restores the great Elisabethans. His aptitude for structure is great. — The Nation (O. W. Firkins). Mr. Rice has fairly won his singing robes and has a right to be ranked with the first of living poets. One must read the volumes to get an idea of their cosmopolitan breadth and fresh abiding charm. . . . The dramas, taken as a whole, rep- resent the most important work of the kind that has been done by any living writer; . . . This work belongs to that great world where the mightiest spiritual and intellectual forces are for- ever contending; to that deeper life which calls for the rarest gifts of poetic expression. — The Book News Monthly (Albert S. Henry). 2 Vol. $3.00 net At all bookstores Published by THE CENTURY CO. 353 Fourth Ave. New York City TPHE following volumes are now * included in the author's "Collected Plays and Poems/' and are not ob- tainable elsewhere : At the World's Heart Cale Young Rice is highly esteemed by readers wherever English is the native speech. — The Man- chester {England) Guardian. Porzia; A Play It matters little that we hesitate between ranking Mr. Rice highest as dramatist or lyrist ; what mat- ters is that he has the faculty divine laeyond any living poet of America ; his inspiration is true, and his poetry is the real thing. — The London Bookman. Far Quests It shows a wide range of thought, and synvpathy, and real skill in workmanship, while occasionally it rises to heights of simplicity and truth, that suggest such inspiration as should mean lasting fame. — The Daily Telegraph {London). The Immortal Lure; Four Plays It is great art — with great vitality. — James Lane Allen. Different from Paola and Francesca, but excelling it — or any of Stephen Phillips's work — in a vivid presentment of a supreme moment in the lives of the characters. — The New York Times. Many Godg These poems are flashingly, glowingly full of the East , . . What I am sure of in Mr. Rice is that here we have an American poet whom we may claim as ours. — William Dean Howells, in The North American Review. Nirvana Days Mr. Rice has the technical cunning that makes up almost the entire equipment of many poets now- adays, but human nature is more to him always . . . and he has the feeling and imaginative sym- pathy without which all poetry is but an empty and vain thing. — The London Bookman. A Night in Avignon > A Play It is as vivid as a page from Browning, Mr. Rice has the dramatic pulse. — James Huneker. Yolanda of Cyprus: A Play It has real life and drama, not merely beautiful words, and so differs from the great mass of poetic plays. — Prof. Gilbert Murray. David: A Play It is safe to say that were Mr. Rice an English- man or a Frenchman, his reputation as his coun- try's most distinguished poetic dramatist would have been assured by a more universal sign of recognition. — The Baltimore News. Charles Di Tocca: A Play It is the most powerful, vital, and truly tragical drama written by an American for some years. There is genuine pathos, mighty yet never repel- lant passion, great sincerity and penetration, and great elevation and beauty of language. — The Chicago Post. Song-Surf Mr. Rice's work betrays wide sympathies with nature and life, and a welcome originality of sen- timent and metrical harmony. — Sydney Lee.