A 
 CRITICAL FABLE 
 
r -7 
 
 
 
A CRITICAL FABLE 
 
Dear Sir (or Dear Madam) who happen to glance at this 
 
 TITL-<PAg 
 
 Printed you'll see to enhance its aesthetic attraction, 
 Pray buy, if you're able, this excellent bargain: 
 
 A CRITICAL FABLE 
 
 The book may be read in the light of 
 
 A Segue/ to the " FABLE for CRITICS" 
 
 A volume unequal (or hitherto so) for its quips and digressions on 
 
 Cfjt $0ets of tfje Bap 
 
 WITHOUT UNDUE PROFESSIONS, I WOULD SAY THAT THIS TREATISE 
 
 IS FULLY AS LIGHT AS THE FORMER, ITS JUDGMENTS AS 
 
 CERTAINLY RIGHT AS NEED BE. 
 
 A HODGE-PODGE 
 
 Delivered primarily in the hope of instilling instruction 
 
 so airily that readers may see, in the persons on view, 
 
 a peripatetic, poetic Who 'j Who. 
 
 An Account of the Times 
 
 BY 
 A POKER OF FUN, WITT D., o.s., A.I. 
 
 cooooooooooooo 
 
 HOUGHTON MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 
 
 Boston and New York 
 Published September, 1922 
 
COPYRIGHT, IQ22, BY HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 
 
 CAMBRIDGE MASSACHUSETTS 
 PRINTED IN THE U.S.A. 
 
GENTLE READER, 
 
 THE book you're about to peruse has only one object, 
 which is to amuse. If, as over its pages you may chance 
 to potter, you discover it's rather more pungent and 
 hotter than this simple pretension might lead one to 
 think, recollect, if you please, there's a devil in ink; 
 and a critic who starts without any intention to do 
 more than recount, will find his apprehension of the 
 poets running on to minutely-limned pictures of the 
 men as he sees them. Neither praises nor strictures 
 were in my design for I tried to elude them; but a man, 
 plus his writings, must always include them inferen- 
 tial ly, even if nothing be stated. As the picture emerges, 
 the sitter stands rated. 
 
 But who would be backward when others have done 
 the very same thing in a search of pure fun? Sixty-odd 
 years ago, a volume appeared called "A Fable for 
 Critics," wherein were ensphered eighteen authors of 
 merit. The poet who selected them dared many sly 
 prods just because he respected them. What a serious 
 analysis may fail to discover is often revealed to a fun- 
 loving lover. 
 
 In the volume before you, you will find twenty-one 
 modern poets popped off 'twixt a laugh and a pun. I 
 have spared them no squib and no palm, what I give is 
 a cursory view of them run through a sieve. As I rattle 
 
vi PREFACE 
 
 my poets about faster and faster, each man shakes 
 more certainly into a master; to my thinking, at least, 
 for their rich native flavour gives them all so abundant 
 a claim on my favoifr that I'm willing to leave them 
 for sixty-odd years and let my great-grandchildren 
 foot the arrears. 
 
 With the poets I've not noticed, there's a chance 
 for a sequel, and some other critic who thinks himself 
 equal to the writing may build on my scaffolding gratis; 
 and for readers, I really cannot calculate his with 
 his hundreds of victims he'll sell each edition as fast 
 as it's printed I'm no mathematician. Take the 
 Poetry Society's roster of members, brush away all the 
 laymen and leave just the embers which spark into 
 verse now and then ; for equations, let A. equal the poet 
 and B. his relations; then his wife and her friends with 
 their "circles" and "clubs"; and the cultural ladies, 
 impervious to snubs, who get out long programmes of 
 up-to-date readings which are called "very helpful" 
 in the printed proceedings of some Woman's Club's 
 "most remarkable year" (one wonders sometimes 
 what the poor creatures hear, for of course they don't 
 read now books are so dear), and some one's geometry 's 
 needed, it's clear, to post up the total. I'll not volun- 
 teer for a task which requires an expert cashier. For 
 the ladies I've mentioned, who take what they're told 
 as immaculate gospel in letters of gold, and rather than 
 buy prefer to be sold, they'll be moved, I believe, to 
 purchase his anthology which, like Poe, he might call 
 "A Hand-Book of Conchology." Since I've got the 
 
PREFACE vii 
 
 pearls, he must e'en take the shells, but the public at 
 large has no knowledge of sells see them gape at the 
 lies which every quack tells and, as I said before, on 
 the question of vails, if I collar the kudos, why he'll 
 gorge the sales. 
 
 For I really don't think there's one person in ten 
 who can tell the first-class from the second-class men. 
 If I've twenty-one poets and he sixty-four, how many 
 will stop to consider that more of the very same thing 
 means a well-watered article? In my book, you'll per- 
 ceive, there is n't a particle of stuffing or layers of lath 
 to increase the absolute weight of my poets, piece by 
 piece. Each is wrapped in tin-foil and set round the 
 core of a box that I've softened with excelsior which, 
 as every one knows, is the lightest of packing and ex- 
 ceedingly cheap; so, if money be lacking, you have 
 only to take a few useless trees, such as laurel, or wil- 
 low, or bay, and with these make a bundle of shavings 
 as thick as you please. The foil, I admit, is a good deal 
 more trouble. To wrap poets round with tin is like 
 hoisting a bubble with grapples and rope. Do you 
 notice my drift? You can't pull at your bubbles or 
 teach your poets thrift. Having done what you can to 
 arrange them precisely and, considering their angles, 
 this is hard to do nicely you should view them a mo- 
 ment to be sure that no jutting or over-sized head will 
 prevent the box shutting; then, just at the last, right 
 under the cover, to off -set any jars, put a thick wad of 
 clover. A few little holes may be left here and there 
 for the egress of words and the ingress of air, and your 
 
viii PREFACE 
 
 poets are quite ready for nailing and mailing. If you 're 
 sure of your press, the rest is plain sailing. 
 
 Having read me so far, you will ask, I am certain, for 
 just a stray peep round the edge of the curtain I have 
 carefully hung up between us, but this is, Gentle 
 Reader, the one of all my prejudices I would not depart 
 from by even a tittle. Suppose, for a moment, the au- 
 thor's a little just-out-of-the-egg sort of fellow why 
 then, would you care half a jot what fell from his pen? 
 Supposing, for naturally you must suppose at least 
 something or other, he's (under the rose) a personage 
 proper, whose judgments are wont to sway many 
 opinions, would you dare to confront so seasoned a rea- 
 soning with your own reflections? 
 
 Where's the fun of a book if you can't take objec- 
 tions to this and to that, call the author a zany, and in 
 doing so prove to yourself what a brainy person you 
 are, with a tribe of convictions which only malicious 
 folk speak of as fictions? 
 
 Have I laboured my point? You'll enjoy me the 
 more if you hazard a guess between every score or so 
 lines. Why, it's endless; you'll see in a twinkling how 
 exciting a book can be when you've no inkling as to 
 who, or to why, or to whether, or what, the author may 
 be. If it fall to your lot to unmask him, how deeply 
 you '11 relish the jest. No, Kind Reader, I cannot fulfil 
 your request. 
 
 Think again of my poets, each one will be lying in 
 wait with some sharp, eager weapon. For dying 
 why, all in good time, but not plunked on the head by a 
 
PREFACE ix 
 
 furious poet who's disliked what I said. They're all 
 sure to dislike the particular parts which deal with 
 their own books, own heads, and own hearts. All poets 
 are the same in one singular trait : whatever is said of 
 them, that thing they hate. As I wish to enjoy a life of 
 some quiet, I refuse to be pestered by poets on the riot. 
 Having opened my heart, I must seek to preserve it 
 from every result, even though it deserve it. 
 
 Then, like most other writers, I've a scant equa- 
 nimity and scarcely can hope to retain my sublimity, in 
 spite of all efforts to show magnanimity, if any one 
 penetrates my anonymity. 
 
 One word more, and I'm silent in propria persona: 
 If you, who are reading, should chance to be owner of 
 the volume in hand and a poet comes to call, fling it 
 into the fire or over the wall, put it into your work- 
 basket, under your seat; but, whatever you do, don't 
 permit him to see it. 
 
 With which parting remark, I close my introduction 
 and leave you the book without farther obstruction, 
 only wishing you joy of my modest production. 
 
A CRITICAL FABLE 
 
 THERE are few things so futile, and few so amusing, 
 As a peaceful and purposeless sort of perusing 
 Of old random jottings set down in a blank-book 
 You've unearthed from a drawer as you looked for 
 
 your bank-book, 
 
 Or a knife, or a paper of pins, or some string. 
 The truth is, of course, you'd forgotten the thing, 
 And all those most vitally important matters 
 You'd preserved in its pages, just so many spatters 
 The wheel of your life kicked up in its going 
 Now hard as caked clay which nothing can grow in. 
 You raved over Browning, you discovered Euripides, 
 You devoured all volumes from which you could snip 
 
 idees 
 
 (No one need be surprised if I use the vernacular 
 Whenever it fits with my text. It's spectacular. 
 And what smacks of the soil is always tentacular.) 
 Astronomy, botany, palaeontology 
 At least you acquired their strange phraseology 
 And sprinkled it over your pages in splendid 
 Profusion because that was what learned men did. 
 Having one day observed daffodils in a breeze, 
 You remarked as a brand new impression that these 
 Were beautiful objects; you filled quite two pages 
 With extracts from all those esteemed personages 
 
2 A CRITICAL FABLE 
 
 Whose sayings are found to their last adumbrations 
 In any respectable book of quotations. 
 You heard "Pelleas" and returned in a stutter 
 Of rainbows, and bomb-shells, and thin bread and but- 
 ter; 
 
 And once every twenty odd entries or so 
 You recorded a fact it was worth while to know. 
 At least that was my blank-book, but one of the 
 
 "odds" 
 
 Gave my memory two or three violent prods. 
 All it said was, "A gentleman taking a walk 
 Joined me, and we had a most interesting talk." 
 We certainly did, that day is as clear 
 As though the whole circumstance happened this 
 
 year. 
 
 But when it did happen I really can't say, 
 The note is undated, except it says "May." 
 Put it, then, when you please, whether last year or next 
 Doesn't matter a rap, and I shall not be vext 
 If you think I just dreamt it, it swings in my mind 
 Without root or grapple, a silvery kind 
 Of antique recollection, that's all I can say. 
 The sun shone I remember the scattering way 
 It shot over the water. I stood by the river. 
 The plane-trees were just leaving out, and a shiver 
 Of sunshine and shadow twitched over the grass. 
 I was poking at something which glittered like glass 
 With my stick when he joined me and stopped, and 
 
 his stick 
 Helped mine to dig up a long bottle-neck, thick, 
 
A CRITICAL FABLE 3 
 
 Brown, and unctuous with memories of cool yellow wine 
 From some pre-bellum vineyard on the banks of the 
 
 Rhine: 
 
 "Berncastler Doctor/' perhaps, or "Riidesheimer," 
 "Liebfraumilch" could nomenclature ere be sub- 
 
 limer? 
 
 Our dear cousins German are so deftly romantic! 
 Where else in the world could you meet such an antic 
 Idea, such a sentiment oily to dripping? . 
 The pot-bellied humbugs deserved a good whipping, 
 With their hands dropping blood and their noses 
 
 a-sniffle 
 At some beautiful thought which burns down to mere 
 
 piffle. 
 
 As I rubbed off the dirt (with my handkerchief mainly) 
 I may have said this, for he answered profanely, 
 " But their wine was damned good ! " I dispensed from 
 
 replying, 
 
 His remark held a truth I was far from denying. 
 The gentleman seemed not to notice my silence. 
 " Could you tell me," said he, "if that place a short 
 
 mile hence 
 
 Is really Mt. Auburn? 1 ' I said that it was, 
 And went on to observe I had never had cause 
 To enter its precincts. "Why should you?" he said. 
 "The living have nothing to say to the dead. 
 The fact is entirely the other way round, 
 The dead do the speaking, the living are wound 
 In the coil of their words." Here I greatly demurred. 
 His expression provoked me to utter absurd 
 
4 A CRITICAL FABLE 
 
 Refutations. "In America," I began, with bombast 
 "Tut! Tut!" the old gentleman smiled, "not so fast. 
 Fold your wings, young spread-eagle, I merely have 
 
 stated 
 
 That the worth of the living is much over-rated. 
 I was young once myself some few decades ago, 
 And I lived hereabouts, so I really should know. 
 This parkway, for instance, is simply man's cheating 
 Himself to believe he is once more repeating 
 A loveliness ruthlessly uptorn and lost. 
 Those motor-horns, now, do you really dare boast 
 That they please you as marsh -larks' and bobolinks' 
 
 songs would? 
 
 That shaven grass shore, is it really so good 
 As the meadows which used to be here, and these plane- 
 trees, 
 
 Are they half as delightful as those weather-vane trees, 
 The poplars? I grant you they're quaint, and can 
 
 please 
 
 Like an old gouache picture of some Genevese 
 Lake-bordering highway; but it is just these 
 Trans- Atlantic urbanities which crowd out the flavour, 
 The old native lushness and running-wild savour, 
 Of mulleins, and choke-cherries in a confusion 
 So dire that only small boys dared intrusion ; 
 Beyond, where there certainly wasn't a shore, 
 Just tufted marsh grass for an acre or more 
 Treading shiftily into the river and drowned 
 When the high Spring tides turned inconveniently 
 round, 
 
A CRITICAL FABLE 5 
 
 And on the tall grass-sprays, as likely as not, 
 Red-winged blackbirds, a score of them, all in one spot. 
 This place had the taste which a boy feels who grapples 
 With the season's first puckery, bitter-green apples. 
 Regardless of consequence, he devours and crams on. 
 Does maturity get the same joy from a damson? 
 But we, with our marshes, were' more certainly urban 
 Than you with your brummagem, gilded suburban, 
 Which you wear like a hired theatrical turban. 
 You move and you act like folk in a play 
 All carefully drilled to walk the same way. 
 Just look at this bottle, we were free in my time, 
 But I think you are free of nothing but rhyme." 
 Now here was a thing which was not to be stood, 
 Poking fun at a soul just escaped from the wood 
 Like a leaf freshly burst from the bark of its twig. 
 "At least," I said hotly, "we are not a mere sprig 
 From an overseas' bush, and we don't care a fig 
 For a dozen dead worthies of classic humdrum, 
 And each one no bigger than Hop-o'-my-thumb 
 To our eyes. Why, the curse of their damned rhetoric 
 Hangs over our writers like a school-master's stick." 
 Here I caught a few words like "the dead and the 
 
 quick." 
 
 I admit I was stung by his imperturbability 
 And the hint in his eyes of suppressed risibility. 
 1 ' We are breaking away . . ! ' Here he tossed up the bottle, 
 Or the poor jagged neck which was left of the hot Hell 
 Container, as I think Mr. Volstead might say. 
 How thankful I am I preceded his day 
 
6 A CRITICAL FABLE 
 
 And remember the lovely, suave lines of these flasks. 
 
 To piece them together will be one of the tasks 
 
 Of thirty-third century museum curators, 
 
 Subsidized and applauded by keen legislators. 
 
 It flashed in the sun for an instant or two, 
 
 And we watched it in silence as men always do 
 
 Things that soar, then it turned and fell in chaotic 
 
 Uprisings of spray from a sudden aquatic 
 
 Suppression beneath the waves of the Charles. 
 
 " Yet that, like so much, is but one of the snarls," 
 
 He dusted his fingers. "And if a man flings 
 
 His tangles in air, there are so many strings 
 
 To a single cat's-cradle of impulse, who knows 
 
 When you pull at one end where the other end goes. 
 
 We were worthy, respectable, humdrum, quite so, 
 
 An admirable portrait of one Edgar Poe." 
 
 "Oh, Poe was a bird of a different feather, 
 
 We always rank him and Walt Whitman together." 
 
 "You do?" The old gentleman tugged at his whisker. 
 
 " I could scarcely myself have imagined a brisker 
 
 Sarcasm than that to set down in my ' Fable. ' 
 
 I did what I could, but I scarcely was able 
 
 To throw leaves of grass to Poe's raven as sops 
 
 For his Cerberus master, who would be mad as hops 
 
 At a hint of your excellent juxtaposition, 
 
 Since that book was not yet in its first slim edition. 
 
 You remember I said that Poe was three parts 
 
 genius. 
 
 As to Whitman, can you think of an action more hei- 
 nous 
 
A CRITICAL FABLE 7 
 
 Than to write the same book every two or three years? 
 It's enough to reduce any author to tears 
 At the thought of this crime to the writing fraternity. 
 A monstrous, continual, delaying paternity. 
 But I wax somewhat hot, let's have done with the fel- 
 lows. 
 
 Your strange estimation has made me quite jealous 
 For those of my time whose secure reputations 
 Gave us no concern. These are trifling vexations,, 
 But they itch my esteem. Is there really not one 
 You sincerely admire?" "Yes, Miss Dickinson," 
 I hastily answered. At this he stopped dead 
 In his walk and his eyes seemed to pop from his head. 
 "What," he thundered, "that prim and perverse little 
 
 person 
 
 Without an idea you could hang up a verse on ! 
 Wentworth Higginson did what he could, his tuition 
 Was ardent, unwearied, but bore no fruition. 
 You amaze me, young man, where are Longfellow, 
 
 Lowell, 
 
 With Whittier, Bryant, and Holmes? Do you know well 
 The works of these men? What of Washington Irving, 
 And Emerson and Hawthorne, are they not deserving 
 A tithe of your upstart, unfledged admiration? 
 In the name of the Furies, what's come to the nation!" 
 Here I thought it was prudent to say, as to prose 
 I was perfectly willing to hand him the rose. 
 But I could not admit that our poets were so backward. 
 I thought, if he knew them, he'd see they'd a knack 
 would 
 
8 A CRITICAL FABLE 
 
 Command his respect. For the matter of liking, 
 
 The men he had mentioned might be each a Viking, 
 
 While we, very probably, were merely the skippers 
 
 Of some rather lively and smartish tea-clippers; , 
 
 Or, to put it in terms somewhat more up to date, 
 
 Our steamers and aeroplanes might be first-rate 
 
 As carriers for a particular freight. 
 
 Each time for its heroes, and he must excuse 
 
 The terms I employed, I'd not meant to abuse 
 
 Our forerunners, but only to speak of a preference 
 
 Anno Domini merely. So classic a reference 
 
 Should cool him, I thought. Here I went on to better a 
 
 Most happy allusion, and continued et c&tera. 
 
 I will not repeat all the soothing remarks 
 
 With which I endeavoured to smother the sparks 
 
 Of his anger. Suffice it to say I succeeded 
 
 In clouding the issue of what had preceded. 
 
 I enjoyed it myself and I almost think he did. 
 
 I admit there was something a trifle pragmatical 
 
 In my method, but who wants the truth mathematical? 
 
 It sours good talk as thunder does cream. 
 
 I ignore, for the nonce, a disquieting gleam 
 
 In his eye. " But your critics," he answered demurely, 
 
 "For your poets, by-and-by; with your critics you 
 
 surely 
 
 Surpass what .we did. I was not fond of critics; 
 If I rightly remember, I gave them some sly ticks. 
 I called them, I think, poor broken-kneed hacks." 
 "We've advanced," I replied, "to the office boot- 
 blacks. 
 
A CRITICAL FABLE 9 
 
 We are quite democratic, and the newspapers think 
 One man is as good as another in ink. 
 The fluid that's paid for at so much a sprinkling 
 Is a guaranteed product, quite free of all inkling 
 That standardized morals, and standardized criti- 
 cisms, 
 
 And a standardized series of cut-and-dried witticisms, 
 Are poor stuff to purvey as a full reading ration, 
 Though they suit to a T the views of a nation 
 Which fears nothing so much as a personal equation. 
 Subscribers demand that their thoughts be retailed to 
 
 them 
 So often and plenteously that they become nailed to 
 
 them 
 And when travelling are lost if their journal's not mailed 
 
 to them. 
 
 By this safe and sane rule our newspapers get on 
 Without any gambling, since there's nothing to bet on. 
 Of course I refer to things of import 
 Such as stock-exchange news, murders, fashions, and 
 
 sport, 
 
 With a smattering of politics, garbled to fit 
 Editorial policy; if they admit 
 Puerilities like music and art, these are extras 
 Put in to augment, by means of a dexterous 
 Metropolitan appearance, their own circulation, 
 For a paper's first duty is self-preservation. 
 If they will run book columns, why some one must 
 
 feed them, , 
 And, after all, few take the trouble to read them. 
 
io A CRITICAL FABLE 
 
 With a pastepot and scissors to cut up his betters 
 And any young numskull is equal to letters. 
 He scans what the publisher says on the jacket, 
 Then the first paragraph and the last, and the packet 
 Goes off to the second-hand book-shop, the bunch 
 Polished off in the minutes he's waiting for lunch. 
 I believe there's no record of any one feeling 
 As he pockets his pay that he may have been stealing. 
 The thing would be murder, but that time has gone by 
 When an author can be made or marred by such fry. 
 Some good paper is spoiled, that's the long and the 
 
 short of it." 
 Here I watched the old gentleman to see what he 
 
 thought of it. 
 " These reviews which you speak of have one great 
 
 advantage," 
 
 He remarked, "they are brief. In our less petulant age 
 They had not that merit. But I see we agree 
 On essentials. Yet we had a very few men 
 Who wielded a passably powerful pen." 
 "And one woman," I slyly put in. He grimaced. 
 "That's the second you've dug up and greatly dis- 
 placed. 
 
 Since you criticize thus, do I err if I doubt 
 Whether you are the boot-black on his afternoon out?" 
 Fairly touched and I owned it, and let Margaret Fuller 
 Slide softly to limbo. 'Twas unmanly to rule her 
 Out of count in this way, but the fish I must fry 
 Required considerable diplomacy 
 To keep in the pan and not drop in the fire. 
 
A CRITICAL FABLE II 
 
 'Twas an expert affair, and might shortly require 
 I knew not what effort to induce him to grant 
 That whatever we are is worth more than we aren't. 
 So I instantly seized on his "very few men" - 
 And assured him that we also, now and again, 
 Found a youth who was willing to write good re- 
 views 
 
 While learning to tickle the publishers' views 
 And make them believe he was worth while to back. 
 "The thing after all is a question of knack, 
 Ten to one if you have it you turn out a quack; 
 If you don't, and win through, you've arrived with- 
 out doubt, 
 But the luck's on your side if you're not quite wora 
 
 out." 
 "Good old world," he remarked, as he prodded the 
 
 ground 
 
 With the point of his cane, " I observe it goes round 
 In the same soothing, punctual way. This pastiche 
 Of the quite unfamiliar is merely a bleach, 
 A veneer, acid-bitten, on a colour we knew. 
 By the way, when it's finished, who reads your re- 
 view?" 
 
 "The fellow who wrote it, on all those occasions 
 When his fine self-esteem has received some abra- 
 sions. 
 
 Then the fellow who's written about cons the thing 
 Over several times in a day till the sting 
 Of its strictures becomes just the usual pedantic 
 Outpouring, and its granules of praise grow gigantic. 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 
12 A CRITICAL FABLE 
 
 Once acquire this excellent trick for benumbing 
 What you don't want to hear by an extra loud strum- 
 ming " 
 
 On the things which you do and you fast are becoming 
 A real going author. Then there are the gentry 
 Who must read reviews to fill out an entry 
 In next week's advertisement; and others peruse 
 The paper with care to note down its abuse 
 Of their dear brother writer, and suck up each injurious 
 Phrase to retail with a finely luxurious 
 Hypocritical pretense of its being unsuitable, 
 While all the time showing it quite irrefutable. 
 Then there are the sisters, and cousins, and aunts 
 Of the writer and wrote about; some sycophants 
 Who pry into favour by announcing they've read it, 
 And praise or deride to heighten their credit 
 With the interested person. There are others who edit 
 Gossip columns, and who must go through at a dead- 
 heat **. 
 The news of the day for the spicy tid-bits 
 And who greatly prefer the more virulent hits. 
 By the time we are through, a fairly large public 
 Has skimmed through the paper." He gave a quick 
 
 flick 
 
 To a stone which arose with a circular twist 
 And plopped into the river. "But if I insist 
 On your people of parts?" "Oh, they do not exist/' 
 I assured him, "or only as sparsely as daisies 
 In city back-yards. And if one of them raises 
 His voice it is drowned in the whirligig hazes 
 
A CRITICAL FABLE 13 
 
 Of mob murmurings. If these men hold the key 
 To the spacious demesne known as posterity 
 The gate must have shrunk to a postern, I think. 
 Every one worth his salt glues his eye to the chink 
 'Twixt the frame and the door, but it's long to keep 
 
 looking 
 
 With never a chance to get even a hook in 
 And pull open a door where it's 'Skeletons Only.' 
 A notice designed to make any one lonely. 
 It stares over the gate in huge letters of red: 
 'No person admitted until he is dead.' 
 Small wonder if some of them cannot hold out. 
 As they dwindle away, the watchers, no doubt, 
 Feel a sort of cold envy creep through their contempt. 
 Then perhaps the door opens and one is exempt, 
 Gone over to dust and to fame. As it slams, 
 The requiem fraternal, a chorus of 'Damns!' 
 Cracks the silence a moment. More still break away, 
 But the shrivelled remainder waits each one his day. 
 It takes marvellous force and persistence to tarry on 
 When your own special corpse may be counted as car- 
 rion 
 
 And left where it lies to await decomposing 
 While that devilish door shows no sign of unclosing. 
 These custodians of keys are ill to rely on 
 As the last Day of Judgment to the followers of Zion. 
 There are folk who dress up in the very same guise 
 And boast of a power that's nothing but lies. 
 They shout from their chosen, particular steeple 
 Of some weekly review: 'We are surely the people! 
 
I 4 A CRITICAL FABLE 
 
 We know what posterity wants, for we know 
 
 What other posterities have wanted, and so 
 
 We affirm confidently the true cut and fashion 
 
 Which the future will certainly dote on with passion. 
 
 There is no need at all of making a fuss 
 
 For all generations are exactly like us. 
 
 We represent that which is known as the Vox 
 
 Populi, species Intelligentsia, or Cocks 
 
 Of the Walk on the Dunghill of High Erudition, 
 
 Referred to more elegantly as Fields Elysian. ' 
 
 The matter of clocks may be readily dropped, 
 
 Every Ph.D. knows that they long ago stopped. 
 
 What are colleges for with their dignified massiveness 
 
 But just to reduce all time-pieces to passiveness." 
 
 * 'The picture you draw does not greatly attract 
 
 One who seeks for the absolute even in fact. 
 
 That fanciful bit you put in about clocks 
 
 Borders rather too smartly upon paradox. 
 
 We had a few poets, and we had a few colleges, 
 
 And something like half of your bundle of knowledges. 
 
 We delivered our lectures and wrote our lampoons, 
 
 And I venture to say that the fire-balloons 
 
 Of our verse made as lively a sputter as yours. 
 
 If things are so changed, what, pray, is the cause?" 
 
 I groaned. Poor old gentleman, should I be tempted 
 
 To tell him the fault was that he had preempted, 
 
 He and the others, the country's small stock 
 
 Of imagination? The real stumbling-block 
 
 Was the way they stood up like Blake's angels, a chorus 
 
 Of geniuses over our heads, no more porous 
 
A CRITICAL FABLE 15 
 
 Than so much stretched silk; rain, sun, and the stellar 
 Effulgences balked by our national umbrella 
 Of perished celebrities. To mention a trifling 
 Fact, underneath them the air's somewhat stifling. 
 Youthful lungs need ozone and, considering the tent, 
 No man can be blamed if he punches a rent 
 With his fist in the stiff, silken web if he can. 
 A feat, I assured him, more horrible than 
 Cataclysmic tide-waters or Vesuvian 
 Explosions to all those quaint, straightly-laced folk 
 Who allow a man only the freedom to choke. 
 "We may buckle the winds and rip open the sea, 
 But we mayn't poke a finger at authority." 
 "A nursery game," the old man spoke benignly, 
 "To all school-boys, convention's a matter divinely 
 Ordained, and the youngster who feels himself bold 
 
 enough 
 To step out of the ring will soon find himself cold 
 
 enough. 
 
 To be chips from a hardened old tree may be crippling, 
 But it's nothing compared to the lot of the stripling. 
 For the sake of the argument, let us agree 
 That we were the last surge of life which the tree 
 Could produce, that our heart- wood was long ago rotted, 
 Our sap-wood decaying, and all our roots spotted 
 With fungus ; the Spring of our flourishing over, 
 The first Winter storm would most likely have rove a 
 Great cleft through the trunk, and the next year's out- 
 leaving 
 Would unbalance the whole without hope of retrieving. 
 
16 A CRITICAL FABLE 
 
 The gentlest of breezes would then send it crashing. 
 Good luck to the striplings if they escape smashing. 
 When an oak, having lasted its time, is once thrown, 
 What is left are the acorns it cast, and these grown 
 Are the forest of saplings in which it lies prone. 
 But 'twould be a dull acorn who should dare to declare 
 It was sprung only from earth's connection with air, 
 The miraculous birth of a marvellous rut. 
 Such an acorn indeed would be a poor nut." 
 He quickened his steps and I followed along, 
 Listening partly to him, and partly to the song 
 Of the little light leaves in the plane-trees. Said he, 
 Stopping short quite abruptly, "I think it should be 
 Somewhere about here that a house I once knew 
 Used to stand. It was not much to look at, 'tis true, 
 But its elms were superb and it had a fine view 
 Of the river. A friend of mine owned it, indeed 
 He was born here and loved every tree, every weed. 
 Circumstance loosed his moorings, but he came back to 
 
 die, 
 
 To envisage the past with a chill, older eye, 
 And dwelt a few years with the bitter-sweet ghosts 
 Of his earlier dreams, with the shadowless hosts 
 Of the things he had never brought farther than plan- 
 ning. 
 
 How often he wished there were some way of spanning 
 The past and the present, to go back again 
 And drink to the dregs the austere cup of pain. 
 Instead, he allowed the nepenthe of change 
 To smother that loneliness by which the range 
 
A CRITICAL FABLE 17 
 
 Of his soul might have reached to some highest 
 
 achievement 
 
 Through the vision won out of a grievous bereavement. 
 He'd a wit and a fancy, a hint of some deepness, 
 An excellent humour quite unmarred by cheapness, 
 But somehow his work never got beyond soundings. 
 I wonder sometimes if it was his surroundings 
 Or the fact that he fled them. With a grim taciturnity, 
 He admitted no masterpiece owed its paternity 
 To him. Now they've pulled down his house, I suppose. 
 Thistles spring up and die, and the thistledown goes 
 Anywhere the wind blows it." "Wait," I said, "if you 
 
 mean 
 
 James Lowell's house, 'Elmwood,' you can see it be- 
 tween 
 That brick porch and that window, and those are its 
 
 chimneys. 
 
 The grounds are cut up and built over, their trimness 
 Is due to that cluster of very new houses. 
 In its rather bedraggled condition, it rouses 
 My ire each time I come anywhere near it. 
 It deserved better treatment." "I fear it! I fear it!" 
 He murmured. "Was it lack of success, or those years 
 I spent in escaping the tonic arrears 
 Of a grief not lived through. I cannot bear more." 
 He turned and walked rapidly down to the shore 
 Of the river and seated himself on the bank. 
 Many minutes went by, then he asked me point-blank 
 Who were the young poets of the day. "Since my mood 
 Will admit no more sorrowful past, be so good 
 
18 A CRITICAL FABLE 
 
 As to marshal your forces, I shall find it quite pleasant 
 
 To stroll for a little with you in the present. 
 
 So bring them out, lock, stock, and barrel, the whole 
 
 of them, 
 
 I'm really most anxious to get a good toll of them. 
 Recount me their merits, their foibles and absurdities, 
 Such a tale is too saccharine without some acerbities." 
 His gesture of challenge was so debonnaire 
 I could only accept with as devil-may-care 
 A grace as I could. But our Ostrogothic 
 Modern manners, I fear, made me seem sans-culottic, 
 I know that I felt supremely idiotic. 
 Still "out of the mouths of the babes and the suck- 
 lings," 
 
 And I was prepared with some brave ugly ducklings 
 I was willing to swear would prove to be swans, 
 Or, to tone up the metaphor, Bellerophons. 
 At least they'd no fear of a chase round the paddock 
 After Pegasus, who "might be lamed by a bad hock 
 And so easily mounted" I can hear the malicious 
 Sneers of the critics when one dare be ambitious 
 And attempt a bold thing, yet it's hard to decry a 
 Flight its existence when above you the flyer 
 Is gyrating and plunging on his way to the zenith, 
 And he grins the best who at the last grinneth. 
 But my unknown old friend seemed to need no ac- 
 quainting 
 
 With this style of horseflesh, he would notice my paint- 
 ing, 
 No chance then at all to confuse him by feinting. 
 
A CRITICAL FABLE 19 
 
 I must prove that my horse had his quota of wings, 
 Was sound wind and limb, that his sidles and swings 
 Were no circus parade, that the man who would stride 
 
 him 
 
 Knew perfectly well why he wanted to ride him. 
 That 'twas bareback or die, that the fellow was 
 
 game 
 
 For whichever result was the end of his aim. 
 As I pondered, I harboured no little aversion 
 At having embarked on so great an excursion, 
 Nothing less, be it said, than his total conversion. 
 "Come, come," he urged quickly, "you're taking some 
 
 time 
 
 To trot out your up-to-date dabblers in rhyme." 
 I pouted, I think. "Ha! Ha! you're offended! 
 Because I said * dabblers' or because I pretended 
 Not to know that rhyme's lost its erstwhile predomi- 
 nance?" 
 
 I assured him at once that we gave no prominence 
 To rhyme or the lack of it. To which he said "Good! 
 We've got somewhere at last; now let's have the whole 
 
 brood 
 
 In their rareness and rawness. I am surely no prude, 
 I shall not be satisfied if you exclude 
 Any atom of character, any least mood. 
 Give your men as you see them from their toes to 
 
 their chin. 
 
 Only, for God's sake, my dear fellow, begin." 
 Since he and I wanted the same thing exactly, 
 I started to put it quite matter-of-factly. 
 
20 A CRITICAL FABLE 
 
 He had spoken of acorns, so poets in a nutshell 
 Should please him, I thought, and they're none of 
 
 them but shell. 
 
 To hesitate longer would smack of the boyish, 
 And a prophet's ill served by an attitude coyish, 
 Like a diffident girl asked to play the piano. 
 I detest all such feminine ruses, and so 
 I hitched up my mind as sailors and whalers 
 Are reported to do with their trousers (why tailors 
 Should so fashion these garments that this act must 
 
 precede 
 
 Every truly stupendous and heroic deed 
 I am quite at a loss to surmise). To continue, 
 I exerted each muscle and braced every sinew 
 For the duty in hand. In a fiery burst 
 Which I hoped might be eloquence, I took up the first 
 Poet I happened to think of, explaining quite clearly 
 That my order of precedence meant nothing really. 
 Number ten might be easily rated as equal 
 To one or fifteen, if we lived for the sequel. 
 Here I saw with concern he had fixed both his eyes on 
 That soothing Nirvana we call the horizon. 
 There was danger of slumber I felt, so embarking 
 On my story with gusto, I began by remarking 
 (And here I must add for my just self-esteem 
 That the minute I spoke he awoke from his dream 
 And never thereafter did so much as blink, 
 Though I thought, once or twice, I detected a wink.) 
 But I'm straying again. I remarked then succinctly, 
 Without farther preamble: . 
 
A CRITICAL FABLE 21 
 
 "To name them distinctly, 
 
 There's Frost with his blueberry pastures and hills 
 All peopled by folk who have so many ills 
 'Tis a business to count 'em, their subtle insanities. 
 One half are sheer mad, and the others inanities. 
 He'll paint you a phobia quick as a wink 
 Stuffed into a hay-mow or tied to a sink. 
 And then he'll deny, with a certain rich rapture, 
 The very perversion he's set out to capture. 
 Were it not for his flowers, and orchards, and skies, 
 One would think the poor fellow was blind of both eyes 
 Or had never read Freud, but it's only his joke. 
 If we're looking for cheer, he's a pig in a poke. 
 But he's such a good chap, he is welcome to say 
 Tweedledum's Tweedledee if he's feeling that way. 
 When he calls a thing yellow and you know it is pink, 
 Why, you've purchased his book and you're welcome 
 
 to think. 
 
 He's a foggy benignity wandering in space 
 With a stray wisp of moonlight just touching his face, 
 Descending to earth when a certain condition 
 Reminds him that even a poet needs nutrition, 
 Departing thereafter to rarefied distances 
 Quite unapproachable to those persistencies, 
 The lovers of Lions, who shout at his tail 
 At least so he says when he comes within hail. 
 Majestic, remote, a quite beautiful pose, 
 (Or escape, or indulgence, or all three, who knows?) 
 Set solidly up in a niche like an oracle 
 
22 A CRITICAL FABLE 
 
 Dispensing replies which he thinks categorical. 
 No wonder he cleaves to his leafy seclusion, 
 Barricading his door to unlawful intrusion, 
 The goal of the fledgling, a god in a thicket, 
 To be viewed only Tuesdays and Fridays by ticket. 
 Yet note, if you please, this is but one degree 
 Of Frost, there are more as you'll presently see, 
 And some of them are so vexatiously teasing 
 All this stored heat is needed to keep him from freez- 
 ing. 
 
 Life is dreadfully hard on a man who can see 
 A rainbow-clad prophet a-top of each tree; 
 To whom every grass-blade's a telephone wire 
 With Heaven as central and electrifier. 
 He has only to ring up the switch-board and hear 
 A poem lightly pattering into his ear, 
 But he must be in tune or the thing takes a kink, 
 An imminent lunch-bell puts it all on the blink. 
 Some one to be seen in the late afternoon 
 Throws all his poetical thoughts in a swoon. 
 He can't walk with one foot on Parnassus, and stutter 
 Along with the other foot deep in the gutter, 
 As many poets do, all those who have tamely 
 Submitted to life as men live it, and lamely 
 Continue to limp, half man-in-the-street, 
 Half poet-in-the-air. How often we meet 
 Such fellows, they throng the bohemian centres, 
 The 'Blue Cats' and 'Pink Moons' those artistic fre- 
 quenters 
 Who eat at the house's expense for the fame 
 
A CRITICAL FABLE 23 
 
 Their presence ensures have conceived as a name 
 Full of rich innuendo. Though why a strange hue 
 Connected with something moons pink or cats blue 
 Should make it so vicious, I can't see, can you? 
 These double-paced bardlings are marvels at talking, 
 But their writing seems curiously given to balking, 
 A result, like as not, of their manner of walking. 
 Not {50 Frost, he divides his life into two pieces, 
 Keeping one for himself while the other he leases 
 To various colleges. He's eclectic in choice 
 And at least half-a-dozen have cause to rejoice 
 That he's sojourned among them; for his unique duty, 
 What they pay him to do and regard as their booty, 
 Is the odd one of being on hand, nothing more. 
 He's an unexplored mine you know contains ore; 
 Or rather, he acts as a landscape may do 
 Which says one thing to me and another to you, 
 But which all agree is a very fine view. 
 Such a sight is experience, a wonderful thing 
 To have looked at and felt. This establishing 
 Of a poet in a college like a bird in a cage 
 Is a happy endowment for art which our age 
 Is the first to have thought of and made quite the rage. 
 That the poet cannot function while kept as a zoo, 
 Does not matter at all to the wiseacres who 
 Invented the scheme. They secure for the year 
 That desideratum, a high atmosphere. 
 If the poet who provides it be drained to the pith, 
 That is nothing to leaving their college a myth, 
 A tradition, to hand down to all future classes. 
 
24 A CRITICAL FABLE 
 
 A thing and its shadow are one to the masses. 
 
 The man's written his poems, now he can recite them ; 
 
 As for new ones, he is a great fool to invite them, 
 
 Notoriety offers a constant repose, 
 
 Like a time-honoured rose-bush which now bears no 
 
 rose. 
 
 Instead of one poet, we've a score of poetasters. 
 Are we wise in our method or ignorant wasters? 
 Frost suffers himself to be bled for the small fry 
 While Pegasus, never a quiescent palfrey, 
 Stamps at the hitching-post. Still, I'm not saying 
 There is really much harm in this lengthy delaying. 
 There's the other half-year and his telegraph grasses 
 And no college thrives on a diet of asses; 
 A man must be sacrificed now and again 
 To provide for the next generation of men. 
 So if, once in a while, a real poet is captured 
 And bled for the future, we should all be enraptured. 
 The violence done to his own special nature 
 Is a thing of no moment if he add to the stature 
 Of a handful of students, and business is booming 
 For the troubadour poets in the town he's illuming. 
 They come, called in shoals by the interest he rouses, 
 And talk of themselves to preposterous houses. 
 But who, in the end, has the best of the luck, 
 The migrating birds or the poor decoy duck? 
 Small surprise, when Commencement has ended the 
 
 year, 
 
 If our poet's first free action is to disappear. 
 Chained up on a campus creating diurnal 
 
A CRITICAL FABLE 25 
 
 Poetic fine weather must be an eternal 
 Annoyance, a horror, growing always more biting. 
 How pleasant his mountains must look, how exciting 
 The long leisured moments to think, with no gaping 
 Importunate youths whose lives he is shaping 
 Forever observing his least little movement. 
 Why, a bleak desert island would be an improvement 
 On such an existence. Though we should be proud 
 That there is such a man to let loose on a crowd 
 Of young bears, any one of whom may become Presi- 
 dent, 
 
 We should be even prouder to know him a resident 
 Of our woods and our hills, a neighbour of neighbours, 
 A singer of country-sides and country labours, 
 Like a hermit thrush deep in a wood whose fresh fire 
 Of song burns the whole air to music, and higher 
 Up-soars till it seems not one voice but a choir 
 The choir of his people whose hearths are the altars 
 Of that deep race-religion which in him never falters, 
 His life is its worship, his songs are its psalters. 
 Prophet, seer, psalmist, is the world so importunate 
 As to leave you no peace even here? You are fortunate 
 At least to abide, remote as the fables, 
 In a place much neglected by railroad time-tables. 
 I promise, for one, when I turn from the wicket, 
 That the name of your town will not be on my ticket. 
 You have as much right to protect your seclusion 
 As any old monk of the order Carthusian, 
 Though solitude really is but an illusion 
 As most men find out to their utter confusion. 
 
26 A CRITICAL FABLE 
 
 To speak of seclusion is to think of a man 
 
 Who is built on a totally otherwise plan, i 
 
 I mean, and I rather imagine you know it, 
 
 Edwin Arlington Robinson, excellent poet, 
 
 And excellent person, but vague as a wood 
 
 Gazed into at dusk. His preponderant mood 
 
 Is withdrawal, and why? For a man of his stamp, 
 
 So conscious of people, it seems odd to scamp 
 
 Experience and contact, to live in a hollow 
 
 Between the four winds and perpetually swallow 
 
 The back draughts of air from a swift forward motion. 
 
 It takes a huge strength to withstand all emotion, 
 
 But Robinson stays with his feet planted square 
 
 In the middle of nothing, the vacuum where 
 
 The world's swinging starts and whirls out, where is left 
 
 The dead root of movement, an emptiness cleft 
 
 In the heart of an aim, of all aims, peering out 
 
 At the dust and the grass-blades that swirl all about. 
 
 He notes who is here, who is coming along, 
 
 Who has passed by alone, who is one of a throng. 
 
 He peers with intentness bent all into seeing, 
 
 A critical eye finely pointed on being. 
 
 He is cruel with dispassion, as though he most dreaded 
 
 Some shiver of feeling might yet be imbedded 
 
 Within him. And if this occurrence should happen, 
 
 He would probably see himself with a fool's cap on 
 
 And feel himself sinking to shipwreck at once; 
 
 Of the two, much preferring disaster to dunce. 
 
 For the dunce is contingent on a sort of a curse 
 
A CRITICAL FABLE 27 
 
 He thinks he is doomed with. A curious, perverse 
 
 Undercutting of Fate which decrees him observer 
 
 And hoods him in ice from all possible fervour. 
 
 The slightest conceivable hint of a thaw 
 
 Wounds his conscience as though he had broken a law 
 
 He had sworn to uphold. Are there demons in hiding 
 
 Within his ice-mail? Can he feel them abiding 
 
 A time to break loose and disrupt into tatters 
 
 The scheme of existence he has taught himself matters, 
 
 A barrier raised betwixt him and his satyrs? 
 
 For he has them ; his quaint, artificial control 
 
 Is a bandage drawn tightly to hold down his soul. 
 
 Should a nail or a thorn tear the least little mesh, it 
 
 Would let all his nature go leaping in freshet 
 
 Overflowing his banks and engulfing his dams 
 
 In a flurry of life. But the desolate calms 
 
 He has cherished so long would be lost in the slams, 
 
 The torrential vortices of a swift current 
 
 Exploding in motion. Some uncouth, deterrent 
 
 Complex in his make-up enforces recoil 
 
 Before the fatigue and the wrench of turmoil. 
 
 He compounds with inertia by calling it Fate, 
 
 Deeply dreading the rush of emotion in spate, 
 
 Distrusting his power to outwit disaster 
 
 In the realization that with him fast means faster, 
 
 And refusing to see that a turbulent strife , 
 
 Is the valuable paradox given to life 
 
 Which only the few may possess. With the prize 
 
 In his hand, he turns sadly away, crucifies 
 
 His manhood each day with the old dog's-eared lies, 
 
28 A CRITICAL FABLE 
 
 The heritage, left by those Puritan heirs. 
 His bogies and satyrs are grandsons of theirs. 
 Could he see them as fruit-trees distorted by mist, 
 He might unknot himself from the terrible twist 
 He has suffered through fear of them. Now, with 
 
 vicarious 
 
 Experience in verse, he cheats all the various 
 Impulses within him which make him a poet; 
 But, try as he will, his poems all show it. 
 His tight little verses an inch in diameter, 
 His quatrains and whole-book-long tales in pentameter, 
 With never a hint of what he'd call a sham metre, 
 Though some people style his kind ad nauseam metre 
 With gimlets for eyes and a sensitive heart, 
 All battened down tight in the box of his art, 
 And we have his rare merits and his strange deficiencies 
 Which mix to a porridge of peculiar efficiencies. 
 Admired by every one dowered with wit, 
 He has scarcely the qualifications to hit 
 The unlettered public, but the fact that his name 
 Is already spotted with the lichens of fame 
 Opens up a most fecund and pertinent query 
 And is one of the pedestals on which my theory 
 Is based: whether now we have not reached the stage 
 Of a perfectly genuine coming-of-age. 
 I am willing to swear that when he has retired 
 His books will be listed as 'reading required/ 
 And poor sweltering youths taking examinations 
 Will crown him with the bays of their wild lamenta- 
 tions. 
 
A CRITICAL FABLE 29 
 
 Our beautiful system is to make every course able 
 To render delight quite sterile through forcible 
 Insistence upon it. But these are the laurels 
 With which no man who's not insane ever quarrels. 
 Perhaps it's as well not to look at the guerdon 
 Too closely or no one would shoulder the burden 
 Of being a poet. 
 
 The next I shall take up 
 Is a fellow as utterly different in make-up 
 As you're likely to see if you scour the land 
 With field-glasses and microscopes. This is Carl Sand- 
 burg, a strange, gifted creature, as slow as a fog 
 Just lifting to sunshine, a roughly hewn Gog, 
 Shorn of his twin Magog, set over the portal 
 Through which brawls the stream of everything mortal. 
 Day and night he observes it, this river of men, 
 With a weary- sweet, unflagging interest, and ten 
 Times in a day he seeks to detach 
 Himself from the plinth where he's destined to watch, 
 And mingle as one of them, mistaking his stature 
 To be but that generally ordained by nature 
 For the run of humanity. His miscalculations 
 Of the possible height to which civilizations 
 May rightly aspire are constantly leading 
 Him into positions whence there's no proceeding. 
 Because he can easily reach to the stars, 
 He cannot believe that a short arm debars 
 Any others from doing the same, and declares 
 His qualifications assuredly theirs. 
 
30 A CRITICAL FABLE 
 
 Endowing each man whom he meets with his own 
 Stretch and feeling, he takes for the foundation stone 
 Of his creed the ability to walk cheek by jowl 
 With the sun, at the same time not losing control 
 Of feet always set on the earth. It is droll 
 To hear him announce neither giants nor pigmies 
 Exist, that there's only one knowable size, 
 Which by implication's as tall as the skies. 
 What he feels about souls, he has brought into speech, 
 But since perfect English is a hard thing to teach 
 To those brought up without it, he changes his tactics 
 And declares correct use the hypochondriactics 
 Of language too timid for red-blooded slang. 
 This theory of his is a swift boomerang 
 Overturning his balance and flooring him pell-mell, he 
 Presents the strange sight of a man on his belly 
 Proclaiming that all men walk that way from preference 
 And the manner, though new, must be treated with 
 
 deference. 
 
 Since his own natural speech is correct to a dot, 
 His theory, to use the red-blooded, is 'rot/ 
 And as man does not wiggle along like a jelly 
 When he walks, to affect that laid flat on the belly 
 Is the easiest position to attain locomotion 
 Must surely be called a preposterous notion. 
 But what's the poor fellow to do? It is plain 
 He overtops folk if he stands; once again 
 It's the hill and Mohammed, since he can't raise the 
 
 others 
 He must lie if he'd be the same height as his brothers. 
 
A CRITICAL FABLE 31 
 
 It may weary his readers to see a true poet 
 Who apparently has not the instinct to know it, 
 And so burdens his beauty with wild propaganda 
 That much of his work is a hideous slander 
 Against his remarkable genius, but scratch it 
 With a prudent pen-knife and there's nothing to 
 
 match it 
 
 Going on in the whole world to-day. He has sight 
 Of a loveliness no man has seen, and a might, 
 A great flowing power of words to express 
 Its hugeness and littleness. All the excess 
 Of his passion for living leaps out from his pen 
 In a gtish of fresh imminence ; again and again 
 We read him to fill our soul's withering lungs 
 With the wind-over-water sweep which is his tongue's 
 Particular gift though I should have said 'prairies, ' 
 Not 'water/ he is no result of the seas, 
 But in every whiff of him, flat and extended, 
 A man of the plains, whose horizons are ended 
 By the upreach of earth to that sky which he touches 
 And carries off great fragments of in his clutches. 
 Wood-smoke, and water-smoke rising from runnels 
 At sunrise, long lines of black smoke from the funnels 
 Of engines and factories, steel of man's forging 
 And steel he's forged into; the slow, passive gorging 
 Of earth with mankind, blood of souls, blood of hearts, 
 Swallowed into the fields where the sprouting grain 
 
 parts 
 
 A right rail from a left rail, and always asunder 
 Go marching the fields cleft in two by the wonder 
 
32 A CRITICAL FABLE 
 
 Of man gauging distance as magic and burning it 
 Under boot-heels or car-wheels and all the time earn- 
 ing it 
 
 For the silt of his mind from which a new soil 
 Is gradually risen. This turgescent coil 
 Is the crawling of glaciers, the upheave of hills, 
 The process of making and change, the huge spills 
 Of watersheds seeking their oceans, the miracle 
 Of creeping continuance. This is the lyrical 
 Stuff Sandburg works into something as lazy 
 And deep as geology planting its clays, he 
 Makes keenly, unhastingly, as evolution, 
 And yet, poor blind eagle, he dreams revolution. 
 With the centuries his if he could but decide 
 To pocket his picayune, popular pride, 
 Give up his day-dreams and his tin-penny logic, 
 Be Gog as God made him and not demagogic, 
 Sit solidly down with his eyes and his heart, 
 And a file and a chisel, to fashion great art 
 If he would, but will he? It really is vexing 
 To see such a fellow perpetually flexing 
 His knees to false idols, a mere artizan 
 When he might be an artist. Some historian 
 Of the future will round him up in an abstract 
 By denouncing the times as too matter-of-fact, 
 Not observing what might well be seen for the look- 
 ing 
 
 That it's simply a case of not quite enough cooking. 
 An accredited hero or a dream-blinded sloven 
 Is entirely a matter of stoking the oven. 
 
A CRITICAL FABLE 33 
 
 The material's certainly A number one, 
 
 It will be his own fault if he dies underdone. 
 
 The man whom I next shall bring to the fore 
 
 Is becoming, I fear, an impossible bore. 
 
 Some few years ago, Minerva mislaid 
 
 Her glasses, and unable to see in the shade, 
 
 Feeling also, quite naturally, rather afraid 
 
 To proclaim that she wore them, like any old maid 
 
 Teaching school for a Goddess is loath to parade 
 
 Her antiquity, even as others she said 
 
 No word of the matter at home on Olympus. 
 
 A pity, because a very bad impasse 
 
 Might have so been averted. The handmaids and 
 
 lackeys, 
 Who are always possessed of both front door and back 
 
 keys, 
 
 Would have hunted the palace from cellar to roof 
 And most probably found them not very aloof 
 From the spot where poor Vulcan, in playing Tar- 
 
 tuffe, 
 
 Had received a convincing and permanent proof 
 That the lady was chaste. Indeed, however frigid, 
 No woman of spirit admits to the rigid 
 Mathematical count of the years after forty, 
 And even immortals, though reputed quite 'sporty,' 
 And figuring time by the so many centuries, 
 Still scarcely desire to add up the entries 
 And publish the total. Minerva, then, hid 
 The fact that she could not quite see what she did, 
 
34 A CRITICAL FABLE 
 
 And since it would give things away to inquire, * Oh 
 She could not do that!' And after a giro 
 Which blindly confused every main street and by- 
 row, 
 
 In the end she conferred a great book on a tyro. 
 The author in question, though an excellent notary, 
 Could scarcely be classed at that time as a votary 
 Worth Minerva's attention. But, however unsuitable, 
 The deed, once accomplished, became quite immu- 
 table. 
 
 No matter how foolish she felt, the poor Goddess 
 Must carry it through in a pitiless progress. 
 For be sure, when her family learnt of her blunder, 
 Which they very soon did, she'd have welcomed Jove's 
 
 thunder 
 
 To be quit of his really abominable quizzing. 
 His jokes were caught up by Neptune and sent whizzing 
 For Vulcan to cap them, and as he was still smarting 
 Beneath the rebuke she'd not spared him at parting, 
 He gave her good measure now he'd got the upper 
 Hand. Then the women joined in; what at supper 
 Was observed was rehashed for breakfast and dinner, 
 Even Venus said * Minnie, you have picked a winner! 
 From all that I hear, your man is verbose. 
 He'll print in ten volumes, a very large dose 
 For you to inspire.' 'Oh, Minnie is game,' 
 Cried Mercury, kind-hearted boy. 'All the same,' 
 Growled Vulcan, 'if Min can hold out, 'twould be 
 
 speedier 
 To imbue him at once with an encyclopedia.' 
 
A CRITICAL FABLE 35 
 
 Here Minerva, in tears which begemmed her found 
 
 glasses, 
 
 Declared her relations were all of them asses, 
 That she cared not a fig for their tuppenny threats 
 Having settled the book to be done in vignettes. 
 The Gods broke out laughing. 'Give Minnie the han- 
 dle 
 
 And not one of you is worth even her sandal/ 
 Shouted Jove, l she's arranged for a succes de scandal.' 
 Which she had, and her poet, never doubting the giver, 
 Wrote steadily on without the least quiver, 
 And at last, in due course, was published ' Spoon 
 
 River/ 
 
 Now having explained the volume's true genesis, 
 Let me say it is not for a party where tennis is 
 In order, or bridge. If you like porcupining 
 Your soul with your conscience, here's a chance for 
 
 refining , 
 
 On misery, and since Minerva'd a hand in it 
 No person need doubt that there's plenty of sand in it. 
 Of course the thing's genius no matter how squint-eyed, 
 And the reader who never once weeps must be flint- 
 eyed. 
 
 But hey, Mr. Masters, how weary and dreary 
 You make all your folk! How impossibly smeary 
 And sticky they are with old amorous contacts, 
 A series of ticketed, sexual facts 
 Tucked away, all unwashed, in the ground. Who once 
 
 told you 
 The great, biological truths with a few 
 
36 A CRITICAL FABLE 
 
 Dirty smudges you've never forgotten, like plasters 
 Thumbed tight to your mind? They're the trade-mark 
 
 of 'Masters.' 
 
 Whatever he's writing Minerva inspired 
 As this book, * Spoon River'; or, nervous and tired, 
 Worrying his public as a dog does a bone 
 As in 'Domesday Book,' done, you'll agree, quite 
 
 alone 
 
 They all have the stamp of back-alley lust 
 Which you stand as you can, for stand it you must 
 If you'd read him at all. I've no wish to cloud over 
 The fame of a book which, from cover to cover, 
 Shows the trace of Minerva's most helpful collusion. 
 The hall-marks of genius are here in profusion. 
 People swarm through its pages like ants in a hill, 
 No one's like the others, a personal will 
 Makes each man what he is and his life what it was. 
 The modern Balzac? Not at all the new 'Boz!' 
 Where the Frenchman employed an urbane modera- 
 tion, 
 
 The Englishman gloried in exaggeration. 
 But, in spite of his gargoyles, his fine gift of humour 
 Kept even his quaintness from the taint of ill-rumour. 
 In a grin of delight, he played tricks with his drawing, 
 And no matter how far from the real he was yawing 
 His object were merely a louder guffawing. 
 He never believed his grotesques were true pictures 
 Of life, he knew perfectly well men are mixtures 
 Of rather more this or a little less that; 
 No man is pure angel and none is sheer brat. 
 
A CRITICAL FABLE 37 
 
 Where he painted them so, it was done to enhance 
 Some meaning he wished to make clear; circum- 
 stance 
 
 Induced him to stress both the gall and the honey, 
 And no one knew better just when to be funny. 
 Mr. Masters, quite otherwise, thinks his creations 
 Reveal abstract truth in their vilest relations. 
 He sees every one as the suffering prey 
 Of some low, hidden instinct, his business to flay 
 The decency off them and show them all naked, 
 A few of them zanies, the rest downright wicked. 
 In all his vast gallery there's but one exception, 
 And that, I hold, is to have wrought with deception. 
 If some excellent sense of the really amusing 
 Had led him to practise a little more fusing 
 Of the good and the bad, his book had succeeded 
 In being the great masterpiece we have needed 
 Ever since the beginning. As it is, his caprice 
 Has given us only a great Masters* piece. 
 How Minerva deserted him all through the sequel, 
 We can easily see if we hunt for an equal 
 Success in the list of his subsequent works. 
 Each hitches along in a series of jerks. 
 He tries lyrics, and ballads, and novels in verse, ' 
 But lacks always the wit to return to the terse. 
 In the last, ' Domesday Book/ he relied upon Brown- 
 ing 
 
 To replace Minerva and keep him from drowning. 
 Shallow hope ! He achieved a self-hitting satire, 
 Mr. Masters looked so odd in Browning's attire. 
 
38 A CRITICAL FABLE 
 
 The huge bulk of his book brought to mind the old 
 
 fable 
 
 Of the bull-frog who, seeing an ox in the stable, 
 Puffed up till he burst in a vain-glorious trying 
 To attain the same size. But no magnifying 
 Can make of unripeness a thing brought to a finish, 
 For blowing it up only makes it look thinnish. 
 If asked my opinion, I think that Minerva 
 Was cruel to abandon the r61e of preserver. 
 To lift a man suddenly out of obscurity 
 And leave him quite solus in his prematurity 
 Was not, I think, cricket. (I like to imply an 
 Acquaintance with idioms as remote as the Chian, 
 They read like a dash of the pepper called Cayenne.) 
 To conclude, I believe, when the Gods have done chaff- 
 ing, 
 
 Minerva will one morning catch herself laughing, 
 And, as laughing's a good-natured act to fall into, 
 I should not be surprised if she found she had been 
 
 too 
 
 High-handed and harsh in her speedy desertion 
 Of an author who might have become her diversion 
 Had her relatives not been so prompt with their jeers. 
 Then, totalling up the count of the years 
 And the works she'd permitted her erstwhile proteg 
 To publish without her assistance, ' Heyday! 1 
 I can hear her exclaiming. 4 This will scarcely redound 
 To my credit, and since the world knows that I found 
 Him and helped him, I really think it would be better 
 If I helped him again to become the begetter 
 
A CRITICAL FABLE 39 
 
 Of another 'Spoon River,' or at least some quite fine 
 
 thing 
 
 Which folk will acknowledge to be a divine thing/ 
 I should not be astonished if, touched to the marrow, 
 Minerva set out in her largest Pierce Arrow, 
 Or else (since I would not pretend to a choice) 
 Departed in her most expensive Rolls-Royce, 
 With a dozen or two extremely sharp axes, 
 Three or four different saws, and various waxes, 
 A hammer and nails, also scissors and strings, 
 The whole bundle of tools which a good workman 
 
 brings 
 
 To a job who's no wish to go back for his ' things.' 
 Arriving chez Masters, there'll be a short parley, 
 And I conjure the world not to miss the finale." 
 
 At this point in my tale, there suddenly grew 
 On my ear a low sound like wind sweeping through 
 Many acres of pine-trees; but, even as I listened, 
 It changed into bird-calls which merrily glistened 
 Like sun-spattered feathers of tone through the glanc- 
 ing 
 
 Of leaves over water where shadows are dancing. 
 Once again was a change, and I heard the low roar 
 Of surf beating up against a rock shore; 
 This gave place to the clanging of bells over valleys 
 And the long monotone of horns blown from Swiss 
 
 chalets. 
 
 I 'd scarcely determined that fact when again 
 It transmuted itself into pattering rain, 
 
40 A CRITICAL FABLE 
 
 Which fused in its turn to harsh drums and to blares 
 
 Of tin trumpets, the kind that you meet with at fairs. 
 
 But before I'd accustomed myself to the noise, 
 
 It rose quiet, single, enduring in poise, 
 
 Held high to a balance above growling thunder 
 
 As though I were harkening to the world's wonder, 
 
 The organ at Harlem, while the " Mourning of Rachel " 
 
 Was played and I knew I was listening to Vachel. 
 
 "Who else has, or ever has had, such a voice 
 
 As is his, Vachel Lindsay's? Whatever his choice, 
 
 Be it singing, exhorting, making fun, prophesying, 
 
 It is equally lovely and soul-satisfying. 
 
 He's a composite choir, whether shouting or chanting, 
 
 Whoever's heard once must admit to a haunting 
 
 Nostalgia to hear him again. It's enchanting. 
 
 A Sunday-school orator, plus inspiration, 
 
 The first ballad-singer, bar none, of the Nation. 
 
 When he is performing, I acknowledge to being 
 
 More delighted with hearing than I am with seeing. 
 
 Perhaps I'm self-conscious, but his postures and poses 
 
 Do not strike me as happily chosen for Moses 
 
 Bearing down from the mountain his Tables of Stone, 
 
 Otherwise the part fits him as though 'twere his own. 
 
 When he starts in proclaiming his credo of new laws, 
 
 They appear to be vaudeville stunts dashed with blue 
 
 laws. 
 
 He's so desperately earnest there's no modifying him, 
 And that wonderful voice is forever enskying him. 
 There's a sober old owl and a bright dragon-fly in him, 
 But clearly there's nothing at all of the dry in him. 
 
A CRITICAL FABLE 41 
 
 An odd, antic fellow, but if you insist 
 
 On the unvarnished truth, a sublime egotist 
 
 Delighting to cover his titles and fly-leaves 
 
 With the personal notes his omnipresent ' I ' leaves. 
 
 This trait should endear him to every collector 
 
 Long after his ego's become a mere spectre. 
 
 If his writing's so chic that you can't read a particle, 
 
 Why, all the more grist for a bibliophile's article. 
 
 He's a sort of mad xylophone, twinkling his bells 
 
 Before all the doors of the thirty-six Hells. 
 
 No whirligig dervish gyrating his piety 
 
 Can ever be less moved than he with anxiety 
 
 Lest his furious rhythms may show impropriety 
 
 And injure his creed in the eyes of society. 
 
 He knows his own heart and its innate sobriety 
 
 And cares nothing for fools who may note with dubiety 
 
 A worship which ranges through so much variety. 
 
 A mighty jazz dancer before the Lord! 
 
 I can think of no happier term to record 
 
 His effect when reciting. He's astoundingly mystic 
 
 Even when he purports to be most naturalistic, 
 
 A queer ancient trait we may call Judaistic, 
 
 Engraft on a style which is pure Methodistic. 
 
 He is always attempting to fathom his soul, 
 
 But he cannot get hold of a long enough pole. 
 
 As he uses an ancient one which he inherited, 
 
 Perhaps, after all, his failure is merited. 
 
 It's a battered old thing might be John Wesley's 
 
 staff, 
 Good enough in its day, but too short by half 
 
42 A CRITICAL FABLE 
 
 To reach to his bottom. Still there's something so 
 
 stable 
 
 In his love for the heirloom, it might pass for a label. 
 The fellow has scarce an iota of logic 
 Though he leans rather strongly toward the pedagogic. 
 These two traits make his teaching less vivid than tak- 
 ing, 
 
 He appears as the herald of some proud awaking, 
 But what it's to be, I dare swear he's no whit 
 More enlightened than we are, not one little bit. 
 I like his conceit of the amaranth apples, 
 (The word is so charming, the look of it dapples 
 His page with sunshine) and his modern Valkyri, 
 A cross between Joan of Arc and a fairy 
 I, too, should have relished some good latakia 
 At a table for two behind clumps of spirea 
 At the top of his Truth Tower cafeteria 
 With this twenty-first century wise young Medea. 
 Who wouldn't, indeed! But the sweepings and shav- 
 ings 
 
 I gather up after her talk seem mere ravings, 
 The opaline fancies of moonlight and youth. 
 Among them I scarcely can plot out one truth 
 Plain enough to be platformed by some voting sleuth 
 And paraded before the precinct polling-booth. 
 What's the difference, say I, since the book is as airy 
 As the dew-dripping song of a young wild canary. 
 Who dotes on perusing economists' tracts? 
 There are millions of volumes which deal with mere 
 faces. 
 
A CRITICAL FABLE 43 
 
 I prefer this spiced basket of rose and camelia, 
 
 And a populace dancing a gay seguidilla 
 
 Under Tajes Mahal, with the star-chimes all ringing. 
 
 (That term, by the way, simply does its own singing.) 
 
 * Amaranth apple-trees, sandal -wood thickets!' 
 
 Bless the man who has shown us the way through the 
 . wickets 
 
 Which lead to this pleasance, and haply the leaven 
 
 Works none the less well because he calls it Heaven. 
 
 The book is the whole of him, minus his rhythm. 
 
 But the others how often I pass a day with them, 
 
 Boomlaying and shouting, * creeping through the 
 black, 1 
 
 With a whole troop of nigger-gods yelling at my 
 back, 
 
 And the motors whizzing with their ' crack-crack- 
 crack,' 
 
 Till at last I strike the wheat-ridge track 
 
 And up along a mulberry lane 
 
 I listen to the song of the Rachel-Jane. 
 
 And as I listen, perhaps it is absurd, 
 
 The singer changes to a small grey bird, 
 
 And then I see the purple quiver 
 
 Of a rainbow junk on a silver river. 
 
 I know that 'Spring comes on forever.' 
 
 I know it by heart, I have heard the tale 
 
 From Lindsay's jade-grey nightingale. 
 
 I shall never forget it, because I know it 
 
 By heart. This tribute? Do I not owe it! 
 
 Forgive me then, most fanciful poet, 
 
44 A CRITICAL FABLE 
 
 If I find in you rarest, gravest delight 
 
 When you would have brought me to Heaven's height. 
 
 I am very well off where I am, I think, 
 
 Still you certainly write with a golden ink, 
 
 But I wish you would give us more of the Chink." 
 
 At which juncture, I paused to see if my friend, 
 
 Who had not said a word, might have ceased to attend. 
 
 Far from it, his eyes were fixed on my face 
 
 With an eager insistence as if he would trace 
 
 My meaning beyond the mere words. "What you say," 
 
 He broke silence at last in his impassive way, 
 
 "Proves your poets to be certainly not of my day. 
 
 You put the fact gently, but we are .passe. 
 
 At least that I presume's what you wish to convey." 
 
 With a horrified gesture I started to say 
 
 But what? Thank the Lord I had no time to get in 
 
 The something I should have wrapt up my regret in, 
 
 Like a pill in a sugar-plum, since he went on: 
 
 "I should not be surprised, as your judgment anon, 
 
 If I heard you correctly, was for Miss Dickinson, 
 
 With Whitman and Poe. To throw off constraint, 
 
 I will say I consider your pronouncement quaint. 
 
 But I'm not so at sea to account for the cause 
 
 As before your narration I certainly was. 
 
 For the men, Til admit there is room for dispute; 
 
 But the choice of Miss Dickinson I must refute." 
 
 Then seeing me shrug, he observed, "I am human, 
 
 And hardly can bear to allow that a woman 
 
 Is ever quite equal to man in the arts; 
 
A CRITICAL FABLE 45 
 
 The two sexes cannot be ranked counterparts. " 
 "My dear Sir," I exclaimed, "if you'd not been afraid 
 Of Margaret Fuller's success, you'd have stayed 
 Your hand in her case and more justly have rated 
 
 her." 
 Here he murmured morosely, "My God, how I hated 
 
 her! 
 
 But have you no women whom you must hate too? 
 I shall think all the better of you if you do, 
 And of them, I may add." I assured him, "A few. 
 But I scarcely think man feels the same contradictory 
 Desire to love them and shear them of victory?" 
 "You think wrong, my young friend," he declared 
 
 with a frown, 
 
 "Man will always love woman and always pull down 
 What she does." "Well, of course, if you will hug the 
 
 cynical, 
 
 It is quite your affair, but there is the pinnacle. 
 She's welcome to climb with man if she wishes." 
 "And fall with a crash like a trayful of dishes," 
 He answered at once, "but if there's no gainsaying her, 
 There's certainly not the least use in delaying her." 
 "Very well," I assured him, and quite without mock- 
 ery, 
 
 "But I know several women not yet broken crockery. 
 Amy LTowell, for instance," I spoke a bit clammily. 
 "Good Heavens!" he shouted, "not one of the family! 
 I remember they used to be counted by dozens, 
 But I never was interested in immature cousins." 
 "They grow, I believe." The retort was so pat 
 
46 A CRITICAL FABLE 
 
 There was nothing to say, and he pulled down his hat. 
 I continued: "But since this is not genealogy, 
 You '11 permit me to waive any sort of analogy 
 Between her and your friend. No one likes to be bound 
 In a sort of perpetual family pound 
 Tied by esprit de corps to the wheels of the dead. 
 A poet above all people must have his head. 
 Indeed it's been whispered the lady sees red 
 When the subject is broached, she will find her own 
 
 latitude." 
 
 "My friend, were he here, would extol such an atti- 
 tude/' 
 
 He said very gravely. "But proceed, Sir, I pray." 
 I hastened as fast as I could to obey: 
 " Conceive, if you can, an electrical storm 
 Of a swiftness and fury surpassing the norm ; 
 Conceive that this cyclone has caught up the rainbow 
 And dashed dizzily on with it streaming in tow. 
 Imagine a sky all split open and scissored 
 By lightnings, and then you can picture this blizzard. 
 That is, if you'll also imagine the clashes 
 Of tropical thunder, the incessant crashes 
 Which shiver the hearing and leave it in ashes. 
 Remember, meanwhile, that the sky is prismatic i 
 And outrageous with colour. The effect is erratic 
 And jarring to some, but to others ecstatic, 
 Depending, of course, on the idiosyncratic 
 Response of beholders. When you come to think of it, 
 A good deal is demanded by those on the brink of it. 
 To be caught in the skirts of a whirling afflatus 
 
A CRITICAL FABLE 47 
 
 One must not suppose is experienced gratis. 
 Broncho-busting with rainbows is scarcely a game 
 For middle-aged persons inclined to the tame. 
 Likewise, who'd enjoy a sunrise from the Matter- 
 horn something all travellers agree is the attar 
 Of distilled perfection must be ready to reap 
 The mid-afternoon pangs of too little sleep. 
 I might go on forever commingling my metaphors, 
 And verse by this means does undoubtedly get a force, 
 But persons who so air their fancy are bores, 
 A thing every bone in my body abhors, 
 And you'll guess by this time, without farther allusion, 
 That the lady's unique and surprising profusion 
 Creates in some minds an unhappy confusion. 
 No one's to be blamed who's not something and twenty, 
 But it's lucky for her that young folk are so plenty. 
 The future's her goose and I dare say she'll wing it, 
 Though the triumph will need her own power to sing it. 
 Although I'm no prophet, I'll hazard a guess 
 She'll be rated by time as more rather than less. 
 Once accustom yourself to her strange elocution, 
 And milder verse seems by contrast mere dilution. 
 Then again (for I've kept back a very great part), 
 Despite her traducers, there's always a heart 
 Hid away in her poems for the seeking; impassioned, 
 Beneath silver surfaces cunningly fashioned 
 To baffle coarse pryings, it waits for the touch 
 Of a man who takes surfaces only as such. 
 Her work's not, if you will, for the glib amateur, 
 But I wonder, would it be improved if it were? 
 
48 A CRITICAL FABLE 
 
 Must subtlety always be counted a flaw 
 
 And poetry not poetry which puzzles the raw? 
 
 Let me turn for an instant to note the reverse 
 
 Of my poet, who employs many manners of verse 
 
 And when not hurricaning's astoundingly terse; 
 
 Yet here the poor creature but makes matters worse. 
 
 There are plenty of critics who say they can't hear 
 
 When she sings sotto voce, the sensation's queer 
 
 And inspires a species of horrible fear. 
 
 To be told there's a sound and catch nothing at all, 
 
 Is a circumstance fairly designed to appal 
 
 Most casual people, for here is the hitch : 
 
 The admission that one's own ears can't grasp a pitch 
 
 Clear and lovely to others. Whereupon a bow-wow 
 
 Which swells to a perfectly hideous row. 
 
 They've accused her of every description of quackery, 
 
 Of only concerning herself with knick-knackery, 
 
 It has all been enough to set any one's back awry. 
 
 She's a fool to resent it, a man would have grinned? 
 
 Quite so, but then poets are created thin-skinned, 
 
 And when one is more than a little volcanic, 
 
 With a very strong dash of the ultra-tyrannic, 
 
 The retort contentious will be simply Titanic. 
 
 Behold, then, our poet, by the lash of atrociousness 
 
 Goaded into an attitude much like ferociousness. 
 
 Every book that she writes has a preface to guard it 
 
 Which spits fire and cannon-balls, making each hard 
 
 hit 
 
 Tell, and mow down its swathe of objectors. 
 But critics have ever been good resurrectors. 
 
A CRITICAL FABLE 49 
 
 Since she keeps the fight going, they rise to do battle, 
 
 When the whole mess is only so much tittle-tattle. 
 
 So it goes back and forth with the cries and the cheering, 
 
 And there's no sign at all of the atmosphere clearing. 
 
 Her books follow each other despite all the riot, 
 
 For, oddly enough, there's a queer, crumpled quiet 
 
 Perpetually round her, a crazy-quilt tent 
 
 Dividing her happily from the event. 
 
 Armed to the teeth like an old Samurai, 
 
 Juggling with jewels like the ancient genii, 
 
 Hung all over with mouse-traps of metres, and cages 
 
 Of bright-plumaged rhythms, with pages and pages 
 
 Of colours slit up into streaming confetti 
 
 Which give the appearance of something sunsetty, 
 
 And gorgeous, and flowing a curious sight 
 
 She makes in her progress, a modern White Knight, 
 
 Forever explaining her latest inventions 
 
 And assuring herself of all wandering attentions 
 
 By pausing at times to sing, in a duly 
 
 Appreciative manner, an aria from Lully. 
 
 The horse which she rides will suit any part 
 
 Either Peg (with the 'asus,') or 'Peg o' my heart.' 
 
 To avoid making blunders, he's usually known 
 
 Without any suffix as ' Peg ' all alone. 
 
 This style of address has become a tradition 
 
 Most offendingly silly, since no erudition 
 
 Unaided can ever produce a magician. 
 
 For the magic she has, I see nothing demonic 
 
 In the use of free verse (the 'free' is quite comic!) 
 
 Or even that mule of the arts, polyphonic. 
 
50 A CRITICAL FABLE 
 
 No matter what pedants may find that's awry in him, 
 There's plenty of kick and plenty of fly in him. 
 Taking this thing and that, and considering on it, 
 I believe there are more guesses under her bonnet 
 Than in any two hats you are likely to meet 
 (Straw or felt, take your choice, so the shape be dis- 
 creet, 
 Not too flap-brimmed and weird, nor too jaunty and 
 
 neat) 
 
 In any particular city or street 
 
 You may happen to pick. Note, I only say questions, 
 Which leaves the mind open to many suggestions, 
 Up or down, there's the rub. (The mere matter of 
 
 hats 
 
 Is too nice, by the way, to be dealt with as 'Rats!' 
 There's a temperature here which the best thermostats 
 Could not regulate better. We're all diplomats 
 Now the 'Arrys have ousted the aris-tocrats.) " 
 
 I looked at my friend, his face was averted. 
 
 "You make it quite clear why we are deserted, 
 
 Old men are tough customers. Now, as a foil, 
 
 Give me something as smooth and slow-running as oil, 
 
 Something clear, uncontentious, it even may be 
 
 A bit chilly in beauty perhaps." " There's 'H. D.,'" 
 
 I was tempted to shout, she fitted so rightly 
 
 His immediate preference : frost falling lightly 
 
 In delicate patterns on thin blades of grass. 
 
 (Since oil does not fit, I let that figure pass, 
 
 Though it did well enough up above where it was.) 
 
A CRITICAL FABLE 51 
 
 "This author's become a species of fable 
 
 For she masks her identity under a label. 
 
 If others have ancestors, she would forget hers 
 
 And appear the spontaneous child of two letters, 
 
 The printing of which is the bane of type-setters. . 
 
 They have called her a dryad just stepped from a bosk, 
 
 But I see an ice maiden within an ice kiosk, 
 
 With icicle stalactites hanging around her, 
 
 And the violets frozen with which they have crowned 
 
 her 
 
 The man who would filch them would be an icebounder, 
 Which I surely am not. If each lovely, veined petal 
 Becomes by the contact a trifle too brittle 
 And cold to give out its usual warm scent, 
 They make it up amply by such dazzlement 
 Of sun-shot-through-ice that the shine of her shrine 
 Seems the sky-piercing glitter of some Apennine. 
 I have told you before that my mind teems with sim- 
 iles. 
 
 It's a shocking bad habit persists in some families, 
 I've an uncle but there, I spread out like a runnel, 
 When I should flow as straight as though poured 
 
 through a funnel. 
 
 So take this digression in the light of an interlude 
 Leading up to a change which I wish to obtrude 
 On the form of my speech, for I find I am freezing 
 Before the remarkably chilly, though pleasing, 
 Ice image I've painted, and soon shall be sneezing. 
 My Muse must immediately seek out a clime 
 Where her trippings and Sittings are not above rime, 
 
52 A CRITICAL FABLE 
 
 Or dew that is duly congealed, or hoar-frost. 
 
 I'm indifferent to science, so the meaning be tossed 
 
 Into some sort of shape which fits well with my 
 
 pattern, 
 
 For, whatever the faults of said Muse, she's no slattern. 
 My verse, I'll allow, is the species fantastic, 
 I've been epris for years of the style Hudibrastic, 
 But my rhyming morale is, I trust, inelastic. 
 Which preamble means I have searched for a week 
 To rouse neither my Muse's nor heroine's pique 
 In the matter of climate. I've found it in Greek. 
 *H. D.' (for it's time we got back to the girl) 
 Might be some ancient mirror, with mother-of-pearl 
 Let into its metal, a thing which a nation 
 Deems well worth the cost of its own exhumation, 
 A prize to count up to the whole excavation. 
 This mirror, which carries the breath of the past 
 On its scarcely stained surface, is no scholiast, 
 But a living replica of what once was living 
 At the touch of a rare adoration reviving. 
 Here youths in scant armour, on the way to the 
 
 galleys, 
 
 Woo maidens in dark ilex-groves; in the valleys, 
 Anemone-sprinkled, young shepherds guard flocks 
 Clad in ram's fleeces only; above the sharp rocks 
 Jutting into the purple Ionian sea 
 Are the white, fluted columns of Fiddle-de-dee! 
 Such lyrical bursts in a mere jeu $ esprit 
 Are like brandy poured into a cup of bohea, 
 A transaction called ' lacing ' in old days, on dit. 
 
A CRITICAL FABLE 53 
 
 I can't say for myself, being no devotee 
 Of either diluted or straight eau-de-vie, 
 And the eighteenth amendment is nothing to me. 
 Still, I don't like a law couched in hyperbole, 
 It gets any one's goat. To return to *H. D.,' 
 Whom I've really kept waiting most outrageously, 
 She's the thing as it was, not the thing we have made it 
 And with insolent ornament quite overlaid it. 
 She descends to no commonplace, flock-guarding shep- 
 herds. 
 
 No pompous Victorian gush ever jeopards 
 Her reticent, finely-drawn line. No Greek marble 
 Has less of the pueril and less of the garble. 
 Her sea is the sea of a child or a Neriad, 
 And yet no false word lifts it out of its period. 
 Her flowers of shore and of cliff those we seek 
 On our cliffs and our shores, but hers somehow are 
 
 Greek. 
 
 Her poems are excitement and rest, and the glory 
 Of living a life and not reading a story. 
 Archaeology? Yes, in the very same way 
 That geology's the mountain we climb every day. 
 The armour she welds, the dyed cloth she weaves, 
 Are so perfect in artistry, every word cleaves 
 To the substance as though that would crackle without 
 
 it 
 And split. Read her books (there are two) if you 
 
 doubt it. 
 
 Perhaps, after all, this quintessence of Greece 
 Is the wool on a century -garlanded fleece ; 
 
54 A CRITICAL FABLE 
 
 Underneath is, and was, a tough fibre of leather. 
 Is the Greece she has given us Greece altogether? 
 As well might one ask if the youth of Praxiteles 
 Is an everyday chap or a scheme to belittle ease 
 By exalting the sharp line of young masculinity. 
 In her method and his is there not some affinity? 
 Each sheers to the soul, to the base of a nemesis, 
 And the hard, glancing residue is the ultimate genesis. 
 For out of the past is the future; a truism, 
 You must pardon, since man has invented no new 
 
 'ism 
 
 Since the days of the cavemen. I wish merely to 
 
 prove 
 
 That this most modern poet runs along an old groove, 
 That the erudite novelties filling her pages 
 Are as old as this morning and as new as the ages." 
 
 Here a voice interrupted my long peroration, 
 Speaking, I detected, in some irritation. 
 "I think," it announced, " though I may be mistaken, 
 There's a poet whom you've not mentioned yet, Con- 
 rad Aiken." ; ^ 
 Such an ill -governed mind as I Ve got, and the porter 
 Never keeps out intruders who call, as he ought to. 
 (That rhyme will be cursed as "a regular snorter" 
 By every stand-pat, Tennysonian supporter. 
 I am sorry myself to be forced to distort a 
 Fine line unduly, and if I or my thought err 
 I am willing to own it without -the least hauteur. 
 I rhyme as I can, and am never a courter 
 
A CRITICAL FABLE 55 
 
 For all suffrages.) The doorman, I said, 
 
 Who, between you and me, is a crass dunderhead, 
 
 Had let this extremely irascible gentleman 
 
 Pass through the door, and of course he began 
 
 At once to upbraid me. It's the method he uses 
 
 To force himself into the sight of the Muses. 
 
 "Young man," I replied with some heat, "you mistake 
 
 My preoccupation. If you wish to make 
 
 Your entrance at once with the ladies, I'll see to it, 
 
 But I should have supposed you'd immediately veto 
 
 it." 
 This was rather a staggerer, to be grouped with the 
 
 women 
 
 Would tax the endurance of any male human; 
 Yet to wait any longer, when I might be weary 
 Before his turn came, did not strike him as cheery. 
 He puffed and he fumed, with pride pulling both 
 
 ways ; 
 
 It was pitiable to see the poor fellow's malaise. 
 But finally, with a great bluffing of chivalry, 
 He declared he had no sort of feeling of rivalry 
 Against the fair sex who adorned his profession. 
 A very neat way, this, to blur a confession, 
 For the long and the short of it was he'd go on 
 The carpet at once, if I pleased. Thereupon 
 I hastily made my excuses to one 
 Or two ladies I'd meant to have been next presented. 
 Being sensible persons, they seemed quite contented. 
 Perhaps 'twas as well, for I'd rather a hunch 
 The irascible poet might make good with his " Punch" 
 
56 A CRITICAL FABLE 
 
 And land me that terrible "one on the jaw," 
 
 When I'm sure I should "measure my length" in the 
 
 straw. 
 
 It will clearly be seen that my anxious perusal 
 Of a recent combat has done much to bamboozle 
 The erstwhile classic grace of my natural diction. 
 You see I obeyed a strong predilection 
 In Carpentier's favour to the tune of a tenner 
 And, with other good sportsmen, I found my Gehenna. 
 "Mr. Aiken's a poet so cram full of knowledge 
 He knows all about poetry that's taught in a college. 
 His versification's as neat as a pin, 
 His metre so fine it becomes finikin. 
 I say nothing of rhythm, for he's something fanatical 
 Anent the advantage of the beat mathematical. 
 Within his set limits, the pulse of his verse 
 Is often most subtle, and even his worse 
 Attempts are by no means either jejune or lacking 
 In form, one can hardly imagine him slacking 
 In pains or desire. He's all that a poet 
 Can make of himself when he sets out to do it 
 With his heart, and his soul, and his strength, and his 
 
 mind. 
 
 For years now, he's had a most horrible grind 
 With his work, with the public, but what stands in his 
 
 way 
 
 Is the awkward necessity of something to say. 
 A man of sensations, of difficult cheerfulness 
 Which the fog in his brain has tormented to fearful- 
 ness, 
 
A CRITICAL FABLE 57 
 
 Possessed of much music and little idea, 
 
 Always steeping his soul in the strange undersphere 
 
 Of the brain. Since all thought in him tends to grow 
 
 hazy 
 
 When his sentiment's roused, he is lost in a mazy 
 Vortex where he swings like some pale asteroid. 
 Seeking orientation, he's stumbled on Freud. 
 With the Austrian's assistance, he's become neurologi- 
 
 cal, 
 
 A terrible fate to befall the illogical. 
 Being born with an ultra-sensitive cuticle, 
 We must realize his verse in a sense therapeutical. 
 If he doesn't quite state any fact, his oblique 
 Side-glances at subjects are just hide-and-seek 
 He's playing with all his frustrated ambitions 
 And gaining, thereby, some vicarious fruitions. 
 He's so young as to think that he proves his maturity 
 By boldly colliding with all sorts of impurity. 
 His ladies are, most of them, a little bit dusty, 
 But we're learning to think any other kind musty. 
 The true modern artist would face destitution 
 Were it not for that universe-wide institution 
 Plain people frown down on and call prostitution. 
 No matter how shopworn the plots he has made, 
 They will always pass muster if he mentions a spade. 
 At least this is true with that type of Bohemia 
 Which is not yet aware that such art spells anaemia. 
 Not so Aiken his brothels, street-walkers, dope- 
 eaters 
 Are merely the web he weaves over with metres. 
 
58 A CRITICAL FABLE 
 
 He uses them chiefly because they are easy 
 
 And sure to produce an effect on the queasy. 
 
 For more than all else he dreads falling flat; 
 
 The fear of it teases his brain like a gnat. 
 
 He would rather be called wicked, incomprehensible, 
 
 Anything, so long as the world's not insensible. 
 
 In his anxious desire to escape being tepid, 
 
 He makes too great a show of the over-intrepid, 
 
 But his real interest lies in quite other directions: 
 
 In noting the faintest of fleeting reflections 
 
 In tone or in colour; in catching the magic 
 
 Of words against words; and it simply is tragic 
 
 How few apprehend his remarkable quality. 
 
 But was ever a public more lost in frivolity 
 
 Than ours? It cannot tell feathers from lead 
 
 Till you hit it a crack with the last on the head. 
 
 His volumes are filled with a sea-green miasma 
 
 Shot and sprinkled throughout with the grotesque 
 
 phantasma 
 
 Of an egoist's brain, or a man's when he's sleepy. 
 They revolve unrelated and sink into creepy 
 Sight and sound mutterings, yet sometimes so vivid 
 They are that they seem to stand out in a livid 
 And flaming protrusion. Take, for instance, the scene 
 Of his satyrs and maenads, which is white striped on 
 
 green, 
 
 With red, sudden explosions. Sometimes, more sur- 
 prising, 
 
 The fog lifts a moment before a sun rising 
 As clear and as thin as though painted on china 
 
A CRITICAL FABLE 59 
 
 By some eighteenth century Dresden designer. 
 
 His sordid back rooms disappear and the groans 
 
 Of dying dope-fiends, and we hear ' three clear tones/ 
 
 The tones of his bird in the china-berry tree. 
 
 What a mercy that such a tree happened to be ! 
 
 Otherwise, I believe, he must have invented it. 
 
 Never mind, here it is, and he's simply cemented it 
 
 On the botany of poetry for ever and ever. 
 
 I say that superbly, without the least quiver. 
 
 If the rest of his work's neither Saint Paul's nor Krem- 
 
 len, 
 
 He's built a basilica surely in 'Senlin.' " 
 At least in that ' Morning Song,' which, until lately,. 
 Was the sole, single fragment he'd done adequately. 
 Till 'Punch,' ah! with 'Punch' now, he should achieve 
 
 fame, 
 But there's nothing so dogging as a once-come-by 
 
 name. 
 
 If this were his first, he'd be up like a rocket, 
 Now I think he'll burn steadily on in his socket 
 Making beautiful poems though the public won't 
 
 stand 'em 
 
 Because he can't drive style and tale in a tandem. 
 Since the books as they are stick so hard in the gizzard, 
 The sensible thing is to have each one scissored. 
 Cut out from each volume the one or two scraps 
 You might like on a third or fourth reading perhaps; 
 Paste them into a scrap-book, and some rainy day 
 Just glance over the lot and I think you will say: 
 'By Jove! What a fellow he is in his way!' 
 
60 . A CRITICAL FABLE 
 
 And I'll thank you for that as a true leaf of bay. 
 If he, the arch-sceptic, finds other folk doubting, 
 He makes a mistake to be seen always pouting. 
 He has not his deserts, yet to publish the fact 
 Is a childish and most unintelligent act, 
 But every one knows he's deficient in tact. 
 A man who can work with such utter devotion 
 Can afford to wait patiently for his promotion, 
 And that it will come, I've a very strong notion. 
 One thing we can say, he will certainly wait 
 And either get in or turn dust at the gate. 
 Since Fame is a very good hand at the shears, 
 I shall not be surprised if he gets his arrears, 
 For quality counts in the long run of years." 
 I turned to the shade in my mind, but unused 
 To listening with patience, the^thing had vamoosed. 
 
 Not so my old friend, he was listening intensely, 
 And as I stopped speaking, he said, "I'm immensely 
 Intrigued by that man, he's a curious fellow. 
 Too bad he's permitted himself to see yellow. 
 A jaundiced perspective's a great handicap. 
 Well, what other poets have you got in your lap? 
 I commend you, young man, as an excellent etcher." 
 "The next I shall notice will be John Gould Fletcher," 
 I answered, "but before I begin my narration 
 Don't think\ if you can, see an irradiation 
 Spreading out over roofs, over trees, over sky, 
 The gold screen of a moment, on which you descry 
 Such oddments as heaps of 'vermilion pavilions' 
 
A CRITICAL FABLE 61 
 
 And Gabriel's angels all riding on pillions 
 
 On the backs of cloud horses, blowing trumpets of 
 
 thunder, 
 
 Above forests of elephant trees standing under 
 The precipitous cone of some steep afternoon. 
 The whirling wind * screams,' the stars * shrill,' the 
 
 streets croon. 
 
 A cataract of music swirls out of the throats 
 Of the long scarlet trumpets, the prismatic notes 
 Sweep over the city like sun-spray and laughter, 
 Embroidered with all colours . . . Then what comes 
 
 after? 
 
 More colours, a rain of them, hanging, delaying, 
 To sprinkle cool 'jade balustrades' with their staying. 
 Golden flakes, silver filaments, what pandemonium ! 
 The rainbow joined in wedlock to a bursting harmo- 
 nium. 
 
 Elephantine surrenders, prodigious relapses, 
 Speech turned to a fire-ball which soars and collapses 
 And spills down its words like the whole spectrum fall- 
 ing 
 
 In a broken excitement* My eye, it's appalling! 
 Such a chaotic shooting and drifting of particles, 
 Mere loveliness solus, not stuck tight to articles, 
 For what it all means does not matter a jot; 
 You are filled with delight at it, or you are not. 
 But suppose that you weary of the polychromatic 
 Some natures, I realize, are far too lymphatic 
 To derive any pleasure from what is not static 
 There are corners to rest in with fountains, and grass 
 
62 A CRITICAL FABLE 
 
 Streaming up in long slopes, and if you should pass 
 Just over the hill, there's a house where each column 
 Is wreathed and entangled with the half-gay, half- 
 solemn 
 
 Recollections of childhood. There you can eat lunch- 
 eon, 
 
 And drink slow well-water from some old grey punch- 
 eon, 
 
 And listen to tales of hobgoblins and genie 
 Till I venture to say you'll be a bit spleeny 
 And welcome the rising of white-faced Selene. 
 (Rather pretty, that last, such touches do garnish 
 One's writing, I think, and I'm not above varnish. 
 I like a bright lustre in poems or medallions, 
 The polish one sees in the later Italians. 
 Here a friend who's dropped in says I've mixed my 
 
 mythology. 
 
 Such a slip, if I've made it, deserves an apology: 
 Selene, Cybele, Diana I care 
 
 Not at all for mere names. You may take Lempriere 
 And choose any Goddess you think opportune 
 So you quite understand I refer to the moon.) 
 As you sit in the moonlight, the gist of your sum- 
 mary 
 
 Will be: Here at last, is a poet without flummery. 
 A score or two words are his total of plunder, 
 But the whole is a boyhood imprisoned in wonder. 
 A boy, and the things all about him plain stuff, 
 And not even new, but the measure's enough. 
 Not the kind which they want for a penny-a-liner; 
 
A CRITICAL FABLE 63 
 
 It's too sharp, and too sheer, but for that all the 
 
 finer. < 
 
 Have you ever gone into a dim, disused attic 
 And poked about there among the erratic 
 Remains of worn toys, legless soldiers, chipped blocks, 
 And suddenly come on an old music-box? 
 As you twist round the handle, the notes seem to 
 
 squeeze 
 Through the dust, some are lost and the rest choke and 
 
 wheeze, 
 But you make out a tune, and the mere broken hint 
 
 of it 
 
 Is the agonized joy of remembrance, by dint of it 
 You suffer and love with an ache you'd forgotten. 
 It were wiser, perhaps, were your ears stuffed with cot- 
 ton. 
 
 So Fletcher's not only the rainbow in spate, 
 He's the soul of a music-box which can create 
 All our childhood again. If the tune's a bit scrappy, 
 What's the odds, just so long as the sound makes us 
 
 happy? 
 
 So far, Mr. Fletcher, for that's only a mood, 
 We'll not whistle until we are out of the wood. 
 Were your publishers mad, or why bind together 
 Your 'Old House' and 'Symphonies'? One wonders 
 
 whether 
 
 You were bent on emptying out your portfolio. 
 You created, at any rate, quite an imbroglio. 
 This break-up of feeling with one or two vile hacks 
 Of discord is as jarring as gumdrops and smilax 
 
64 A CRITICAL FABLE 
 
 Giving suddenly place to red-peppers and asters. 
 
 The symphonies, come on this way, call for plasters. 
 
 This arrangement, indeed, was the worst of disasters. 
 
 Up bright in the morning, shoes tied and hair brushed, 
 
 On a Sunday, maybe, when you're not too much 
 rushed, 
 
 You can seek ancient China in Symphony Blue; 
 
 Or, if you prefer, you may take a stroll through 
 
 Any Spring, in the Green ; you may sail over oceans 
 
 With the Red glare of stoke-holes to thrill your emo- 
 tions; 
 
 You may fight in the Scarlet, and laugh in the Yel- 
 low, 
 
 You may do what you please in the Gold. A fine fel- 
 low 
 
 Whose palette is full if a little bit messy. 
 
 But you have a good deal of the world here in esse. 
 
 At least, you would have, were it not for a doubt 
 
 About what any symphony's really about. 
 
 He writes, it appears, in a prismatic spasm ; 
 
 This phase of his work is complete protoplasm. 
 
 He is whirling his atoms before quite cohering them, 
 
 But there's no doubt at all that he soon will be steering 
 them. 
 
 Yet, hold on a bit, my dear chap, do you think 
 
 You can set all America down in cold ink? 
 
 Here you are, aeroplaning from Boston to Texas, , f. 
 
 And taking snapshots as you fly to perplex us. 
 
 If you see a sky-scraper, down it goes, and the next 
 
 Shot's a square of Chicago fit it into the text. 
 
A CRITICAL FABLE 65 
 
 Joggle niggers and Mexicans, some of them dead 
 
 'uns, 
 
 And for spirit, bring in a few battles where reddens 
 The smoke of proud guns, for your richest of gravies 
 Is the sauce of Bull Run and the bier of Jeff Davis. 
 You've done it, my cock, as well as a man 
 Who is chiefly the slave of his sensations can; 
 For somehow your genius has a habit of shying 
 Whenever your heart is involved. It's most trying. 
 You can work yourself up to a towering passion 
 Over landscapes and peoples, but when you would 
 
 fashion 
 
 A love lyric Puff! and the substance dissolves 
 And melts out of your fingers. A thousand resolves 
 To break through with yourself, to have done with ob- 
 jectives, 
 
 Leave you still where you were, exploring perspectives. 
 I declare I could weep, did I not know that life 
 Is only achieved through a vast deal of strife. 
 You stand in the midst of a cosmic heterogeny, 
 But I do not despair of your rearing a progeny. 
 If chaos at last jelled into a man, 
 What a big chaos did, your small chaos can. 
 You were built, you perceive, as the first of your 
 
 clan. 
 
 And, whatever you want, you've got what no other 
 Poet ever has had. So a truce to the pother! 
 Bless the man/ you've done something as new as to- 
 morrow, 
 And I cannot consider -your case with much sorrow. 
 
66 A CRITICAL FABLE 
 
 Just wait'! . . But, most gently, my old friend inter- 
 rupted, 
 
 "Don't go on, Sir, I beg, I am being corrupted. 
 
 Your poets are so diverse. One thing I can say, 
 
 Good or bad, they're more various than poets were in 
 my day. 
 
 If you've more in your bag, produce them, I pray." 
 
 Thus adjured, I remembered the one or two ladies 
 I'd deserted, and mentally crying "Oh, Hades! 
 Will they be mad as hops or affect a quite staid ease? 
 Whichever it is, I shall get a good wigging, 
 To be kept waiting's always a bit infra digging. 
 I must cudgel my brain for a really apt whopper, 
 Women don't pardon blunders when their amour 
 
 propre 
 
 Is in question." But all of the chickens I'd counted, 
 When I'd tallied them up to a total, amounted 
 To just nothing at all, for your modern Egeria 
 Is far too advanced to give way to hysteria. 
 Approaching the first, I said no woman like her 
 Had yet been considered. She replied "Oh, you piker! 
 A poet learns to see, and you need not dissemble. 
 We will go up at once. Grace, here is your thimble." 
 Then jumping up quickly from where she was sitting 
 She quite overturned a little girl's knitting 
 Who was there by some chance, I'll come back to that 
 
 later. 
 
 Said I to myself, no man living can hate her, 
 She is what I should call a born fascinator. 
 
A CRITICAL FABLE 67 
 
 Upon reaching my friend and let me explain 
 That these scenes in the scene all take place in my 
 
 brain 
 
 I began with a few neatly turned words on love 
 As the poet's own bourne, and declared that no glove 
 Ever fitted a hand with less wrinkling and snugger 
 Than this theme this poet. Here I noticed her shrug 
 
 her 
 
 Shoulders a little, which was rather upsetting. 
 However, it may have been only coquetting. 
 Still I thought it was wise to get on with my tale : 
 "Our love-poet, par excellence, Sara Teasdale," 
 I said with a flourish. Now that was a whale 
 Of a compliment, such things deserve an entail, 
 'Twas so brilliantly super even if it were true, 
 And I knew very well 'twas but one of a cue. 
 "This poet," I went on, "is a great niece of Sapho, 
 I know not how many ' greats' laid in a row 
 There should be, but her pedigree's perfectly clear; 
 You can read it in ' Magazine Verse' for the year. 
 She is also a cousin, a few times removed, 
 Of dear Mrs. Browning, that last can be proved. 
 The elder poet hid in a shrouding mantilla 
 Which she called Portuguese. Was ever trick sillier? 
 Our Sara is bolder, and feels quite at ease 
 As herself; in her mind there is nothing to tease. 
 Dale and valley, the country is hers she traverses, 
 She has mapped it all out in a bushel of verses. 
 Sara Teasdale she is was for our minnesinger, 
 Behind her front door, is now Mrs. Filsinger. 
 
68 A CRITICAL FABLE 
 
 A hard question this, for a hand-maid of Muses, 
 When she's once made a name in cold print which she 
 
 loses 
 
 On taking a husband, the law's masculinity 
 Would seem to demand a perpetual virginity 
 For all married poets of the down-trodden sex. 
 To forfeit the sale of a new volume checks 
 Even marital ardour, to say nothing of cheques. 
 It's just this sort of thing which so frequently wrecks 
 The artistic composure, and must surely perplex 
 Any husband who's not in the class of henpecks. 
 Still I think the poor man should find some consola- 
 tion 
 
 In two or three volumes of sheer adoration. 
 It's the price he receives for never imposing 
 Himself on his wife when the lady's composing. 
 Under whatever name, the world grows awarer 
 Every year of the prize we have got here in Sara. 
 She has no colours, no trumpets, no platforms, no 
 
 scepticisms, 
 She has no taste for experiments, and joins in no 
 
 schisms; 
 
 She just sings like a bird, and I think you'll agree 
 This is clearly the place for the china-berry tree 
 With a difference, the bird in that pleasant, arboreal 
 Importation had three tones, while her repertorial 
 Range is compassed in one, the reflex amatorial. 
 She loves in a charming, perpetual way, 
 As though it just came when she was distrait, 
 Or quite occupied in affairs of the day. 
 
A CRITICAL FABLE 69 
 
 Or else, and I think the remark's more acute, 
 
 She lives as the flower above a deep root. 
 
 Like a dedicate nun, she tells bead after bead 
 
 At Matins, Tierce, Vespers. You'd think she'd be treed 
 
 Just once in a while to find something to say. 
 
 Not at all, she's a vast catalogue raisonnee 
 
 Of the subject. No one's so completely au fait. 
 
 Her poetry succeeds, in spite of fragility, 
 
 Because of her very remarkable agility. 
 
 There is no single stunt in the style amatory 
 
 Which is not included in her category, 
 
 We may as well take that at once a priori. 
 
 So easy to her seems the work of creation 
 
 She might be just jotting down lines from dictation. 
 
 There is nothing green here, each poem's of the ripest. 
 
 The income tax lists her as Cupid's own typist. 
 
 Of course, it is true that she's not intellectual, 
 
 But those poets who are, are so apt to subject you all 
 
 To theories and treatises, the whole galvanometry 
 
 Of the bardling who thinks verse a sort of geometry. 
 
 Now Sara's as easy to read as a slip 
 
 On a piece of banana, and there's no need to skip, 
 
 For each poem's so peculiarly like every other 
 
 You may as well stay where you are and not bother. 
 
 She's that very rare compost, the dainty erotic; 
 
 Such a mixture can't fail to produce a hypnotic 
 
 Effect on the reader, whose keenest sensation 
 
 Will consist in a perfect identification 
 
 Of himself with the poet, and her sorrows and j.oys 
 
 Become his, while he swings to the delicate poise 
 
70 A CRITICAL FABLE 
 
 Of a primitive passion so nicely refined 
 
 It could not bring a blush to the most squeamish 
 
 mind. 
 
 Though the poems, I may add, are all interlined 
 For the ready perusal of those not too blind. 
 For Sara, if singer, is also a woman, 
 I know of no creature more thoroughly human. 
 If woman, she's also a lady who realizes 
 That a hidden surprise is the best of surprises. 
 She seems a white statue awaiting unveiling, 
 But raised on a platform behind a stout railing 
 Whence she lures and retires, provoking a nearer 
 Contact which is promised to be even dearer 
 If we find we have courage enough not to fear her." 
 I looked at my subject to find she'd departed, 
 It's a habit of hers when a party's once started 
 To vanish unnoticed. My poetess had flown. 
 Seeing which, I remarked that I'd better postpone 
 The rest of my discourse. "I think you have shown 
 The outlines at least, my young cicerone," 
 Said my friend. "Have you others? I see the sun's set- 
 ting. 
 
 If you have many more, why we must be getting 
 On faster." I promised to use all despatch 
 Which I saw was most needed when I took out my 
 watch. 
 
 " There's a child here I've not yet had leisure to men- 
 tion, 
 Both she and her mother are worth your attention. 
 
A CRITICAL FABLE 71 
 
 And one or two more I can think of, but most of them 
 Will not take up much time. After that, there's a host 
 
 of them 
 
 We'll consider, if you are agreeable, en masse. 19 ' 
 "You spoke of a child, a child in this class!" 
 He asked me astonished. "I suppose that betrays 
 
 me 
 
 A fogey indeed, but the thing does amaze me." 
 "No wonder," I answered, "America's youth 
 Symbolized with a vengeance as plainest of truth. 
 The poets I've presented may none of them be 
 Among the top boughs of that flourishing tree, 
 The Genus Poeticus, Anglice-folia, 
 Whose flowers have rivalled the greater magnolia, 
 But no shoot we know of has blossomed so early 
 As ours, and that makes a distinction clearly. 
 A ten-year-old child, half elf and half sage, 
 Where else can you find a poet of her age? 
 This is no little girl, though the critics preempt her 
 As the essence of childhood, but, caveat emptor\ 
 It is easy to say, which is all that they care about, 
 For where is the critic one can see is aware about 
 Any essence whatever. This child's no more childhood 
 Than the wolf was the grandmother for donning her 
 
 mild hood. 
 
 Hilda Conkling (I see I've forgotten to name her) 
 Is a greater phenomenon than they would proclaim 
 
 her. 
 
 She is poetry itself, for her slight little soul 
 Is not yet of a size to encompass the whole 
 
72 A CRITICAL FABLE 
 
 She gives out. Without knowing who really is speaking, 
 She speaks, and her words fall without the least seek- 
 ing. 
 There's no need for allowances, the poems that she 
 
 writes 
 
 May be certainly reckoned among the high lights 
 Of their genre, and although I'm no hyperbolist 
 I say flatly this child is the first Imagist. 
 But you will remember that Jove sometimes naps, 
 And the baby in Hilda not seldom entraps 
 The genius. But what of that! Such handicaps 
 May be reckoned as nil in the total, perhaps. 
 If she sometimes descends from Parnassus crescendo 
 To play with her dolls, why, the greatest of men do 
 The same in their fashion, and no innuendo 
 Need follow so natural a way of proceeding. 
 It is merely the little girl in her stampeding. 
 Since she's neither a freak, nor a ghoul, nor a 
 
 Houyhnhnm, 
 We may thank the good fate which has left her a 
 
 minim 
 
 Of usual childhood but, bless my soul, what 
 Has become of her now, she was here, was she not?" 
 "Oh," her mother joined in, "she ran off to catch 
 A white kitten she saw. There's no fear of a scratch, 
 She understands kittens." " Did she hear what I'm 
 
 saying?" 
 
 I asked. "I am really afraid she was paying 
 But little attention, her fingers were drumming 
 In time to some sort of a tune she was humming. 
 
A CRITICAL FABLE 73 
 
 Now she and the kitten are disposed to agree, 
 
 We have lost her, I fear, so you'll have to take me." 
 
 Now what can a gallant gentleman do 
 
 On receiving a challenge so couched? "Entre nous, 
 
 I think you're delightful," I said in aside, 
 
 " Your verses have made many poets emerald-eyed. 
 
 What you seem to do without turning a hair 
 
 Is just the one trick makes the less gifted swear. 
 
 Who would copy you, digs for himself a fine snare. " 
 
 But when a man whispers inside of his mind 
 
 He can scarcely expect an onlooker to find 
 
 His abstraction amusing. My friend woke me smartly 
 
 From my silent flirtation by announcing, quite tartly, 
 
 "The child, as you've proved, is a lusus natures, 
 
 A verdict I'm sure any qualified jury 
 
 Would agree to at once were her case up for trial. 
 
 Why even our feminophobe on the ' Dial ' 
 
 Never dared to bring forward young ladies of ten 
 
 As serious rivals to middle-aged men. 
 
 Poor Margaret Fuller, how she would have doted on 
 
 Your remarkable age, and how happily floated on 
 
 Its dawn-coloured currents and all its forensical 
 
 Preoccupations! We were so common-sensical. 
 
 Perhaps we were tainted with some sentimentalism, 
 
 But your beau ideal seems to be elementalism. 
 
 I can cap you, however, by mentioning one 
 
 Poet who never grew up, your friend, Miss Dickin- 
 
 son." 
 
 "The comparison's just," I declared. "As to Hilda, 
 
74 A CRITICAL FABLE 
 
 Your juxtaposition need never bewilder 
 
 The admirers of either. One you failed quite to scotch ; 
 
 The other, I think, you should certainly watch." 
 
 "Well, well," he said hastily, "but I protest 
 
 At sitting all night with you and your quest. 
 
 Who's the next, and be quick." As if riding a race 
 
 I dashed at my subject: "Let me introduce Grace 
 
 Conkling, no one is so handy at brooks, 
 
 They chatter and spatter through all of her books. 
 
 And her fish every angler is on tenterhooks 
 
 Lest they should escape him. The same with her birds. 
 
 My land, what a fluttering they make! Quite two 
 
 thirds 
 Of her work is concerned with them, so that her 
 
 pages 
 
 Present the appearance of so many cages. 
 Then mountains yes, mountains she crams them 
 
 in too. 
 
 The little nearby ones all green, and all blue 
 The more distant peaks. She is great on perspective. 
 And whatever her theme, she is always selective. 
 Take her love-poems, for instance, she serves, piping 
 
 hot, 
 
 A lyric of passion, and chooses the spot 
 For its setting somewhere where you go in a yacht: 
 South America, Mexico, wherever not, 
 So there is a garden with grapefruit, kumquat, 
 A score or two peach-trees and some apricot. 
 For her flowers, one should be an encyclopedia. 
 No less an abundance of knowledge the medea 
 
A CRITICAL FABLE 75 
 
 Could possibly be to surmount and recount 'em. 
 (Here I've got in a mess. There's no rhyme except 
 
 'fount/ Hem! 
 
 Take no notice I beg of the exceedingly thin ice 
 I'm skating on; if you find my heroine nice, 
 Which she certainly must be to all masculine eyes, 
 I care not a whit with what names I am twitted. 
 On account of my subject, the claim's manumitted.) 
 Now turn back six lines, so you capture the gist 
 Of my tale where I left it I will jot down a list 
 Of a few of her flowers which must not be missed. 
 There's magnolia first, of the kind grandiflora, 
 With its moons of blooms scenting the air where 
 
 Senora 
 
 Jimenez, Alcaro take your pick, I would banish 
 Such names if I could, but the Senora's Spanish 
 Walks under daturas whose cups of perfume 
 Hang above her, with jasmine so thick there's scant 
 
 room 
 
 To pass down the path to the beds where the lilies 
 Are standing together in a stately and still ease. 
 The dates are in blossom, or is it in fruit? 
 One should not make a list unless able to do't, 
 And this Mexican flora trips any one's foot 
 Never mind, it's enough that the lady's en route 
 To a clandestine tryst, when a tingling sol fa 
 Shakes the garden to life, for he's brought his guitar. 
 I acknowledge I've taken a few autocratic 
 Liberties with my author, who's never dramatic, 
 But the garden alone seemed to me miasmatic, 
 
76 A CRITICAL FABLE 
 
 With its scents and its sounds, but for the rest solus. 
 If we must not embroider, why she must parole us. 
 Since I've given no promise, and the scene, without 
 
 doubt, 
 
 Should have been there although the poet left it out, 
 It shall stand in my version and there's a night- 
 piece. 
 
 But what of the mornings, as soft as crepe-llsse 
 Till the mists IDUHI away with the sun and leave 
 
 staring 
 
 A peacock-hued dome, with gilt cornices, flaring 
 Above an old market-place crowded with fig-trees 
 And the flame-coloured awnings of booths where the 
 
 big trees 
 
 Make a thunder-cloud shade, and Giuseppe, Felice, 
 (These Mexican, names make our own sound so 
 
 screechy !) 
 
 Are vociferously selling figs, melons, and grapes? 
 It's the rainbow gone mad in all colours and shapes. 
 There are smoky blue plums and raw-striped cucum- 
 bers, 
 
 Red slits of pomegranates, gold loquats, the umbers 
 Of nuts and the green of almonds not yet husked; 
 Huge elephant baskets of flowers all betusked 
 With long sprays of yucca the poet has attacked 
 
 us 
 
 With all of her armoury at once spears of cactus 
 Shoot Out between passion-vines spreading their dis- 
 cus- 
 Like blooms just above a bouquet of hibiscus. 
 
A CRITICAL FABLE 77 
 
 The trees, I observe, are all festooned with monkeys, 
 Long necklaces of them, and the square's choked with 
 
 donkeys. 
 
 The bell in the peacock dome clatters and clangs, 
 Parakeets flash through leaves like so many whiz-bangs 
 On the fourth of July, there are orchids exploding 
 New flowers each minute over hand-carts unloading 
 Bread-fruit and bananas, and the hot, dry sirocco 
 Tips it all to a sparkle so bright and rococo 
 The book should be bound in a purple morocco 
 If the contents and cover were made to agree, 
 This dismal sage-green is a catastrophe; 
 But what publisher thinks of aught else but his fee. 1 
 I have written my best, but it's so multiplex I can 
 Never compete with her when she's on Mexican 
 Horticulture, zoology, and I don't know what all, 
 Unless I've Gray's 'Botany' handy, and Nuttall, 
 With Wilson and Chapman close by on the table; 
 And as to the speech, it is just so much Babel 
 To me if each word is not tagged with a label 
 In good easy English. Well, no matter for that, 
 I've told you she's got every atmosphere pat. 
 She's as happy with pine-trees and an orchard of ap- 
 ples 
 
 And the clouds which a 'slender sky* scatters and dap- 
 ples 
 Over grass-and-stone hillsides, as with lotus-brimmed 
 
 fountains, 
 
 And I'll swear that no poet has done better with moun- 
 tains. 
 
78 A CRITICAL FABLE 
 
 Her flickers, and veeries, and finches, and thrushes 
 Are as good as her nightingale hid in a bush is, 
 And when she would sing of the Old Mohawk Trail 
 I toss up my hat with a shout of ' All hail ! 
 Troubadour of New England, who knows that white 
 
 pine is 
 Her very soul's self/ and I write in gold, ' Finis! '" 
 
 "Dear me," said my friend, "so you think she's the 
 
 laureate 
 Of poor old New England." "If there's any one bore 
 
 I hate 
 
 More than another," I answered, "it's the man 
 Who pretends to see farther than any one can. 
 Considering we've Robinson, Miss Lowell, and Frost 
 Such a statement were rash. I'm afraid you have 
 
 lost 
 Just the shade I intended; there's a difference, be 
 
 sure, 
 
 Between a poet laureate and a troubadour.* 
 "The point is well taken," he admitted at once. 
 "Was I laureate or troubadour? The distinction con- 
 fronts 
 
 Me now rather unpleasantly. For, was I able 
 To go her one better in my famous ' Fable ' ? 
 That I loved my New England you'll find by the space 
 I devoted to her in that book. Face to face 
 With her new poets, I'm wondering who'll win in the 
 
 race. 
 Am I in the lead since they've quickened the pace? 
 
A CRITICAL FABLE 79 
 
 I'm beginning to doubt it as far as mere praise 
 Counts at least, I was Frost and she mixed, hence my 
 
 bays, 
 
 If I really deserved any. But with this poetess 
 I find myself back on old ground, none the less- 
 Delightful, be sure, and there is a slight change 
 In her manner, I do detect that, but her range 
 Does not carry me out of the depth of my sympathy." 
 "The next fellow will," was my succinct reply. 
 "Alfred Kreymborg, deft master of the oddest machine 
 Made of strings and of gut which I ever have seen. 
 A hybrid of sorts yclept mandolute. 
 Queer instrument? Very. His voice is the flute 
 Playing over the strings, and his songs epigrams 
 Tinkled up into rhythm. Oh, yes, they're called 
 
 shams 
 
 By the public at large, but who wants a large public? 
 Kreymborg's manner to his is a kiss and a kick. 
 He's the monkey of poetry who climbs on a stick, 
 But that's only his way to conceal by a trick 
 The real truth he has. Oh, he's impolitic 
 To a fault, but the fellow is no lunatic, 
 Nor mountebank either, though some people think 
 He has squeezed not two drops of his blood in his ink 
 And regard him as jester with more than suspicion. 
 The fact is he's an untaught, but natural musician. 
 His poems and his tunes come straight out of his pestle 
 And fall as they will. Unbaked clay's not a vessel, 
 However, and though I believe he has made 
 Some excellent poems, that's not really his trade, 
 
80 A CRITICAL FABLE 
 
 Which I grieve to admit consists largely of bluffing. 
 The gems in his books are half smothered in stuffing. 
 He's an ironist pure, but I can't call him simple; 
 More than one of his efforts may be classed as a pimple 
 On the fair face of poetry, but others delight us 
 As much for their beauty as the first kind affright us 
 By their horrible ugliness, wry-formed and waxy. 
 He's a man flinging queer little toys from a taxi. 
 If you scrabble round fast enough you may pick a good 
 
 one, 
 
 But the chances are ten to one you'll get a wooden 
 Contraption of rude, creaky springs, badly gilt, 
 Just words nailed together haphazard, no lilt, 
 And no sense you can find. It's a real 'hunt the slip- 
 per' 
 
 To read what he writes, and you may come a tripper 
 Or you may win a prize, that's the whole proposition. 
 How does it affect his poetic position? 
 I tell you quite frankly I feel at a loss 
 For an answer to give you, we might try a toss 
 Or leave it in peace on the lap of the Gods. 
 To put it quite plainly, dear Sir, what's the odds? 
 When we come to his singing, it's another concern. 
 However on earth did the chap come to learn 
 Of those strange sweeping chords and that odd whis- 
 pered singing 
 
 Which cleaves to the heart and sets the nerves sting- 
 ing, 
 
 And where did he find his sawed-off mandolin 
 Or guitar, or banjo? Good Lord, it's a sin 
 
A CRITICAL FABLE 81 
 
 When there is such an instrument no one else knows 
 
 it, 
 
 But the luckier for him, I say, and therefore prositl 
 The poems he writes down never end, scarce begin, 
 If the truth must be told ; in the music, a thin 
 Silver chord holds a something, a glitter of fable, 
 And the tale and its moral lie strung on a cable, 
 Half-music, half-thought, but what we have heard 
 Is more echo than music, more music than word. 
 He's a poet in the core of him, a bit of a clown, 
 And two-thirds of a vagabond drifting round town, 
 Seeing whimsical nothings at every street corner. 
 A lover possessed, an inveterate scorner, 
 Engaged in a pulling of plums like Jack Horner 
 There's the man, Alfred Kreymborg." "We had no 
 
 counterpart 
 
 To your monkey-musician. Do you call the thing art 
 You've been talking about?" The old gentleman's 
 
 tone 
 
 Betrayed just a trace of annoyance. "I've shown 
 You a figure, make of him whatever you can, 
 To tag him as this or that's not in my plan. 
 You asked me to give you each phase of the time." 
 "And I could not stand Whitman because he'd no 
 
 rhyme!" 
 
 He gasped. "You may banish all verse that's har- 
 monious, 
 
 But it's not so far short of being felonious 
 When you ask us to substitute for it the simious. 
 You will find what that means in the pages of Linnaeus. 
 
82 A CRITICAL FABLE 
 
 We raised roses, but you seem to cultivate zinnias, 
 Not to call your verse anything more ignominious." 
 "You forget,*' I reminded him, "his mandolute; 
 To judge him without it is hardly acute." 
 The old gentleman suddenly turned and snapped 
 
 ''Nonsense!" 
 
 "On the contrary, Sir, it's the sine gud non sense. 
 We have Lindsay, a voice ; and Kreymborg, an instru- 
 ment." 
 
 "Is your poetry a junk-shop? I am now quite con- 
 vinced you meant 
 
 All this as hoaxing." I tried to protest. 
 He went on in a stream like a person possessed : 
 "A junk-shop indeed! There is Frost, a dim Buddha 
 Set high on a shelf; there is Sandburg, a cruder 
 Carved god of some sort, neither English nor Gothic 
 Assyrian, Egyptian, perhaps a huge Thothic 
 Sacerdotal presentment placed over the door; 
 There are two Chinese vases, a spy-glass, three score 
 Or so dog's-eared books, flower-pots, and a spinet, 
 This odd jumble's Miss Lowell; there's a little green 
 
 linnet 
 
 Hung up in a cage, Sara Teasdale, I think; 
 And a battered old desk all bespattered with ink, 
 That's Masters; and just up above is a palette 
 Smudged over with paint, that is Fletcher; a mallet 
 Thrown down on a heap of new books which it crushes 
 Is Aiken ; and there is a bundle of rushes 
 Just picked and brought in to the shop to set off 
 A stone-lantern 'H.D.'; just behind is a trough 
 
A CRITICAL FABLE 83 
 
 To water poor readers, it's not overflowing 
 
 But full to the brim and seems always just going 
 
 To spill, but that never quite happens, you guess 
 
 At once this is Robinson ; in a recess 
 
 Just under the counter are two or three chromos 
 
 Of tropical scenes, Mrs. Conkling is those; 
 
 And the blocks which you see have just come from the 
 
 gilder 
 
 I need hardly tell you are your precious Hilda, 
 They are specially made to build Castles in Spain. 
 There's your junk-shop of poets, and I tell you again 
 I don't like to be quizzed." Poor old soul, he was fu- 
 rious, 
 
 But when once convinced his suspicions were spurious 
 He was eager as ever. " For," said I, " there's no quar- 
 rel. 
 
 The shop sign's a wreath and it's possibly laurel." 
 "Perhaps I have half a suspicion of that 
 Myself," he smiled broadly, "now give tit for tat, 
 And confound all my quondam ridiculous ires 
 With something so pleasant and ..." 
 
 "TheUntermeyers!" 
 
 The shout which I gave cut his sentence in two, 
 And we lost the last part in the hullabaloo 
 I made as I served up my marital dish. 
 "Two poets, and between them whatever you wish. 
 If they haven't the depth, they've more range than the 
 
 Brownings, 
 It runs all the way from complexes to clownings, 
 
84 . A CRITICAL FABLE 
 
 With love-songs so frank they pursue more than follow 
 
 man 
 
 Being made on the pattern approved by King Solo- 
 man. 
 
 (My so spelling that name is nothing to look solemn on, 
 I've a black-letter precedent one might write a column 
 
 on. 
 
 Orthographical pedantry was not in King Solomon.) 
 At least hers are, a perfectly natural law 
 Vide Freud, D. H. Lawrence, and George Bernard 
 
 Shaw. 
 
 For woman possesses, it seems, an atomic 
 Attraction for man, and his serio-comic 
 Pretence of pursuit is a masculine blind 
 To keep up his prestige within his own mind. 
 If the lady appears to be fleeing, the stroke 
 Is a masterly one and just her little joke. 
 But when this same woman, in some bright confection 
 Of boudoir attire, gives herself to reflection 
 And writes down her heart in a freak of exposure, 
 The result will most certainly jar the composure 
 Of elderly persons brought up more demurely, 
 While youth will retire, with doors locked securely, 
 And read what to them is a gorgeous display 
 Of Paradise opened on visiting day. 
 The best gifts of our time are these pure revelations 
 Of facts as they are in all human relations 
 With no understatements or exaggerations. 
 And the West is the East, with the puritan night 
 Swallowed up in a gush of approaching daylight 
 
A CRITICAL FABLE 85 
 
 At least, so our cherished delusion mistakes it, 
 And since everything is as man's attitude makes it, 
 What the Orient knew we are learning again 
 For the next generation to laud with ' Amen ! ' 
 In this wise are the poems of Jean Untermeyer, 
 Though the whole of her output takes less than a 
 
 quire 
 
 Of paper to hold it. Not at all so with Louis, 
 He's as rich and eclectic as a bowl of chop-suey. 
 If his wife plays a timbrel, he plays a ram's horn, 
 His ardour for worship is never outworn, 
 One of Joshua's soldiers, protecting his candle 
 With the pitcher he eagerly holds by the handle, 
 Tramping his turn at a long sentry-go 
 Round and round the high walls of our new Jericho; 
 Or, again, on a harp which, if slightly archaic, 
 Has lost nothing in tone or in timbre since Hebraic 
 Psalmists once plucked it in stern exhortations 
 Before kneeling hosts of the wandering nations. 
 Through the streets of to-day, with his shoulders set 
 
 square, 
 
 He walks, full of business, and yet one's aware 
 Of a something he sees which surrounds and encloses 
 His vision, he might be just gazing on Moses 
 Descending the mountain, but his tables of stone 
 Have Marx written on them and Debs, while his own 
 Name has no place at all, and that's characteristic; 
 His ego's too eager to be egotistic. 
 When everything beckons, why sit at home brooding 
 On the opposite wall; he's no taste for secluding 
 
86 A CRITICAL FABLE 
 
 Himself or his interests, and they're only controlled 
 
 By the small slice of time which he happens to hold. 
 
 Punctiliously present in this exact moment, 
 
 His dates began when he learnt what 'proximo 1 meant. 
 
 No glance of his, scanning the past, finds it prizable, 
 
 The only real worth is in the realizable; 
 
 Neither history nor legend induce him to vary 
 
 His perfect allegiance to the mere temporary. 
 
 When he takes on himself the role of appraiser, 
 
 His words spout and gush like a Yellowstone geyser, 
 
 At least for the poet whose political ways err 
 
 From those of society, an apt paraphraser 
 
 Of the poems of such men, he becomes a sharp razor 
 
 To others, no hint of the sham sentimental 
 
 Escapes his smooth blade, and he is not gentle 
 
 With the scenes or the poses in which ' temperamental ' 
 
 Poets indulge, and he's scarcely parental 
 
 To persons with leanings toward the transcendental. 
 
 His dictums, it's true, are less poignant than plenty, 
 
 And do not rank too high among cognoscenti, 
 
 Who are usually college boys not quite turned twenty. 
 
 He has a blind spot: he cannot keep his eye on 
 
 A world without man. Why, a fresh dandelion 
 
 Is nothing to him without someone to pick it, 
 
 Observe it alone and he hands you the ticket 
 
 For exit at once, and it's not a return check. 
 
 He hopes in this way to act as a stern check 
 
 On all those untoward imaginative flights .,. 
 
 In which he is sure he descries signal-lights 
 
 Of a shower of earth-wrecking meteorites. 
 
A CRITICAL FABLE 87 
 
 Now why should a man who is so pyrotechnical 
 Find a mere meteoric display apoplectical, 
 While many consider it a beautiful spectacle? 
 That's a matter for wonder; but, speaking of rockets, 
 He carries them round like small change in his pockets. 
 A touch and they're off, and the whiz and the flare 
 And the burst of bright balls are quite his affair. 
 What a crackle of rhymes! They go off like red crackers 
 Beneath a tin pan. And there are some whackers 
 Exploding at intervals when you least expect them, 
 And long trailing assonances set to connect them. 
 His wit is a pin-wheel which at first jerks and spits 
 Then whirls suddenly round as though ten thousand fits 
 Were in it, and all is one sparkling gyration 
 In every known manner of versification. 
 But the best of his fire-works comprise his set-pieces 
 Which are really so many bright-coloured esquisses. 
 (Please pardon a liberty in pronunciation. 
 Le mot juste, I believe, needs no justification, 
 Even when it involves a slight deviation 
 From the speech of a friendly but jaw-breaking nation, 
 Who, I trust, will regard this brief explanation 
 In the light of a willing, though painful, libation.) 
 But how I run on ! To return to my symbol : 
 A bare two or three poets have ever been nimble 
 Enough to depict their confreres and show them 
 Drawn to scale in each feature as all their friends know 
 
 them. 
 
 Just glance at them now, each hung on a hook 
 Awaiting the match Ftt! Presto! Now, look 
 
88 A CRITICAL FABLE 
 
 How they flicker and burn, each one to his trick: 
 There are Robinson's quatrains, Frost's long, pliant 
 
 stick 
 
 Of blank- verse which he carries when taking his walks, 
 And Sandburg with his suit-case all crammed full of 
 
 talks 
 
 With murderers and hobos and such worthwhile gentry ; 
 Here is Lindsay retreating at speed to the entry 
 To stand on the stair and harangue new arrivals 
 With the very same stunts they employ at revivals, 
 While Amy Lowell, close by the library door, 
 Announces her theories and tries hard to score 
 More disciples than Lindsay; though, with his and her 
 
 medium, 
 
 It's a matter of choice which produces least tedium. 
 Whoever the poet and whatever his foibles, 
 Even dull ones like well, I won't say are enjoy- 
 
 ables 
 
 When he touches them up to a glare with his slow- 
 match. 
 
 At this sort of thing every one else is no match 
 For him, and the best simply rank as * and Other 
 
 Poets.' 
 
 A terrible fellow with his black line to smother poets, 
 And that line is become the poetical plank 
 From which he dives into posterity's tank. 
 It's a curious conceit, and his one bit of swank, 
 To flaunt himself under a long line of blank. 
 But what poet, quick or dead, would dare to decline 
 An immortal existence conferred by one line. 
 
A CRITICAL FABLE 89 
 
 Take it then, Untermeyer, irrepressible Louis, 
 
 And observe, as you touch it, that the leaves are still 
 
 dewy. 
 
 That dew is the proof that it's not bombazine, 
 One has to be careful with a housewife like Jean. 
 The lady, you know, is a trifle impulsive, 
 And I should not like my gift to receive a propulsive 
 Reception. For fame's rather like millinery, 
 To-day it's a blossom, to-morrow a cherry, 
 The day after, glass flowers in some cemetery. 
 But who, even in fame, would remain stationary? 
 Not you certainly, Louis, your deepest devotion 
 Is involved in this question, but you have no notion 
 How nearly you come to perpetual motion." 
 Here I ended abruptly. When he's carried a man 
 To the centre of movement, the historian 
 Does well to leave off. I left off therefore. 
 My old friend somewhat wearily asked, "Is there 
 
 more?" 
 
 " A few odds and ends, but not much you need heed/' 
 I replied. "Very well, run them over at speed," 
 He commanded. 
 
 Now if he had wielded a bludgeon 
 I could not have more quickly obeyed, no curmudgeon 
 Could have forced my direction more surely than he 
 
 did. 
 
 His imperious courtesy was all that I needed 
 To start off again with my tale: "The expatriates 
 Come next," I began, "but the man who expatiates 
 
90 A CRITICAL FABLE 
 
 Upon them must go all yclad in cold steel 
 
 Since these young men are both of them most difficile, 
 
 And each is possessed of a gift for satire. 
 
 Their forked barbs would pierce any usual attire. 
 
 In order of merit, if not of publicity, 
 
 I will take Eliot first, though it smacks of duplicity 
 
 To award Ezra Pound the inferior place 
 
 As he simply won't run if not first in a race. 
 
 Years ago, 'twould have been the other way round, 
 
 With Eliot a rather bad second to Pound. 
 
 But Pound has been woefully free with the mustard 
 
 And so occupied has quite ruined his custard. 
 
 No poems from his pen, just spleen on the loose, 
 
 And a man who goes on in that way cooks his goose. 
 
 T. S. Eliot's a very unlike proposition, 
 
 He has simply won through by process of attrition. 
 
 Where Pound played the fool, Eliot acted the wiseacre; 
 
 Eliot works in his garden, Pound stultifies his acre. 
 
 Eliot's always engaged digging fruit out of dust; 
 
 Pound was born in an orchard, but his trees have the 
 rust. 
 
 Eliot's mind is perpetually fixed and alert; 
 
 Pound goes off anywhere, anyhow, like a squirt. 
 
 Pound believes he's a thinker, but he's far too roman- 
 tic; 
 
 Eliot's sure he's a poet when he's only pedantic. 
 
 But Eliot has raised pedantry to a pitch, 
 
 While Pound has upset romance into a ditch. 
 
 Eliot fears to abandon an old masquerade; 
 
 Pound's one perfect happiness is to parade. 
 
A CRITICAL FABLE 91 
 
 Eliot's learning was won at a very great price; 
 What Pound calls his learning he got in a trice. 
 Eliot knows what he knows, though he cannot digest 
 
 it; 
 
 Pound knows nothing at all, but has frequently 
 guessed it. 
 
 Eliot builds up his essays by a process of massing; 
 
 Pound's are mostly hot air, what the vulgar call 'gass- 
 ing.' 
 
 Eliot lives like a snail in his shell, pen protruding; 
 
 Pound struts like a cock, self-adored, self-deluding. 
 
 Pound's darling desire is his ego's projection; 
 
 Eliot tortures his soul with a dream of perfection. 
 
 Pound's an ardent believer in the value of noise; 
 
 Eliot strains every nerve to attain a just poise. 
 
 Each despises his fellows, for varying reasons ; 
 
 Each one is a traitor, but with different treasons. 
 
 Each has left his own country, but Pound is quite sick 
 of it, 
 
 While for Eliot's sojourn, he is just in the nick of it. 
 
 Pound went gunning for trouble, and got it, for cause; 
 
 Eliot, far more astute, has deserved his applause. 
 
 Each has more brain than heart, but while one man's a 
 critic 
 
 The other is more than two-thirds tympanitic. 
 
 Both of them are book-men, but where Eliot has found 
 
 A horizon in letters, Pound has only found Pound. 
 
 Each man feels himself so little complete 
 
 That he dreads the least commerce with the man in the 
 street; 
 
92 A CRITICAL FABLE 
 
 Each imagines the world to be leagued in a dim pact 
 To destroy his immaculate taste by its impact. 
 To conceive such a notion, one might point out slyly, 
 Would scarcely occur to an author more highly 
 Original ; such men seldom bother their wits 
 With outsiders at all, whether fits or misfits. 
 Where they are, whom they see, is a matter of sheer 
 Indifference to a poet with his own atmosphere 
 To exist in, and such have no need to be preachy 
 Anent commonplaceness since they can't write a 
 
 cliche 
 
 In toto y at least, and it's toto that grounds 
 All meticulous poets like the Eliots and Pounds. 
 Taking up Eliot's poetry, it's a blend of intensive 
 And elegant satire with a would-be offensive 
 Kind of virulent diatribe, and neither sort's lacking 
 In the high type of polish we demand of shoe-blacking. 
 Watteau if you like, arm in arm with Laforgue, 
 And both of these worthies laid out in a morgue. 
 The poems are expert even up to a vice, 
 But they're chilly and dead like corpses on ice. 
 Now a man who's reluctant to heat his work through, 
 I submit, is afraid of what that work will do 
 On its own, with its muscles and sinews unfrozen. 
 Something, I must think, which he would not have 
 
 chosen. 
 
 Is there barely a clue here that the action of heat 
 Might reveal him akin to the man in the street? - 
 For his brain there's no doubt that is up on a steeple, 
 But his heart might betray him as one of the people. 
 
A CRITICAL FABLE 93 
 
 A fearful dilemma! We can hardly abuse him 
 
 For hiding the damaging fact and excuse him 
 
 If it really be so, and we've more than a hint of it, 
 
 Although I, for one, like him better by dint of it. 
 
 Since the poet's not the half of him, we must include 
 
 The critical anchorite of his ' Sacred Wood. ' 
 
 ' This slim duodecimo you must have your eye on 
 
 If you'd be up to date, ' say his friends. He's a sly one 
 
 To have chosen this format the book's heavy as iron. 
 
 I'm acutely aware that its grave erudition 
 
 Is quite in the line of a certain tradition, 
 
 That one which is commonly known as tuition. 
 
 To read it is much like a lengthy sojourning 
 
 In at least two or three institutions of learning. 
 
 But, being no schoolboy, I find I'm not burning 
 
 Fof this sort of instruction, and vote for adjourning. 
 
 What the fellow's contrived to stuff into his skull 
 
 May be certainly classed as a pure miracle, 
 
 But the way he imparts it is terribly dull. 
 
 This may not be fair, for I've only begun it, 
 
 And one should not pronounce on a book till one's done 
 
 it, 
 
 But I've started so often, in so many places, 
 I think, had there been any livelier spaces 
 I must have encountered at least one of those 
 Before falling, I say it with shame, in a doze. 
 We must take Ezra Pound from a different angle: 
 He's a belfry of excellent chimes run to jangle 
 By being too often and hurriedly tugged at, 
 And even, when more noise was wanted, just slugged at 
 
94 A CRITICAL FABLE 
 
 And hammered with anything there was lying round. 
 Such delicate bells could not stand so much Pound. 
 Few men have to their credit more excellent verses 
 Than he used to write, and even his worse is 
 Much better than most people's good. He'd a flair 
 For just the one word indispensably there, 
 But which few could have hit on. Another distinction 
 Was the way he preserved fledgeling poets from extinc- 
 tion. 
 
 Had he never consented to write when the urge 
 To produce was not on him, he'd have been on the 
 
 verge 
 
 Of a great reputation by now, but his shoulder 
 Had always its chip, and Ezra's a scolder. 
 Off he flew, giving nerves and brain up to the business 
 In a crowing excitement not unmixed with dizziness, 
 Whenever he could get any sort of newspaper 
 To lend him a column and just let him vapour. 
 But while he was worrying his gift of invention 
 For adequate means to ensure the prevention 
 Of any one's getting what he had not got, 
 His uncherished talent succumbed to dry rot. 
 When, after the battle, he would have employed her, 
 He learnt, to his cost, that he had destroyed her. 
 Now he does with her ghost, and the ghosts of the hosts 
 Of troubadours, minstrels, and kings, for he boasts 
 An acquaintance with persons of whose very names 
 I am totally ignorant, likewise their fames. 
 The foremost, of course, is Bertrand de Born, 
 He's a sort of pervasively huge leprecawn 
 
A CRITICAL FABLE 95 
 
 Popping out from Pound's lines where you never ex- 
 pect him. 
 
 He is our poet's chief lar, so we must not neglect him. 
 There is Pierre de Maensac, and Pierre won the sing- 
 ing 
 Where or how I can't guess, but Pound sets his fame 
 
 ringing 
 
 Because he was dreitz horn (whatever that is) 
 And had De Tierci's wife; what happened to his 
 We don't know, in fact we know nothing quite clearly, 
 For Pound always treats his ghosts cavalierly. 
 There is John Borgia's bath, and be sure that he needed 
 
 it; 
 
 Aurunculeia's shoe, but no one much heeded it. 
 There's a chap named Navighero and another Bara- 
 
 bello, 
 
 Who prods a Pope's elephant; and one Mozarello; ' 
 Savairic Mauleon Good Lord, what a dance 
 Of impossible names! First I think we're in France, 
 Then he slides in Odysseus, and Eros, and Atthis 
 But I'm not to be fooled in my Greek, that's what that 
 
 is. 
 
 Yet, look, there's Italian sticking out in italics 
 And French in plain type, the foreign vocalics 
 Do give one the feeling of infinite background, 
 When it's all just a trick of that consummate quack, 
 
 Pound, 
 
 To cheat us to thinking there's something behind it. 
 But, when nothing's to find, it's a hard job to find 
 it. 
 
96 A CRITICAL FABLE 
 
 The tragedy lies in the fact that the man 
 Had a potentiality such as few can 
 Look back to or forward to ; had he but kept it, 
 There's no bar in all poetry but he might have leapt it. 
 Even now, I believe, if he'd let himself grow, 
 He might start again . . ." "We will have no 'although* 
 In your gamut of poets. Your man is a victim 
 Of expatriation, and, as usual, it's licked him. 
 It has happened more times than I care to reflect, 
 And the general toll is two countries' neglect." 
 The old gentleman sighed. " I presume that you've fin- 
 ished," 
 
 He went on at last. "The ranks are diminished," 
 I answered, "but still there remain cne or two 
 Whose names, at the least, I must pass in review. 
 
 There's William Rose Benet, his poems have no beaters 
 In their own special genre- he's a wonder with metres, 
 A sleight of hand artist, and one of his mysteries 
 Is his cabinet trick with all the world's histories. 
 There's Bodenheim, trowel in hand, bent on laying 
 A tessellate floor with the words he is saying. > 
 Squares of marble, moss-agate, and jade, and carnelian, 
 Byzantium in pleno, never Delphic nor Delion. 
 A perfect example of contemporaneity, 
 But with too little force and too much femineity. 
 The man's a cascade of verbose spontaneity. 
 Except when he's giving Advice, there he shines 
 And La Fontaine plays hide and seek in his lines. 
 As a maker of Fables, no one ever quarrels 
 
A CRITICAL FABLE 97 
 
 With his style, and old ^Esop must look to his laurels. 
 There's another young man who strums a clavier 
 And prints a new poem every third or fourth year. 
 Looking back, I don't know that anything since 
 Has delighted me more than his ' Peter Quince.' 
 He has published no book and adopts this as pose, 
 But it's rather more likely, I think, to suppose 
 The particular gift he's received from the Muses 
 Is a tufted green field under whose grass there oozes 
 A seeping of poetry, like wind through a cloister; 
 On occasion it rises, and then the field's moister 
 And he has a poem if he'll trouble to bale it, 
 Address it to 'Poetry,' and afterwards mail it. 
 His name, though the odds overbalance the evens 
 Of those who don't know it as yet's Wallace Stevens, 
 But it might be John Doe for all he seems to care 
 A little fine work scattered into the air 
 By the wind, it appears, and he quite unaware 
 Of the fact, since his motto's a cool ' laisser-faire. 9 
 There's Edna Millay with her 'Aria da Cap- 
 O'h, she dealt all society a pretty sharp rap 
 With that bauble of hers, be it drama or fable, 
 Which I certainly trust won't be laid on the table 
 In my time. Her ' Bean-Stalk' is a nice bit of greenery, 
 For one of her charms is her most charming scenery, 
 Few can handle more deftly this sort of machinery. 
 But I must call a halt, or your brain will be flooded 
 With big poets, and little poets, and poets not yet 
 
 budded." 
 "Have you really so many?" my old friend desired 
 
98 A CRITICAL FABLE 
 
 To know. "If you count all the ones who've aspired, 
 
 I could go on all night. You see we have got 
 
 A Renaissance on." "Dear me, I forgot," 
 
 He remarked somewhat dryly. "We were not renais- 
 
 sant, 
 
 But also I note we were far less complacent 
 Than you seem to be, and this beggar-my-neighbour 
 Game you all indulge in was no part of our labour." 
 "No," I told him, "you played on a pipe and a tabour; 
 We go girt with a shield and drawing a sabre. 
 And yet you, with Miranda . . " I talked to the swell 
 Of the wide-running river, to a clock-striking bell. 
 There was no one beside me. A wave caught the sedge 
 Of the bank and went ruffling along its soft edge. 
 Behind me a motor honked twice, and the bridges 
 Glared suddenly out of the dusk, twinkling ridges 
 Notched into the dim river-line. Wind was whirling 
 The plane-trees about, it sent the waves curling 
 Across one another in a chuckle of laughter 
 And I recollect nothing that happened thereafter. 
 Who my gentleman was, if you hazard a guess, 
 I will tell you I know nothing more, nothing less, 
 Than I here have set forth. For I never have met him 
 From that day to this, or I should have beset him 
 With questions, I think. My unique perseverance 
 Kept me haunting the river for his reappearance, 
 Armed with two or three books which might serve as 
 
 a primer 
 
 To point my remarks, for I am no skimmer, 
 When I push at a wheel it must go or I'll break it, 
 
, A CRITICAL FABLE 99 
 
 Once embarked on a mission I never forsake it. 
 
 Did he guess my intention and think he'd enough 
 
 Of me and my poets, a sufficient rebuff; 
 
 But I Ve never believed he went off in a huff. 
 
 Did I dream him perhaps? Was he only a bluff 
 
 Of the past making sport with my brain? But that's 
 
 stuff! 
 
 Take it what way you like, if he were a spectre 
 Then the ghosts of old poets have received a correcter 
 Account than they had of us, and may elect a 
 Prize winner and vote over post-prandial nectar. 
 Suppose that, before awarding the prize, 
 The poets had determined to sift truth from lies 
 And had sent an ambassador down to enquire 
 Whose flames were cut tinsel and whose were real fire. 
 Selecting a man once employed in the trade, 
 They had only to wait the report that he made 
 And discuss it at al fresco lunch in the shade 
 Of some cloudy and laurel-embowered arcade. 
 Supposing it happened that their emissary 
 Determined to take me as a tutelary 
 Genius to guide him, and after he'd pumped me 
 Of all that I knew, quite naturally dumped me 
 And returned whence he came. You call this bizarre? 
 But then, after all, so many things are! 
 If it were so, at least the conclave knows who's who, 
 And will see there's no reason at all to pooh-pooh. 
 I, for one, am most eager to know what they'll do. 
 Aren't you?