Joyce Kilmer

“ For us rich draughts of thine enchanted bliss
Shouldst be plunged down this cruel black abyss. 258
Brother and Master, if our love could free
Thy flameborne spirit from its leaden chain,
Thou shouldst rise up from this sad house of pain,
Be young and fair as thou wast wont to be,
And strong with joy as is the boundless sea.
Brother and Master, at thy feet we lay
These roses, red as lips that thou hast sung,
To mingle with the green and fragrant bay,
And cypress wreaths above thy head are hung.
We kneel awhile, then turn in tears away.
259
THE POET’S EPITAPH
Dreams fade with morning light ”

“ We who every morning at the breakfast table read of war and desolation need to cheer our hearts with the burlesque battles of the clowns; we who ride in the subway need to exult when the charioteer, with streaming toga, guides his six white horses on their thunderous course; we whose eyes are daily on our ledgers and sales records need to lift them, if not to the stars, at least to the perilous wire on which a graceful pedestrian gayly flirts with death. We whose lives are prose may well be grateful for the circus, our annual draught of poetry ”

“ But you, who can build of the stubborn rock no form of loveliness, Who can never mingle the radiant hues to make a wonder live, Who can only show your little woe to the world in a rhythmic dress — What kind of a counterpart of you does the three-ring circus give? Well — here in the little side-show tent to-day some people stand, One is a giant, one a dwarf, and one has a figured skin, And each is scarred and seared and marred by Fate's relentless hand, And each one shows his grief for pay, with a sort of pride therein. You put your sorrow into rhyme and want the world to look ”

“ If I should live in a forest And sleep underneath a tree, No grove of impudent saplings Would make a home for me. I'd go where the old oaks gather, Serene and good and strong, And they would not sigh and tremble And vex me with a song. The pleasantest sort of poet Is the poet who's old and wise, With an old white beard and wrinkles About his kind old eyes. For these young flippertigibbets A-rhyming their hours away They won't be still like honest men And listen to what you say. The young poet screams forever About his sex and his soul ”

“ That the great tragedy which has overtaken Belgium will have a beneficial effect upon its literature is not to be doubted. Of course, the first result is an almost total cessation of creative activity; one cannot handle a rifle and a pen at the same time. But with the return of peace must come the development of a new Belgian literature, a literature which is not an echo of the salon-philosophies of Paris and Berlin, but a beautiful expression of the soul of a strong and brave race. ”

“ Coates, "that all young poets would keep their minds and souls sensitive to the appeals of beauty. As has been said, there is nothing in the world capable of such spontaneous uplifting and speedy ennoblement as the soul. It may seem for the moment to be satisfied, but it has always a thirst for a wilder beauty than this world knows. And poetry, which is the voice of the soul's aspirations, has for it, of all the arts, the most natural and immediate appeal.
"Sculpture and painting are moments of life. Poetry is life itself. ”

“ Each poet is glad there was no cure To stop his lonely pain. For nothing keeps a poet In his high singing mood Like unappeasable hunger For unattainable food. So fools are glad of the folly That made them weep and sing, And Keats is thankful for Fanny Brawne And Drummond for his king. They know that on flinty sorrow And failure and desire The steel of their souls was hammered To bring forth the lyric fire. Lord Byron and Shelley and Plunkett, McDonough and Hunt and Pearse See now why their hatred of tyrants Was so insistently fierce. Is Freedom only a Will-o'-the-wisp To cheat a poet's eye? ”

“ But a house that has done what a house should do, a house that has sheltered life, That has put its loving wooden arms around a man and his wife, A house that has echoed a baby's laugh and held up his stumbling feet, Is the saddest sight, when it's left alone, that ever your eyes could meet. So whenever I go to Suffern along the Erie track I never go by the empty house without stopping and looking back, Yet it hurts me to look at the crumbling roof and the shutters fallen apart, For I can't help thinking the poor old house is a house with a broken heart. ”

“ If any living poet deserves to be called the laureate of democracy, that poet is Gilbert K. Chesterton. I do not base this statement so much on his serious poems in praise of democracy, as on his light verse. In his gay ballades, full of rollicking humor, we find every now and then a bit of shrewd satire, a devastating criticism of the false leaders, of the hypocrites and tyrants who sit in high places. Better than any other writer of our day, Chesterton knows how to drive his rapier of rhyme to the very heart of hypocrisy and injustice. ”

“ Well, what is the difference between a poet who writes prose and a prose-writer who writes verse? The difference is easy to see but hard to describe. Mr. Thomas Hardy is a prose writer. He has forsaken the novel, of which he was so distinguished a master, to make cynical little sonnet portraits and to pour the acid wine of his philosophy—a sort of perverted Presbyterianism—into the graceful amphora of poetic drama. But he is not a poet. Thackeray was a prose-writer, in spite of his delicious light verse. Every novelist writes or has written verse, but not all of them are poets. ”

“ It must be fine to walk a line of silver in the air And to cleave a hundred feet of space with a gesture like a song. Sir Henry Irving never knew a keener, sweeter thrill Than that which stirs the breast of him who turns his painted face To the circling crowd who laugh aloud and clap hands with a will As a tribute to the clown who won the great wheel-barrow race. Now, one shall work in the living rock with a mallet and a knife, And another shall dance on a big white horse that canters round a ring, By another's hand shall colours stand in similitude of life ”

“ This comes from its perfect sense of the fitness of things; the call to business should be business-like. But what triumphant peals burst from its tiny belfry when it bids you rise and put on robes of honor! It can mimic the proud mirth of wedding bells; it knows the mighty song that rang from all the towers of London to cheer Dick Whittington. And that it can utter harsh and strident grief, those know who lie down with Sorrow and must awaken with her.
Even the most materialistic man has for his alarm clock a shame-faced personal regard. ”

“ Our altar light is a buttercup bright, And our shrine is a bank of sod, But still we share St. Alexis' care, The Vagabond of God!
Folly (For A. K. K.) What distant mountains thrill and glow Beneath our Lady Folly's tread? Why has she left us, wise in woe, Shrewd, practical, uncomforted? We cannot love or dream or sing, We are too cynical to pray, There is no joy in anything Since Lady Folly went away. Many a knight and gentle maid, Whose glory shines from years gone by, Through ignorance was unafraid And as a fool knew how to die. ”

“ But there is no more reason for your own library to resemble a public library than there is for your study to resemble your office, or for your dining-room to resemble the Automat, or for every bedroom in your house to bear on its door printed directions to ring twice for your wife to bring you hot water and three times for a clean collar.
The crowning virtue of the successful private library is inefficiency. As an example closely approaching the ideal, as a model to householders who have been allowed a closet or vault in which to keep books, I respectfully present my own library. ”

“ At the foot of the Cross on Calvary Three soldiers sat and diced, And one of them was the Devil And he won the Robe of Christ. When the Devil comes in his proper form To the chamber where I dwell, I know him and make the Sign of the Cross Which drives him back to Hell. And when he comes like a friendly man And puts his hand in mine, The fervour in his voice is not From love or joy or wine. And when he comes like a woman, With lovely, smiling eyes, Black dreams float over his golden head Like a swarm of carrion flies. ”

“ It is their incongruity which gives to rustic sign boards the magic of romance. The deliberately commercial announcement, firmly set in an innocent meadow or among the eternal hills, has exactly the same charm as a buttercup in a city street or a gray wood-dove fluttering among the stern eaves of an apartment house.
What a benefaction to humanity these rural sign boards are! To the farmer they are (in addition to being a source of revenue) a piquant suggestion of the wise and wealthy city. He loves and fears the city, as mankind always loves and fears the unknown. ”

“ Through flying lead and crimson steel They plunged for Freedom and the Right. May we, their grateful children, learn Their strength, who lie beneath this sod, Who went through fire and death to earn At last the accolade of God. In shining rank on rank arrayed They march, the legions of the Lord; He is their Captain unafraid, The Prince of Peace . . . Who brought a sword.
The Rosary Not on the lute, nor harp of many strings Shall all men praise the Master of all song. Our life is brief, one saith, and art is long; And skilled must be the laureates of kings. ”

“ We left behind the land we love, the stormy sea we crossed.
We heard the cry of Belgium, and France the free and fair,
For where there’s work for fighting-men, the Sixty-ninth is there.
The Harp that once through Tara’s Halls shall fill the air with song,
And the Shamrock be cheered as the port is neared by our triumphant throng.
With the Potsdam Palace on a truck and the Kaiser in a sack,
New York will be seen one Irish green when the Sixty-ninth comes back.
The men who fought at Marye’s Heights will aid us from the sky,
They showed the world at Fredericksburg how Irish soldiers die. ”

“ A city street that is busy and wide is ground by a thousand wheels, And a burden of traffic on its breast is all it ever feels: It is dully conscious of weight and speed and of work that never ends, But it cannot be human like Main Street, and recognise its friends. There were only about a hundred teams on Main Street in a day, And twenty or thirty people, I guess, and some children out to play. And there wasn't a wagon or buggy, or a man or a girl or a boy That Main Street didn't remember, and somehow seem to enjoy. ”

“ I never have seen a haunted house, but I hear there are such things; That they hold the talk of spirits, their mirth and sorrowings. I know this house isn't haunted, and I wish it were, I do; For it wouldn't be so lonely if it had a ghost or two. This house on the road to Suffern needs a dozen panes of glass, And somebody ought to weed the walk and take a scythe to the grass. It needs new paint and shingles, and the vines should be trimmed and tied; But what it needs the most of all is some people living inside. ”

“ For Christmas is more than a day, it is a season, of which December 25 is only the commencement. And as the Christmas tree seems pleasanter and more friendly when some of its needles have formed little green aromatic heaps on the carpet, and when the china angel and two or three of the red glass balls have been taken down for the baby to play with—so does the Christmas season seem pleasanter and more friendly when its first great feast and pageant has come to its joyous close and become a part of time's rich treasury of golden days. ”

“ If all the poetry of Belgium were the work of charlatans and vicious men, then, not even this tremendous war could stimulate it into healthy life. The fame of Maeterlinck’s dismal dramas, and of the least worthy poems of Emile Verhaeren, should not make us oblivious of the fact that Belgium has, and has always had, its small, but brilliant, company of sincere and gifted writers, men who have not debased their art, but have held in honour the sacred traditions of their high calling. ”

“ And it was grief that made Mankind your lover, And it was grief that made you love Mankind. III Before Christ left the Citadel of Light, To tread the dreadful way of human birth, His shadow sometimes fell upon the earth And those who saw it wept with joy and fright. "Thou art Apollo, than the sun more bright!" They cried. "Our music is of little worth, But thrill our blood with thy creative mirth Thou god of song, thou lord of lyric might!" ”

“ To say that they reflect Russian life is to insult Russia grievously. They do reflect, it is true, the basest part of Russian life, the part which no friend of Russia or of literature can wish reflected. They reflect the gross and hideous bestiality of the Russian criminal class, they reflect the life of people who have added to their native savagery the vices of civilization. They call to mind a picture of the Russian people as something at once bestial and human, a monstrosity, a nightmare: perhaps the thing that Kipling had in mind when he wrote of the bear that walks like a man. ”

“ IV On nights like this the huddled sheep — I never saw a night so fair. How huge the sky is, and how deep! And how the planets flash and glare! At dawn beside my drowsy flock What winged music I have heard! But now the clouds with singing rock As if the sky were turning bird. O blinding Light, O blinding Light! Burn through my heart with sweetest pain. O flaming Song, most loudly bright, Consume away my deadly stain! V The stable glows against the sky, And who are these that throng the way? My three old comrades hasten by And shining angels kneel and pray. ”

“ For many a youthful shoulder now is gay with an epaulet, And the hand that was deft with a cricket-bat is defter with a sword, And some of the lads will laugh to-day where the trench is red and wet, And some will win on the bloody field the accolade of the Lord. They have taken their youth and mirth away from the study and playing-ground To a new school in an alien land beneath an alien sky; Out in the smoke and roar of the fight their lessons and games are found, And they who were learning how to live are learning how to die. ”

“ Ryan, woman is no longer your bond slave! You must have no more babies. You are killing your wife with soul-deadening drudgery. No janitor should have children; no janitor should have a wife. You must put Mrs. Ryan in a model tenement somewhere, and let her lead a normal, intellectual life. Society will care for the children. There are plenty of places where they can go and be studied by scientists and develop, perhaps, into useful members of the community. ”