ARYOc^ ^IUBRARYQ<;^ ^^W^UNIVtRy/^ g •-rn ■jo o *-Af w V J I * » V J '-■ 17 (5 UJ i %. _^OF-i % ,-§^ 5> ^ nil '1> THE POETIC YEAR FOR 1916 THE POETIC YEAR FOR I916 A CRITICAL ANTHOLOGY BY WILLIAM STANLEY ;BRAITHWAITE Author o/" "Lyrics of Life and Love," "The House of Falling Leaves," etc. Editor of "Anthology of Magazine Verse for 1914," "Anthology of Magazine Verse for 1915," "Anthology of Magazine Verse for 1916," "The Book of Elizabethan Verse," etc. BOSTON SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY PUBLISHERS te 13 gopybight, 1917, By Smalx,, Maynard & Company (incobpokated) TO PSYCHE AND CASSANDRA 4 Z- 5 ^ B13 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The substance of the chapters in this book ap- peared in the columns of the Boston Evening Tran- script, in a series of articles called " The Lutanists of Midsummer," and in the poetry reviews, which I contributed during 1916, to that paper, and are here reprinted by courteous permission. I desire to acknowledge my indebtedness to Mr. Alain LeRoy Locke for many helpful suggestions. For permission to quote selections, illustrating the critical opinions in this volume, I wish hereby to express my obligation to the following publish- ers who hold the copyright of the books of poems : The Macmillan Company : " Go, Spend Your Penny," and " Flesh, I Have Knocked," from " Good Friday and Other Poems," by John Mase- field ; " The Dark House," " Fragment," selections from " Flammonde," " Ben Jonson Entertains a Man from Stratford," " Borkado," and " The Man Against the Sky," from " The Man Against the Sky," by Edwin Arlington Robinson ; selec- tions from " The Great Maze," by Hermann Hage- dorn ; " In the Cage," " For a Dance," and selec- tions from " The Star," from " Songs and Sat- ires," by Edgar Lee Masters ; selections from " The Story of Eleusis," by Louis V. Ledoux ; " Two Travellers in the Place du Vendome," " An Aquarium," and selections from " The Hammers," vii viii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS from " Men, Women and Ghosts," by Amy Lowell ; "Spring in Ireland: 1916," and selections from " Green Branches," by James Stephens ; poems number XIV, XXXII, and XLV, from "Fruit Gathering," by Sir Rabindranath Tagore; "Let Down Your Hair," and " The Story," from " The Quest," by John G. Neihardt; and selection from " Earth Tedium," from " Earth Triumphant and Other Tales in Verse," by Conrad Aiken. Houghton, Mifflin Company : " The Heritage," " Harvest Moon, 1914," and " Harvest Moon, 1916," from " Harvest Moon," by Josephine Pea- body Marks ; " Au Quatrieme : Rue des Ecoles," " FalHng Asleep," and " To a Garden in April," from "Idols," by Walter Conrad Arensberg; " Bain's Cats and Rats," and " Zudora," from " Turns and Movies," by Conrad Aiken ; " Sea Gods," from " Sea Garden : Imagist Poems," and " Some Imagist Poets, 1916," by H. D. ; " White Symphony," "The Front Door," and "Epi- logue," from " Goblins and Pagodas," by John Gould Fletcher; and "The Happiest Heart," from " Poems," by John Vance Cheney. Henry Holt and Company : " What He Knew of Simple Simon," " Franklin P. Adams," selec- tions from " Vachel Lindsay," from " and Other Poets," by Louis Untermeyer ; " The Lis- teners," " An Epitaph," from " The Listeners and Other Poems," and " OfF the Ground," from " Pea- cock Pie," by Walter de la Mare, The Century Company: "The Sin Eater," " The Orient, Half Morocco," selection from ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ix "The Night Court," and "Revelation," from "The Night Court and Other Verse," by Ruth Comfort Mitchell; and "Creed," "Sonnet," and selection from " Laughter," from " War and Laughter," by James Oppenheim. Yale University Press : " Overland Route," and " Cleared," from " The Overland," by Freder- ick Mortimer Clapp ; and " A Summer Day," and selections from " The Testament of William Win- dune," from " The Testament of William Win- dune," by James H. Wallis. Charles Scribner's Sons : Sonnets I, XV, XLI, and selections from sonnets XXIII, XXIVj XLVII, from " The Cycle's Rim," by Olive Tilford Dargan ; and " I Have a Rendezvous with Death," from " Poems by Alan Seeger." John Lane Company : Selections from " The Fairy Bride," by Norreys Jephson O'Conor ; and selections from " Sea and Bay : A Poem of New England," by Charles Wharton Stork. Princeton University Press : " Ganymede," from " A Book of Princeton Verse," contributed by John Pearle Bishop. George H. Doran Company : " Out of My Liv- ing," " The Flirt," and selections from " Brother Angelico," " Ulysses in Ithaca," and " Mary of Egypt," from " Life and Living," by Amelia Josephine Burr. G. P. Putnam's Sons : " Invocation," " To a Cyclamen," " Instinct and Reason," " Saint Cath- erine," and " Tomorrow," from " The Book of Winifred Maynard." X ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The Knickerbocker Press (G. P. Putnam's Sons): "Between the Lines," and "His An- swer," from " The Open Door," by Madeline Bridges. The Manas Press, Rochester, N. Y. : " Triad," "Susanna and the Elders," "Night Winds," " Amaze," " The Immortal Residue," and " To the Dead in the Graveyard Underneath My Window," from " Verse," by Adelaide Crapsey. DufEeld and Company : " The Barber Shop," and " Brown Sands," from " Flashlights," by Mary Aldis. Nicholas L. Brown: "The Body of the Queen," from " Two Deaths in the Bronx," by Donald Evans ; and " When It is Night," and " The Merchant," from " Ephemers," by Mitchell S. Buck. Alfred A. Knopf: " In the Country," " Man," "Catherine," "The Two Children," from "The Collected Poems of William H. Davies," " Spring," from " Others : An Anthology of the New Verse," contributed by Hester Sainsbury ; ''' The Next Drink," from " Others : An Anthology of the New Verse," and " Fugue," *' Credo," " Overheard in an Asylum," from " Mushrooms, A Book of Free Forms," by Alfred Kreymborg. The Four Seas Company: Selections from " The Jig of Forslin," by Conrad Aiken. The Roadside Press : " Coming Home," from " The Chicago Anthology," contributed by E. Sewell Hill. The Astor Press: "Kinship," from "The Hour Has Struck," by Angela Morgan. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xi Barse and Hopkins : " The Haggis of Private McPhee," from " Rhymes of a Red Cross Man," by Robert W. Service. Sherman, French and Company : " The Femi- nist's Alphabet," and "The Tragedy," from " Cat's Cradle," by H. Stanley Haskins. Richard G. Badger : " Mammy-Lore," and "Youth," from "The Edge of the World," by CaroHne Stern ; and selections from " The Fledg- ling Bard and the Poetry Society," by George Reginald Margetsen. To David O'Neil I am indebted for the permis- sion to use his poem, " To a Mocking Bird," from his volume, " A Cabinet of Jade," shortly to be published. From Lord Dunsany's " A Legend of the Dawn," which appears in his volume, " Time and the Gods," I have quoted a passage with the permission of the publishers, John W. Luce and Company. Small, Maynard and Company : " April Now in Morning Clad," " A New England June," and selections from " Phi Beta Kappa, Harvard, 1914," from " April Airs," and " Carnations in Winter," and one stanza from " A Windflower," from "Low Tide on Grand Pre," by Bliss Car- man ; " The Dark Way," by Joseph Mary Plun- kett; "Of a Post-Patriot," and "Wishes for My Son," by Thomas MacDonagh ; and " Hamilcar Barca," by Sir Roger Casement, from " Poems of the Irish Revolutionary Brotherhood," edited by Padraic Colum and Edward J. O'Brien. CONTENTS Chapteb Paqb Introduction. We discuss the poetry of — .... xv I Magic Casements 1 Bliss Carman, Walter de la Mare, Lizette Woodworth Reese II The Reseiarch Artifice 25 Mitchell S. Buck, Elsa Barker, Cuthbert Wright, Donald Evans III The SACimDOTAL Wonder of Life 33 Norreys Jephson O'Conor, Mary Aldis, John Masefield IV The Chant op Armageddon 48 J. C. Squire, A. St. John Adcock, Thomas MacDonagh, P. H. Pearse, Joseph Mary Plunkett, Sir Roger Casement V Peacock Pie 62 High Tide; Songs of Joy and Vision from the Present-Day Poets of America and Great Britain, Others, An Anthology of the New Verse, A Book of Princeton Verse, Catholic Anthology, Some Imagist Poets, 1916, The Chicago Anthology VI Clotho, Lachesis, Atropos & Co 101 Edwin Arlington Robinson, Hermann Hagedorn VII Selling Aladdin's Lamp 123 Edgar Ijee Masters, Conrad Aiken VIII The Idol-Breakers (other peoples') 149 Adelaide Crapiey, John Gould Fletcher, Alfred Kreymborg, Walter Conrad Arensberg IX The Nostalgia op Bournes 187 Charles Wharton Stork, Frederick Mortimer Clapp, Caroline Stern X "The Glory that was Greece" 214 Witter Bynner, I^ouis V. Ledoux XI The Jest of Dkhocracy 229 \ Louis Untermeyer, H. Stanley Haskins, Madeline Bridges, A. George Reginald MJrgeston XII Footnotes to Reality 252 Amelia Josephine Burr, Winifred Maynard xiii CnAPTEB Page XIII Romantics: Half Morocco 8vo 278 Ruth Comfort Mitchell, Amy Lowell XIV The Dream on its Throne 306 James Oppenheim, James Stephens, Josephine Preston Peabody XV "A Few Brave Drops were Ours" 335 Alan Seeger, Robert W. Service XVI LusTRAL Waters 349 Sir Rabindranath Tagore, Olive Tilford Dargan XVII Patrins 364 William H. Davies, John G. Neihardt, Donald Evans XVIII In Gloria Mundi 375 James H. Wallis, Conrad Aiken XIX Apologia 39i8 Anthology of Magazine Verse for 1916 XIV INTRODUCTION WE DISCUSS THE POETRY OF Need I say a word for the plan and substance of this book? One moment I think I ought, and the next that I ought not. But since the begin- ning is made, the end ought to be reached. It might be reached bj simply saying — here's the book ! Still, there's more than the book here, I think. There's an experiment — and that is al- ways a dangerous thing in literature. Then, there's myself in the experiment, and this ego is an aggravation to some critics of American poetry. In every book, the ego is the dominant note — or else there would be no books, no literature, really no life. The world is a clash of egos — some as thin as air, others as solid as water. Both types are necessary — and the old world goes its way. I suspect, some day, it will be said of me that " he was that ineffectual critic who beat his pen in the luminous void of appreciation." I should like nothing better, for an epitaph. The one worth- while thing in life is to have a passion. If you have that, intuition is a surer guide to wisdom than philosophy. It may lead to destruction, but the path will be strewn with dreams, and dreams are the only seeds of human aspiration. If it arrives at the goal, which it very often does, the fabric of XV xvi INTRODUCTION success will be mostly woven with the gray threads of failure. Nothing is perfect but the will to do. We will to do from some divine and eternal im- pulse: that is our passion. What follows in ac- tion or method, is the attempt of our humanity, with its checks and limitations, to embody in the terms of the world the realities of the spirit. Thus life is all — and always — a mystical ven- ture. And the symbols of this mystical venture are more clearly defined in the art of poetry than in any other form of human expression. Art is not the end, but the means of this expression. Art changes, but the aims of art never do. The im- portant thing in all this is not to engage the greater part of one's energies upon the means of art but upon the ends for which the art exists. It is a straight and narrow path to follow, because upon both sides of the way the walls of prestige and tradition restrict the discernment of new values. Contemporary achievement has always labored, and will always continue to labor, under the tyranny of the past. But it is not the tyranny of substance ; it is the tyranny of form, which puts the present at a disadvantage with the past. Art is one, and the highest, form of the manifestation of the spirit of life. The spirit of life, whatever its mode or quality, never changes, but its manifestations do, and the art which em- body those manifestations must be rendered in terms of contemporary experience. Experience is what I have most tried to disen- INTRODUCTION xvii gage from the embodiments of a particular art, in this book. Let us suppose this experience is a kind of fabric — woven of dream, vision, imagina- tion, observation, of physical and spiritual emo- tion — and ask if, being an abstraction, like spirit, the world has worn it threadbare, as we wear a garment on the body? Take the common experi- ence of love: does it really differ more in spirit in the twentieth century than it did in the sixteenth? No ; but the social environment having changed, men and women conform to it in their external, emotional relationships. And what I mean to in- sist upon is, that except for a few supreme re- citals, the contemporary poet has an original sub- stance to deal with, and can deal with it with all the intensity and passion, as any poet of the past. It is the function of the critic to acknowledge the achievement not with the tape-measure of rules and formulas, but as a personal discovery of the secrets and mysteries of life being expressed through art. If the art is not adequate, they will remain hidden. And this same point of view applies to the interpretation of every other human experience. This is what I have tried to do in the following pages ; how crudely sometimes, how successfully at others, I am well aware. What I have most tried to avoid, in any view expressed, is dogmatism. I have been absolute in my point of view time and again: but then I have merely held the position, and not attempted to advance it ruthlessly. I am perfectly willing to surrender the position to any xviii INTRODUCTION one who can take it on the same terms of spiritual interpretation — but they must be bold enough to attack me in front, and not from the rear. The conversational scheme of the book may, or may not, interest some readers. Poetry is a hu- man thing, and it is time for the world — and es- pecially our part of the world — to regard it as belonging to the people. It sprang from the folk, and passed when culture began to flourish into the possession of a class. Now culture is passing from a class to the folk, and with it poetry is return- ing to its original possessors. It is in the spirit of these words that we discuss the poetry of the year. There are omissions from the year's publications, which I regret, and hope to make up if this work continues as a supplementary volume to the " An- thology of Magazine Verse." No inference of de- preciation must be drawn because certain volumes are excluded from examination. Time and cir- cumstances have had something to do with what may seem to many an arbitrary selection of titles. W. S. B. Cambridge, Massachusetts, March 2, 1917. THE POETIC YEAR FOR 1916 THE POETIC YEAR FOR 1916 MAGIC CASEMENTS Have you been drunk with April weather? Then you know what it is to be rapturously in- toxicated with the charming experience of listen- ing to Psyche quoting from Bliss Carman's " April Airs " : April now in morning clad Like a gleaming oread, With the south wind in her voice. Comes to bid the world rejoice. With the sunlight on her brow. Through her veil of silver showers, April o'er New England now Trails her robe of woodland flowers, — Violet and anemone; While along the misty sea. Pipe at lip, she seems to blow Haunting airs of long ago. It was an inspiration for me, beyond the mere ex- perience, because it brought to birth a resolution which became a joyous fact. 1 2 THE POETIC YEAR FOR 1916 It was a happy accident that discovered and won for me the hospitality of Laurel Farm, rest- ing there in the North with its western acres run- ning down to the Merrimac River. It spreads eastward from the house by the high road, to the wooded hills covering eight or ten miles, to euphonious Derry with its famous academy and as- sociations of our New England Theocritus, Robert Frost, nestling in the New Hampshire landscape. We entered the woods by the Derry Road, the only highway crossing eastward from the trolley line which runs from Nashua to Manchester, and on either side of this ascending and twisting path- way were thick woods of hemlocks, birches, poplars and pines, shading running streams and silent sombre pools. This main road, now lifting, then lying flat for a distance on the crest of a rise, and sometimes like an open current of brown sand bordered for stretches by low fields of bushes and innumerable varieties of wild flowers, ran in freak- ish windings to Derry. All along the way side- paths, which are sometimes scarcely more than secret footways, and at others the width of wheel- ruts over which lumbermen and farmers take short cuts, go twisting north and south, sloping and turning into the heart of the woods. Under the thick and tangled boughs of the trees the ground is rich with nature's carpeting of every design of moss and fern ; the open spaces, naturally so, or due to the cutting of timber, or forest fires, are filled with every variety of wild flowers, and the thick, tangled, swampy hollows massed with moun- MAGIC CASEMENTS 3 tain laurel. A short distance up the Derry Road from the car line, is the neglected cemetery, on the crest of a hill, completely encircled by the woods. Just beyond the cemetery, where the ground is level for a stretch, a branch road turns south- east from the main highway through the woods ; the latter widens at this point, and on the left is a considerable clearing where the forest fire of last year bequeathed its heritage of charred tree trunks, standing desolate and ghostly against the shimmering and luxuriant colors of the woods beyond. On the south side of the road, a quarter of a mile behind the cemetery, is a pine grove, and in our fancy, — the fancy, I should say, — of Psyche who suggested it, we had a fairy belief that some New England Academus had set it there for our discussion of poetry. There were four of us in the little group, and our common love for the art of poetry suggested a weekly meeting in the grove to discuss the books we had all agreed upon reading. " It is a good way," I remarked, " to examine the poetry of the year from different points of view, resulting in a sort of collective judgment. Out of the flood of books that pour from the press, we will select sixty or seventy volumes as representative. We will take a certain number a week : it might be two, three, four, five or six. I will see that copies of the books are distributed around not less than one week ahead of our meeting; sometimes two or three weeks will intervene for careful study." I 4 THE POETIC YEAR FOR 1916 made up my mind to record these discussions, and the setting as well, with all those other touches of human character and mood which never fail to en- liven and give color to the serious business of art and life. If this little book needs an apology, it is at least stated, in the foregoing sentence. I gave fanciful names to my companions, Greek names which I am persuaded symbolized the spirit of each. There was nothing Psyche touched but made its soul apparent. Her wood-lore was beautiful and thorough ; the very spirit of flowers, birds and trees was evoked when she went among them. Our other companion of her sex was Cas- sandra, and we gave her this name not because her forebodings were gloomy, but merely for her prophesying disposition, which was always build- ing air-castles. If Psyche, as a very human in- dividual, had a passion, she secreted it in her dreamy temperament, though from its hiding it sometimes burst with a force that quickly spent itself. She was an artist in paint and clay, who hid her talents as she hid her passions. Cas- sandra's passion was music, and her attitude towards life was in the terms of melody. Life surprised her most, I think, in its handling of faiths ; Fate would sometimes pull her back from the extremities of devotion and confidence, leaving her a little dazed with disappointment. It was always a mystery to her that there might be two or three faces to the character of a person, and that the one she knew might not be the soul's true countenance. Where Psyche was wistfully wise MAGIC CASEMENTS 5 through intuition, Cassandra was winsomely ignorant through sympathy. The other mem- ber, besides myself, of our little group was Jason of the heroic dreams and adventuresome spirit, he who was always leading an argonaut of emotions to the Colchis of mystery in the hope of bring- ing back the golden fleece of beauty. We knew him to be all this beneath an exterior skeptical and sardonic. He was restless in the bonds of a tranquillity that chafed the hidden spirit of his being. When the war broke with such fury over Europe he and his mother were on the high seas returning from Paris ; his wish, I should say his passion, was, on landing at New York, to take the next steamer back to Europe and join the Foreign Legion. But his mother would not have it. He was all she had, and though she lived in New York dur- ing the winter with occasional weeks in Florida or California, and at various New England water- ing places, through the hot weather, when not abroad, he roamed about at all seasons and places. For a year he stood the pressure of his desire to offer his services to France, with an uneasy con- science as he remarked, for the sake of national pride and honor which he believed was humbled with the declaration of neutrality in the face of Belgium's rape, and then proposed to join a Har- vard unit. He wrote his mother a pleading let- ter, but against her denial he could not act. I discovered him lolling about New England, pour- ing his wounded soul out in execrable war poems, 6 THE POETIC YEAR FOR 1916 which he showed me in a moment of confidence, celebrating the cause of the Allies, praising the valor and spirit of France, and rebuking his own country for throwing away the greatest oppor- tunity destiny had proffered her in safe-guarding and preserving the ideals of democracy. This was Jason, a kind of modern Jaques in spirit, wander- ing rudderless in a world of disrupted ideals, ach- ing patiently beneath the reserve he presented to it, but loving his own dreams exquisitely, with his soul listening secretly for the mysterious call of adventure that never sounded. He loved poetry passionately, and knew it profoundly, and his greatest sorrow, at this particular time, next to not being allowed to fight for France, was his lack of ability to write good poetry. " Isn't it perfectly delicious," observed Psj'che, " to be here this glorious June day, with all the world of materialism shut out and all the world of spirit flowing in upon us? I used to wonder why it was that poets call the woods, so full of sing- ing birds, the shrill and piping music of insects, a world of silence. Everything about is teeming with gay and ecstatic speech. I suppose it is the inner world of spirit, man's and nature's, that gives the outer senses that feeling of quietude." The spell of silence, as Psyche remarked, was upon us, as we sat under the canopy of pines. " It is really too satisfying to break," I haz- arded, to test the interest in our program. " ' Charmed, magic casements opening on the MAGIC CASEMENTS 7 foam — ' " Jason quoted. " You see Keats knew the value of silence which he framed in that phrase for the soul to look through upon wonder and mys- tery, two very active forces." " Are we to believe that life and nature are dreams, fitted with magic casements, through which we look — that is our souls look — to see the meaning and mystery of things ? " asked Psyche. *' Yes," I answered her. " And only poets know the secret of building such magical windows. But some have very special kind of window-panes for magnifying and clarifying the vistas of dreams. Don't you think our little group of poets chosen for discussion to-day have special virtues in magical craftsmanship? " I asked my companions. " I think all of us will concede that," Jason spoke up, " though I will not concede that other virtues are always in entire harmony. In spite of opinion, I should say, that Miss Reese is quite the most perfect in harmonizing these virtues. Mr. de la Mare makes a good second, and I will grant you about Mr. Carman that he — " " Satisfies my sense of magic," interrupted Cas- sandra, " because he makes truth felicitous, a habit some modern poets feign to scorn." " I agree with Cassandra," I said ; " but would like to stress the nature element which gives the spirit to that felicity." " The spirit seems pretty worn in ' April Airs,' " Jason gave as his opinion. " For in- stance, this lyric on * A New England June,' may 8 THE POETIC YEAR FOR 1916 be delicate and elusive, but is it vivid with the sense of nature which Mr. Carman gave to a num- ber of earlier lyrics? " These things I remember Of New England June, Like a vivid day-dream In the azure noon. While one haunting figure Strays through every scene. Like the soul of beauty Through her lost demesne. " Gardens full of roses And peonies a-blow In the dewy morning. Row on stately row, Spreading their gay patterns. Crimson, pied and cream. Like some gorgeous fresco Or an Eastern dream, " Nets of waving sunlight Falling through the trees; Fields of gold-white daisies Rippling in the breeze ; Lazy lifting groundswells, Breaking green as jade On the lilac beaches. Where the shore-birds wade. " Orchards full of blossom, Where the bob-white calls And the honeysuckle MAGIC CASEMENTS 9 Climbs the old gray walls ; Groves of silver birches, Beds of roadside fern, In the stone-fenced pasture At the river's turn. ' Out of every picture Still she comes to me With the morning freshness Of the summer sea, — A glory in her bearing, A sea-light in her eyes. As if she could not forget The spell of Paradise. Thrushes in the deep woods. With their golden themes. Fluting like the choirs At the birth of dreams. Fireflies in the meadows At the gate of Night, With their fairy lanterns Twinkling soft and bright. Ah, not in the roses. Nor the azure noon. Nor the thrushes' music. Lies the soul of June. It is something finer. More unfading far, Than the primrose evening And the silver star ; Something of the rapture My beloved had. 10 THE POETIC YEAR FOR 1916 When she made the morning Radiant and glad, — Something of her gracious Ecstasy of mien, That still haunts the twilight. Loving though unseen. " When the ghostly moonlight WalJcs my garden ground, Like a leisurely patrol On his nightly round. These things I remember Of the long ago. While the slumbrous roses Neither care nor know. It is all there but the vividness of touch which brightens such lines as these," — Jason went on quoting from memory : " Between the roadside and the wood. Between the dawning and the dew, A tiny flower before the sun. Ephemeral in time, I grew — or > Your carmine flakes of bloom to-night The fire of wintry sunsets hold; Again in dreams you burn to light A far Canadian garden old. The blue north summer over it Is bland with long ethereal days; The gleaming martins wheel and flit Where breaks vour sun down orient ways. MAGIC CASEMENTS 11 There -when the gradual twilight falls. Through quietude of dusk afar. Hermit antiphonal hermit calls From hills below the first pale star. Then in your passionate Love's foredoom Once more your spirit stirs the air. And you are lifted through the gloom To warm the coils of her dark hair." « \r. You scarcely make out your case, Jason," I said. " The main thing is, that Mr. Carman, whatever you think of his infusion, has lost none of his magic. His muse came out of the North, bringing with it all of the romantic qualities which a northern imagination possesses. There the ' emerald twilights ' are more lucid and transpar- ent ; April bugles with a rapture more intense, and a pain more exquisitely arousing, than the pas- sionate maturing of southern climes. Hill, vale, meadow and sea are touched with a glamour and magic, at the heart of which is a wonder white and mysterious ; something half elusive with sym- bolism, half declarative with the plain-song of innocent delight. The whole feeling is one of reticence and virginity in nature, — fresh, strong and vivid ; to which the heart gives its confidence of dream and vision. " This substance has a twofold significance. There is the exterior delight of the senses ; pure, simple witchery of associated memories ; the will playing upon the surface of experience, arrayed in all the illusions worn by the healthy instincts of 12 THE POETIC YEAR FOR 1916 man. Interwoven with this delight of the senses is a natural symbolism, with its inexplicable and supernatural meanings. Bliss Carman's poetry from the beginning had the glamour of the one and the magic of the other. He gave to them a felicity of expression." " What I like about Bliss Carman is not his flowers, but his bouquets," Jason countered. " He is a poet that does arrange his poems with some view to unity of effect." " If we grant you that," Psyche addressed Ja- son, "does it dim his imaginative vision.'' Such a vision as Mr. Carman's does not dim with time. April has always been the symbol of the poet's dreams of life and nature. From the first to the last of his poetic utterance he has never lost his responsiveness to Nature's mystery and charm. Her enchantments have been perennial, and the secret of it, kept so profoundly wise all these years, is in these four lines from a poem in ' April Airs ' : " And then it came to me, That all that I had heard Was my own voice in the sea's voice And the wind's lonely word. He finds, as these lines confess, his own voice in all the elemental things of the world, because his w^isdom and aspiration are in compact with their mysteries. For this reason he is aboundingly ar- dent and youthful ; and it is not a great question wlicthcr his mood is grave or gay ; the felicity of knowledge and the lavish bestowal of sympathy, MAGIC CASEMENTS 13 makes his heart and soul familiar with the laws or- daining the secrets of nature." " Take such a poem as ' A Mountain Gate- way,' " I chimed in on the heels of Psyche's re- marks. " Doesn't he give us in that poem a more habitable cabin for a poet's mind, than the un- realizable Innisfree of Yeats? His description and allurement of peace (in this beautiful poem), is the reward of the faithful trust which has kept his heart sweet and his mind wistfully confident through the rapid changes of later years." " Yes," said Psyche, " hasn't he in that single line in ' A Mountain Gateway,' when he speaks of the ' unAvorn ritual of eternal things,' hasn't he, I repeat, stated poetrj^'s final truth? It is what he heeds and hearkens to. Yet sometimes I seem to see him step aside a little wearily, in his beauti- ful and holy regard for the ' eternal things ' to let the blatant note, and the stridency of the ultra- modern singer, take the road. It puzzles him a little, to see this motley figure in a hurried and arrogant progress trampling down his prophetic wayside flowers ; disclaiming a fellowship and love that loses all of its mystery and beauty in the blindness and noise accompanying him. It hurts Mr. Carman most of all to see the spirit of cul- ture gone out of this figure ; the reverence for worth and age ; the regard for delicate and ex- quisite courtesies ; for in these things is the es- sence of his desire for truth and beauty." " I daresay," interpolated Jason, " it was largely this ' motley figure,' as Psyche called it, 14 THE POETIC YEAR FOR 1916 that filled the poet's mind when he refers to the ' poisonous weeds of artifice,' in the ' Phi Beta Kappa Poem, Harvard, 1914?.' He has a particu- lar harangue against the state of aff'airs it would give me a delight to quote because it might well suit a melancholy mood. Listen," and Jason in his fine voice, not untouched with a little scorn, re- cited : " Defiling Nature at her sacred source; And there the questing World-soul could not stay, Onward must journey with the changing time, To come to this uncouth rebellious age. Where not an ancient creed nor courtesy Is underided, and each demagogue Cries some new nostrum for the cure of ills. To-day the unreasoning iconoclast Would scofF at science and abolish art, To let untutored impulse rule the world. Let learning perish, and the race returns To that first anarchy from which we came, When spirit moved upon the deep and laid The primal chaos under cosmic law." " But he does not leave the poem as a rebuke," Cassandra reminded Jason. " The poet has faith that sanity and balance will return; that the old verities will again possess the hearts of men. For does he not add, ' Have we not the key,' " Whose first fine luminous use Plotinus gave, Teaching that ecstasy must lead the man? Three things, we see, men in this life require, (As they are needed in the universe) ; MAGIC CASEMENTS 15 First of all spirit, energy, or love, The soul and mainspring of created things ; Next wisdom, knowledge, culture, discipline. To guide impetuous spirit to its goal ; And lastly strength, the sound apt instrument, Adjusted and controlled to lawful needs. The next world-teacher must be one whose word Shall reaffirm the primacy of soul, Hold scholarship in her high guiding place. And recognize the body's equal right To culture such as it has never known. In power and beauty serving soul and mind. ' April Airs,' comes to us with this teaching, whether in a poem with its didactic appeal as these Phi Beta Kappa lines, or in some wistful lyric of field and wood." " You are quite right. Psyche," I assented. " And in spite of his teaching the poet does not take us into the schoolroom of dry exhortations, but rather out into the open, where the lessons are from nature's own lips. He is bounteous with her beauties and delights, with her mysteries and magic of wind and flower, of roads and sky and stream ; for among these, he bade us in a verse a long while ago, to " Let loose the conquering toiler within thee ; Know the large rapture of deeds begun ! The joy of the hand that hews for beauty Is the dearest solace beneath the sun." a That would all be very well," commented Ja- son, " if the poet really showed more of ' the joy 16 THE POETIC YEAR FOR 1916 of the hand that hews for beauty,' than I have been able to discover in these later poems of Mr. Car- man's. Your true magician of casements, to my mind, is Miss Reese. You will wonder why I am of this opinion when Mr. de la Mare has a more elaborate recipe for spells. The reason, I can very easily state: Miss Reese is an unconscious transmitter, consequently simpler, and wholly un- der the influence of the angels. I do not deny that Mr. de la Mare very often experiences this same state of reliance upon pure imagination ; but quite often he takes a metaphysical interest in his sub- ject, stepping outside of his mood to watch the flow of substance into form." " And Miss Reese ^" " Does nothing of the kind," — Jason completed Cassandra's sentence to his own satisfaction. " She is always the heart of her song, a hidden force you never catch at work. She can tell you the secret better than I, and I am going to let her in this poem ' To a Town Poet ' : " Snatch the departing mood ; Make yours its emptying reed, and pipe us still Faith in the time, faith in our common blood, Faith in the least of good ; Song cannot fail if these its spirit fill ! " What if your heritage be The huddled trees along the smoky way ; At a streeet's end the stretch of lilac-sea ; The vendor, swart but free, Crying his yellow wares across the haze? MAGIC CASEMENTS 17 ' Your verse awaits vou there ; For Love is Love though Latin swords be rust ; The keen Greek driven from gossiping mall and square; And Care is still but Care Though Homer and his seven towns are dust. Thus Beauty lasts, and lo ! Now Proserpine is barred from Enna's hills, The flower she plucked yet makes an April show, Sets some town sill a-glow, And yours the Vision of the Daffodils. The Old-World folk knew not More surge-like soimds than urban winters bring Up from the wharves at dusk to every spot ; And no Sicilian plot More fire than heaps our tulips in the spring. Strait is the road of Song, And they that be the last are oft the first ; Fret not for fame; the years are kind though long; You, in the teasing throng, May take all time with one shrewd lyric burst. Be reverend and know 111 shall not last, or waste the ploughed land; Or creeds sting timid souls; and naught at all. Whatever else befall, Can keep us from the hollow of God's hand. Let trick of words be past; Strict with the thought, unfearful of the form, So shall you find the way and ^old it fast. The world hear, at the last, The horns of morning sound above the storm. 18 THE POETIC YEAR FOR 1916 ' Let trick of words be past,' " repeated Jason, — " that is what j^ou sometimes feel that Mr. de la Mare fails to do. It is part of the heritage which a group of contemporary English poets have re- ceived from old Dr. Donne." " For all that you say, Jason, Mr. de la Mare is a poet of magic," I insisted. " I fancy there will never come a time when I shall weary of quot- ing ' The Listeners ' : " ' Is there anybody there ? ' said the Traveller, Knocking on the moonlit door; And his horse in the silence champed the grasses Of the forest's ferny floor: And a bird flew up out of the turret, Above the Traveller's head: And he smote upon the door again a second time ; ' Is there anybody there ? ' he said. But no one descended to the Traveller; No head from the leaf fringed sill Leaned over and looked into his grey eyes. Where he stood perplexed and still. But only a host of phantom listeners That dwelt in the lone house then Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight To that voice from the world of men: Stood thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark stair, That goes down to the empty hall. Hearkening in an air stirred and shaken By the lonely Traveller's call. And he felt in his heart their strangeness, Their stillness answering his cry. MAGIC CASEMENTS 19 While his horse moved, cropping the dark turf, 'Neath the starred and leafy sky ; For he suddenly smote on the door, even Louder, and lifted his head: — ' Tell them I came, and no one answered ; That I kept my word,' he said. Never the least stir made the listeners. Though every word he spake Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house From the one man left awake: Ay, they heard his foot upon the stirrup, And the sound of iron on stone. And how the silence surged softly backward. When the plunging hoofs were gone. That is the very stuff of magic, not in any single line or word, but by the total conjuration of some- thing elemental, like an odor, a light, a feeling. Pierce the magic, if one dares, and I am willing to admit a bit of terror comes into view, haunting and overawing." " No wonder the listeners did not answer this Traveller," Jason satirically remarked ; " they were afraid to let him in to the ' shadowiness of the still house,' his house of childhood and youth ; such an accommodation by Time would prove too eeyrie an experience for any man. I still maintain that the metaphysics of John Donne produces some- thing else besides magic in our modern poet. The fact is, that Mr. de la Mare is a poet untroubled by time or circumstances. He is altogether too 20 THE POETIC YEAR FOR 1916 acquiescent with life, with nature, with his own dreams." " That isn't quite so," retorted Cassandra. " His acquiescence is only a trait, which permits him to listen for the secrets stealing shyly from the heart of the world. He knows what unhappy and futile powers sometimes go into their weav- ing." " It is his almost acute perception of the im- permanency of the world and its desires, that forces him to lure what loveliness he can out of the present impulse. Has he not inscribed it all in those beautiful lines ' An Epitaph ^? " Here lies a most beautiful lady, Light of step and heart was she ; I think she was the most beautiful lady That ever was in the West Country. But beauty vanishes ; beauty passes ; However rare — rare it be ; And when I crumble, who will remember This lady of the West Country? " Psyche, I noticed, had been silent, listening to our discussion. " Are you debating in 3'our mind which of us is right ? " I asked her. " Why, not exactly," she answered. " I was merely asking myself how it was that both of you seem to miss what is most infectious in Mr. de la Mare's poetry." " What is most infectious in Mr. de la Mare's poetry.'' " asked Jason. " His humor, of course," she replied. " Here MAGIC CASEMENTS 21 is proof in one of the ' Three Queer Tales,' called ' Off the Ground ' from ' Peacock Pie ' : " Three jolly Farmers Once bet a pound Each dance the others would OfF the ground. Out of their coats They slipped right soon. And neat and nicesome. Put each his shoon. One — Two — Three ! And away they go, Not too fast, And not too slow ; Out from the elm-tree's Noonday shadow, Into the sun And across the meadow. Past the schoolroom, With knees well bent Fingers a-flicking, They dancing went. Up sides and over, And round and round, They crossed click-clacking, The Parish bound, By Tupman's meadow They did their mile, Tee-to-tum On a three-barred stile. Then straight through Whipham, Downhill to Week, Footing it lightsome, But not too quick. 22 THE POETIC YEAR FOR 1916 Up fields to Watchet, And on through Wye, Till seven fine churches They'd seen skip by — Seven fine churches, And five old mills, Farms in the valley. And sheep on the hills; Old Man's Acre And Dead Man's Pool All left behind, As they danced through Wool. And Wool gone by. Like tops that seem To spin in sleep They danced in dream: Withy — Wellover — Wassop — Wo — Like an old clock Their heels did go. A league and a league And a league they went. And not one weary, And not one spent. And lo, and behold ! Past Willow-cum-Leigh Stretched with its waters The great green sea. Says Farmer Bates, ' I pufFs and I blows, What's under the water. Why, no man knows ! ' Says Farmer Giles, ' My wind comes weak, And a good man drownded MAGIC CASEMENTS 23 Is far to seek.' But Farmer Turvey, On twirling toes Ups with his gaiters. And in he goes : Down where the mermaids Pluck and play On their twanging harps In a sea-green day ; Down where the mermaids. Finned and fair. Sleek with their combs Their yellow hair. . . . Bates and Giles — On the shingle sat. Gazing at Turvey's Floating hat. But never a ripple Nor bubble told Where he was supping Off plates of gold. Never an echo Rilled through the sea Of the feasting and dancing And minstrelsy. They called — called — called: Came no reply: Nought but the ripples' Sandy sigh. Then glum and silent They sat instead, Vacantly brooding On home and bed. Till both together Stood up and said: U THE POETIC YEAR FOR 1916 ' Us knows not, dreams not. Where you be, Turvey, unless In the deep blue sea ; But axcusing silver — And it comes most willing — Here's us two paying Our forty shilling; For it's sartin sure, Turvey, Safe and sound. You danced us square, Turvey, OfF the ground!'" We could not help but admit that Psyche had called our attention to a distinctive gift in Mr. de la Mare's poetry, though Jason merely to be perverse, I think, would not agree that it was more infectious than his other qualities. " I'll like to see you ' axcusing silver,' " Psyche mocked Jason, as we prepared to return to The Farm. " Well, it would be an adventure to have had Turvey's experience," laughed Jason, " with the shillings and the mermaids in the bargain." II THE RESEARCH ARTIFICE " Our verse this week," began Psyche, as she comfortably seated herself on a fallen log with that swaying grace which is one of her attractive pos- sessions, " is full of fine essences." "All good poetry is chiefly essence, isn't it?" queried Jason. " Yes ; but you can't always qualify it," I sug- gested. " And that is why criticism so often falls back upon generalities in explaining its mood and substance." " But the four volumes we selected for discus- sion this week," Psyche went on, " have each a special kind of poetic essence, though I don't think they all have the same agreeable taste." " For instance," I prompted. " Before Psyche gives her theory — or is it a theory.? " Jason remarked " — of our four poets, I would like to ask, if so real a thing as poetry cannot be better characterized as a substance.'' I don't know, I merely ask," " Let's have Psyche's view first," I proposed. " They are simply impressions," Psj^che in- formed me with a glance. " Well," she began, set- tling to the theme, " Mrs. Barker's ' Songs of a 25 26 THE POETIC YEAR FOR 1916 Vagrom Angel ' is the essence of a faith, which she has not wholly and fully proved. These songs, she declares in her Preface, were dictated to her in twenty-two hours of a March day. They came from, well — really from no particular state of existence, though angels, of course, have a particu- lar abode in our mortal fancy. The songs sing of the soul in relation to this life we live on earth ; and this suggests a quality of human spirit one likes to believe really exists in us. But I know of only one other modern poet, though I suppose I ought to count in Evelyn Underhill, — the In- dian mystic Tagore, who actually lives and believes in such an abstract reality. For us, then, these fifty songs are a compound of essences. Now, in another sense, Mr. Buck's ' Ephemera ' is also a volume of essences — the pagan efflorescence of a modern American whose soul is really, and only, alive in antiquity. He calls his pieces Greek prose poems ; they are an exquisite pattern of gems. The glow, the warmth, the color, have each a piquancy that bite into the emotions. I should call, too, Mr. Evans pagan ; through his volume ' Two Deaths in the Bronx,' he extracts his es- sence from modern life. His poetic solution w^ill not always filter clear, however, for he strains the turgid emotionalism of a futuristic temperament. Futurism, cubism, or whatever you choose to call this ultra-modern aesthetic note, is nothing more to my mind than paganism reaching passionately back toward primitive chaos. INIr. Evans is primi- tive, or should I say primal? of the jungle and the THE RESEARCH ARTIFICE 2T cave in the manner of communication, though his substance is modern to the extreme. Strangely enough, too," Psyche affirmed with a gesture, " Mr. Wright's ' One Way of Love,' is a volume of es- sences, fevers distilled, if you like, the strange mixture of the sensuous and ecclesiastical. His sensuous love-songs are ritualistic ; his poems in which the influence of ecclesiasticism is evident, are physically emotional. In these he has fallen in love with the angel and is deaf to the message which the angel brings from heaven. Now, all these poets," Psyche summed up, " are not in touch with life as an actuality ; as a simple, every day affair which men live, and wear as they do their clothes or their sorrows, but merely reflect it through the ground glass of dreams. We see on this side of the glass shadowy forms, and emo- tionally, shadows are always essences." " We might expect Psyche," assented Jason, turning to me, " to seek the intangible in the form, but I do believe that she is right. You recall the twenty-first song in which Mrs. Barker's angel whispered its love of an invisible soul, out of a London sky on a certain day in the particular month of March." " If we all could have an angel, like Mrs. Barker," I observed ; " but I am afraid I am one of those skeptics she mentions in her preface, and rather credit her own splendid talents for the ac- complishment of those twenty-two London hours." " I think," said Cassandra, " that Jason did not refer to the appropriate poem from Mrs. Barker's 28 THE POETIC YEAR FOR 1916 book for the proper understanding of the mystery of this angelic dictation. Read the opening song and it may throw some light on her peculiar priv- ilege of developing this psychic intuition." " I didn't," retorted Jason, " because it is arro- gant to have your inspiration talk as reported in that poem, whether it is an angel or just yourself wishing to make a poem." " Your irreverence is out of place," I rebuked Jason. " You can possibly countenance no angels except of your own acquaintance. I wonder if you could find one as accommodating as Mrs. Barker's.?" " Oh, I prefer shepherds," Jason replied sar- castically. " When it comes to vagueness they beat angels hollow. Between the two in modern literature there really seems to be no choice for — well, let us say, reality. That is why I would match Mr. Buck's shepherds against Mrs. Bar- ker's angels any day. You have heard an angel speak, in divine — no, rather psychic — accents ; now listen to a shepherd in any accent you please, but don't charge the timbre to a modera Phila- delphian : " When it is night, before the moon has risen and the skies are spattered thick with stars ; when, in the distance, all things blend into one and the sleeping earth touches the arched sky, I stand before my tiny hut and pray. " Below me on the hillside, their coats glowing softly in the starlight, lie my sheep. And from the THE RESEARCH ARTIFICE 29 trees, the brooks, the grasses, the incessant chorus of midsummer nights trills through the air. " Yet I know not to what or to whom I pray. Not to the sun or moon for they are nowhere to be seen; not to the gods for there is no temple nor even a statue here ; not to the stars for there are too many and some, neglected, would be jealous. " Perhaps it is to the sighing wind I pray; perhaps to the shadows and the rolling hills; perhaps to the night itself, itself which seems so peaceful, all-embrac- ing, mysteriously divine." Cassandra offered a suggestion about the mod- ern interpreter of Greek emotion that was worth attention in spite of its obviousness. " Your mod- ern singer of Greek themes," she said, " is likel}' to be a bit sensual. Scarcely any poet in English had, like Keats, the impersonality to escape it. It will always remain a mystery how the London cockney, as one of his early critics called him, be- came so authentic a Greek. I imagine Matthew Arnold, after ' The Strayed Reveller,' gave up the attempt in despair ; ' Empedocles on Etna,' was of Landorian mode rather than of true Greek sub- stance. Swinburne made of his intellectual Greek sympathies a sort of Renaissance confusion. But your modern poet without these sympathies, is sensual. Of course, he doesn't mean to be. He aims to be merely faithful to the Greek view of life, and that is to give a frank expression of experi- ence. If you wish to be convinced of the differ- ence, read the idyls of Theocritus, especially I would recommend the twenty-seventh idyl." 30 THE POETIC YEAR FOR 1916 " You should discriminate," broke in Jason, " between the bucolic poets and the broad field of Greek poets. Your argument might not prove so persuasive." " I see that you, for all your contact with life," Cassandra addressed Jason in reply, " cling to the fallacy that the city is more moral than the coun- try. I don't think the rural community of the first century differed much in this respect from the twentieth. So I maintain that this bucolic poet Theocritus, telling frankly the pastoral life of his day, presented it with a wholesomeness our poets miss when they copy the mood. In such poems as * Penumbra ' and ' Astarte,' Mr. Buck comes off very well, I'll admit, with his task." " Oh, that's a rather pale approval of Mr. Buck's talents," I charged Cassandra. " Surely no American poet has struck this particular note better than Mr. Buck has in * The Merchant.' Give it the honor of your attention : " These treasures I have gathered for many years. And if thou wilt . . . Here are mirrors of bronze; and here a silver bracelet, heavy with sards from Lydia. It is enchanted, caressing the arm of her that wears it, if only she be fair . . . Thou seest ! " Here are perfumes and rare essences in alabaster vials from Corinth and the isle of Crete. And here, perfumes no less immortal in brown clay vases from Etruria. " This rose powder from the amorous blooms of Mitylene will make thy nails lustrous as nacre. And THE RESEARCH ARTIFICE 31 here is purest kohl to shadow the flaming languor of thine eyes. " These glowing silks have come from many lands. This is thy color . . . O Isis ! How beautiful! . . . The price? Nay, take it, and the bracelet also. They would desolate, away from thee. And as my only payment, I pray thee wear them once, passing my door." " I'll not deny you the comfort of your opinion of Mr. Buck's poem," Jason exclaimed with an excessive gesture of politeness ; it was a way he sometimes had of dismissing a subject about which he was not in entire agreement with the speaker, and desired to introduce a fresh one. We really can't leave Mr. Evans," he added, " without an auditory acquaintance with his art, and I propose to give you that pleasure by reading the first poem in ' For the Haunting of Mauna,' which is about the ' Body of the Queen.' You will observe that it is made out of such — well, Shakespeare would have said dreams — stuff as headaches are made out of, and that's no reflection upon the appetite of desire, I can most humbly assure you. The thing haunts me like a visitation I had, or believed I had, when a child, on Christmas eve of an ass's head crowned with flowers in a nimbus of light, projected over my bed in. the dark. Here is the poem: " Suave body of the Queen, she gave me you. Misting in still, warm rains of tenderness — But kept herself, and we are each betrayed. You are her mistress, and she makes of me 32 THE POETIC YEAR FOR 1916 Another mistress ! Playthings are we both, When we thought she meant us for full sovereignty ; It was not regal, and her throne is stained. She bade you seek me, and your singing feet Ran quickly, surely ; you held out your hands. You had no fear because you felt my heart Leap as you laid your white breast under it. We had no prides to conquer as we kissed. For we knew kinship in our overthrow. Yet now she stands apart and questions us. How can she question — leave me out of it — But you, her body, her sweet source of joy, — How can she then divide herself from you. And calmly reckon what the gain may be? The hour will come when she will tire of us. And all your softness will be broken up, Your rioting lips chilled with an ashen wind. There is a hint of vileness in the air. And on the strings a dance of ironies. With love's scarecrow jigging wearily. . . . So still I have you — so I am not afraid ! " " Well," commented Cassandra, when Jason finished, " the exotic mood seems to have taken hold of the poet's conception. But I suppose, whether of the spirit or the flesh, the exotic may be, ac- cording to Psyche's opinion, merely an essence." Ill THE SACERDOTAL WONDER OF LIFE We lingered in the house waiting for the clouds to break, but they hung on with a persistency that threatened our ardor. I had brought a friend, a poet from the West, up to the Farm, and I partic- ularly wanted him to see our woods ; nor did I want my friends to miss the reading he promised, under the leafy boughs, of the delicate, suggestive hokku poems he had written. Psyche was for dashing out, with no mind for the weather, and her en- thusiasm prevailed upon us to start. She knew a canopied grove, she said, near the edge of a deep brook, and even if the rain came down heavily, the boughs would protect us there. It was not far from the place we were accustomed to meet. So with wraps and umbrellas, we went out to defy a showery June sky. In David's leather case, we put our books ; besides his manuscript and our weekly group of poets, I took along Robinson's poems which I was to read for David O'Neil's pleasure late in the afternoon. The rain held off during our walk to the grove. Psyche's brook ran through a deep ravine; it was a still and sombre place, far away from the high road that ran to Derry. The woodland floor 33 34 THE POETIC YEAR FOR 1916 there, was carpeted thick with pine needles and moss. We found a comfortable and sheltered spot, under a huge pine standing so close to its fellows that its lower branches made a perfect ceiling. Here we spread raincoats and sweaters, and seated ourselves, undisturbed by the rain which began to patter lightly above our heads. " Psyche on the last occasion of our visit to the woods," I began, " gave us a little explanation of essence in poetry. I suppose everything has an essence, everything that is of the spirit and beauti- ful. But the particular significance of her re- marks, was in showing how four poets such as Elsa Barker, Mitchell Buck, Cuthbert Wright, and Donald Evans, could extract it from the same source of temperament, and yet present such a totally different sense of experience. Jason, here, preferred to regard this mystery as a substance ; something too vital to be an abstraction. And Cassandra, questioning the term, came up at the end with a rather flat assumption that the moods of all these poets were exotic." " Oh, I protest that interpretation," Cassandra put in. " Essences are rare, and I only meant, that where life is so solid as it is with us to-day, any attempt to get so far away from it as those poets do, is to express the strange and unfamiliar. Whether it is the embodiment of angels through the psychic experience of a woman's soul, as in Mrs. Barker's songs; or fauns and shepherds of ancient Greece taking shape in Mr. Buck's SACERDOTAL WONDER OF LIFE 35 imagination, as in his pastels, the impulse, I in- sist, is exotic." " Wasn't life just as solid for the Sicilian shep- herd two thousand years ago — more solid, I imagine, than we can guess, when there came to his passionate mind echoes of the Palestine trag- edy, tumbling his gods in confusion from their al- tars, and setting up this new god, a man like him- self, only pale where he was rosy of countenance, and with no humor in his nature — wasn't life just as solid then," repeated Jason, " as it is with us now? And may it not be just as solid for the angels, even though they live on light, music and prayers, as some of us do who have bad digestions — in the abodes where they are? Well, then, why shouldn't these poets treat distance and time as of no consequence in searching for their own particular kind of beauty and meaning of truth? " " There is something in what Jason says," I ap- proved, " Something! in what I say ! " Jason threw at me, in a tone of contempt. " Well, you don't seem to have found it, if that is all you can say," he added. I laughed heartily at the pain Jason pretended to suffer from my obtuse remark. " Here, Ja- son," I said, " is my tender of conciliation, this sonnet of Masefield," and I read: " Go, spend your penny. Beauty, when you will. In the grave's darkness let the stamp be lost. The water still will bubble from the hill, And April quick the meadows with her ghost; 36 THE POETIC YEAR FOR 1916 Over the grass the daffodils will shiver, The primroses with their pale beauty abound, The blackbird be a lover and make quiver With his glad singing the great soul of the ground; So that if the body rot, it will not matter ; Up in the earth the great game will go on. The coming of Spring and the running of the water. And the young things glad of the womb's darkness gone; And the j oy we felt will be a part of the glory In the lover's kiss that makes the old couple's story. You will discover, expressed in this sonnet, how I feel about what you said, Jason. ' Go, spend your penny, Beauty, when you will,' it is the ' lov- er's kiss ' of humanity, and chronicles the ' old couple's story,' age after age. It is the sacerdotal wonder of life which poets feel, and it need not be just the particular period of life into which the poet is born. More certainly than other men poets are conscious of pre-existence, in other worlds, and in this too, and into their poems they bring often the temper of another age. Your ' belated Elizabethan,' is an example." " Your theory is all nonsense," Jason scoffed. " But I do appreciate your discernment of Mase- field's genius. I say ' genius ' advisedly, for what- ever was claimed for his earlier narratives, sea- ballads and poems, they never gave him the right to wear that term as these sonnets do. . . ." " Yet some profess to see a decline of his powers in the sonnets," I observed, " from the vigorous and picturesque realism of the narratives. The SACERDOTAL WONDER OF LIFE 37 reverence for life, the quest for beauty, in them is the finest expression of this poet's life." " My testimony to that assertion," said Psyche, " is this one with its mystic illumination," and she read: " Flesh, I have knocked at many a dusty door. Gone down full many a windy midnight lane, Probed in old walls and felt along the floor, Pressed in blind hope the lighted window-pane. But useless all, though sometimes, when the moon Was full in heaven and the sea was full. Along my body's alleys came a tune Played in the tavern by the Beautiful. Then for an instant I have felt at point To find and seize her, whosoe'er she be. Whether some saint whose glory does anoint Those whom she loves, or but a part of me. Or something that the things not understood Make for their uses out of flesh and blood." " I come back," declared Jason, " to Psyche's theory of essences. The ' mystic illumination,' of the sonnet — it is her phrase — is a kind of es- sence, too. The mood is a little too abstract, however, to give it a name. Nevertheless, whether we agree or disagree about this intangible quality in poetry, there's precious little of it come to the surface in the poetry of Mr. O'Conor, or ]Mrs. Aldis." " Don't you include," asked Psyche, " Mr. O'Conor's play, ' The Fairy Bride,' in this ele- mental class of verse.'' There are ideals and fairies and disembodiments in it ; and, having these, like \ 2L. OSA- 38 THE POETIC YEAR FOR 1916 all things of the Celtic imagination, aren't they the essences of dreams ? " " One would almost accept your point of view," replied Jason, " when one reads this dialogue from ' The Fairy Bride,' in which Dermot the prince says to Ethne, the fairy princess, as he leaves her, being healed, to go back to Dun Faithoi and the inheritance of his father's kingdom : ' Time has been short indeed ; but I have gained strength of body and soul. Both thou gavest me : the one with thy potions and thy healing hands, the other thy love; and I would go, as every man must wish to go, and show the strength of this, thy love, to all the world.' And Ethne replies : " * That which it may not understand, why show The world, when here we know the worth of love.'' ' And when you consider the wicked queen, Buan, in league with evil powers and dark spells, which she uses against the loyalty of the druids and nobles, in behalf of her son Connla whom she is ambitious to have succeed Fergus on the throne, I almost grant that Mr. O'Conor, too, belongs to Psyche's poetry of abstraction. Only I think his sym- bolism has a body to it, though it may be of vague substance." " The very unreality of the play," Psyche claimed, " is the most real part of it. And strange as it may seem, the fairy bride is the most living character in the play. Fergus and his queen, Buan, are vivid — well, if one may say so, like shadows on a bright surface. Of course, in com- SACERDOTAL WONDER OF LIFE 39 mon with all fairy tales, the play has its moral, but it is not a pendant as it should be, owing, I suppose, to the American influence upon the poet's Celtic spirit. Take the scene, at the end, when Buan having failed, and in humiliation and anger is led away by the nobles, and the happy plighting of Dermot and Ethne follows, doesn't the poet voice a wisdom which is the most elusive in the world? " Ethne. Now, justice done, I will complete my story. On the happy meadows was Prince Dermot healed, And there I won his love ; yet could not win His promise to remain with me forever. The mortal call of duty sounded still Upon his ears; he had not learned that Love Is all, and Love and Duty one in Fairyland. " King. Well has thou proved thy father's trust, O Dermot ! " Ethne. Then, since he would return, my bugle horn I gave him; bade him in his direst need Blow thrice thereon. Straightway would I appear. My father granted then his suit : consent To come again to Fairyland and wed With me; yet charged him he should touch no wine Before the sun was set upon the day That saw him in thine hall once more ; to tell No mortal of his healing, under pain Of coming nevermore to Fairyland. 40 THE POETIC YEAR FOR 1916 " Dermot. But I have tasted wine, and so am doomed. " Ethne. Peace to thy fears, Beloved; for the King, My father, in his wisdom judged not thus. The spirit of thy promise thou hast kept, Broken the letter only. I am come, A mortal woman, here to wed with thee, Bearing my father's blessing. Fairy nature Is mine no more. Because thou hast touch'd wine, Never mayest thou return to Fairyland; But I will stay henceforward in the world. And by our love shall we be made immortal ! "Dermot [Embracing Ethne]. By such love am I made immortal now! We shall reign together through the years; and, at the end, pass in the fullness of our time to the meadows we once have known; there live and love forever. " King. O Ethne, a hundred thousand thanks were not enough for all that thou hast done! I am forever grateful to the Fairies, the unseen spirits who live to favor mortal men. I welcome thee and Dermot, giving him my throne, and to ye both my blessing. O nobles, choose now whom ye will have to reign! " Nobles: [with one voice]. We choose Prince Der- mot ! " " The moral influence cannot any more be said to be a stigmata on American art," Cassandra broke in on the heels of Psyche's reading. " Mrs. SACERDOTAL WONDER OF LIFE 41 Aldis's ' Flashlights,' is a very fine book in every way, and proves that life and art may become ac- quainted on equal terms without an ethical or moral introduction. This poet presents life nak- edly, takes no sides with this or that condition, holds no brief for this or that purpose ; expressing only the pity and glor^- of it. She gives one, too, a sense of securit}^ in the free forms that are used, a conviction one does not feel regarding many of the ' new ' poets." " Well, I see a very strong moral influence in Mrs. Aldis's poem ' The Barber Shop,' " Jason wished to correct Cassandra. " I daresay Mrs. Aldis had no notion of exerting any such influence. What she desired to show, I suppose, was that such a girl as that manicurist was simply human, and clean about it, a fact the stupid old world of pious people won't accept. But it isn't in that direction the poem drives home most sharply ; it is in the test of the man. A man needn't have a grandfather and four uncles ' elders in the Sixth Presbyterian Church,' to make him behave decently. I ad- mire that chap for acknowledging his weakness by running away from temptation, but I despise the weakness in human nature that must regard such a frank and honest confession as a temptation. Let me read these appealing lines : " I spend my life in a warren of worried men. In and out and to and fro And up and down in electric elevators That rush about and speak each other. Hurrying on to finish the deal.