Toward the Gulf Part 1

Toward the Gulf.

by Edgar Lee Masters.

TO WILLIAM MARION REEDY

It would have been fitting had I dedicated Spoon River Anthology to you. Considerations of an intimate nature, not to mention a literary encouragement which was before yours, crowded you from the page. Yet you know that it was you who pressed upon my attention in June, 1909, the Greek Anthology. It was from contemplation of its epitaphs that my hand unconsciously strayed to the sketches of "Hod Putt," "Serepta The Scold" ("Serepta Mason" in the book), "Amanda Barker" ("Amanda" in the book), "Ollie McGee" and "The Unknown," the first written and the first printed sketches of The Spoon River Anthology. The _Mirror_ of May 29th, 1914, is their record.

I take one of the epigrams of Meleager with its sad revealment and touch of irony and turn it from its prose form to a verse form, making verses according to the breath pauses:

"The holy night and thou, O Lamp, we took as witness of our vows; and before thee we swore, he that would love me always and I that I would never leave him. We swore, and thou wert witness of our double promise. But now he says that our vows were written on the running waters. And thou, O Lamp, thou seest him in the arms of another."

In verse this epigram is as follows:

The holy night and thou, O Lamp, We took as witness of our vows; And before thee we swore, He that would love me always And I that I would never leave him.

We swore, And thou wert witness of our double promise.

But now he says that our vows were written on the running waters.

And thou, O Lamp, Thou seest him in the arms of another.

It will be observed that iambic feet prevail in this translation. They merely become noticeable and imperative when arranged in verses. But so it is, even in the briefest and starkest rendering of these epigrams from the Greek the humanism and dignity of the original transfer themselves, making something, if less than verse, yet more than prose; as Byron said of Sheridan's speeches, neither poetry nor oratory, but better than either. It was no difficult matter to pa.s.s from Chase Henry:

"In life I was the town drunkard.

When I died the priest denied me burial In holy ground, etc."

to the use of standard measures, or rhythmical arrangements of iambics or what not, and so to make a book, which for the first third required a practiced voice or eye to yield the semblance of verse; and for the last two-thirds, or nearly so, accommodated itself to the less sensitive conception of the average reader. The prosody was allowed to take care of itself under the emotional requirements and inspiration of the moment. But there is nothing new in English literature for some hundreds of years in combinations of dactyls, anapests or trochees, and without rhyme. Nor did I discover to the world that an iambic pentameter can be lopped to a tetrameter without the verse ceasing to be an iambic; though it be no longer the blank verse which has so enn.o.bled English poetry. A great deal of unrhymed poetry is yet to be written in the various standard rhythms and in carefully fashioned metres.

But obviously a formal resuscitation of the Greek epigrams, ironical and tender, satirical and sympathetic, as casual experiments in unrelated themes would scarcely make the same appeal that an epic rendition of modern life would do, and as it turned out actually achieved.

The response of the American press to Spoon River Anthology during the summer of 1914 while it was appearing in the _Mirror_ is my warrant for saying this. It was quoted and parodied during that time in the country and in the metropolitan newspapers. _Current Opinion_ in its issue of September, 1914, reproduced from the _Mirror_ some of the poems. Though at this time the schematic effect of the Anthology could not be measured, Edward J. Wheeler, that devoted patron of the art and discriminating critic of its manifestations, was attracted, I venture to say, by the substance of "Griffy, The Cooper," for that is one of the poems from the Anthology which he set forth in his column "The Voice of Living Poets" in the issue referred to. _Poetry, A Magazine of Verse_, followed in its issue of October, 1914, with a reprinting from the _Mirror_.

In a word, the Anthology went the rounds over the country before it was issued in book form. And a reception was thus prepared for the complete work not often falling to the lot of a literary production.

I must not omit an expression of my grat.i.tude for the very high praise which John Cowper Powys bestowed on the Anthology just before it appeared in book form and the publicity which was given his lecture by the _New York Times_. Nathan Haskell Dole printed an article in the Boston _Transcript_ of June 30, 1915, in which he contrasted the work with the Greek Anthology, pointing in particular to certain epitaphs by Carphylides, Kallaischros and Pollianos. The critical testimony of Miss Harriet Monroe in her editorial comments and in her preface to "The New Poetry" has greatly strengthened the judgment of to-day against a reversal at the hands of a later criticism.

This response to the Anthology while it was appearing in the _Mirror_ and afterwards when put in the book was to nothing so much as to the substance. It was accepted as a picture of our life in America. It was interpreted as a transcript of the state of mind of men and women here and elsewhere. You called it a Comedy Humaine in your announcement of my ident.i.ty as the author in the _Mirror_ of November 20, 1914. If the epitaphic form gave added novelty I must confess that the idea was suggested to me by the Greek Anthology. But it was rather because of the Greek Anthology than from it that I evolved the less harmonious epitaphs with which Spoon River Anthology was commenced. As to metrical epitaphs it is needless to say that I drew upon the legitimate materials of authentic English versification.

Up to the Spring of 1914, I had never allowed a Spring to pa.s.s without reading Homer; and I feel that this familiarity had its influence both as to form and spirit; but I shall not take the s.p.a.ce now to pursue this line of confessional.

What is the substance of which I have spoken if it be not the life around us as we view it through eyes whose vision lies in heredity, mode of life, understanding of ourselves and of our place and time?

You have lived much. As a critic and a student of the country no one understands America better than you do. As a denizen of the west, but as a surveyor of the east and west you have brought to the country's interpretation a knowledge of its political and literary life as well as a proficiency in the history of other lands and other times. You have seen and watched the unfolding of forces that sprang up after the Civil War. Those forces mounted in the eighties and exploded in free silver in 1896. They began to hit through the directed marksmanship of Theodore Roosevelt during his second term. You knew at first hand all that went with these forces of human hope, futile or valiant endeavor, articulate or inarticulate expression of the new birth. You saw and lived, but in greater degree, what I have seen and lived. And with this back-ground you inspired and instructed me in my a.n.a.lysis.

Standing by you confirmed or corrected my sculpturing of the clay taken out of the soil from which we both came. You did this with an eye familiar with the secrets of the last twenty years, familiar also with the relation of those years to the time which preceded and bore them.

So it is, that not only because I could not dedicate Spoon River to you, but for the larger reasons indicated, am I impelled to do you whatever honor there may be in taking your name for this book. By this outline confession, sometime perhaps to be filled in, do I make known what your relation is to these interpretations of mine resulting from a spirit, life, thought, environment which have similarly come to us and have similarly affected us.

I call this book "Toward the Gulf," a t.i.tle importing a continuation of the attempts of Spoon River and The Great Valley to mirror the age and the country in which we live. It does not matter which one of these books carries your name and makes these acknowledgments; so far, anyway, as the opportunity is concerned for expressing my appreciation of your friendship and the great esteem and affectionate interest in which I hold you.

EDGAR LEE MASTERS.

The following poems were first printed in the publications indicated:

Toward the Gulf, The Lake Boats, The Loom, Tomorrow is my Birthday, Dear Old d.i.c.k, The Letter, My Light with Yours, Widow LaRue, Neanderthal, in Reedy's Mirror.

Draw the Sword, Oh Republic, in the Independent.

Canticle of the Race, in Poetry, a Magazine of Verse.

Friar Yves, in the Cosmopolitan Magazine.

"I pay my debt for Lafayette and Rochambeau," in Fashions of the Hour.

TOWARD THE GULF

_Dedicated to Theodore Roosevelt_

From the Cordilleran Highlands, From the Height of Land Far north.

From the Lake of the Woods, From Rainy Lake, From Itasca's springs.

From the snow and the ice Of the mountains, Breathed on by the sun, And given life, Awakened by kisses of fire, Moving, gliding as brightest hyaline Down the cliffs, Down the hills, Over the stones.

Trickling as rills; Swiftly running as mountain brooks; Swirling through runnels of rock; Curving in sphered silence Around the long worn walls of granite gorges; Storming through chasms; And flowing for miles in quiet over the t.i.tan basin To the muddled waters of the mighty river, Himself obeying the call of the gulf, And the unfathomed urge of the sea!

Waters of mountain peaks, Spirits of liberty Leaving your pure retreats For work in the world.

Soiling your crystal springs With the waste that is whirled to your breast as you run, Until you are foul as the crawling leviathan That devours you, And uses you to carry waste and earth For the making of land at the gulf, For the conquest of land for the feet of men.

De Soto, Marquette and La Salle Planting your cross in vain, Gaining neither gold nor ivory, Nor tribute For France or Spain.

Making land alone For liberty!

You could proclaim in the name of the cross The dominion of kings over a world that was new.

But the river has altered its course: There are fertile fields For a thousand miles where the river flowed that you knew.

And there are liberty and democracy For thousands of miles Where in the name of kings, and for the cross You tramped the tangles for treasure.

The Falls of St. Anthony tumble the waters In laughter and tumult and roaring of voices, Swirling, dancing, leaping, foaming, Spirits of caverns, of canyons and gorges: Waters tinctured by star-lights, sweetened by breezes Blown over snows, out of the rosy northlands, Through forests of pine and hemlock, Whisperings of the Pacific grown symphonic.

Voices of freedom, restless, unconquered, Mad with divinity, fearless and free:-- Hunters and choppers, warriors, revelers, Laughers, dancers, fiddlers, freemen, Climbing the crests of the Alleghenies, Singing, chopping, hunting, fighting Erupting into Kentucky and Tennessee, Into Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Sweeping away the waste of the Indians, As the river carries mud for the making of land.

And taking the land of Illinois from kings And handing its allegiance to the Republic.

What riflemen with Daniel Boone for leader, And conquerors with Clark for captain Plunge down like melted snows The rocks and chasms of forbidden mountains, And make more land for freemen!

Clear-eyed, hard-muscled, dauntless hunters, Choppers of forests and tillers of fields Meet at last in a field of snow-white clover To make wise laws for states, And to teach their sons of the new West That suffrage is the right of freemen.

Until the lion of Tennessee, Who crushes king-craft near the gulf.

Where La Salle proclaimed the crown, And the cross, Is made the ruler of the republic By freeman suffragans, And winners of the West!