The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century Part 21

PITY

They never saw my lover's face, They only know our love was brief, Wearing awhile a windy grace And pa.s.sing like an autumn leaf.

They wonder why I do not weep, They think it strange that I can sing, They say, "Her love was scarcely deep Since it has left so slight a sting."

They never saw my love nor knew That in my heart's most secret place I pity them as angels do Men who have never seen G.o.d's face.

A PRAYER

Until I lose my soul and lie Blind to the beauty of the earth, Deaf tho' a lyric wind goes by, Dumb in a storm of mirth;

Until my heart is quenched at length And I have left the land of men, Oh, let me love with all my strength Careless if I am loved again.

If the two pieces just cited are not poetry, then I have no idea what poetry may be.

Another young woman poet is Fannie Stearns Davis (Mrs. Grifford). The quality of her mind as displayed in her two books indicates possibilities of high development. She was born at Cleveland, on the sixth of March, 1884, is a graduate of Smith College, was a teacher in Wisconsin, and has made many contributions to various magazines. Her first book of poems, _Myself and I_, appeared in 1913; two years later came the volume called _Crack o' Dawn_. She is not much given to metrical adventure, although one of her most original poems, _As I Drank Tea Today_, has an irregular rime-scheme. For the most part, she follows both in subject and style the poetic tradition.

She has the gift of song--not indeed in the superlative degree--but nevertheless unmistakable; and she has a full mind. She is neither optimist nor pessimist; I should call her a sympathetic observer. The following poem sums up fairly well her acc.u.mulated wisdom:

I have looked into all men's hearts.

Like houses at night unshuttered they stand, And I walk in the street, in the dark, and on either hand There are hollow houses, men's hearts.

They think that the curtains are drawn, Yet I see their shadows suddenly kneel To pray, or laughing and reckless as drunkards reel Into dead sleep till dawn.

And I see an immortal child With its quaint high dreams and wondering eyes Sleeping beneath the hard worn body that lies Like a mummy-case defiled.

And I hear an immortal cry Of splendour strain through the sodden words, Like a flight of brave-winged heaven-desirous birds From a swamp where poisons lie.

--I have looked into all men's hearts.

Oh, secret terrible houses of beauty and pain!

And I cannot be gay, but I cannot be bitter again, Since I looked into all men's hearts.

There is one commandment that all poets under the first cla.s.s, and perhaps some of those favoured ones, frequently break: the tenth. One cannot blame them, for they know what poetry is, and they love it.

They not only know what it is, but their own limited experience has taught them what rapture it must be to write lines of flawless beauty.

This unconquerable covetousness is admirably and artistically expressed in Fannie Davis's poem, _After Copying Goodly Poetry_.

It is an honest confession; but its author is fortunate in being able to express vain desire so beautifully that many lesser poets will covet her covetousness.

Theodosia Garrison was born at Newark, New Jersey, on the twenty-sixth of November, 1874. She has published three volumes of verse, of which perhaps the best known is _The Joy of Life_ (1909). At present she is engaged in war work, where her high faith, serene womanliness, and overflowing humour ought to make her, in the finest sense of the word, efficient. Her short poem on the war is a good answer to detractors of America.

APRIL 2nd

We have been patient--and they named us weak; We have been silent--and they judged us meek, Now, in the much-abused, high name of G.o.d We speak.

Oh, not with faltering or uncertain tone-- With chosen words we make our meaning known, That like a great wind from the West shall shake The double throne.

Our colours flame upon the topmost mast,-- We lift the glove so arrogantly cast, And in the much-abused, high name of G.o.d We speak at last.

Another war alchemist is Mary Carolyn Davies, poet of Oregon and Brooklyn. She knows both coasts of America, she understands the American spirit of idealism and self-sacrifice, and her verses have a direct hitting power that will break open the hardest heart. In her book, _The Drums in Our Street_ (1918), the glory and the tragedy of the world-struggle are expressed in terms of individual feeling.

There is decided inequality in this volume, but the best pieces are so carefully distributed among the commonplace that one must read the whole work.

Harriet Monroe was born in Chicago and went to school in Georgetown, D. C. In connection with the World's Exposition in Chicago she received the honour of being formally invited to write a poem for the dedication. Accordingly at the ceremony commemorating the four hundredth anniversary of the discovery of America, 21 October, 1892, her _Columbian Ode_ was given with music.

Harriet Monroe's chief services to the art of poetry are seen not so much in her creative work as in her founding and editing of the magazine called _Poetry_, of which I made mention in my remarks on Vachel Lindsay. In addition to this monthly stimulation--which has proved of distinct value both in awakening general interest and in giving new poets an opportunity to be heard, Miss Monroe, with the a.s.sistance of Alice Corbin Henderson, published in 1917 an anthology of the new varieties of verse. Certain poets are somewhat arbitrarily excluded, although their names are mentioned in the Preface; the t.i.tle of the book is _The New Poetry_; the authors are fairly represented, and with some sins of commission the selections from each are made with critical judgment. Every student of contemporary verse should own a copy of this work.

In 1914 Miss Monroe produced a volume of her original poems, called _You and I_. There are over two hundred pages, and those who look in them for something strange and startling will be disappointed.

Knowing the author's sympathy with radicalism in art, and with all modern extremists, the form of these verses is surprisingly conservative. To be sure, the first one, _The Hotel_, is in a kind of polyphonic prose, but it is not at all a fair sample of the contents. Now whether the reading of many ma.n.u.scripts has dulled Miss Monroe's creative power or not, who can say? The fact is that most of these poems are in no way remarkable either for feeling or expression and many of them fail to rise above the level of the commonplace.

There is happily no straining for effect; but unhappily in most instances there is no effect.

Alice Corbin (Mrs. Henderson) is a native of Virginia and a resident of Chicago. She is co-editor with Miss Monroe of _The New Poetry_ anthology, wherein her own poems are represented. These indicate skill in the manipulation of different metrical forms; and they reveal as well a shrewd, healthy acceptance of life as it is. This feeling communicates itself in a charming way to the reader; it is too vigorous for acquiescence, too wise for blind optimism, but nearer optimism than pessimism. It seems perhaps in certain aspects to resemble the philosophy of Ralph Hodgson, although his command of the art of poetry is beyond her range.

Sarah Norcliffe Cleghorn was born at Norfolk, Virginia, on the fourth of February, 1876, but since childhood has lived in Vermont. She studied at Radcliffe College, and has written much verse and prose. In 1915 a number of her lyrics were printed between the short stories in a volume by her friend, Dorothy Canfield, called _Hillsboro People_. In 1917 she published a book of verses, _Portraits and Protests_, where the portraits are better than the protests. No one has more truly or more sympathetically expressed the spirit of George Herbert's poetry than Miss Cleghorn has given it with a handful of words, in the lyric _In Bemerton Church_. But she is above all a country mouse and a country muse; she knows her Vermont neighbours to the skin and bone, and brings out artistically the austere sweetness of their daily lives. I think I like best of all her work the poem

A SAINT'S HOURS

In the still cold before the sun, _Her matins_ Her brothers and her sisters small She woke, and washed and dressed each one.

And through the morning hours all _Prime_ Singing above her broom she stood And swept the house from hall to hall.

Then out she ran with tidings good, _Tierce_ Across the field and down the lane, To share them with the neighbourhood.

Four miles she walked, and home again, _s.e.xts_ To sit through half the afternoon And hear a feeble crone complain.

But when she saw the frosty moon _Nones_ And lakes of shadow on the hill, Her maiden dreams grew bright as noon.

She threw her pitying ap.r.o.n frill _Vespers_ Over a little trembling mouse When the sleek cat yawned on the sill

In the late hours and drowsy house.

_Evensong_ At last, too tired, beside her bed She fell asleep--her prayers half said.

Is not this one of the high functions of poetry, to interpret the life the poet knows best, and to interpret it always in terms of the eleventh and twelfth commandments? Observe she loves the sister-mother, and she loves the mouse as well as the cat. There is no reason why those who love birds should not love cats as well; is a cat the only animal who eats birds? It is a diverting spectacle, a man with his mouth full of squab, insisting that cats should be exterminated.

A woman who has done much for the advance of English poetry in America by her influence on public critical opinion, is Jessie B. Rittenhouse.

She is a graduate of Genesee Wesleyan Seminary in Lima, New York, taught Latin and English in Illinois and in Michigan, and for five years was busily engaged in journalism. In 1904 she published a volume of criticism on contemporary verse, and for the last fourteen years has printed many essays of interpretation, dealing with the new poets.

I dare say no one in America is more familiar with the English poetry of the twentieth century than she. She has been so occupied with this important and fruitful work that she has had little time to compose original verse; but any one who will read through her volume, _The Door of Dreams_, will find it impossible not to admire her lyrical gift. She has not yet shown enough sustained power to give her a place with Anna Hempstead Branch or with Sara Teasdale; but she has the capacity of putting much feeling into very few words.

Margaret Widdemer, the daughter of a clergyman, was born at Doylestown, Pennsylvania, and was graduated from Drexel Inst.i.tute Library School in 1909. She has written verse and prose from early childhood, but was not widely known until the appearance of her poem _Factories_. In 1915 this was published in a book with other pieces, and a revised, enlarged edition was printed in 1917, called by the name of the now-famous song, and containing in addition nearly a hundred lyrics. Although her soul is aflame at the omnipresence of injustice in the world, her work covers a wide range of thought and feeling. Her heart is swollen with pity for the sufferings of women; but she is no sentimentalist. There is an intellectual independence, a clear-headed womanly self-reliance about her way of thinking and writing that is both refreshing and stimulating. In hope and in despair she speaks for the many thousands of women, who first found their voice in Ibsen's _Doll's House_; her poem, _The Modern Woman to Her Lover_ has a cleanly honesty without any strained pose. And although _Factories_ is doubtless her masterpiece in its eloquent _Inasmuch as ye did it not_, she can portray a more quiet and more lonely tragedy as well. Her poem called _The Two Dyings_ might have been named _The Heart Knoweth its own Bitterness_.

I can remember once, ere I was dead, The sorrow and the prayer and bitter cry When they who loved me stood around the bed, Watching till I should die:

They need not so have grieved their souls for me, Grouped statue-like to count my failing breath-- Only one thought strove faintly, bitterly With the kind drug of Death:

How once upon a time, unwept, unknown, Unhelped by pitying sigh or murmured prayer, My youth died in slow agony alone With none to watch or care.

Never in any period of the world's history was the table of life so richly spread as in the years 1900-1914; women were just beginning to realize that places ought to be reserved for them as well as for men, when the war came, and there was no place for any one except a place to fight the Black Plague of Kaiserism; now when the war is over, suppose the women insist? What then? Before the French Revolution, only a few were invited to sit down and eat, while the majority were permitted to kneel and watch from a distance. A Frenchman once remarked, "The great appear to us great because we are kneeling--let us rise." They rose, and out of the turmoil came an enormous enlargement of the dining-hall.

Carl Sandburg sings of Chicago with husky-haughty lips. I like Chicago and I like poetry; but I do not much care for the combination as ill.u.s.trated in Mr. Sandburg's volume, _Chicago Poems_. I think it has been overrated. It is pretentious rather than important. It is the raw material of poetry, rather than the finished product. Mere pa.s.sion and imagination are not enough to make a poet, even when accompanied by indignation. If feeling and appreciation could produce poetry, then we should all be poets. But it is also necessary to know how to write.

Carl Sandburg was born at Galesburg, Illinois, on the sixth of January, 1878. He has "worked his own way" through life with courage and ambition, performing any kind of respectable indoor and outdoor toil that would keep him alive. In the Spanish war, he immediately enlisted, and belonged to the first military company that went to Porto Rico. In 1898 he entered Lombard College; after his Freshman year, he tried to enter West Point, succeeding in every test--physical and mental--except that of arithmetic; there he has my hearty sympathy, for in arithmetic I was always slow but not sure. He returned to Lombard, and took the regular course for the next three years, paying his way by hard work. His literary ambition had already been awakened, and he attained distinction among his mates. Since graduation he has had constant and varied experience in journalism.

For a group of poems, of which the first was _Chicago_, he was awarded the Levinson prize as the best poem by an American that had appeared in _Poetry_ during the year October 1913-October 1914.

In 1916 appeared a substantial volume from his pen, called _Chicago Poems_.