Various

“ Musing, between the sunset and the dark, As Twilight in unhesitating hands Bore from the faint horizon's underlands, Silvern and chill, the moon's phantasmal ark, I heard the sea, and far away could mark Where that unalterable waste expands In sevenfold sapphire from the mournful sands, And saw beyond the deep a vibrant spark.
There sank the sun Arcturus, and I thought: Star, by an ocean on a world of thine, May not a being, born like me to die, Confront a little the eternal Naught And watch our isolated sun decline— Sad for his evanescence, even as I? ”

“ The hospitality of this hall will have been a genuine source of happiness if somehow it tells the visitors, either while they are here, or after they have gone to other places, what a delight it is to enjoy a poem, to realize it, to live in the vivid dream it evokes, to hark to its music, to listen to the special magic grace of its own style and composition, and to know that this special grace will say as deeply as some revealing hour with a friend one loves, something nothing else can say—something which is life itself sung in free sympathy beyond the bars of time and space. ”

“ But poetry, I believe, never speaks her beauty—certainly never her scope and variety, except on the condition that in her presence one sits down quietly with folded hands, and truly listens to her singing voice.
"So for one the wet sail arching through the rainbow round the bow, And for one the creak of snow-shoes on the crust." Many people do not like poetry, in this way, as a living art to be enjoyed, but rather as an exact science to be approved. To them poetry may concern herself only with a limited number of subjects to be presented in a predetermined and conventional manner and form. ”

“ To feel, and in order to feel, to express, or at least to understand the expression, of all that is lovely in nature, of all that is poignant and sensitive in man, is to us in itself a sufficient end.... The pathos of life and death, the long embrace, the hand stretched out in vain, the moment that glides forever away, with its freight of music and light, into the shadow and bush of the haunted past, all that we have, all that eludes us, a bird on the wing, a perfume escaped on the gale— to all these things we are trained to respond, and the response is what we call literature. ”

“ Architecture, responding to commercial and social demands, is whipped into shape by the rough and tumble of life and fostered, willy-nilly, by men's material needs. Poetry alone, of all the fine arts, has been left to shift for herself in a world unaware of its immediate and desperate need of her, a world whose great deeds, whose triumphs over matter, over the wilderness, over racial enmities and distances, require her ever-living voice to give them glory and glamour. ”

“ The sea-winds to thy voice Lent power; the Grecian with the English blossom Twined, to rejoice Upon thy brow in chaplets of new bloom; And over thee the Celtic mists of doom Hovered to give their magics to thy hand; And past the moon, where Music dwells alone, She woke, and loved, and left her starry zone At thy command.
VI
For thee spake Beauty from the shadowy waters; For thee Earth garlanded With loveliness and light her mortal daughters; Toward thee was sped The arrow of swift longing, keen delight, Wonder that pierces, cruel needs that smite, Madness and melody and hope and tears. ”

“ To the hill-flowers clings my dust, and tho' eyeless Death may thrust All else into the darkness, in their heaven I put my trust; And a dawn shall bid me climb to the little spread of thyme Where first I heard the ripple of the fountain-heads of rhyme.
And a fir-wood that I know, from dawn to sunset-glow, Shall whisper to a lonely sea, that swings far, far below. Death, thy dawn makes all things new. Hills of Youth, I come to you, Moving through the dew, moving through the dew. ”

“ A still moon looketh down from the sky, and a wavering moon looks up From every hollow in the green hills that holds a pool in its cup.
[Pg 46] The woodland borders are wreathed with bloom—elder, viburnum, rose; The young trees yearn on the breast of the wind that sighs of love as it goes.
The small stars drown in the moon-washed blue but the greater ones abide, With Vega high in the midmost place, Altair not far aside.
The glades are dusk, and soft the grass, where the flower of the elder gleams, Mist-white, moth-like, a spirit awake in the dark of forest dreams. ”

“ Paragraphers have done their worst for the minor poet, while they have allowed the minor painter, sculptor, actor—worst of all, architect—to go scot-free. The world which laughs at the experimenter in verse, walks negligently through our streets, and goes seriously, even reverently, to the annual exhibitions in our cities, examining hundreds of pictures and statues without expecting even the prize-winners to be masterpieces. ”

“ The people must do their part if the poet is to tell their story to the future; they must cultivate and irrigate the soil if the desert is to blossom as the rose.
The present venture is a modest effort to give to poetry her own place, her own voice. The popular magazines can afford her but scant courtesy—a Cinderella corner in the ashes—because they seek a large public which is not hers, a public which buys them not for their verse but for their stories, pictures, journalism, rarely for their literature, even in prose. Most magazine editors say that there is no public for poetry in America ”

“ I heard one whisper, "Lo! the dawn is breaking, And he has lost the wonder of the day." Another came whom I had loved on earth, And kissed my brow and brushed my dampened hair. Softly she spoke: "Oh that he should not see The April that his spirit bathed in! Birds Are singing in the orchard, and the grass That soon will cover him is growing green. The daisies whiten on the emerald hills, And the immortal magic that he loved Wakens again—and he has fallen asleep." Another said: "Last night I saw the moon Like a tremendous lantern shine in heaven, And I could only think of him—and sob. ”

“ Now may I recall her face. It is my light to think by in the dark. Yes, all my years of study, all the will Tenacious to achieve, the tempered strife, The victories attained through patient skill, Lie at the door of one dear human life. And yet ... the letter ... Often have I read How love relumes the flowers and the trees. True! For my world is newly garmented: Rewards seem slight, and slighter penalties. Daily companionship is more and more. To make one little good more viable, To lift one load, is worth the heart's outpour. ”

“ It is exhilarating to read the pages of Pope and of Byron, whether you agree with them or not, because here poetry does speak the little and the great tongues of the earth, and sings satires, pastorals and lampoons, literary and dramatic criticism, all manner of fun and sparkling prettiness, sweeping judgments, nice discriminations, fashions, politics, the ways of gentle and simple—love and desire and pain and sorrow, and anguish and death. ”

“ We have denied Poe, we do not give him his full meed of appreciation even today, and yet we accept him through the disciples who have followed or have assimilated his tradition. And now that young Englishmen are beginning to feel the influence of Whitman upon French poetry, it may be that he too, through the imitation of vers libre in America, will begin to experience a "perfect return."
Must we always accept American genius in this round-about fashion? Have we no true perspective that we applaud mediocrity at home, and look abroad for genius, only to find that it is of American origin? ”

“ At any rate this international acceptance of the two greatest American poets, and the realization of their international influence upon us, may awaken us to a new sense of responsibility. It would be a valuable lesson, if only we could learn to turn the international eye, in private, upon ourselves. If the American poet can learn to be less parochial, to apply the intellectual whip, to visualize his art, to separate it and see it apart from himself; we may learn then to appreciate the great poet when he is "in our midst." and not wait for the approval of English or French critics. ”

“ But hearts in whom thy heart lives, though they be By oceans sundered, walk the night with thee In alien land.
IV
For them, grief speaks not with the tidings spoken That thou art of the dead. No lamp extinguished when the bowl is broken, No music fled When the lute crumbles, art thou nor shalt be; But as a great wave, lifted on the sea, Surges triumphant toward the sleeping shore, Thou fallest, in splendor of irradiant rain, To sweep resurgent all the ocean plain Forevermore. ”

“ Within space limitations set at present by the small size of our monthly sheaf, we shall be able to print poems longer, and of more intimate and serious character, than the popular magazines can afford to use. The test, limited by ever-fallible human judgment, is to be quality alone; all forms, whether narrative, dramatic or lyric, will be acceptable. We hope to offer our subscribers a place of refuge, a green isle in the sea, where Beauty may plant her gardens, and Truth, austere revealer of joy and sorrow, of hidden delights and despairs, may follow her brave quest unafraid. ”

“ O strange ecstatic Pool, What unknown country art thou dreaming of, Or temple than this garden lovelier?
Who made thy sky the silver side of leaves, And poised its orchid like a swan-white moon Whose disc of perfect pallor half deceives The mirror of thy limpid green lagoon, He loveth well thy ripple-feathered moods, Thy whims at dusk, thy rainbow look at dawn! Dream thou no more of vales Olympian: Where pale Olympus broods There were no orchid white as moon or swan, No sky of leaves, no garden-haunting Pan! ”

“ That in the end we turn to thee, Death, That we turn to thee, singing One last song.
O Death, Thou art an healing wind That blowest over white flowers A-tremble with dew; [Pg 41] Thou art a wind flowing Over long leagues of lonely sea; Thou art the dusk and the fragrance; Thou art the lips of love mournfully smiling; Thou art the pale peace of one Satiate with old desires; Thou art the silence of beauty, And we look no more for the morning ”

“ For the words of my mouth shall keep step with the ripple of waves and the beating of wings; yea, they shall mount with the huge paces of the sun in heaven, that cease not for my ceasing. Men shall sound them on suckling tongues still soft with milk, they shall run into battle to the tune of thy deeds, and kindle their fire with the breath of thy wisdom. And thy glory shall be ever living, as a jewel of jasper from the earth—yea, as the green jewel of jasper carven into a god for the rod of thy power, oh king, and of the power of thy sons forever. ”

“ Few persons, I think, will read The Story of a Round House and other Poems without a sense that the invisible root of its deep poetry is that fine power which Whitman called Friendship, the genius of sympathetic imagination.
This is the force that knits the sinews of the chief, the life-size figure of the book. Dauber is the tale of a man and his work. It is the story of an artist in the making. The heroic struggles of an English farmer's son of twenty-one to become a painter of ships and the ocean, form the drama of the poem. ”

“ Since the passing of the nineteenth-century poets, the art of poetry, like the art of painting, has taken on new forms and become the vehicle of a new message. The poet of to-day speaks through so different a medium, his themes are so diverse from those of the elder generation, that he cannot hope to find his public in their lingering audience. ”

“ On the boy's helm a glove Of the Duke's daughter— In his eyes splendor of love And slaughter.
Hideous the Hun advances Like a sea-tide on sand; Unyielding, the haughty lances Make dauntless stand. And ever amid the clangor, Butchering Hun and Hun, With sorrowful face rides Sangar And his son....
Broken is the wild invader (Sullied, the whole world's fountains) ; They have penned the murderous raider With his back to the mountains. Yet tho' what had been mead Is now a bloody lake, Still drink swords where men bleed, Nor slake. ”

“ The arts especially have need of each an entrenched place, a voice of power, if they are to do their work and be heard. For as the world grows greater day by day, as every member of it, through something he buys or knows or loves, reaches out to the ends of the earth, things precious to the race, things rare and delicate, may be overpowered, lost in the criss-cross of modern currents, the confusion of modern immensities.
Painting, sculpture, music are housed in palaces in the great cities of the world ”

“ Here where old barks upon new headlands shatter, And worlds seem torn apart, Amid the creeds now vain to shield or flatter The mortal heart, Where the wild welter of strange knowledge won From grave and engine and the chemic sun Subdues the age to faith in dust and gold: The bardic laurel thou hast dowered with youth, In living witness of the spirit's truth, Like prophets old. ”

“ In the wilderness, alone, when skies were cloven, Thou hast thy garment and thy refuge woven From thine own soul.
XII
[Pg 142] The faiths and forms of yesteryear are waning, Dropping, like leaves. Through the wood sweeps a great wind of complaining As Time bereaves Pitiful hearts of all that they thought holy. The icy stars look down on melancholy Shelterless creatures of a pillaged day: A day of disillusionment and terror, A day that yields no solace for the error It takes away.
XIII
Thee with no solace, but with bolder passion The bitter day endowed. ”

“ Life's city ways are dark, Men mutter by, the wells Of the great waters moan. O death, O sea, O tide, The waters moan like bells. No light, no mark, The soul goes out alone On seas unknown.
Stripped of all purple robes, Stripped of all golden lies, I will not be afraid. Truth will preserve through death; Perhaps the stars will rise, The stars like globes. The ship my striving made May see night fade. ”