Various

“ Which flows and bears us with it into dusk,
Repeat the things you say! Repeat them slowly
Upon this air, make them an incantation
For ancient tower, old wall, the purple twilight,
This dust, and me. But all I hear is silence,
And something that may be leaves or may be sea.
III
When the tree bares, the music of it changes:
Hard and keen is the sound, long and mournful;
Pale are the poplar boughs in the evening light
Above my house, against a slate-cold cloud. ”

“ THE GRINDSTONE
Having a wheel and four legs of its own
Has never availed the cumbersome grindstone
To get it anywhere that I can see.
These hands have helped it go and even race;
Not all the motion, though, they ever lent,
Not all the miles it may have thought it went,
Have got it one step from the starting place.
It stands beside the same old apple tree.
The shadow of the apple tree is thin
Upon it now; its feet are fast in snow.
All other farm machinery's gone in,
And some of it on no more legs and wheel
Than the grindstone can boast to stand or go. ”

“ Which crouch in the dusk above their feeble lanterns,
Each coldly lighted by his tiny faith;
The moon, the waxen moon, now almost full,
Creeps whitely up. . . . Westward the waves of cloud,
Vermilion, crimson, violet, stream on the air,
Shatter to golden flakes in the icy green
Translucency of twilight. . . . And the moon
Drinks up their light, and as they fade or darken,
Brightens. . . . O monstrous miracle of the twilight,
That one should live because the others die! ”

“ Hung over nothing in an arch of light
While one more evening like a wave of silence
Gathers the stars together and goes out."
V
Now the great wheel of darkness and low clouds
Whirs and whirls in the heavens with dipping rim;
Against the ice-white wall of light in the west
Skeleton trees bow down in a stream of air.
Leaves, black leaves and smoke, are blown on the wind;
Mount upward past my window; swoop again;
In a sharp silence, loudly, loudly falls
The first cold drop, striking a shriveled leaf. . . .
Doom and dusk for the earth! ”

“ Earth breathes him like an eternal spring: he is a second sky over the Earth.
Mighty race! mighty race!—my flesh, my flesh
Is a cup of song,
Is a well in Asia. . . .
I go about with a dark heart where the Ages sit in a divine thunder. . . .
My blood is cymbal-clashed and the anklets of the dancers tinkle there. . . .
Harp and psaltery, harp and psaltery make drunk my spirit. . . . ”

“ That April should be shattered by a gust,
That August should be leveled by a rain,
I can endure, and that the lifted dust
Of man should settle to the earth again;
But that a dream can die, will be a thrust
Between my ribs forever of hot pain.
V
What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,
I have forgotten, and what arms have lain
Under my head till morning; but the rain
Is full of ghosts to-night, that tap and sigh
Upon the glass and listen for reply ”

“ Mournfully human, that cries from the darkening valley;
Close, with your leaves, about the sound of water:
Take me among your hearts as you take the mist
Among your boughs!" . . . Now by the granite milestone,
On the ancient human road that winds to nowhere,
The pilgrim listens, as the night air brings
The murmured echo, perpetual, from the gorge
Of barren rock far down the valley. Now,
Though twilight here, it may be starlight there;
Mist makes elfin lakes in the hollow fields;
The dark wood stands in the mist like a somber island
With one red star above it. . . . ”

“ Too easily brought to tears and weakness by music,
Baffled and broken by love, the helpless beholder
Of the war in my heart of desire with desire, the struggle
Of hatred with love, terror with hunger; I
Who laughed without knowing the cause of my laughter, who grew
Without wishing to grow, a servant to my own body;
Loved without reason the laughter and flesh of a woman,
Enduring such torments to find her! I who at last
Grow weaker, struggle more feebly, relent in my purpose,
Choose for my triumph an easier end, look backward
At earlier conquests ”

“ It was not chastity that made me cold nor fear,
only I knew that you, like myself, were sick
of the puny race that crawls and quibbles and lisps
of love and love and lovers and love's deceit.
It was not chastity that made me wild but fear
that my weapon, tempered in different heat,
was over-matched by yours, and your hand
skilled to yield death-blows, might break. ”

“ Oh, gipsies, proud and stiff-necked and perverse,
Saying: "We tell the fortunes of the nations,
And revel in the deep palm of the world.
The head-line is the road we choose for trade.
The love-line is the lane wherein we camp.
The life-line is the road we wander on. ”

“ Across the country, between two ocean shore lines,
where cities cling to rail and water routes,
there people and horses stop in their foot tracks,
cars and wagons stop in their wheel tracks—
faces at street crossings shine with a silence
of eggs laid in a row on a pantry shelf—
among the ways and paths of the flow of the Republic
faces come to a standstill, sixty clockticks count—
in the name of the Boy, in the name of the Republic. ”

“ Writing inventories in ledgers, reading the "Song of Solomon" at night,
So many verses before bedtime,
Because it was the Bible.
The dead fed you
Amid the slant stones of graveyards.
Pale ghosts who planted you
Came in the night time
And let their thin hair blow through your clustered stems.
You are of the green sea,
And of the stone hills which reach a long distance.
You are of elm-shaded streets with little shops where they sell kites and marbles,
You are of great parks where every one walks and nobody is at home. ”

“ And the real frontier was his sun-burnt breast.
From the fiery core of that apple, the earth,
Sprang apple-amaranths divine.
Love's orchards climbed to the heavens of the West,
And snowed the earthly sod with flowers. ”

“ It is as if a dozen unacademic painters, separated by temperament and distance, were to arrange to have an exhibition every two years of their latest work. They would not pretend that they were the only painters worthy of a public showing; they would maintain that their work was, generally speaking, most interesting to one another. ”

“ PRIME
Your voice is like bells over roofs at dawn
When a bird flies
And the sky changes to a fresher color.
Speak, speak, Beloved.
Say little things
For my ears to catch
And run with them to my heart. ”

“ As you open a window and stare at a stone gray sky,
And the streets give back the jangle of meaningless movement
That is tired of life and almost too tired to die.
Night comes on, and even the night is wounded ”

“ And the purple dusk, grown old, grown old in heart.
Shadows of clouds flow inward from the sea.
The mottled fields grow dark. The golden wall
Grows gray again, turns stone again, the tower,
No longer kindled, darkens against a cloud.
Old is the world, old as the world am I ”

“ How shall we praise the magnificence of the dead,
The great man humbled, the haughty brought to dust?
Is there a horn we should not blow as proudly
For the meanest of us all, who creeps his days,
Guarding his heart from blows, to die obscurely? ”

“ Up attic that we'd ever want again.
The attic was less to us than the cellar.
If the bones liked the attic, let them like it,
Let them stay in the attic. When they sometimes
Come down the stairs at night and stand perplexed
Behind the door and headboard of the bed,
Brushing their chalky skull with chalky fingers,
With sounds like the dry rattling of a shutter,
That's what I sit up in the dark to say—
To no one any more since Toffile died.
Let them stay in the attic since they went there. ”

“ Not for myself was I so much concerned.
Oh, no!—although, of course, I could have found
A better way to pass the afternoon
Than grinding discord out of a grindstone,
And beating insects at their gritty tune. ”

“ Yet held in a flaming circle far greater that our own?
Last night we were single, a radiant core of completion,
Surrounded by flames that embraced us but left no burns,
To-day we are only ourselves; we have plans and pretensions ”

“ Georgian Poetry has an editor, and the poems it contains may be taken as that editor's reaction to the poetry of the day. The Miscellany, on the other hand, has no editor; it is no one person's choice which forms it; it is not an attempt to throw into relief any particular group or stress any particular tendency. It does disclose the most recent work of certain representative figures in contemporary American literature. ”

“ And so to-day—they lay him away—
the boy nobody knows the name of—
the buck private—the unknown soldier—
the doughboy who dug under and died
when they told him to—that's him.
Down Pennsylvania Avenue to-day the riders go,
men and boys riding horses, roses in their teeth,
stems of roses, rose leaf stalks, rose dark leaves—
the line of the green ends in a red rose flash. ”

“ And with the gipsies there will be a king
And a thousand desperadoes just his style,
With all their rags dyed in the blood of roses,
Splashed with the blood of angels, and of demons.
And he will boss them with an awful voice.
And with a red whip he will beat his wife. ”

“ III. Johnny Appleseed's Old Age
To be read like faint hoof-beats of fawns long gone
From respectable pasture, and park and lawn,
And heartbeats of fawns that are coming again
When the forest, once more, is the master of men. ”

“ A million faces a thousand miles from Pennsylvania Avenue
stay frozen with a look, a clocktick, a moment—
skeleton riders on skeleton horses—the nickering high horse laugh,
the whinny and the howl up Pennsylvania Avenue:
who? why? ”

“ While you read, hear the hoof-beats of deer in the snow. And see, by their track, bleeding footprints we know.But he left their wigwams and their love.
By the hour of dawn he was proud and stark,
Kissed the Indian babes with a sigh,
Went forth to live on roots and bark,
Sleep in the trees, while the years howled by—
Calling the catamounts by name,
And buffalo bulls no hand could tame,
Slaying never a living creature,
Joining the birds in every game,
With the gorgeous turkey gobblers mocking,
With the lean-necked eagles boxing and shouting ”

“ She lets the hydrant water run:
He fancies lonely, banal,
bald-headed mountains,
affected by the daily
caress of the tropical sun,
weeping tears the length of brooks
down their faces and flanks. ”

“ To the disheartened angels falling around.
A pause.
The angel host withdraws
With empty boasts throughout its sullen files,
Suddenly God smiles. . . .
On the walls of heaven a tumble of light is caught. ”

“ My eyes are weary
Following you everywhere.
Short, oh short, the days!
VIII
When the flower falls
The leaf is no more cherished.
Every day I fear.
IX
Even when you smile
Sorrow is behind your eyes. ”

“ Oh, gipsies, proud and stiff-necked and perverse,
Picking the brains and pockets of mankind,
You will go westward for one-half hour yet.
You will turn eastward in a little while.
You will go back, as men turn to Kentucky,
Land of their fathers, dark and bloody ground. ”

“ But, though they fight and smite him tail and jaw,
Nothing avails; upon his scales their swords
Break like frayed cords or, like a blade of straw,
Bend towards the hilt and wilt like faded grass.
Defeat and fresh retreat. . . . ”

“ The absence of E. A. Robinson from this year's Miscellany is a source of regret not only to all the contributors but to the poet himself. Mr. Robinson has written nothing since his Collected Poems with the exception of a long poem—a volume in itself—but he hopes to appear in any subsequent collection.
It should be added that this is not a haphazard anthology of picked-over poetry. The poems that follow are new. They are new not only in the sense that (with two exceptions) they cannot be found in book form, but most of them have never previously been published. ”

“ When there was water in the cellar in spring
Struck the hard cellar bottom. And then some one
Began the stairs, two footsteps for each step,
The way a man with one leg and a crutch,
Or little child, comes up. ”

“ He said the dead had souls, but when I asked him
How that could be—I thought the dead were souls,
He broke my trance. Don't that make you suspicious
That there's something the dead are keeping back? ”

“ Too playfully, as though to say, "Now off
With that long face—you've years and years to live."
I think he thinks so. But, for Heaven's sake,
Don't credit it—and never tell Mathilde.
Poor dear, she has enough to bear already . . . ”