Adelaide Crapsey

“ As her study in metrics was astoundingly objective and coldly unreflective of any emotional mood, so her own poems were at the other extreme, astoundingly subjective and descriptive of a mental state that found expression in no other form. They are heart-breakingly sombre; but they are true.
Adelaide Crapsey, by nature as vivid and joyous and alive a spirit as ever loved the beauty of life, like Keats and Stevenson, worked doggedly for many years against the numbing weight of a creeping pitiless disease. ”

“ THE WITCH When I was a girl by Nilus stream
I watched the desert stars arise;
My lover, he who dreamed the Sphinx,
Learned all his dreaming from my eyes.
I bore in Greece a burning name,
And I have been in Italy
Madonna to a painter-lad,
And mistress to a Medici.
And have you heard (and I have heard)
Of puzzled men with decorous mien,
Who judged—The wench knows far too much—
And hanged her on the Salem green? ”

“ She died on October eighth 1914, after having completed two-thirds of her Analysis of English Metrics—an exhaustive scientific thesis relating to accent—which, years before, she had planned to accomplish as her serious life work. Though her mind was intensely preoccupied with the technical and analytical aspects of prosody, still the creative, artistic side of her nature was so spontaneously alive, that she accomplished a very considerable volume of original poetry—almost as a by-product of her study in metrics. ”

“ The pacing of my sable-sandal'd feet,
And know my tear-drenched veil along the grass,
And think them less forsaken in their graves,
Saying: There's one remembers, one still mourns;
For the forgotten dead are dead indeed. ”

“ THE CRUCIFIXION And the centurion who stood by said:
Truly this was a son of God.
Not long ago but everywhere I go
There is a hill and a black windy sky.
Portent of hill, sky, day's eclipse I know:
Hill, sky, the shuddering darkness, these am I.
The dying at His right hand, at His left
I am—the thief redeemed and the lost thief;
I am the careless folk; I those bereft,
The Well-Belov'd, the women bowed in grief.
The gathering Presence that in terror cried,
In earth's shock, in the Temple's veil rent through,
I; and a watcher, ignorant, curious-eyed,
I the centurion who heard and knew. ”

“ These poems, of a gossamer delicacy and finish, are the stronger for the technical knowledge behind them. Likewise, her technical work possessed the more vigor because it was not the result of mere theoretical analysis, but also of the first-hand knowledge gained through her own creative achievement. In each field she spoke with the authority that experience in the other gave. Her studies in prosody were too technical for comprehension by the lay reader. It is through her creative work that she will be remembered, though she herself considered this the slightest part of her accomplishment. ”

“ On windless nights
The moon-cast shadows are,
So still will be my heart when I
Am dead. ”

“ ROSE-MARY OF THE ANGELS Little Sister Rose-Marie,
Will thy feet as willing-light
Run through Paradise, I wonder,
As they run the blue skies under,
Willing feet, so airy-light?
Little Sister Rose-Marie,
Will thy voice as bird-note clear
Lift and ripple over Heaven
As its mortal sound is given,
Swift bird-voice, so young and clear?
How God will be glad of thee,
Little Sister Rose-Marie! ”

“ From bleakening hills
Blows down the light, first breath
Of wintry wind . . . look up, and scent
The snow! ”

“ THE IMMORTAL RESIDUE Wouldst thou find my ashes? Look
In the pages of my book;
And, as these thy hand doth turn,
Know here is my funeral urn. ”

“ Drawn laughter from
A well of secret tears
And thence so elvish it rings,—mocking
And sweet:
BLUE HYACINTHS In your ”

“ DOOMSDAY Peter stands by the gate,
And Michael by the throne.
"Peter, I would pass the gate
And come before the throne."
"Whose spirit prayed never at the gate,
In life nor at the throne,
In death he may not pass the gate
To come before the throne":
Peter said from the gate;
Said Michael from the throne. ”

“ Were lighter touch
Than petal of flower resting
On grass, oh still too heavy it were,
Too heavy! ”

“ So shimmering fine it is and fair,
With stitches set in even rows.
I make my shroud but no one knows.
In door-way where the lilac blows,
Humming a little wandering air,
I make my shroud and no one knows,
So shimmering fine it is and fair. ”

“ Old winds that blew
When chaos was, what do
They tell the clattered trees that I
Should weep? ”

“ With faint dry sound,
Like steps of passing ghosts,
The leaves, frost-crisp'd, break from the trees
And fall. ”

“ White rose, but thy
Ensanguined sister is
The dear companion of my heart's
Shed blood. ”

“ And coral! Oh, I'll
Climb the great pasture rocks
And dream me mermaid in the sun's
Gold flood. ”

“ Although in Meredith's phrase "a man and a woman both for brains," she was an intensely feminine presence. Perfection was the passion of her life, and as one discerns it in her verse, one marked it also in her raiment. In the line
"And know my tear-drenched veil along the grass"
I see again her drooping figure with some trail of gossamer bewitchment clinging about or drifting after her. ”

“ ON SEEING WEATHER-BEATEN TREES Is it as plainly in our living shown,
By slant and twist, which way the wind hath blown? ”

“ This "immortal residue" is full of poignancy and power. The heart is stricken with her own terror at the approach of
"The despot of our days the lord of dust."
The book which is her funeral urn will be found to hold more than the ashes of a personal passion, it contains
"Infinite passion, and the pain of finite hearts that yearn."
Claude Bragdon.
Rochester, N.Y.
October 1915.
PREFACE Adelaide Crapsey was, over a term of many years, an eager student of the technical aspects of English poetry. ”