The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century Part 25

MISERERE

Ah, G.o.d, my strength again!-- Not power, nor joy, but these: The waking without pain, The ardour for the task, And in the evening, peace.

Is it so much to ask?

Ah, G.o.d, my strength again!

American literature suffered a loss in the death of Robert Cameron Rogers, of the cla.s.s of 1883. His book of poems, called _The Rosary_, appeared in 1906, containing the song by which naturally he is best known. Set to music by the late Ethelbert Nevin, it had a prodigious vogue, and inspired a sentimental British novel, whose sales ran over a million copies. The success of this ditty ought not to prejudice readers against the author of it; for he was more than a sentimentalist, as his other pieces prove.

Rupert Hughes is an all around literary athlete. He was born in Missouri, on the thirty-first of January, 1872, studied at Western Reserve and later at Yale, where he took the degree of M.A. in 1899.

He is of course best known as a novelist and playwright; his novel _The Thirteenth Commandment_ (1916) and his play _Excuse Me_ (1911) are among his most successful productions. His works in prose fiction are conscientiously realistic and the finest of them are accurate chronicles of metropolitan life; while his short stories, _In a Little Town_ (1917) are, like those of William Allen White, truthful both in their representation of village manners in the West, and in their recognition of spiritual values. In view of the "up-to-dateness" of Mr. Hughes's novels, it is rather curious that his one long poem _Gyges' Ring_ (1901), which was written during his student days at Yale, should be founded on Greek legend. Yet Mr.

Hughes has been a student of Greek all his life, and has made many translations from the original. I do not care much for _Gyges'

Ring_; it is hammered out rather than created. But some of the author's short poems, to which he has often composed his own musical accompaniment, I find full of charm. Best of all, I think, is the imaginative and delightful.

WITH A FIRST READER

Dear little child, this little book Is less a primer than a key To sunder gates where wonder waits Your "Open Sesame!"

These tiny syllables look large; They'll fret your wide, bewildered eyes; But "Is the cat upon the mat?"

Is pa.s.sport to the skies.

For, yet awhile, and you shall turn From Mother Goose to Avon's swan; From Mary's lamb to grim Khayyam, And Mancha's mad-wise Don.

You'll writhe at Jean Valjean's disgrace; And D'Artagnan and Ivanhoe Shall steal your sleep; and you shall weep At Sidney Carton's woe.

You'll find old Chaucer young once more, Beaumont and Fletcher fierce with fire; At your demand, John Milton's hand Shall wake his ivory lyre.

And learning other tongues, you'll learn All times are one; all men, one race; Hear Homer speak, as Greek to Greek; See Dante, face to face.

_Arma virumque_ shall resound; And Horace wreathe his rhymes afresh; You'll rediscover Laura's lover; Meet Gretchen in the flesh.

Oh, could I find for the first time The _Churchyard Elegy_ again!

Retaste the sweets of new-found Keats; Read Byron now as then!

Make haste to wander these old roads, O envied little parvenue; For all things trite shall leap alight And bloom again for you!

Robert Munger, B.A., 1897, published in 1912 a volume called _The Land of Lost Music_. He is a lyric poet. Melody seems as natural to him as speech.

There is a land uncharted of meadows and shimmering mountains, Stiller than moonlight silence brooding and wan, The land of long-wandering music and dead unmelodious fountains Of singing that rose in the dreams of them that are gone.

That rose in the dreams of the dead and that rise in the dreams of the living, Fleeting, bodiless songs that pa.s.sed in the night, Winging away on the moment of wonder their cadence was giving Into the deeps of the valleys of stifled delight.

Richard Butler Glaenzer, B.A. 1898, whose verses have frequently been seen in various periodicals, collected them in _Beggar and King_, 1917. His poems cover a wide range of thought and feeling, but I like him best when he is most whimsical, as in

COMPARISONS

Jupiter, lost to Vega's realm, Lights his lamp from the sun-ship's helm: Big as a thousand earths, and yet Dimmed by the glow of a cigarette!

Mr. Glaenzer has published a number of verse criticisms of contemporary writers, which he calls _Snapshots_. These display considerable penetration; perhaps the following is fairly ill.u.s.trative.

CABLE

To read your tales Is like opening a cedar-box Of ante-bellum days, A box holding the crinoline and fan

And the tortoise-sh.e.l.l diary With flowers pressed between the leaves Belonging to some languid _grande dame_ Of Creole New Orleans.

Benjamin R. C. Low, B.A. 1902, a practising lawyer, has published four or five volumes of poems, including _The Sailor who has Sailed_ (1911), _A Wand and Strings_ (1913) and _The House that Was_ (1915). He is seen at his best in _These United States_, dedicated to Alan Seeger, which appeared in the _Boston Transcript_, 7 February, 1917. This is an original, vigorous work, full of the unexpected, and yet seen to be true as soon as expressed.

His verses show a constantly increasing grasp of material, and I look for finer things from his pen.

Although Mr. Low seems to be instinctively a romantic poet, he is fond of letting his imaginative sympathy play on common scenes in city streets; as in _The Sandwich Man_.

The lights of town are pallid yet With winter afternoon; The sullied streets are dank and wet, The halted motors fume and fret, The world turns homeward soon.

There is no kindle in the sky, No cheering sunset flame; I have no help from pa.s.sers-by,-- They part, and give good-night; but I....

Walk with another's name.

I have no kith, nor kin, nor home Wherein to turn to sleep; No star-lamp sifts me through the gloam, I am the driven, wastrel foam On a subsiding deep.

I do not toil for love, or fame, Or hope of high reward; My path too low for praise or blame, I struggle on, each day the same, My panoply--a board.

Who gave me life I do not know, Nor what that life should be, Or why I live at all; I go, A dead leaf shivering with snow, Under a worn-out tree.

The lights of town are blurred with mist, And pale with afternoon,-- Of gold they are, and amethyst: Dull pain is creeping at my wrist....

The world turns homeward soon.

A poet of national reputation is William Rose Benet, who was graduated in 1907. Mr. Benet came to Yale from Augusta, Georgia, and since his graduation has been connected with the editorial staff of the _Century Magazine_. At present he is away in service in France, where his adventurous spirit is at home. He may have taken some of his reputation with him, for he is sure to be a favourite over there; but the fame he left behind him is steadily growing. The very splendour of romance glows in his s.p.a.cious poetry; he loves to let his imagination run riot, as might be guessed merely by reading the names on his books. To every one who has ever been touched by the love of a quest, his t.i.tle-pages will appeal: _The Great White Wall_, a tale of "magic adventure, of war and death"; _Merchants from Cathay_ (1913), _The Falconer of G.o.d_ (1914), _The Burglar of the Zodiac_ (1917). His verses surge with vitality, as in _The Boast of the Tides_. He is at his best in long, swinging, pa.s.sionate rhythms. Unfortunately in the same measures he is also at his worst.

His most potent temptation is the love of noise, which makes some of his less artistic verse sound like organized cheering.

But when he gets the right tune for the right words, he is irresistible. There is no s.p.a.ce here to quote such a rattling ballad--like a frenzy of snare-drums--as _Merchants from Cathay_, but it is not mere sound and fury, it is not swollen rhetoric, it is an inspired poem. No one can read or hear it without being violently aroused. Mr. Benet is a happy-hearted poet, singing with gusto of the joy of life.

ON EDWARD WEBBE, ENGLISH GUNNER

He met the Danske pirates off Tuttee; Saw the Chrim burn "Musko"; speaks with bated breath Of his sale to the great Turk, when peril of death Chained him to oar their galleys on the sea Until, as gunner, in Persia they set him free To fight their foes. Of Prester John he saith Astounding things. But Queen Elizabeth He worships, and his dear Lord on Calvary.

Quaint is the phrase, ingenuous the wit Of this great childish seaman in Palestine, Mocked home through Italy after his release With threats of the Armada; and all of it Warms me like firelight jewelling old wine In some ghost inn hung with the golden fleece!

Arthur Colton, B.A. 1890, is as quiet and reflective as Mr. Benet is strenuous. Has any one ever better expressed the heart of Chaucer's _Troilus and Criseyde_ than in these few words?

A smile, of flowers, and fresh May, across The dreamy, drifting face of old Romance; The same reiterate tale of love and loss And joy that trembles in the hands of chance; And midst his rippling lines old Geoffrey stands, Saying, "Pray for me when the tale is done, Who see no more the flowers, nor the sun."

Mr. Colton collected many of his poems in 1907, under the t.i.tle _Harps Hung Up in Babylon_. He had moved from New Haven to New York.

Allan Updegraff, who left college before taking his degree, a member of the cla.s.s of 1907, recently turned from verse to prose, and wrote an admirable novel, _Second Youth_. He is, however, a true poet, and any one might be proud to be the author of

THE TIME AND THE PLACE

Will you not come? The pines are gold with evening And breathe their old-time fragrance by the sea; You loved so well their spicy exhalation,-- So smiled to smell it and old ocean's piquancy; And those weird tales of winds and waves' relation-- Could you forget? Will you not come to me?

See, 'tis the time: the last long gleams are going, The pine-spires darken, mists rise waveringly; The gloaming brings the old familiar longing To be re-crooned by twilight voices of the sea.

And just such tinted wavelets sh.o.r.eward thronging-- Could you forget things once so dear--and me?

Whatever of the waves is ceaseless longing, And of the twilight immortality: The urge of some wild, inchoate aspiration Akin to afterglow and stars and winds and sea: This hour makes full and pours out in libation,-- Could you forget? Will you not come to me?