The Chinese Nightingale and Other Poems Part 10

Oh, once I walked in Heaven, all alone Upon the sacred cliffs above the sky.

G.o.d and the angels, and the gleaming saints Had journeyed out into the stars to die.

They had gone forth to win far citizens, Bought at great price, bring happiness for all: By such a harvest make a holier town And put new life within old Zion's wall.

Each chose a far-off planet for his home, Speaking of love and mercy, truth and right, Envied and cursed, thorn-crowned and scourged in time, Each tasted death on his appointed night.

Then resurrection day from sphere to sphere Sped on, with all the POWERS arisen again, While with them came in clouds recruited hosts Of sun-born strangers and of earth-born men.

And on that day gray prophet saints went down And poured atoning blood upon the deep, Till every warrior of old h.e.l.l flew free And all the torture fires were laid asleep.

And h.e.l.l's lost company I saw return Clear-eyed, with plumes of white, the demons bold Climbed with the angels now on Jacob's stair, And built a better Zion than the old.

And yet I walked alone on azure cliffs A lifetime long, and loved each untrimmed vine: The rotted harps, the swords of rusted gold, The jungles of all Heaven then were mine.

Oh mesas and throne-mountains that I found!

Oh strange and shaking thoughts that touched me there, Ere I beheld the bright returning wings That came to spoil my secret, silent lair!

Fifth Section

The Poem Games

An Account of the Poem Games

In the summer of 1916 in the parlor of Mrs. William Vaughn Moody; and in the following winter in the Chicago Little Theatre, under the auspices of Poetry, A Magazine of Verse; and in Mandel Hall, the University of Chicago, under the auspices of the Senior Cla.s.s,--these Poem Games were presented. Miss Eleanor Dougherty was the dancer throughout.The entire undertaking developed through the generous cooperation and advice of Mrs. William Vaughn Moody. The writer is exceedingly grateful to Mrs. Moody and all concerned for making place for the idea. Now comes the test of its vitality. Can it go on in the absence of its initiators?

Mr. Lewellyn Jones, of the Chicago Evening Post, announced the affair as a "rhythmic picnic". Mr. Maurice Browne of the Chicago Little Theatre said Miss Dougherty was at the beginning of the old Greek Tragic Dance.

Somewhere between lies the accomplishment.

In the Congo volume, as is indicated in the margins, the meaning of a few of the verses is aided by chanting.

In the Poem Games the English word is still first in importance, the dancer comes second, the chanter third. The marginal directions of King Solomon indicate the spirit in which all the pantomime was developed. Miss Dougherty designed her own costumes, and worked out her own stage business for King Solomon, The Potatoes' Dance, The King of Yellow b.u.t.terflies and Aladdin and the Jinn (The Congo, page 140). In the last, "'I am your slave,' said the Jinn" was repeated four times at the end of each stanza.

The Poem Game idea was first indorsed in the Wellesley kindergarten, by the children. They improvised pantomime and dance for the Potatoes'

Dance, while the writer chanted it, and while Professor Hamilton C.

Macdougall of the Wellesley musical department followed on the piano the outline of the jingle. Later Professor Macdougall very kindly wrote down his piano rendition. A study of this transcript helps to confirm the idea that when the cadences of a bit of verse are a little exaggerated, they are tunes, yet of a truth they are tunes which can be but vaguely recorded by notation or expressed by an instrument.

The author of this book is now against instrumental music in this type of work. It blurs the English.

Professor Macdougall has in various conversations helped the author toward a Poem Game theory. He agrees that neither the dancing nor the chanting nor any other thing should be allowed to run away with the original intention of the words. The chanting should not be carried to the point where it seeks to rival conventional musical composition. The dancer should be subordinated to the natural rhythms of English speech, and not attempt to incorporate bodily all the precedents of professional dancing.

Speaking generally, poetic ideas can be conveyed word by word, faster than musical feeling. The repet.i.tions in the Poem Games are to keep the singing, the dancing and the ideas at one pace. The repet.i.tions may be varied according to the necessities of the individual dancer.

Dancing is slower than poetry and faster than music in developing the same thoughts. In folk dances and vaudeville, the verse, music, and dancing are on so simple a basis the time elements can be easily combined. Likewise the rhythms and the other elements.

Miss Dougherty is particularly ill.u.s.trative in her pantomime, but there were many verses she looked over and rejected because they could not be rendered without blurring the original intent.

Possibly every poem in the world has its dancer somewhere waiting, who can dance but that one poem. Certainly those poems would be most successful in games, where the tone color is so close to the meaning that any exaggeration of that color by dancing and chanting only makes the story clearer. The writer would like to see some one try Dryden's Alexander's Feast, or Swinburne's Atalanta in Calydon.

Certainly in those poems the decorative rhythm and the meaning are absolutely one.

With no dancing evolutions, the author of this book has chanted John Brown and King Solomon for the last two years for many audiences. It took but a minute to teach the people the responses. As a rule they had no advance notice they were going to sing.

The versifier sang the parts of the King and Queen in turn, and found each audience perfectly willing to be the oxen, the sweethearts, the swans, the sons, the shepherds, etc.

A year ago the writer had the honor of chanting for the Florence Fleming Noyes school of dancers. In one short evening they made the first section of the Congo into an incantation, the King Solomon into an extraordinarily graceful series of tableaus, and the Potatoes'

Dance into a veritable whirlwind. Later came the more elaborately prepared Chicago experiment.

In the King of Yellow b.u.t.terflies and the Potatoes' Dance Miss Dougherty occupied the entire eye of the audience and interpreted, while the versifier chanted the poems as a semi-invisible orchestra, by the side of the curtain. For Aladdin and for King Solomon Miss Dougherty and the writer divided the stage between them, but the author was little more than the orchestra. The main intention was carried out, which was to combine the work of the dancer with the words of the production and the responses of the audience.

The present rhymer has no ambitions as a stage manager. The Poem Game idea, in its rhythmic picnic stage, is recommended to amateurs, its further development to be on their own initiative. Informal parties might divide into groups of dancers and groups of chanters. The whole might be worked out in the spirit in which children play King William was King James' Son, London Bridge, or As We Go Round the Mulberry Bush.

And the author of this book would certainly welcome the tragic dance, if Miss Dougherty will gather a company about her and go forward, using any acceptable poems, new or old. Swinburne's Atalanta in Calydon is perhaps the most literal and rhythmic example of the idea we have in English, though it may not be available when tried out.

The main revolution necessary for dancing improvisers, who would go a longer way with the Poem Game idea, is to shake off the Isadora Duncan and the Russian precedents for a while, and abolish the orchestra and piano, replacing all these with the natural meaning and cadences of English speech. The work would come closer to acting, than dancing is now conceived.

The King of Yellow b.u.t.terflies

(A Poem Game.)

The King of Yellow b.u.t.terflies, The King of Yellow b.u.t.terflies, The King of Yellow b.u.t.terflies, Now orders forth his men.

He says "The time is almost here When violets bloom again."

Adown the road the fickle rout Goes flashing proud and bold, Adown the road the fickle rout Goes flashing proud and bold, Adown the road the fickle rout Goes flashing proud and bold, They shiver by the shallow pools, They shiver by the shallow pools, They shiver by the shallow pools, And whimper of the cold.

They drink and drink. A frail pretense!

They love to pose and preen.

Each pool is but a looking gla.s.s, Where their sweet wings are seen.

Each pool is but a looking gla.s.s, Where their sweet wings are seen.

Each pool is but a looking gla.s.s, Where their sweet wings are seen.

Gentlemen adventurers! Gypsies every whit!

They live on what they steal. Their wings By briars are frayed a bit.

Their loves are light. They have no house.

And if it rains today, They'll climb into your cattle-shed, They'll climb into your cattle-shed, They'll climb into your cattle-shed, And hide them in the hay, And hide them in the hay, And hide them in the hay, And hide them in the hay.

The Potatoes' Dance

(A Poem Game.)