E/V5 THE YALE REVIEW in THE YALE REVIEW A NATIONAL QUARTERLY Edited by WILBUR CROSS OCTOBER, 1921 Ten Years of The Yale Review . , The Editor xxix Castles in Spain John Galsworthy Asia's Challenge to America The Young Dante and the Dante of the Comedy Maple. Verse On the Writing of Novels The Future of Our Foreign Trade ... Two Songs for Solitude. Verse Protestantism and the Masses The Psychology of the Radical Edward L. Parsons Benedetto Croce Robert Frost Sir Harry Johnston . Francis H. Sisson . Sara Teasdale James J. Co ale , Stewart Paton Shakespeare Apart 'Tucker Brooke Caput Mortuum. Verse . . . ... . Edwin Arlington Robinson The Birds of Tanglewood Karle Wilson Baker The Fall of the Curtain Chauncey B. Tinker Books and Reading. Verse ....... John Jay Chapman From Plutarch to Strachey . . . . . . . . . Wilbur Cross Paradise Negro School Howard Snyder Among the New Books A Major Prophet Amy Lowell and Other Poets . Critics of Contemporary Drama . William James in His Letters . Ideas on Art and Life .... Mystical Medicine God-like and Satan-like The Vogue of the Printed Play The Air Service A Successful Career The Philosophy of Modern Finance A New Era in Forestry .... Whitman as Journalist .... The Rise and Fall of Navies . Allen Johnson William Rose Benet Stark Toung Frederick J. E. Woodbridge F. Weitenkampf Knight Dunlap . Leo Pasvolsky Helen McAfee Edward P. Warner Moorfield Storey Ray Morris Henry S. Graves Emory Holloway Robert W. Neeser etters and Comment Copyright, 1921, by THE YALE PUBLISHING ASSOCIATION, Inc. EDITORIAL AND BUSINESS OFFICES: I2O~5 HIGH STREET, NEW HAVEN, CO 15 34 5 2 58 68 77 78 89 102 117 118 130 *39 140 158 170 175 1 80 182 188 190 194 197 20 1 203 207 209. 212 2I 5 218 MAPLE BY ROBERT FROST HER teacher's certainty it must be Mabel Made Maple first take notice of her name. She asked her father, and he told her, "Maple Maple is right." "But teacher told the school There's no such name." "Teachers don't know as much As fathers about children, you tell teacher. You tell her that it's M-A-P-L-E. You ask her if she knows a maple tree. Well, you were named after a maple tree. Your mother named you. You and she just saw Each other in passing in the room upstairs, One coming this way into life, and one Going the other out of life you know? So you can't have much recollection of her. She had been having a long look at you. She put her finger in your cheek so hard It must have made your dimple there, and said, * Maple.' I said it too: * Yes, for her name.' She nodded. So we're sure there's no mistake. I don't know what she wanted it to mean, But it seems like some word she left to bid you Be a good girl be like a maple tree. How like a maple tree 's for us to guess. Or for a little girl to guess sometime. Not now at least I shouldn't try too hard now. By and by I will tell you all I know About the different trees, and something, too, MAPLE 53 About your mother that perhaps may help." Dangerous self-arousing words to sow In a child's mind, he suddenly perceived. Luckily all she wanted of her name then Was to rebuke her teacher with it next day And give the teacher a scare as from her father. Anything further had been wasted on her, V Or so he tried to think to avoid blame. She would forget it. She all but forgot it. What he'd sowed with her slept so long a sleep And came so near death in the dark of years That when it woke and came to life again The flower was different from the parent seed. It came back vaguely at the glass one day, As 'she stood saying over her name aloud, Striking it gently across her lowered eyes To make it go well with the way she looked. What was it about the name? She saw its strangeness Lay in its having meaning. Other names As Lesley, Carol, Irma, Marjorie, Signified nothing. Rose could have a meaning, But hadn't as it went. (She knew a Rose.) This difference from other names it was Made people notice it and notice her. (They either noticed it, or got it wrong.) The problem was to find out what it asked In dress or manner of the girl who bore it. If she could form some notion of her mother, What she had thought was lovely and what good. This was her mother's childhood home; The house one storey high in front, three storeys On the end it presented to the road. (The arrangement made a pleasant sunny cellar.) Her mother's bedroom was her father's still, Where she could watch her mother's picture fading. Once she found for a bookmark in the Bible 54 THE YALE REVIEW A maple leaf she thought must have been laid In wait for her there. She read every word Of the two pages it was pressed between As if it was her mother speaking to her. She forgot to put back the leaf in closing And lost the place never to find again. She was sure, though, there had been nothing in it. So she looked for herself as everyone Looks for himself more or less outwardly. And her self-seeking, fitful though it was, May still have been what led her on to read And think a little, and get some city schooling. She learned shorthand, whatever shorthand may Have had to do with it she sometimes wondered. So till she found herself in a strange place For the name Maple to have brought her to Taking dictation on a paper pad, And in the pauses when she raised her eyes Watching out of a nineteenth storey window An airship laboring with unship-like motion And a vague all-disturbing roar above the river Beyond the highest city built with hands. Someone was saying in such natural tones She almost wrote the words down on her knee, "Do you know you remind me of a tree A maple tree?" "Because my name is Maple?" "Isn't it Mabel? I thought it was Mabel." "No doubt you've heard the office call me Mabel. I have to let them call me what they like." . They were both stirred that he should have divined Without the name her personal mystery. MAPLE 55 It made it seem as if there must be something She must have missed herself. So they were married And took the fancy home with them to live by. They went on pilgrimage once to her father's (The house one storey high in front, three storeys On the end it presented to the road), To see if there was not some special tree She might have overlooked. They could find none, Not so much as a single tree for shade, Let alone grove of trees for sugar orchard. She told him of the bookmark maple leaf In the big Bible, and all she remembered Of the place marked with it " Wave offering, Something about wave offering, it said." "You've never asked your father outright have you?" "I have, and been put off sometime, I think." (This was her faded memory of the way Once long ago her father had put himself off.) "Because no telling but it may have been Something between your father and your mother Not meant for us at all." "Not meant for me? Where would the fairness be in giving me A name to carry for life and never know The secret of?" "And then it may have been Something a father couldn't tell a daughter As well as could a mother. And again It may have been their one lapse into fancy 'Twould be too bad to make him sorry for By bringing it up to him when too old. Your father feels us round him with our questing, And holds us off unnecessarily, As if he didn't know what little thing 56 THE YALE REVIEW Might lead us to discovery. It was as personal as he could be About the way he saw it was with you To say your mother had she lived would be As far again as from being born to bearing." "Just one look more with what you say in mind, And I give up"; which last look came to nothing. But though they now gave up the search forever They clung to what one had seen in the other By inspiration. It proved there was something. They kept their thoughts away from when the maples Stood uniform in buckets, and the steam Of sap and snow rolled off the sugar house. When they made her related to the maple, It was the tree the autumn fire ran through And swept of leathern leaves, but left the bark Unscorched, unblackened even by any smoke. They always took their holidays in autumn. Once they came on a maple in a glade Standing alone with smooth arms lifted up And every leaf of foliage she'd worn Laid scarlet and pale pink about her feet. But its age kept them from considering this one. Twenty-five years ago at Maple's naming It hardly could have been a two-leaved seedling The next cow might have licked up out at pasture. Could it have been another maple like it? They hovered for a moment near discovery, Figurative enough to see the symbol, But lacking faith in anything to mean The same at different times to different people. Perhaps a filial diffidence partly kept them From thinking it could be a thing so bridal. And anyway it came too late for Maple. MAPLE 57 She used her hands to cover up her eyes. "We would not see the secret if we could now: We are not looking for it any more." Thus had a name with a meaning given in death Made a girl's marriage and ruled in her life. No matter that the meaning was not clear. A name with meaning could bring up a child, Taking the child out of the parents hands. Better a meaningless name I should say, As leaving more to nature and happy chance. Name children some names and see what you do. . GOVERNMENT BONDS LEE, HIGGINSON & Co, NEW YORK BOSTON CHICAGO HIGGINSON & CO LONDON FOREIGN EXCHANGE LETTERS OF CREDIT ACCEPTANCES CORPORATION BONDS "A MASTERPIECE of the first ** rank. . . . will be read sooner or later by practically everyone who reads this newspaper." Christo- pher Morley in the A". Y. Evening Post. "Mr. Strachey has . . . almost invented an art of worming him- self into the consciousness of the per- sonages he designs to study ... he attains a vividness of portraiture which is a new and most valuable innovation in the art of writing his- tory." The Dial. "A masterpiece of that irony in which Mr. Strachey excels. . . . He is gifted in remarkable degree with the dramatic sense of the self-reveal- ing in word and deed." Nation. "A psychological portrait ... a ;;irly alive and vivid picture." AT. Y. Times "A volume of extraordinary inter- est and with the charm of a very real and unstudied clever " Choosing this fact and that, elab- orating this trait aiv that incident, he completed a por- trait that is more than a biography. It is a shrewd, acciiran Victoria and her times, a penetrating look into the chambers of her mind, a novel based entirely on accepted ical facts a romance. It is of the surpassingly beautiful prose achievements of our times." ir. a go Daily News. "Historically exact, pi fascinating both in matter and man- ner ... its portraits are well-nigh Boston Tra n "There is not a sentence which the most fastidious reader could wish to alter." London Letter in the Literary A' "There is not a page unenlivened by his clever analysis. . . . Would that all history could be written by a Strachey." Detroit News. "Will rank among the master- s of its kind." Christian Science Monitor. "Without question the most bril- liant biographical volume of the spring." Springfield Republican. "A book to dream over ... a masterpiece that will influence the art of biography." New Statesman. Queen Victoria by Lytton Strachey Author of Eminent Victorians WHEN Queen Victoria first appeared in the pages of The New Republic its success was immediate and overwhelming. Not since Eminent Victorians has any work of belles let-Ires achieved such instantaneous and universal recognition. The New Republic Edition of Queen Victoria was arranged for so that those who delighted in the published chapters might secure the complete work at a great saving in time and money. The first edition was com- pletely subscribed for six weeks after publication. A second is now off the press and is obtainable with a year's subscription to The New Republic at the bargain price of Here is a combination such as is rarely possible: a book that nrpassingly beautiful achievement in English letters, one that raises the art of biography to its perfection, and a weekly magazine that has long been pre-eminent in the field of politics, literature and art. And the joint price is almost incredibly attractive. The New Republic Edition of Queen Victoria is a volume of 450 pages, illustrated and bound from the sheets of the Har- court edition in Holliston blue. It is gold lettered and stamped in blank with the ship of The New Republic. It has no retail price and may not be bought separately. THE NEW REPUBLIC 421 West 2 ist Street, New York City For the enclosed f*; send me The New Republic for and a copy of Lytton Strachey's Queen Victoria (N. R. Edition). Name,.. Address