Colors of Life Part 4

This feeling is due partly to a kind of honesty of which the squareness of a sonnet is symbolic. It is a form in which poets can express themselves when they are not rhapsodically excited. And very often they are not so excited, and at such times if they write rapid lyrics they have to whip themselves up with an emotion that they get out of the writing rather than out of the facts. And this makes much lyric poetry seem a little histrionic, whereas in order to create a sonnet at all, a concentration and sustainment of feeling is required that is inevitably equal to its more temperate pretensions.

The quality of being inevitably and honestly square may become a dreadful thing, however. And it makes this form inappropriate for persons who have not at least a certain degree of lyrical taste. In the hands of such persons a sonnet is not a poem, but an enterprise. They get inside that square with a whole lot of materials, colors and sounds and old clothes of ideas, and they push them round, and if they can not make them fill in properly and come up to the edges, they climb out and get some more. And the result is so palpably spreadout an object, always with lumps of imagery here and there, that it can not even be received in the linear sequence that is natural to the eye and ear.

This fault can be avoided by having strongly in mind while composing a sonnet, the virtues not specifically its own--the clarity, the running and pouring in single stream, that are the qualities of song. And to these qualities the strict convention of its rhymes and the traditional relation of the sonnet's parts, ought to give way when there is a conflict between them, for if a poem has not rhapsody, it is the more important that it should have grace. At least that is my opinion, and I offer this preface, in expiatory rather than boastful vein, to those high priests of perfection who guard the sonnet as a kind of lonely reliquary of their G.o.d.

A PRAISEFUL COMPLAINT

You love me not as I love, or when I Grow listless of the crimson of your lips, And turn not to your burning finger-tips, You would show fierce and feverish your eye, And hotly my numb wilfulness decry, Holding your virtues over me like whips, And stinging with the visible eclipse Of that sweet poise of life I crucify!

How can you pa.s.s so proudly from my face, With all the tendrils of your pa.s.sion furled, So adequate and animal in grace, As one whose mate is only all the world!

I never taste the sweet exceeding thought That you might love me, though I loved you not!

THOSE YOU DINED WITH

They would have made you like a pageant, bold And nightly festive, l.u.s.tre-lit for them, And round your beauty, like a dusky gem, Have poured the glamour of the pride of gold; And you would lie in life as in her bed The mistress of a pale king, indolent, Though hot her limbs and strong her languishment, And her deep spirit is unvisited.

But I would see you like a gypsy, free As windy morning in the sunny air, Your wild warm self, your vivid self, to be, A miracle of nature's liberty, Giving your gift of being kind and fair, High, gay and careless-handed everywhere!

THE Pa.s.sIONS OF A CHILD

The pa.s.sions of a child attend his dreams.

He lives, loves, hopes, remembers, is forlorn For legendary creatures, whom he deems Not too unreal--until one golden morn The gracious, all-awaking sun shines in Upon his tranquil pillow, and his eyes Are touched, and opened greatly, and begin To drink reality with rich surprise.

I loved the impetuous souls of ancient story-- Heroic characters, kings, queens, whose wills Like empires rose, achieved, and fell, in glory.

I was a child, until the radiant dawn, Thy beauty, woke me--O thy spirit fills The stature of those heroes, they are gone!

AS THE CRAG EAGLE

As the crag eagle to the zenith's height Wings his pursuit in his exalted hour Of her the tempest-reared, whose airy power Of plume and pa.s.sion challenges his flight To that wild alt.i.tude, where they unite, In mutual tumultuous victory And the swift sting of nature's ecstasy, Their shuddering pinions and their skyward might-- As they, the strong, to the full height of heaven Bear up that joy which to the strong is given, Thus, thus do we, whose stormy spirits quiver In the bold air of utter liberty, Clash equal at our highest, I and thee, Unconquered and unconquering forever!

TO MY FATHER

The eastern hill hath scarce unveiled his head, And the deliberate sky hath but begun To meditate upon a future sun, When thou dost rise from thy impatient bed.

Thy morning prayer unto the stars is said.

And not unlike a child, the penance done Of sleep, thou goest to thy serious fun, Exuberant--yet with a whisper tread.

And when that lord doth to the world appear, The jovial sun, he leans on his old hill, And levels forth to thee a golden smile-- Thee in his garden, where each warming year Thou toilest in all joy with him, to fill And flood the soil with Summer for a while.

TO EDWARD S. MARTIN

FROM A PROFESSIONAL HOBO

How old, my friend, is that fine-pointed pen Wherewith in smiling quietude you trace The maiden maxims of your writing-place, And on this gripped and mortal-sweating den And battle-pit of hunger now and then Dip out, with nice and intellectual grace, The faultless wisdoms of a nurtured race Of pale-eyed, pink, and perfect gentlemen!

How long have art and wit and poetry, With all their power, been content, like you, To gild the smiling fineness of the few, To filmy-curtain what they dare not see, In mult.i.tudinous reality, The rough and b.l.o.o.d.y soul of what is true!

(In an editorial in _Life_, Mr. Martin had described as "professional hoboes" a number of revolutionary agitators whom he did not like--Pancho Villa, William D. Haywood, Wild Joe O'Carroll--and he did me the honor to include me among them.)

EUROPE--1914

Since Athens died, the life that is a light Has never shone in Europe. Alien moods, The oriental morbid sanct.i.tudes, Have darkened on her like the fear of night.

In happy augury we dared to guess That her pure spirit shot one sunny glance Of paganry across the fields of France, Clear startling this dim fog of soulfulness.

But now, with arms and carnage and the cries Of Holy Murder, rolling to the clouds Her b.l.o.o.d.y-shadowed smoke of sacrifice, The Superst.i.tion conquers, and the shrouds Of sick black wonder lay their murky blight Where shone of old the immortal-seeming light.

ISADORA DUNCAN

You bring the fire and terror of the wars Of infidels in thunder-running hordes, With spears like sun-rays, shields, and wheeling swords Flame shape, death shape and shaped like scimitars, With crimson eagles and blue pennantry, And teeth and armor flashing, and white eyes Of battle horses, and the silver cries Of trumpets unto storm and victory!

Who is this naked-footed lovely girl Of summer meadows dancing on the gra.s.s?

So young and tenderly her footsteps pa.s.s, So dreamy-limbed and lightly wild and warm-- The bugles murmur and the banners furl, And they are lost and vanished like a storm!