H E/1VE 
 
 LC7 U ! 5 ZJNTEKM E.YE K 
 

 
HEAVENS 
 
HEAVENS 
 
 By 
 
 LOUIS 
 UNTERMEYER 
 
 Author of " The New Adam," "Including Horace," 
 "Challenge," etc. 
 
 WITH A COVER DESIGN AND FRONTISPIECE 
 BY C. BERTRAM HARTMAN 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY 
 HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY, INC. 
 
 PRINTED IN THC U. S. A. BY 
 
 THE QUINN A BODEN COMPANY 
 
 RAHWAY. N. J. 
 
Putting up his blunted lance and deserting, for all time, 
 
 the ensanguined lists of Parody, the author dedicates these 
 
 feints and skirmishes in that field to 
 
 JAMES BRANCH CABELL 
 
 HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN 
 
 CARL SANDBURG 
 
 AMY LOWELL 
 
 ET AL. 
 
 With the comforting assurance that to the victims belong 
 the spoils. 
 
The first part of Heavens, with the exception of the chap 
 ter, "The Heaven of Lost Memoirs," which has never 
 appeared in print, was published originally in Broom. For 
 permission to reprint it in this amended form, my thanks 
 are herewith presented to Messrs. Alfred Kreymborg and 
 Harold A. Loeb. 
 
 The five previews and other parodies first basked in the 
 glare of publicity in The New Republic, Broom, Vanity Fair 
 and The Literary Review. The author bows his acknowl 
 edgments to the editors of these publications. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 HEAVENS PAGE 
 
 The Prolog ......... 3 
 
 THE HEAVEN OF QUEER STARS ..... 7 
 
 First Intermission . . - i? 
 
 THE HEAVEN OF THE TIME-MACHINE . . . 19 
 
 Second Intermission . . . . . . 29 
 
 THE HEAVEN OF LOST MEMOIRS . . . . 3 1 
 
 Third Intermission ... . . . 45 
 
 THE HEAVEN ABOVE STORYSENDE ... . . 49 
 
 Fourth Intermission . . . . . 61 
 
 THE HEAVEN OF MEAN STREETS .... 63 
 
 FIVE PREVIEWS 
 
 A Note on Previewing . ~ , .. . . . 85 
 
 WOODROVIAN POETRY . . . . . . 87 
 
 THE MANUFACTURE OF VERSE . . . . . 97 
 
 THE LOWEST FORM OF WIT , . . . . 107 
 
 VERSED AID TO THE INJURED . . . . . 113 
 
 RHYME AND RELATIVITY . * . , . . 121 
 Edw-n Arlin-ton Robins-n ... . .125 
 
 C-rl Sandb-rg . . . . . . . . 126 
 
Contents 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Rob-rt Fr-st . .. .128 
 
 Vach-1 Lin-say . . . . .... 129 
 
 Edw-n Markh-m . . . .... 132 
 
 Edg-r L-e Mast-rs . . . . . . . 133 
 
 Ed-a St. Vinc-nt Mill-y . ... . . . 135 
 
 Amy Low-11 . . ... . . 136 
 
 "H. D." . . . . . . . . - , 139 
 
 Conr-d Aik-n . . .- ..... x . 141 
 
 Maxw-11 Bod-nheim ... . . < 142 
 
 Alfr-d Kr-ymborg . ... . v . . 143 
 
 Ezr- Po-nd . . . * . . . . . 145 
 
 T. S. Eli-t . . . . . . . , . 147 
 
 S-ra Teasd-le . . ^ . - . 148 
 
 Lou-s Unterm-yer . . . . . . ,. 149 
 
 Rob-rt W. Serv-ce . ..... .. 150 
 
 INDEX OF VICTIMS 153 
 
HEAVENS 
 
The Prolog 
 
 "So this," I exclaimed with a ghostly facetiousness, 
 "is Heaven!" 
 
 It was a vague, sprawling region with no definition 
 of any sort. The place was soundless, lifeless, mo 
 tionless, save for the continual rising and falling of 
 gauzy curtains of clouds. Except for a pale, gray 
 light, wanly diffused, there was not a trace of color. 
 
 "No," said my guide, "you are now in The Limbo 
 of Infinity, a vast stretch that some of our younger 
 members have rechristened The Neutral Zone. It is 
 a kind of ante-chamber in which the guest is left to 
 decide where he will go." 
 
 "But I have decided," I replied, with anxious haste, 
 "I want to go to Heaven." 
 
 "Which one?" he asked. 
 
 "Which one? Why er are there more than one?" 
 I gasped. 
 
 "There are," he replied, "if the last census can be 
 relied upon, exactly nine hundred and seventy-six of 
 them, not including the three score or so of Secession 
 ist, Extremist, Intimate, Neighborhood, Revolutionary, 
 Village and Little Heavens that have clustered around 
 
 3 
 
4 Heavens 
 
 the main structures. The principal divisions date back 
 to antiquity; the Movement for Separate Incorpora 
 tion came in 1935 and was caused, first of all, by the 
 astonishing series of reports by the Committee on Con 
 gested Districts. As every one is aware, even the In 
 finite Void became crowded after the conversion of the 
 Martians and Lunarians to your remarkable earthly 
 standards." 
 
 I gulped, "But must I choose? All I want is a com 
 fortable cloud, a small harp and a neat, not too close- 
 fitting halo." 
 
 "I am sorry, but that is the rule," he assured me. 
 "Besides, the accessories you mention have been dis 
 continued. The Hygienic and Sanitary Cordon has 
 prohibited the use of halos; the Cumulus Division of 
 the Efficiency Board has taken over the control of 
 clouds which were condemned as a menace to the Pub 
 lic Highways, and the Musicians Union, Ethereal 
 Local, number X3, has passed a by-law limiting the 
 use of harps to holders of uncancelled cards." 
 
 "But" 
 
 "On the other hand," he continued, "you should have 
 no difficulty in selecting an appropriate sphere. What 
 were you before you came here?" 
 
 "A crit a book-reviewer," I blushed. 
 
 "Ah," he beamed, "a lover of literature!" 
 
 "A book-reviewer," I insisted. 
 
The Prolog 5 
 
 "Well," he went on, unheeding, "your place is obvi 
 ously in a branch of the Literary Heavens just which 
 one I cannot say. Have you any favorite god?" 
 
 "None in particular. That is, not now. I used to 
 worship my lost preferences and prejudices." 
 
 "You will regain them," he chuckled. " Gone but 
 not forgotten is true of characteristics that are not 
 mentioned on tomb-stones. One of the delightful sur 
 prises awaiting the dear departed is to see his most 
 cherished convictions in cap-and-bells attending the 
 coronation of his pet aversion. But I digress." 
 
 "Don t apologize," I hastened to add. "Digression 
 is an art, not an accident. You were saying " 
 
 "I was saying that a corner in one of the Literary 
 Realms should suit you admirably. Which would you 
 prefer the H. G. Wells Heaven, the Vers Libre 
 Heaven, the George Moore Heaven, the G. K. Chester 
 ton Heaven, the Robert W. Chambers Heaven, the 
 Freudian Heaven, the " 
 
 "Heavens!" I exclaimed, not irreverently. "I could 
 never decide offhand. Would it not be possible for me 
 to try them first? Not all of them, of course just 
 three or four of the more popular ones or possibly 
 a meagre half-dozen?" 
 
 "I don t know," he said dubiously. "It isn t done 
 and it s not quite regular. Still, there s no particular 
 law against it. On the other hand " 
 
6 Heavens 
 
 "Be human," I urged the angelic creature. "A day 
 in each would do a few hours even a glimpse." 
 
 "Well," he temporized, "the windows are tall but 
 not so high. If you could get a foothold on the sills, 
 you could see and hear. They found it futile to shut 
 the windows or draw the shades after the subconscious 
 was discovered. You must be prepared for anything, 
 I warn you. If you still have the curiosity and cour 
 age, I will lead you. Come." 
 
 I followed. 
 
THE HEAVEN OF QUEER STARS 
 
 THE darkness was slashed with two intersecting bars 
 of silver that split the sky. They lay on the monstrous 
 clouds like two swords still shining with the faith of 
 those who had swung them. They made, according 
 to the view of the beholder, the pattern of some stu 
 pendous hieroglyphic which man must either decipher 
 or die, or the still simpler pattern which men have 
 died to decipher, the pattern of a cross. Although the 
 design did not change, the play of light was constantly 
 shifting; the two blades of brilliance flashed, burned 
 and coruscated with colors that were as glittering and 
 strange as a futurist poem or sunrise in the wrong quar 
 ter of the sky. It was a wild and spectacular radi 
 ance, so dazzling that the sparkle of the stars was 
 wasted and every sun that flamed seemed a prodigal 
 sun. One could perceive nothing else. One was, how 
 ever, aware of a vast undercurrent of gaiety, a bright 
 violence, that swept through space with the magnifi 
 cent gusto of a March wind. It was as though some 
 gigantic virtuoso were improvising vast runs and ter 
 rific chords of mirth on an elemental orchestra of light, 
 wood, winds and water. It rocked with a benign and 
 
8 Heavens 
 
 boisterous vigor; an upheaval that was fervently hu 
 morous and furiously holy. 
 
 ( 7 can t make head or tail of this. It s all so bril 
 liantly confusing" I complained to my guide. "My 
 head is spinning upside down." 
 
 "That s the effect the Chesterton Heaven has on 
 every one at first" he assured me. "Wait a few mo 
 ments; the dazzle will wear off and you ll notice many 
 things as familiar as they are astonishing. See the 
 air is beginning to clear") 
 
 A more diffused but no less vivid light spread itself 
 over the sky. It picked out curious corners and 
 kindled them till they shone like candled niches; it 
 burned the gray fields of space till they roared like a 
 battlefield; it tipped the crests of sleeping clouds till 
 they woke and shook their gilded plumes, like knights 
 roused by the clashing of steel. The accolade of sun 
 light fell impartially on endless spires, titanic peaks, 
 sacred pinnacles and a few thousand spirits who had 
 nothing in common but their uncommon size. There 
 was not one figure in the crowds that was not six feet 
 high and at least four feet wide. They were gargan 
 tuan, globular, glorious. And, what is more, they were 
 galumphing. They were, it became increasingly evi 
 dent, the source and center of the mad gaiety that im- 
 
The Heaven of Queer Stars 9 
 
 pelled their universe. Every one seemed bent on per 
 forming some athleticism more acrobatic than his fel 
 low. Some were skipping on and off incredibly high 
 walls, some were savagely demolishing figures of straw, 
 some were sliding down two-mile banisters, some 
 springing up fan-like and fantastic trees, while others 
 were continually erecting ridiculous obstacles over 
 which they would immediately bound like joyful and 
 gigantic footballs. Still others, dressed like mystical 
 Punchinellos, were playing leap-frog among the 
 stars. 
 
 In this excited universe there were only two figures 
 that remained without motion. These two, as though 
 carved in Gothic stone, were seated on a low emi 
 nence the very position of which was as contradictory 
 as the two who occupied it. One of this queer couple 
 was a round, red-faced, blinking individual who might 
 have been either a butcher or a priest. The other had 
 the indubitable figure of a Greek poet and the face of 
 a dubious Greek god; his features were almost perr 
 feet except for a particularly long and peculiarly cleft 
 chin. There was nothing angelic about him and yet 
 he bore the unmistakable traces of one who had once 
 been one of God s chief angels. 
 
 "You are wrong again," he was saying. "There is 
 no divinity in peace. There can be no such thing as 
 a divine content. Discontent is the power that drives 
 
io Heavens 
 
 the worlds. The angry waters send storming regi 
 ments upon the earth and new life appears. The 
 placid waters collect scum on a stagnant lake and 
 spread death on everything they touch. Men do not 
 know where their deliverance lies nor who is their true 
 deliverer. They grope " 
 
 "Sometimes they hold things beyond their grasp," 
 mildly interpolated the rubicund one. 
 
 "They grope," continued his companion, "in a dark 
 ness that is no less dark for being electric; a darkness 
 compared to which the so-called Dark Ages were, if I 
 may be permitted the metaphor, a succession of brief 
 but blinding shooting-stars. Wild deeds and wilder 
 thoughts may have reddened many a sanguine day; 
 but if the years shone like short-lived and sinister 
 suns, at least they shone." 
 
 "If you will pardon a " 
 
 "The blacksmith," he went on, unheeding, "in those 
 days had a position as dignified as the songsmith; the 
 armor he fashioned protected men by covering their 
 bodies. To-day the same iron destroys them since it 
 has entered their souls. Hospitality was once some 
 thing more than a weak invitation for a week-end. One 
 could be sure of cakes and ale at every door-step and 
 every house was a public-house. People as well as 
 periods have changed. They have turned with a dis 
 heartening docility, from the time-spirit to The Times." 
 
The Heaven of Queer Stars II 
 
 "If you will pardon me, they have done nothing so 
 radical, 7 objected the simpler person, "they have 
 merely substituted the middle classes for the Middle 
 Ages." 
 
 "They have done something far worse. They have 
 learned to worship only the middles; either extreme is 
 too much for them. And so they have become the 
 creatures of their own creation. It used to be con 
 sidered cheap, for instance, to own slaves. They have 
 advanced economically; they find it cheaper to be 
 slaves. ... In nothing is their slavery so apparent as 
 in the fetters they place upon themselves. No longer 
 do they cry out These bonds are unworthy of us. 
 They ask, in an excess of humility, Are we worthy of 
 our chains? No matter how they are held up they 
 refuse to be cast down. If any of them bear a cross, 
 they insist that they are carrying on a new kind of 
 physical culture. 
 
 "And thus, a lethargic content, a monstrous satis 
 faction has begun to sap their blood. It has crept, 
 like some unnameable horror, into their minds; it lays 
 its bloated hands upon the gyrations of the sun and 
 twines its clammy fingers around the unconscious cen 
 turies. Dissatisfaction is their only remedy, their most 
 potent saviour. Revolt is the heritage of a bountiful 
 energy; it is only the lack of it which is revolting. I 
 am glad to feel that the iconoclastic impulse is grow- 
 
12 Heavens 
 
 ing stronger. I am happy when I observe that every 
 dawn is a novel and more startling experiment of that 
 discontented spirit which we call Nature. It cheers 
 me to know that every time the earth revolves upon 
 its axis we have actually accomplished, with a quiet 
 but terrible insurgence, a daily revolution." 
 
 "You are such an eloquent talker/ said the other, a 
 bit wistfully, a that I am sure you are wrong. The 
 surprising beauty about the stars and these heavens 
 is not the fact that they are novel but that they are, 
 what is even more surprising, very old. A novel thing 
 is the least enduring thing in the world even to the 
 novelist. It is only something that is quite common or 
 really old, like country wine or the belief in immor 
 tality, that is forever freshening and new. It is only 
 the bright sins and black virtues celebrated by minor 
 poets that deny the miracles of existence." 
 
 "And I deny them also," rejoined the saturnine being 
 whose chin had somehow elongated into a pointed tuft 
 of beard, "the best thing about miracles is that they 
 cannot possibly happen." 
 
 "The best and strangest thing about miracles," 
 quietly replied the combination that was part Santa 
 Claus and part Father Brown, "is that they are al 
 ways happening. A decadent playwright actually does 
 lead an army that conquers a city. Steel leaps through 
 the water and floats in the air. A man in London 
 
The Heaven of Queer Stars 13 
 
 talks to a woman in Chicago without raising his voice. 
 A fanatic in a corner of Europe precipitates a world- 
 war with a bomb, and a college president on the other 
 side of the ocean stops it with a phrase. You see, the 
 whole trouble with ordinary living is that it is such an 
 extraordinary and wild succession of impossibilities; a 
 kaleidoscope of staggering surprises so continuous that, 
 in the vulgar but vivid idiom of the American, Dr. 
 Harvey W. Fletcher, life is just one darn miracle after 
 another. Look!" 
 
 It was an exclamation so sharp that the voice was 
 curiously flat. A concourse of stars had gathered while 
 the two had been debating and were scattering largesses 
 of light. During the last sentences the spheres had 
 grown larger and more animated; their half-discernible 
 faces shone with a brilliance that was better than good 
 news told by a pessimist. They clustered about a 
 radiant giant who held up his hand like a quivering 
 baton. As it descended, he began to beat the time for 
 a lunging measure and tremendous voices swept the 
 sky. 
 
 "The stars are singing!" cried the defender of mira 
 cles, "the morning stars led by St. Rabelais!" 
 
 "And what are they singing?" mocked the diabolic 
 debater, "The Paradoxology?" 
 
 "Listen!" commanded the other. 
 
 And this, to a tune where planets set the tempo, 
 
14 Heavens 
 
 where moons were quarter tones and in which comets 
 were grace-notes, were the words of the song: 
 
 The lanes that run through the Sussex downs 
 
 Are spiced with a savory salt, 
 And the crooked streets of Wessex towns 
 
 Are fruity with hops and malt; 
 They ve kegs of ale and rum for sale 
 
 In fields where the Ule slips by ; 
 And the roads that run through barleycorn 
 
 Will lead you straight to Rye. 
 
 The path dividing Kensal Green 
 
 Is sharp as a Christian sword; 
 It cuts through poisonous alleys clean 
 
 To the heart of the dark East ward. 
 Its lamps are stars where the scimitars 
 
 And the moons of the Orient toss, 
 And you turn from the Golden Crescent 
 
 To come to St. George s Cross. 
 
 The ocean s path is a rolling track 
 
 Where the shark can enjoy his feast; 
 The jungle s maze is cruel and black 
 
 With gods more brute than a beast. 
 But England lies where the holy skies 
 
 Are warmer than wine or home 
 And the roads that run to the ends of the earth 
 
 Will lead you safe to Rome. 
 
 "A very pretty catch," sneered the spirit of nega 
 tion, "very romantic and very ridiculous." 
 
The Heaven of Queer Stars 15 
 
 "Perhaps," answered his opponent, more mildly than 
 ever, "and yet the quality of ridicule is greater than 
 you may imagine. Birth is a sublime adventure in 
 the ridiculous. And what is death but a heroic re 
 turn; a transposition, I might say, from the ridiculous 
 to the sublime! It is only the fool that fears being 
 thought foolish for trumpeting trivialities. Trifles, 
 after all, are tremendous simply because they are too 
 obvious to be noticed by anybody but detectives and 
 poets. It is not the fool who discovers the common 
 place for us; it is the poet who startles us with his own 
 rapturous amazement upon discovering that the sky is 
 still blue and that grass is even greener than the most 
 modern nude by Matisse. It is not the fool fearing 
 ridicule, but the brave man who can face an audience 
 with nothing more startling than the news that God s 
 in His Heaven, that death ends all our troubles and 
 that a penny saved is a penny earned. It requires no 
 hardihood to utter a glittering and anarchic sophistry. 
 There is only one thing that takes all a man s courage 
 to maintain and that is a platitude. Here, thank 
 the God of the Perfect Paradox, you will find only 
 those daring champions who have never faltered in 
 their allegiance to the obvious. Here are those who 
 have devoted their energies to a celebration of the bold 
 precision with which Spring follows Winter, who have 
 
1 6 Heavens 
 
 given their lives to prove the theory that two and two 
 actually are four!" 
 
 "I can t stand this!" screamed his saturnine oppo 
 nent. "Talk talk talk! I can t get a word in edge 
 ways. Even Goethe gave me a better opportunity. 
 It isn t fair it isn t and I ll be roasted in my own 
 fires if I stay here to make a Roman Catholic holi 
 day. I m going!" 
 
 There was a spurt of flame and he vanished. Noth 
 ing remained of him but a slight smell of brimstone 
 and a sulphur-yellow blot on the porphyry bench. The 
 skies were darkened for a moment as though a pointed 
 shadow had fallen over them; a wailing cry rose from 
 the gutters and ended among the stars. 
 
 "Too bad," sighed the benign dialectician, "I think 
 I almost convinced him." 
 
First Intermission 
 
 "Now s your chance/ 7 whispered my guide. "His 
 back is turned and you could slip in here for a while. 
 Shall I help you through?" 
 
 "No, thanks," I said, "I m not as keen for the Ches 
 terton Heaven as I thought I was. I m only a mild 
 agnostic and I could never be happy in an atmosphere 
 where, in order to outdo the other heretics, I would 
 have to embrace the last of all heresies Orthodoxy. 
 I admit the undeniable exhilaration gained by walking 
 on one s head, but one can overdo this cerebral pedes- 
 trianism. And in such a position there is always the 
 possibility not only of talking through one s hat but 
 the graver danger of thinking through one s shoes." 
 
 "You seem to be trying already," returned my 
 seraphic director with a quizzical smile. 
 
 "Heaven any other heaven forbid!" I expostu 
 lated. "I am far too dizzy to attempt any such ma 
 neuvers. Frankly, that atmosphere was worse than 
 intoxicating. What I wanted was a stimulus. Instead 
 of which, you gave me a stimulant. I need a sedative, 
 one that is a corrective rather than a Chestertonic. 
 Couldn t you let me sample something on that order?" 
 
 17 
 
1 8 Heavens 
 
 "Are you weary of the mind so soon?" inquired the 
 angel. 
 
 "No/ I replied. "But, having just witnessed it at 
 play, I would prefer to watch the mind at work. 
 Couldn t you show me something more orderly and so 
 cially serious? Something less scintillating and more 
 static; something controlled not so much by rhetoric 
 as by reason?" 
 
 "Very well," he acquiesced, "I ll take you to the most 
 scientific and rational Heaven we ve ever had. Come 
 along." 
 
 I came. 
 
THE HEAVEN OF THE TIME-MACHINE 
 
 i 
 
 You must imagine a vast laboratory a tremendous 
 affair of several thousand miles stretching its spot 
 less length of Albalune (a by-product of moon-dust 
 that had superseded all wood-work and tilings since 
 2058), reflecting only the purest of celestial colors. 
 An intricate network of rapidly moving runways 
 spanned the stars; myriads of spinning platforms 
 threaded the upper reaches which were reserved for 
 aerocars travelling at speeds of three hundred miles 
 an hour and upward. The introduction of a dozen 
 new metals in 1970 especially Maximite, Kruppium 
 and Luxpar, to name the three chief members of the 
 important Iridio-Aluminoid family had revolutionized 
 aerial traffic and when a half century later the full 
 power of atomic energy was released and exploited, 
 land travel ceased entirely. The whirling streets 
 flashed by in a maelstrom of sound. Huge trumpets, 
 grotesquely curved to resemble calla lilies, blared 
 eternity s oldest ethics and its newest advertisements 
 with an impartial clamour. "Harrumph! Harrumph! 
 Baroom! Look slippy! All the latest styles in latter- 
 
 19 
 
ao Heavens 
 
 day creeds! Special Bargains To-Day in Neo-Pa- 
 ganism! Large Assortment! Baroom! Ham s Halos 
 for Happiness ! Ask Adam He Knows ! Harrumph ! 
 Harrumph!" 
 
 2 
 
 Down one of these runways, seated on a machine 
 not unlike a twentieth century bicycle but far more 
 delicate and equipped with dozens of sensitive an 
 tennae, advanced a figure. You had to look twice at 
 his fantastic costume to assure yourself that this was 
 a man. You figure him a sallow, plumpish person, a 
 little over middle size and age, bespectacled, and with 
 a thinning of the hair on his dolicocephalic head a 
 baldness, if one examined closely, that might have been 
 covered by a shilling. His clothes, conforming to the 
 ethereal fashion, were loosely draped rather than 
 tubular; woven of some bright semi-pneumatic mate 
 rial, ingeniously inflated to suggest a sturdiness not 
 naturally his. All vestiges of facial hair had been ex 
 tracted by a capillotomist in his youth and a neat head 
 dress, not unlike a Phrygian liberty cap, was fastened 
 to his scalp by means of suction. You must picture 
 him borne down one of these ribbons of traffic, past the 
 harr and boom of the Blare Machines, to a quiet curve 
 (corners and all dust-collecting angles had long since 
 vanished from architecture) half-screened off by a 
 
The Heaven of the Time-Machine 21 
 
 translucent substance resembling milky glass. ... In 
 the centre of this chamber, on a pedestal of weights 
 and measures, stood a crystal ball that seemed to have 
 a luminous quality of its own. Clouds, colours, half- 
 defined shapes writhed within it; a faint humming 
 seemed to emanate from its now sparkling, now nebu 
 lous core. Fastening three of the web-like filaments 
 of the machine to the globe, he pressed a series of studs 
 along what seemed to be the crank-shaft, spun the 
 sphere with a gyroscopic motion and brought it grad 
 ually to where a violet ray pierced the ramparts. The 
 light within the crystal ball grew brighter. It turned 
 orange, then flame-colour, then prismatic in its fire, 
 exhausting the spectrum until it assumed an unwaver 
 ing brilliance. This play of colours was reflected in 
 the features of the crystal-gazer. His expression, al 
 most kaleidoscopic in its changes, was, in quick suc 
 cession, imaginative, philosophic, extravagant, meta 
 physical, romantic, quizzical, analytic, middle-class, 
 historical, prophetic. 
 
 ("Who is it?" I whispered in an awe-struck under 
 tone to my super-terrestrial companion. "Am I ac 
 tually gazing on God, the Invisible King?" 
 
 "Scarcely" replied the unabashed angel. "Those 
 varying features belong to a more local divinity: Wells, 
 the Divisible God." 
 
22 Heavens 
 
 "But look " I exclaimed, "he is drawing nearer. 
 . . . He is stopping immediately beneath us. . . . We 
 can even see what is happening inside the crystal. . . . 
 Look") 
 
 5 . ; , , 
 
 It is very hard to tell precisely what period was 
 registering itself in the heart of that amazing crystal. 
 One saw walls quite plainly, a table with shaded lamp, 
 books, chairs. From the conversation between the two 
 men they were both in their aggressive thirties the 
 place seemed to be England some time in the Nineteen 
 Twenties. The older one, whose name was something 
 incongruously like Fulpper, had a trick of waving his 
 arms whenever words failed him, finishing his expan 
 sive sentences with a rush of onomatopoetic sound. 
 
 "We can t wait for wisdom, Balsmeer," he was say 
 ing, "Life goes too damn fast. We start off at a fair 
 pace, increase our speed a little, lag behind, try to 
 catch up and, first thing you know whooosh! That s 
 what the whole business is: an immense and hideous 
 scramble, an irresistible race ending in heart-break and 
 whooosh!" 
 
 "But isn t there such a thing as the scientinc tem 
 perament; something that is not carried away so pas 
 sionately?" inquired Balsmeer. 
 
 "Meaning?" 
 
The Heaven of the Time-Machine 23 
 
 "Well," continued the younger chap, "I m what you 
 might call a serious sociological student. I m earnest 
 straight through. No humor to speak of. No ro 
 mance. I stumble over bright and beautiful things 
 . . . missing most of em, I dare say, but getting on 
 fairly well without em. I know there are high ec 
 stasies in the world splendid music, extraordinary 
 women, stupendous adventures, great and significant 
 raptures but they are just so many abstractions to me. 
 Scientific truth is the least accessible of mistresses. 
 She disguises herself in unlovely trappings; she hides 
 in filthy places; she is cold, hard, unresponsive. But 
 she can always be found! She is the one certainty, 
 the one radiance I have found in a muddle of dirt and 
 misery and disease." 
 
 "And don t you see," pursued Fulpper with exuber 
 ant warmth, "that this same Science of yours is the 
 very Romance you re running away from? This whole 
 mechanistic age with its oiled efficiency, its incalculable 
 energy and speed and whizz. . . . What s it all for, 
 anyway? Just to make traffic go quicker? to get the 
 whole mess revolving faster? Not a bit of it. Your 
 Research and my Romance are blood-brothers or dual 
 personalities, to be more exact. ... I seem to see 
 wait a minute I seem to see a time when this Science 
 will be revealed not so much as the God from the Ma 
 chine as a god within it. A socialized thing. A less- 
 
24 Heavens 
 
 ener of stupid and unnecessary labor. A force to end 
 the criminal exploitation of man by man. A power 
 to finish, once and for all, the muddle and waste and 
 confusion that destroy the finest human possibilities." 
 
 "Yes," Balsmeer conceded, "but " 
 
 "I m coming to that," continued Fulpper. "That s 
 where Love and Refined Thinking grrrr! meet as 
 enemies. Mr. and Mrs. Grundy won t be able to de 
 base the latter and foul the former. Knowledge a 
 full, frank knowledge is going to change all that." 
 
 "But innocence " 
 
 "It may go. We ve tasted the fruit of the tree. 
 You can t have your apple and eat it, any more than 
 Adam could. But there s something better than in 
 nocence. There s a fiercer virginity, a more coura 
 geous and affirmative purity in wisdom. No more 
 dark whisperings. No more poisonous insinuations, 
 nasty suggestiveness. No more music-hall smut. No 
 French-farce allusions. No more smirching of im 
 pulses that are as beautiful as art and as clean as chem 
 istry. No more nightmares of adolescence. No more 
 muddling up to sex. . . . This, please my God or your 
 Science, will cease to be the world of the bully, the 
 enslaved woman, the frightened child the domain of 
 the mud-pel ter, the hypocrite, the professional diplo 
 mat. It will no longer be the world of the underworld, 
 the cesspool, the liver-fluke. ..." 
 
The Heaven of the Time-Machine 25 
 His voice trailed off, incontinently. . . . 
 
 . ". 4 
 
 The crystal became suddenly opaque. For a few 
 minutes there was absolute silence. Then a faint click 
 ing began; invisible pistons tapped out a delicate 
 rhythm. The tympani increased both in volume and 
 speed. A lever shot out from the very heart of the 
 mechanism and the dials of the Time Machine began 
 to register new eras. The radiometer clicked off 
 years, decades, centuries, millennials. . . . Presently 
 the hands stopped. The diffused light within the ball 
 resolved itself; a gray-blue mist lifted from a strange 
 landscape as the magnetic arrow pointed to 5,320,506. 
 
 5 
 
 It was, as I have said, a strange landscape. There 
 was no color, no motion, not a sign of vegetation. 
 Even as the darkness disappeared, the sun, a great 
 greenish disc half the size of the heavens, sprang out 
 of the icy sea. The planets were drawing nearer to 
 gether for the final debacle. The rocks on the shore 
 were covered with frozen rime; the shadow of Mars, 
 a dark clinker as round as the forgotten moon, covered 
 the ground. It fell on the faces of the two who sat, as 
 if carved, at the mouth of their subterranean tun 
 nel. . . . They were swathed in bands of thermic elec- 
 
26 Heavens 
 
 trons; what showed of their faces was bloodless. Their 
 lips did not move the organs of speech had disap 
 peared during the second stage of telepathic communi 
 cation and only the minute dilations of the pupils 
 during some emotional passage, animated their chis 
 elled immobility. 
 
 "The waste of it ... the hideous waste of it," you 
 figure him flashing this to her, " what s the whole push 
 and struggle for? Is every generation to be at the 
 beginning of new things, never at a happy ending? 
 Always prodded or prodding itself on with dreams, half- 
 perceived vistas?" 
 
 "My dear . . ." her eyes remonstrated. 
 
 "It s you and I against the world," he telepathed. 
 "I guess it s always been that. Two alone against the 
 welter of mud and ugliness, dulness, obstinacy; two 
 tiny rebels against a world frozen with hate and hy 
 pocrisy. . . . The pity and shame of it. ... The 
 shabbiness of it all. . . ." 
 
 "But, dear," she challenged, "the human race is still 
 so young. It is still learning to progress." 
 
 "Progress! " his pupils contracted. "We are as sunk 
 in apathy and ignorance as our mythical ancestors in 
 the pre-historic twentieth century. Progress is a shib 
 boleth. It s worse a religion that every one pro 
 fesses and nobody believes in. Where are we now? 
 Education has lost itself in the schools. Sex has been 
 
The Heaven of the Time-Machine 27 
 
 buried in lies and lingerie. Science is fuddling over 
 its dead bones, trying to reconstruct the brain-cells 
 of the Post-Wilsonian man. . . . Progress! . . . Un 
 til this icy earth falls at last into a solid sun, millions 
 of us will come out of our burrows to question what 
 it all means. . . . Here at the very mouths of our 
 underground tunnels man once walked, warm and 
 careless and secure. And here, before that, life ran 
 prodigally on every inch of the surface. . . . Here, in 
 some obscure and forgotten epoch, the long-necked 
 Brontosaurus waded and the Diplodocus thrashed his 
 thirty-foot tail among the muggers. Here the giant 
 Moa screamed as the Hesperornis, that strange wing 
 less bird, pursued the fishes through the Mesozoic 
 waters. Here the Protohippus pranced on his three 
 toes and the Tyrannosaurus, buoyed up by fertile mud, 
 preyed on the happy herbivores. . . . And all for 
 what? . . ." 
 
 "For something it will be hard to answer but harder 
 to deny," she communed intensely, "for some trans 
 figuration, some sort of world cleansed of its crippling 
 jealousies, its spites, its blunderings. . . . After all, 
 there is a long time ahead. Man has existed for little 
 more than ten or twelve million years. We are still 
 so new. . . . The future is so enormous, so stagger 
 ing, so superb. Life is forever young . . . forever 
 eager. . . . Men will, in some distant maturity, 
 
28 Heavens 
 
 adjust their scattered dreams and energies. I see 
 the time when life will have a unified meaning, 
 when even death will be a part of the great inte 
 gration. And, whether we die or live, mankind is in 
 the making. . . . Old worlds are being exchanged 
 for new. Utopias, anticipations, unguessed brother 
 hoods, the last conquest of earth and the stars. . . . 
 All so slowly but so confidently in the making. . . . 
 
 6 
 
 The picture faded out, dissolving imperceptibly, un 
 til the ball paled to a mere glassy transparency. . . . 
 The figure in the machine suddenly became energetic. 
 He wheeled about, took his hands from the controlling 
 levers and touched a series of buttons on delicate, 
 jointed rods which terminated in a set of metal hiero 
 glyphs. First one was struck, then another, then a 
 swift succession of notes. The fingers flew faster, as 
 though they sought to wrest some harmony from the 
 heart of the machine. . . . For some time, nothing else 
 was heard but tap, click tap, tap, tap click tap 
 ping! as the incessant typewriter was driven on 
 through space. 
 
Second Intermission 
 
 "WELL, what do you say?" urged my guide. a ls it 
 to be the Heaven of Mr. H. G. Wells?" 
 
 "No, no," I shuddered, "I could never stand it. 
 When I was below, it seemed so perfect and inevitable 
 in print. But up here. ..." I shuddered again. "It 
 is all logical enough, I suppose, but even machinery 
 palls after the first hundred thousand years and the 
 thought of colloquies lasting through eternity with in 
 variable speculations upon the future of a mechanistic 
 society is really too terrible!" 
 
 He seemed to regard me with an amusement in 
 which commendation and contempt were equally mixed. 
 "What then, would you prefer?" 
 
 "I know I am captious and ungrateful and fickle and 
 all that," I stammered, "but, although I am half 
 ashamed to admit it, I want something less literal and 
 more literary; I woultl prefer to dwell in some Nirvana 
 where fine writing is fully as important as fine think 
 ing." 
 
 "Well," hazarded my interlocutor with what might 
 have been a spiritually suspicious smile, "how literary 
 would you like it?" 
 
 29 
 
30 Heavens 
 
 "The more the merrier," I answered hastily. "After 
 the lumbering generalities of the previous heaven, noth 
 ing could be too special for me. All the sestheticism 
 I once had, demands expression mine or any one 
 else s. It cries out for a realm where every phase and 
 letter of Art is capitalized, where life exists only as 
 material for brilliant table-talk, where the jargon of 
 great movements and rare names drowns the music of 
 the spheres, where the dilettante can loaf and invite his 
 soul-mate, where belles lettres are a religion and the 
 precieux is regnant." 
 
 "Come with me," said the angel with an expression 
 that, in a lesser being, might have been called grim. 
 
 "Where are you taking me?" I called. 
 
 "To the Heaven of George Moore." 
 
THE HEAVEN OF LOST MEMOIRS 
 
 A WALL of almost infinite length. A wall with a 
 peculiar regularity of design interrupting its smooth 
 ness. On closer inspection, the design was a door or, 
 to be more exact, a succession of doors. Doors, an 
 infinity of them, with a strange and extraordinarily 
 shining key-hole. Bending down to discover the cause 
 of this unusual brilliance, my eye encountered another 
 eye. I passed to the next key-hole. Again an eye was 
 burning behind it. Another key-hole; another eye. 
 The ocular adventure continued without change; not 
 an absence, not a sign of disappearance or dissent. The 
 eyes seemed to have it by an infinite majority. An 
 other key-hole; another glistening pupil. Another. . . . 
 I could stand it no longer. 
 
 Suddenly I found myself on the inside of the doors 
 and George Moore, dusting his knees, was shaking an 
 admonishing forefinger at me. 
 
 "A vulgar habit," said he without a trace of self- 
 consciousness, "many of the boys at Oscott did it. But 
 it s wrong. It gives you a squint and the narrowest 
 sort of vision of the world. You really should stop 
 it," he gravely concluded. 
 
 31 
 
32 Heavens 
 
 It was a strange room full of a determined though 
 musty adolescence, the room of a man born prema 
 turely young. There was no ceiling. The dome of 
 the sky served for that, and it was tinted a delicate 
 mauve. A multitude of nets instead of rugs were 
 spread on the ambiguous floor, nets woven of curious 
 stuffs: a singer s corset-lace, a forgotten dream, a strand 
 of honey-coloured hair, a phrase from Walter Pater, 
 moonlight on a pillow in Orelay, a scrap from the 
 Catechism translated by Verlaine, hopes, aspirations 
 and, here and there, a faint, not too secret shame. The 
 walls were a succession of unfamiliar Monets, Manets, 
 Conders, Pissaros. 
 
 "Of course you don t recognize them," Moore was 
 saying. "These are the things that the Impressionists 
 were going to paint and never got round to. Here I 
 can have all the canvases they intended and never 
 had time to begin. This, you see, is Heaven." 
 
 "But" I ventured. 
 
 "I know what you re going to say. But that s be 
 cause you have been glutted with the fat curves and 
 greasy mathematics of the Futurists. If you cannot 
 admire this Pissaro for its magic, admire it for its 
 modern, yes, its ultra-modern morality. It dares to 
 be candid and reticent and self-expressed and virtuous 
 at the same time; it dares you to face yourself, as 
 Degas undoubtedly faced his canvas, and be ashamed 
 
The Heaven of Lost Memoirs 33 
 
 of nothing but shame. What have you to offer against 
 it? Matisse? A jaundiced Debussy who tries to 
 translate his liver-trouble into paint. Seurat? A dis 
 organized palette stricken with spotted fever. Picasso? 
 A tired academician conducting a liaison with a Diesel 
 engine. Redon? A sentimental china-painter spray 
 ing his colors with a rose-water mysticism. Duchamp? 
 A mad geometrician trying to animate a chess-board. 
 Bracque? Gleizes? Derain? Dull arrangements of 
 bourgeois still-life in the fourth dimension. Really, 
 your taste has been debased by Whistler at the one 
 extreme and the Dadaists at the other. You ought to 
 remember your Rochefoucauld." 
 
 "But " I protested. 
 
 "Oh, yes, your objection is logical enough. But 
 what has that to do with us to-day? There was a 
 time when such hair-splitting may have carried weight, 
 I grant you. And your protestations are refreshing 
 in one so catholic. But Catholicism, as I have so 
 often pointed out in Hail and Farewell/ is incapable 
 of producing great Art. The church of Rome, as I 
 have so often said to poor Edward, has never been the 
 same since the Reformation and, mentioning Newman, 
 I said it must rely more and more on conversion than 
 conviction. What happened to Newman after he 
 Verted is history. As his churchly importance grew, 
 he waxed more bathetic; as he became more sentimen- 
 
34 Heavens 
 
 tal, his style if you can call it that became more 
 slipshod and actually sloppy. The fact that he wrote 
 The Apologia in a hurry doesn t excuse him; he was 
 always searching less for some new testament than 
 for an old text. No, you must go further than that, 
 I am afraid. And you ll have to be less argumenta 
 tive. Language, after all, is not so much a matter of 
 cultivation as an accident of geography. I remember 
 talking about this to a fine, dark-haired girl, about 
 twenty, in Drogheda one morning, a few hours be 
 fore breakfast. The effect of soil and climate on 
 speech, I told her, was everywhere apparent, even in 
 the remotest of dialects. The harsh winds, the thistles, 
 the rock-like frosts of Scotland are reflected in the cold 
 timbre, the sharp burr of those uncouth and granite- 
 like Scotch tones. Lonely versts and terrible winters 
 are in the grinding consonants of the Russians; the 
 rough inhabitants of the craggy Caucasus hurl huge 
 blocks of sound at each other whenever they exchange 
 the mildest greetings. And where else could the sunny, 
 liquid Italian be spoken but beside the golden lakes 
 of Italy, or along its lazy, laughing roads, or in its bays 
 where the sunlight foams and sparkles like the true 
 Lachrimae Christi? Not that I have forgotten our 
 own English which still smacks of the racy Eliza 
 bethans, in spite of time and the encroachment of the 
 Latinists. English, for all our studios, is still an out- 
 
The Heaven of Lost Memoirs 35 
 
 door language with something of the downs in its free 
 dom and a tang of venison in its rich and gamy ac 
 cents. . . . Rabelais could have written well in that 
 tongue had he been born in Yorkshire. . . . Delacroix 
 could have painted in that idiom. ... I remember 
 telling all this to the dark-haired girl early one morn 
 ing in Drogheda. There was much more in a similar 
 key and, although I have forgotten a great part of our 
 conversation, I remember my saying to her, as the sun 
 was rising, And do you differ with me or is it a rather 
 heavy assent you are breathing? She said or seemed 
 to say something equivocal I could not catch the 
 syllables as her back was turned. I said, Tor Heav 
 en s sake, have you been asleep all the time I was talk 
 ing? She answered, Tor Heaven s sake, have you 
 been talking all the time I was asleep? She was a 
 sharp, intense creature, an artist in her way, and I 
 remember that the cerise dawn suddenly touched the 
 nape of her little neck and made me think of Ingres 
 portrait of an unknown lady, the one surnamed La 
 Belle Zelie. . . . But Ingres could never have man 
 aged the peculiarly Celtic contradictions of color and 
 temperament. Rubens, for all his preoccupation with 
 barmaids buttocks, might have done it. ... Rubens 
 and Rabelais how they would have loved the English 
 lanes in November when the whole country has the 
 
36 Heavens 
 
 snap and vigor of fresh ale. . . . Dostoevski would 
 never have understood it." 
 
 "But " I interjected. 
 
 "Yes, I know," he went on suavely, "but you must 
 not think I have lost the thread of your not altogether 
 relevant remarks. What I have lost is something more 
 important. The various Memoirs of My Dead Lives 
 (there have been at least nine of them Yeats, you 
 know, has often spoken of my feline characteristics), 
 the five or six Hails and Farewells, to say nothing of 
 a dozen miscellaneous Recollections, Confessions and 
 Reminiscences, all of these have covered my earthly 
 experiences with even more detail than veracity. There 
 is not an hour except one which is not enshrined 
 like a fly in the amber of what, making whatever al 
 lowances you choose for auctorial modesty, is a very 
 decent prose. But that one missing hour! ... Its 
 disappearance bothered me until I was faced with the 
 choice of omitting it from my Definitive Autobiog 
 raphy or hideous alternative supplying it from my 
 imagination rather than my memory. It was in a train 
 going to Galway, I remember that. And there must 
 have been a great deal of interesting conversation, for 
 my first important play had just been accepted by the 
 Coisde Gnotha and I was bubbling over with ideas for 
 its presentation. I thought of getting Craig to do a 
 curtain for us. There was also a bird-call in the 
 
The Heaven of Lost Memoirs 37 
 
 second act which called for better music than we pos 
 sessed and I did not want to depend on the chance 
 improvisations of some local, alcoholic flute-player. I 
 thought of asking Debussy to help us out. A week 
 later, I wrote him explaining that I wanted something 
 both spiritual and sensual, a thrush-like fragment for 
 the moment when Una, coming out of her bath, first 
 sees Tumaus. It was not long before I heard from 
 the composer. He wrote: 
 
 " Mon Cher Moore: J ai regu votre lettre du 7 , et 
 je prends note de son contenu. Aussitot que je rece- 
 vrais votre cheque, je vous enverrai ce que vous de- 
 mandez. J espere que votre famille va bien. Le 
 temps est vraiment trop chaud pour cette saison. Sin- 
 cerement, Claude-Achille Debussy 
 
 "In less than three months, I received another inti 
 mate note, even more brilliant and characteristic of the 
 man, enclosing seven different themes to choose from. 
 But, as they were scored for French horn and con 
 trabass (two instruments that we did not possess), 
 none of the phrases was ever performed. ... I recol 
 lect all this and yet I cannot recapture that lost hour. 
 ... It is a pity, for I know that much that must 
 have been illuminating and sprightly is lost to my 
 pages. It was, my memory takes me that far, a mixed 
 crowd that listened to me. We were going to a Feis 
 
38 Heavens 
 
 and I remember speaking of some one as a delayed 
 or was it a decayed pre-Raphaelite ? But who? . . . 
 And what else did I say? ... So I came here, hop 
 ing to find my lost memory. It was with a distinctly 
 unpleasant shock that I learned this was called The 
 Heaven of Lost Memoirs because the memoirs actually 
 remained lost. No one not even their authors 
 could find them. Well, here I stay, waiting for my 
 strayed sheep to come home, wagging their tales be 
 hind them. ... It is a stupid Celtic idea, this dis 
 appointing Heaven. The Celt is never witty, he is 
 only talkative. All the Celtic humour has come out of 
 Dorsetshire." 
 
 "But " I expostulated. 
 
 "I am coming to that," continued Moore with im 
 perturbable ease, "but you must not hurry me. I 
 am feeling very piano this morning, very piano. There 
 were some of your compatriots here yesterday and I 
 dictated a rather brilliant interview to Miss Gough 
 for them. Some of the questions I asked myself were 
 quite in my best vein. Is it true, Mr. Moore (this 
 is one of them) that you will give us no more de 
 lightful records of amour, no more brightly coloured 
 experiences such as you have so charmingly illuminated 
 in your Euphorion in Texas? Alas, replied the au 
 thor of some of the most exquisite English of our day 
 (you see I didn t dare trust the taste of your gentle- 
 
The Heaven of Lost Memoirs 39 
 
 man-journalists), Alas! I am no longer a practi 
 tioner in Love, only a consultant ... I was rather 
 pleased with that, if I do say so. Eglinton would have 
 liked it. Poor John Eglinton, who was always re 
 ferring to what he called my frigid heresies and my 
 frozen immoralities, would have cherished the neat in 
 souciance of such a self -disposal. So different from 
 Yeats, for all their common sympathies. ... I can 
 see Yeats now, looking for all the world like a badly- 
 drawn, dilapidated crane, his manuscript-case flapping 
 like a black and broken wing. A queer bird, he was, 
 with his beak continually dipped into a world of half- 
 pagan, half-puritan miracles taking part in a ritual 
 where the wine was always being changed to water. 
 I liked his later angularities particularly. To what 
 instrument can I compare them? I suppose an oboe 
 is fairly accurate in my younger days, I would have 
 summarized his writing in English rather than in Gaelic 
 by calling it the music of a Celt learning to play the 
 Anglo-Saxophone but an oboe lacks the uncertain 
 spirituality that Yeats communicated. A viola is more 
 like it or, better still, a celesta. But his early mysti 
 cism never impressed me. Surely, I said, he must 
 see it is absurd. Can he be serious about this literary 
 moonshine or is it merely une blague qu on nous fait? 
 It is the last flicker of majestic twilight a pitiful 
 Gotterdammerung without intensity or strength. 
 
40 Heavens 
 
 After all, health is played out in England. If we want 
 vigor we find it, not in the floundering language of 
 Hardy or the even more puddling prose of Bennett, but 
 in the newspapers. Health, or rather a sort of 
 trumped-up, synthetic substitute for it, is duly manu 
 factured only in the heretical journalism of Mr. Wells 
 or the journalistic orthodoxy of Mr. Chesterton. . . . 
 Every fine perception of the senses has been brutalized 
 by modernity. How many of our prima-donnas, even 
 the leading seraphs, can sing a manuscript a capella? 
 . . . The piano has been the death of music." 
 
 "But" I demurred. 
 
 "It was late at night, one winter," he continued 
 without noticing my interruption, "when the thought 
 of the end of Art overwhelmed me. I had been reading 
 Mallarme in a desultory manner when, in the midst 
 of rather a pompous passage, this sentence leaped 
 at me: The world was made for nothing other than 
 to produce one beautiful book. Suddenly the impli 
 cations surged over me like a succession of tidal waves. 
 It was a crystallization of my life, a synthesis of my 
 existence. I could not go to bed without telling my 
 discovery; I felt I would burst if I did not go out at 
 once and collogue with some one. But it was one 
 o clock in the morning and very few of my friends are 
 to be reached at that hour but dear Edward with whom 
 I had had my quarterly quarrel. Synge, I knew, was 
 
 
The Heaven of Lost Memoirs 41 
 
 somewhere in the Aran Islands hunting native poetry 
 in a celluloid collar; & was dreaming of his beloved 
 Angus and Lir; Lady Gregory was at the other end 
 of the city, coddling a coterie of fledgling playwrights 
 with an air that was a cross between a mother-hen s 
 and Queen Victoria s. But what are the inconven 
 iences of time or the non-availability of friends to one 
 with a passion for literary conversation! I dashed 
 out, buttoning my greatcoat, past Ely Place and Mer- 
 rion Row, for I knew there was a coffee-stall at the 
 corner of Clare Street. Would there be any belated 
 patrons there? My heart was as faint as a lover s 
 until, through a flurry of snow, I observed a police 
 man leaning heavily against the wooden stand. . . 
 In ten minutes I was deep in a discussion of the aris 
 tocracy of Art. The true artist, I remember saying, 
 makes no concessions; he imposes them. Gautier 
 would have understood me. Was it not he who cham 
 pioned the decorative futility of effort when he de 
 clared that nothing can be wholly beautiful unless it 
 is wholly useless?" 
 
 "But" I persisted. 
 
 "There is little to be gained by disputing. You 
 must accept all things, rejoicing not only in Nature s 
 fecundity but in her contradictions. She is the source, 
 the origin, as I have observed somewhere; she is vul 
 gar but never ordinary. We have only to listen to her 
 
42 Heavens 
 
 to learn originality. Turgenieff felt glimmerLigs of 
 this; Dickens never, Balzac still less. . . . You re 
 member Doris of whom I have written? I always 
 used to wonder why her hair, especially when seen in 
 the blond light at Plessy, reminded me less of the 
 golden fleece than of Schopenhauer. I still wonder 
 about it. There was something in the half-lights that 
 only Renoir could have evoked and a touch of the 
 sharp malevolence that is in Jeremiah, the terrible dis 
 quiet that makes all of Hebrew literature so hateful 
 a series of fortissimo passages. . . . Doris was lav 
 ish; she was a prodigal, like poetry or nature. She 
 was, I told IE,, who always treasured the conceit, like 
 a perfumed bedroom trembling with silent music. . . . 
 And yet, what is the aftermath? Flaubert was right. 
 He said, Of the pains most passionately felt, what re 
 mains? Of the woman most passionately loved, what 
 do we possess? An idea/ How true that is. It took 
 me many years to find what I had been looking for. 
 In literature one begins by seeking laboriously for 
 originality in other men s works; one ends by discov 
 ering it in himself. Who said that? It must have 
 been one of the Goncourts, probably Edmond. Still, 
 there is a turn about it that suggests Jules. It could 
 not have been Banville, exquisite though he is. And 
 who could have been the first to declare that History 
 is a novel which never happened; a novel is a history 
 
The Heaven of Lost Memoirs 43 
 
 that might have happened? The Goncourts again. 
 But I have done with novels. I shall write nothing 
 but memoirs here in eternity. The novel is a dead 
 form that can never be resurrected. Only personal 
 ity and the intimacy of self-confession are worthy of 
 communication. Like Baudelaire, I write for only ten 
 minds. Like him, I do not know their owners. Un 
 like him, I do not worship them. . . . What more can 
 be expected? Even Victor Hugo, a dull perception 
 as a rule, knew enough to say that in every century 
 not more than three or four men of genius ascend. 
 Well, here I am still searching for that damnably 
 lost memoir. . . . You ll pardon me, I know, if I ex 
 cuse myself to continue the hunt. I ve enjoyed our 
 little dialogue immensely; you are the sort of gifted 
 conversationalist one always relishes. It has all been 
 most stimulating." 
 "But" I exploded. 
 
Third Intermission 
 
 "BuT," I exploded, as my angelic mentor rejoined 
 me, "but did you ever hear such chatter! And he 
 calls it a dialogue! And I suppose he thinks that 
 mad hodge-podge is a philosophy! And those conver 
 sational leaps! He isn t an artist, he s a chamois!" 
 
 " Why so hot, little man? " replied the angel with 
 an exasperating tolerance. "This, as I understood 
 you, is exactly what you asked for. Am I wrong?" 
 
 "Of course not," I said, half pettishly, half peni 
 tently, "it s all my own fault. I should have known 
 better. I m frightfully sorry to put you to all this 
 bother and I know I don t deserve it but would you 
 let me try again?" 
 
 "What shall it be this time?" the spirit asked with 
 the resignation for which his tribe has become famous. 
 
 "I don t know exactly," I replied. "Have you, per 
 haps, a heaven or two that is not so special, one that 
 is neither mechanistically nor artistically technical? 
 Could you not let me see something utterly unrelated 
 to reality, something that might have been conceived 
 in a golden age or an ivory tower; something that has 
 the hues of life but is far more colorful, more poetically 
 
 45 
 
46 Heavens 
 
 intensified, more tropical and bewildering and bizarre? 
 Have you nothing in that line?" 
 
 "Indeed we have," answered the patient being. 
 "There are two or three of which we are actually proud. 
 Unfortunately, I cannot show you one of our most pic 
 turesque Nirvanas. It is closed temporarily for re 
 pairs, or research, or something of the sort. There 
 are rumors abroad that certain factors have conspired 
 to bring about its temporary suspension. On the one 
 hand, it is accused of being unauthentic; on the other, 
 it is said to be immoral. Being angelic, none of its 
 citizens is able to judge. Frankly, I am sorry I cannot 
 give you an opportunity to determine for yourself." 
 
 "But can t you give me a picture of the place? 
 Something at any rate a little more definite?" I pleaded. 
 
 "Very possibly. Let me see " He drew a thin 
 bundle of papers from the folds of a cerulean mantle. 
 "I have here part of a manuscript which was rescued 
 from the super-terrestrial waste-basket of one of its 
 chief inhabitants. It purports to be a translation from 
 certain pre-Provengal poets, but several contradictory 
 anachronisms make me question the existence of the 
 original. At any rate, it is an indubitably accurate 
 portrait of the rich though restricted region I was 
 about to describe. All that I have of this work is a 
 rejected chapter and a title page which reads Runes 
 of Life: A Comedy of Disappearances/ Adapted and 
 
Third Intermission 47 
 
 Paraphrased from Biilg s Les Milles Gestes de Deodric 
 by James Branch Cabell. If you like, I will read it 
 to you." 
 He did. 
 
THE HEAVEN ABOVE STORYSENDE 
 
 THEY of Poictesme tell the tale how, in the days 
 when the impossible was the one thing that was always 
 happening, Ortnitz rode forth to the battlements of 
 Heaven. They narrate how Duke Ortnitz (who later, 
 was to be known in Ostrogoth as Waldere, in Ross- 
 land as Vidigoia and in far Scandia as Hrolfdeodric) 
 set out with a company of scribes, minstrels, poets 
 and other vagabonds. For nine and ninety days and 
 no one knows how many nights, according to the an 
 cient rune, they travelled. Past Pechlarn they rode, 
 through the doubtful country of the Gjuki, skirting 
 the forest of Niflhel where the trees move about mis 
 erably in a wailing twilight. At last, after certain 
 adventures which are rather more unmentionable than 
 not, Ortnitz and his companions arrived, as had been 
 predicted, at a pool surrounded by young hazel trees. 
 The circle of green was unbroken save where one half- 
 stripped and aging birch held out its mottled arms in 
 a remarkable gesture that is not to be talked about. 
 Ortnitz dismounted, advanced to the foot of this ob 
 scene tree and, after having performed that which was 
 requisite, cried out: 
 
 49 
 
50 Heavens 
 
 "Now, for the love of that high glamour seen before 
 birth and beyond the grave, we stretch our arms to 
 the moon and stammer intolerably some battered 
 stave. Yet, driven by hungers beyond the yearning 
 for what men take as a surety, I have come to the road 
 that has no turning and call on the Leshy to answer 
 me. I call on Hogni and Mersin- Apollo, careless of 
 whether they choose to descend; for I am Ortnitz and 
 I follow after the unattainable end." 
 
 He waited awhile, during which interval a little 
 headless bird flew three times over the pool, and, there 
 being no answer, Ortnitz continued: 
 
 "Now, for the dust of that dying beacon wavering 
 still in the tattered shrine of autumn, now that the 
 old lusts weaken and the night is only spilled dregs 
 of wine drown, in its ineffectual juices, whatever 
 persists of the memories of burning thirsts and the for 
 gotten uses of lips that reveal their inconstancies. 
 Here, on the rim of your magic hollow I have aban 
 doned father and friend; for I am Ortnitz and I fol 
 low after the unattainable end." 
 
 There was a thin sobbing as a purple mouse perched 
 on the back of a salamander ran in and out of the 
 jewel- weeds. Twice the salamander shed his skin into 
 the waters and twice a faint mist rose from the rip 
 ples. Then cried Ortnitz: 
 
 "Now for the end of that final glory I wait and bend 
 
The Heaven Above Storysende 51 
 
 a complaisant back, here, where a livid aurora borealis 
 makes all demoniac. Spurning the threat of the head 
 less swallow, I neither doubt, nor deny nor defend; 
 for I am Ortnitz and I " 
 
 These sonorous strophes were broken by a rumble 
 of voices that issued from his retinue. And Ortnitz, 
 comprehending that the spell was broken beyond 
 promise of repair, retraced his steps ruefully. It may 
 be that he felt betrayed by those who should have 
 understood him best; it is indisputable that his high 
 mood was bedwarfed and, impatient at such belittle- 
 ment, he turned on his companions. 
 
 "Do you tell me now without dubiety or odd by- 
 ends of metaphor, what may this turgescible clatter 
 portend?" 
 
 "Messire," spoke one of them, a lad called Arnaut 
 Daniel, "we are but men; nevertheless we are poets. 
 And as such we hold, not only to ourselves, a dread 
 responsibility. Look you, the record of these days 
 and unguessed years is in our hands. The world lives 
 only as we tell of it. The lurch of seas, the stealthy 
 footsteps of the grass, the huge strides of the sun 
 across the sky, the mystery and mastery of flesh, this 
 snatch and blaze and insolence of life who is to know 
 of it save that we sing; how can men learn of it ex 
 cept through us? Therefore, subject to what limita 
 tions are placed upon us by our eyes and ears, are we 
 
52 Heavens 
 
 bound to record only the Good, the Beautiful and the 
 True. And therefore, messire, must we, who though 
 poets are nevertheless men, be bound to differ in the 
 interpretation of these three beatitudes." 
 
 Said Ortnitz: 
 
 "Ey, but wherein can there be so noisy and divergent 
 an opinion; the good, so runs the ancient cantrap, is 
 always beautiful; the beautiful is true." 
 
 Daniel returned: 
 
 "Good only for the time being, messire. Beautiful 
 only as a challenge to egotism; in the I of the beholder. 
 True only to the question of Pilate." 
 
 "I find that an obscure saying," Ortnitz consid 
 ered. 
 
 "It is an untrue saying," broke in a gaunt fellow 
 with a pair of cold green eyes and an ugly garden uten 
 sil which he carried in lieu of an instrument. "There 
 is only one Truth and that is the real truth, the whole 
 truth and nothing but the truth. All the Rest is Ro 
 manticism. I have not seen the Soul that my friends 
 here prate of, so I cannot call it my own; but I can 
 call this spade a spade. If you will only listen while 
 I play upon it, it will dig up the very roots of song. 
 With it, I will unearth for you the bowels of time. 
 With it I will go down as deep as hell." 
 
 "And as high as heaven?" questioned Ortnitz, not 
 very mirthfully. 
 
The Heaven Above Storysende 53 
 
 The Realist answered nothing but with a gesture of 
 despair mounted his horse and, followed by his ad 
 herents, departed toward the West. 
 
 Then Ortnitz turned to a far more timid being whose 
 dented and flimsy shield bore the device of a crumbling 
 ivory tower. A single white poppy lay sheathed in his 
 painted scabbard, and he was continually discarding 
 and readjusting variously coloured spectacles. 
 
 "Do you not heed him, beau sire," exclaimed this 
 woeful but still militant minnesinger, "do you not heed 
 a syllable of his mangled prose. For that which lives 
 to-day is only an echo of what has died eh, how many 
 times and all this that seems so permanent is noth 
 ing more than the echo of its ghost. For look you, 
 messire, what is reality but the shadow of romance, a 
 shadow that most men take for the substance. These 
 actual adventures, physical encounters, journeyings of 
 the flesh they are pallid things compared to the imag 
 ined Odysseys. Give up this brutal and flagitious 
 search. Come back with me, master, and behold grass 
 that never fades, love that never deceives, a world 
 without smirch or squalor. Come back with me, and 
 you shall scale insurmountable summits, swim lakes 
 of blood, plunge through hurricanes of fire, possess all 
 women, surpass all heroes. You shall do all this with 
 out leaving your hearth." 
 
 "And what potent agency will you summon to ac- 
 
54 Heavens 
 
 complish these not undistinguished miracles?" inquired 
 Ortnitz. 
 
 He answered: "The myths and annals of the past." 
 
 "An indubitable magic, O dusty dreamer. Yet I 
 am bound for present dangers, newer hazards. For 
 I am Ortnitz and I follow after the unattainable end 
 of which no man ever has had cognizance. Will you 
 .not throw away your variously coloured spectacles and 
 follow me who am not altogether blind?" 
 
 The Romanticist answered nothing but, with a ges 
 ture of dismay, mounted his horse and, followed by 
 his adherents, departed toward the East. 
 
 "Nay, ho, and even were the fellow less pitifully 
 his own fool, you answered him rightly, messire, and 
 you are well rid of him and his wistful tribe!" 
 
 This one was a lank individual with womanish hands 
 and rouged lips. He was clad in a brocaded golden 
 stuff that shimmered upon him like scales on a yellow 
 serpent and from time to time he sipped at a curiously 
 carved vial labelled "Poison." 
 
 "Hah, what should such a maudlin evader know of 
 Beauty? His luke-warm world has none of it," cried 
 this fantastic madman. "Come with me, master, and 
 you shall live not unmoved among extraordinary hun 
 gers, strange and perverse desires. In my demesne, 
 day never dawns and sunlight is unknown. Great evil 
 flowers, undreamed of here, add their hot fragrance 
 
The Heaven Above Storysende 55 
 
 to the spicy night. There our bodies, capable of new 
 and curious pleasures, will lie among lace and lilies, ca 
 ressed by queens and the hands of queens daughters. 
 Virgin harlots with breasts like boys will dance for 
 us beneath a ring of moons while nightingales go mad. 
 Come," he cried with a wan rapture, "we shall hear 
 black masses sung in forests whose design was Time s 
 contemporary and where all uncreated loveliness lies 
 hidden. There, by the Terrible Tree, will we find red 
 Lilith who, rejected by Adam for a white and simper 
 ing Eve, assumed the form of a snake and thus rid 
 Paradise of its tepid inhabitants. There, master, you 
 shall never grow sane and temperate and old, but pass 
 from fever to fever, fed by fantastic cravings, roused 
 and rejuvenated by sin." 
 
 For a moment Ortnitz meditated, while a shadow no 
 larger than a crow s foot crept into the corner of his 
 eyes. 
 
 "Pardieu," he answered at length, a but I am no 
 longer young enough for such a high-flying eternity. 
 These are pretty passions you offer me, to be sure, and 
 I would be the last to examine them too circumspectly, 
 but still," Ortnitz estimated drily, "but still it is not 
 sin alone will bring me to a heaven, however scarlet it 
 may prove to be. What stock have you of innocence? 
 Can you not show me an unaffected virtue or two and 
 a paltry half-dozen of assorted simplicities?" 
 
56 Heavens 
 
 The Decadent answered nothing but, with a gesture 
 of disdain, mounted his horse and, followed by his ad 
 herents, departed toward the South. 
 
 Then up spoke the last and youngest leader of them, 
 sweeping a viola d amore that had but one string. His 
 face was smooth and more asexual than an angel s 
 and his thick hair shone like a tossing golden flame. 
 Sang this one: 
 
 "Goodness and beauty and truth. . . . Where? 
 Well, but only in song? . . . Honor, Nobility, Youth, 
 Goodness and Beauty and Truth shrink from man s 
 clutches. In sooth, no man can hold them for long. 
 . . . Goodness and Beauty and Truth wear well. But 
 only in Song!" 
 
 "A skeptical though neatly-joined triolet," smiled 
 Ortnitz. "But you talk in riddles, my fine young poet, 
 for all your cynically smooth generalities. Yet why 
 should I desist? And for what, more specifically, 
 would you have me abandon my quest for truth, jus 
 tice and those ultimates which are the pavement and 
 the pillars of heaven?" 
 
 Thus answered the minstrel: 
 
 "I offer you more than earthly riches in coin that 
 none but the poet pays: Freedom from all the stings 
 and itches of every trivial splutter and blaze; a cup 
 of healing; a stirrup of praise; a mood to meet the 
 
The Heaven Above Storysende 57 
 
 challenge of pleasure; a lilt to the feet of dragging 
 days all in the heart of a minstrel s measure." 
 
 Said Ortnitz: "That is indeed much to promise." 
 
 But the youth continued : 
 
 "I offer you more. I offer you niches where a sour 
 world s grumbling never strays; where ripples a mirth 
 ful music which is an echo of man s first laughter that 
 plays in various keys and secret ways. There still 
 is a land of Light and Leisure (if you will pardon so 
 mouldy a phrase) all in the heart of a minstrel s meas 
 ure." 
 
 Said Ortnitz: "A great deal, to be sure. At the same 
 time " His interjection was interrupted by the poet 
 who pursued his rhapsody, crying: 
 
 "I offer all that ever bewitches the mind of man 
 from its yeas and nays. To the poet, immortal hemi- 
 stitches; to the soldier, conquest crowned with the bays; 
 to the lover, the breath of a thousand Mays; to the 
 boy, a jingle of buried treasure; to the cheated and 
 broken, a merciful haze. All in the heart of a min 
 strel s measure. 
 
 "Master, I offer what never decays though all else 
 wither. Master, what says your will to the magics 
 that quicken and raise all in the heart of a minstrel s 
 measure?" 
 
 He paused. 
 
58 Heavens 
 
 "My will says no, although my heart approves the 
 purport as well as the burden of your ballade," replied 
 Ortnitz not dispassionately. "But I must go further 
 than this place, even after the unattainable end, and 
 I find little comfort and less pleasure in the doing of 
 it, and I would you were coming with me." 
 
 The Lyricist answered nothing but, without lower 
 ing his eyes, came closer to Ortnitz. And Ortnitz saw 
 why he would have to make the journey without him, 
 and he spoke: 
 
 "And so, farewell, you who dream in rhyme for I 
 see your heaven will always be here, an overwordy 
 and somewhat silly Nirvana but God help me! a 
 lovelier place than I have ever known. And so fare 
 well." 
 
 And the last poet answered: 
 
 "Farewell, Duke Ortnitz, farewell, unhappy clay 
 that seeks what it can never find. Farewell, dreamer 
 whose dreams are ten times more pitiful than mine for 
 that yours have reason but no rhyme. Surely you 
 will go for a while as long as this niggardly life will 
 allow, it may be half-disillusioned, half-desperately, 
 questing some comforting finality, some assurance in a 
 world of illimitable perplexities and contradictions. 
 Surely you will be buffeted here and there, searching 
 vainly for the secret of those cryptic platitudes that 
 enliven religion, wars, persecutions, lynchings and all 
 
The Heaven Above Storysende 59 
 
 other such high crusades. And to what end? Eh sirs, 
 you will go down a bitterer man than you are now a 
 preposterous but not unheroic creature. And so I cry 
 farewell with laughing pity, but with envy, too." 
 
 Now the tale tells that Ortnitz was quite alone amid 
 the circle of hazel trees. And, after he had stood there 
 until the wings of the Lyricist s white horse were no 
 longer discernible in the sky, Ortnitz went about his 
 last conjuration with a sadder but no less determined 
 expression. It was a blasphemous and appalling rit 
 ual, which it is neither essential nor wise to record. 
 But, after the final ceremonies had been performed 
 with a queerly constructed crystal of sphalerite, and the 
 jintsan root shaped like a man had come to life and set 
 about that which was necessary, the waters of the pool 
 were lifted. They grew solid, formed into steps, one 
 ripple following another, until Ortnitz beheld an ex 
 traordinary glassy stair-case leading straight toward 
 the zenith. With a not unnatural wonder, he ascended. 
 
 For nine and ninety days and no one knows how 
 many nights, Ortnitz climbed those watery stairs. At 
 length he came to the threshold of heaven. He 
 knocked. There was no answer. Then, raising his 
 voice, he cried, "I am Ortnitz, and I have come to learn 
 of what miraculous composition and in what unlikely 
 manner were designed those elements of truth, justice 
 
60 Heavens 
 
 and goodness which are the pavement and the pillars 
 of heaven." 
 
 There was no answer. 
 
 Then Ortnitz noticed that the hinges of the gate were 
 rusty and that the huge door itself stood slightly ajar. 
 Leaning his body against it, he pushed it open and 
 entered while space rang with an insane creaking. Ort 
 nitz stood astounded. The place was empty. A few 
 spiders were spinning in what seemed to be an aban 
 doned and primitive courtyard. There were neither 
 pillars nor pavement. And Ortnitz, according to the 
 Volundarkvidha, returned to Storysende. 
 
 Thus it was in the old days. 
 
Fourth Intermission 
 
 "You do not look as enthusiastic as I had hoped," 
 said my guiding spirit after he had stopped reading. 
 
 "No," I answered, "I have not lost my admiration 
 for this web of words but I am afraid I am not medi 
 aeval enough to live comfortably in such a tapestry. 
 I have not sufficient poetry in my nature for such 
 highly colored prose; I am too dull a doggerel." 
 
 "Granting that," he murmured with a benign toler 
 ance, "what would you have?" 
 
 "I don t know exactly," I hesitated, rubbing an astral 
 chin, "I am sure I could never learn to talk this lan 
 guage. I do not understand its signs and symbolic 
 veil cities; the whole thing seems perversely cryptic and 
 cabalistic. You see, I m an American to begin with 
 much too provincial for Provence and, coming 
 from the state of Missouri, I ..." 
 
 "Wait I have an idea," interrupted the angel with 
 no little animation. "I think I know the very place 
 for you. How would you like to dwell in the Middle 
 Western Heaven?" 
 
 "You don t mean to tell me that you have a special 
 heaven for midwesterners?" I gasped. 
 
 61 
 
62 Heavens 
 
 "Not for strictly geographical mid- westerners," he 
 replied with the suspicion of a smile. "But ever since 
 the success of your Main Street, Moon Calf, Poor 
 White, Miss Lulu Bett and others, that region has be 
 come fixed in the literary firmament. There was noth 
 ing else to do but recognize it officially and make the 
 necessary arrangements. The structure, I warn you, 
 is by no means completed; the architecture is rather 
 sketchy, and the material itself is not distinguished by 
 its finish. But you, doubtless, are not over-particular. 
 If you will step this way. . . ." 
 
THE HEAVEN OF MEAN STREETS 
 
 A PLACE of crude color and primitive contrasts. A 
 place, indefinite in area and uncertain in its geography, 
 that looked like the meeting-ground and battle-field 
 of a hundred cultures. This apotheosis of the Middle 
 West seemed reared indifferently upon the black mud- 
 banks of the Missouri river, the blare and windy en 
 ergy of northern Illinois, the gaunt stretches of Min 
 nesota, the epic prairies of Nebraska. A helter-skelter 
 combination of parochial village, stark countryside and 
 cheap, gritty industrial towns the triumph of the 
 booster over the backwoodsman, the pioneer sup 
 planted by the press-agent. Even the ground had no 
 uniformity. Here ran a wooden pavement with sev 
 eral boards broken and clumps of weeds sprouting in 
 the irregular gaps between the planks; beyond it was 
 trampled dirt, a yellow soil, untilled and stony; oppo 
 site, a smug concrete sidewalk with a "parking" of 
 grass was lined with sickly trees on which the aphis 
 had been at work. 
 
 The architecture if one could call it that was 
 similarly nondescript. Ramshackle, unpainted, box- 
 like houses stood among garish two-story brick gro- 
 
 63 
 
64 Heavens 
 
 ceries, with signs of the B.P.O.E. and Knights of 
 Pythias above the bleached awnings, or leaned apa 
 thetically against The Eureka Garage with its grease- 
 blackened, slippery floor. A third generation farm 
 house squirmed between The Nemo Moving Picture 
 Palace with its tawdry electric sign in which eight of 
 the bulbs were missing and the Paris Emporium, whose 
 half-washed windows displayed assorted fly-spotted 
 packages of garden-seeds, faded cotton blankets, over 
 alls with metal buckles showing a film of rust, gray 
 hot-water bottles, a tray of tarnished plated-post link- 
 buttons, several bolts of plaid ginghams and two strips 
 of wrinkled fly-paper on one of which a large wasp 
 was buzzing incongruously. 
 
 One could see the interior of these houses. . . . The 
 musty bedrooms with their broken rocking-chairs, their 
 chromo-lithographs of Rosa Bonheur s "Horse Fair" on 
 one wall and a water-stained engraving of General 
 Lee s Surrender on the other. The dining-room with 
 tasteless food gulped noisily by people to whom "taste" 
 was an effeminate affectation, its shoddily upholstered 
 chairs with the imitation leather peeling off at the cor 
 ners, its broken cuckoo clock with its listless pendulum, 
 its plated silver fruit dish standing with a dull dignity 
 and eternal emptiness on a rickety side-board. The 
 parlor with its dirty portieres, its green plush sofa from 
 
The Heaven of Mean Streets 65 
 
 which the nap had long since been worn, the bright 
 mahogany upright piano, metallically out of tune and 
 the false ebony missing from the lowest C sharp key, 
 the curio cabinet, a nightmare of scrolls with its five 
 shelves of souvenirs, card-board jewel-boxes encrusted 
 with shells, pewter spoons showing a bas-relief view 
 of the Washington monument, a filigree-wire brooch 
 that spelled "Minnie," a Columbian half-dollar 
 mounted in a bezel as a charm, a thick red glass tum 
 bler with the words "Greetings from Sioux City Fair" 
 etched in white. . . . 
 
 "And for this," a voice was saying with ghostly 
 shudders, "Davy Crockett tamed the wilderness and 
 Ponce de Leon died to discover the fountain of eternal 
 youth. For this shrine of sodden respectability and 
 standardized negation, Sappho burned, Rome fell and 
 Da Vinci planned his most fantastic dreams!" 
 
 It was a girlish figure that spoke. Trig, bright- 
 eyed, poised like a humming bird ready to dart off at 
 a tangent, with a rather sentimental chin and a batik 
 blouse, she seemed like a cross between a sublimated 
 sophomore and an enthusiastic catalogue of the Roy- 
 crofters Arts and Crafts Association. 
 
 "I imagine er it must be," I stammered, "surely 
 you are Mrs. Carol Kennicott?" 
 
 "How did you know?" she answered, with a ripple 
 
66 Heavens 
 
 of surprise. "But that doesn t matter. Of course I 
 am. And I m frightfully glad to see you. When did 
 you come? And can I show you around?" 
 
 "Thanks. I d be delighted. And this is your 
 heaven?" 
 
 "Heaven forbid!" she shuddered visibly. "This is 
 the place we transplanted Middle Westerners keep as 
 an Awful Example. We only come here when we are 
 in danger of slipping into our mundane apathy or when 
 we need material for our celestial novels. You see 
 the realistic method has its penalties. Now our real 
 heaven But do come along and let me show you." 
 
 We walked past several greasy cross streets, littered 
 with unshaded "community buildings," tin cans and 
 asthmatic Fords. And then, suddenly ! 
 
 "... and that structure which looks like the Parthe 
 non remodelled by Robert Edmund Jones," she was 
 saying as I emerged from a dazzled unconsciousness, 
 "is Axel Egge s General Music Store with the loveliest 
 assortment of Self-Playing Harps you ever heard. We 
 have two at home. You ought to see Will working the 
 pedals while he runs off The Rosary. That replica 
 of St. Mark s ornamented with busts of Pestalozzi, 
 Dalcroze, Montessori, Froebel and Freud, is the school 
 building erected by the Sacred Seventeen. That large 
 octagonal field, flanked by Ionic columns, is the Isa 
 dora Duncan Stadium where we have our weekly meet- 
 
 
The Heaven of Mean Streets 67 
 
 ings of the Y.P.A.A.A.A. the Young People s Es 
 thetic and Athletic Association, you know. The baths 
 of Caracalla? Oh, you mean Ezra Stowbody s First 
 Celestial Bank. Impressive, don t you think? That 
 row of Devonshire cottages? We re rather proud of 
 that bit it is Ye Streete of Lyttle Shoppes, full of 
 quaint things and the loveliest reproductions of real 
 antiques. That vista of Oriental arcades is our park 
 ing space for fiery chariots designed by Lee Simonson. 
 The fountain is by Rodin after a sketch by Raymie 
 Witherspoon. That heroic statue of the western world 
 is the work of Paul Darde. He calls it The Pipes of 
 Pan- America. So symbolic, isn t it? And that group 
 of neo- Aztec residences by Frank Wright " 
 
 "Why hello, Carrie! Didn t know you were out 
 for a stroll. How s tricks to-day huh?" It was a 
 gruff, kindly voice emanating from a tied-and-dyed 
 toga. 
 
 "Oh, Will, how you startled me! I had no idea 
 oh, allow me to present my husband, Dr. Kennicott." 
 
 "Glad t meet any friend of Carrie s. How re you 
 making out? Been here long? Ain t it a dream of a 
 place? Greatest little spot in all creation, I ll say. 
 Darn artistic, every inch of it and not a plank-walk in 
 miles. Full of up-and-coming people, too. Lewis 
 you know the famous author of what s the name of 
 that book, Carrie, the one you and the Thanatopsis 
 
68 Heavens 
 
 Club enjoyed so much? well, he lives here. Wouldn t 
 change, he says, for any place in Heaven. Tried em 
 all but he s back here to stay you can see him most 
 any time floating along the avenue talking to the real 
 estate boys just plain folks like the rest of em. And 
 say, has Carrie shown you our new shack? What? 
 Well, you come right along and " 
 
 "But don t you think," I stammered, "that if I ac 
 cepted your kind offer " 
 
 "Why, Lord love you, brother, don t worry yourself 
 about that. You just hop along and take pot luck with 
 us. No trouble at all not by a long shot! We ll 
 shake up a cup of nectar and some boiled ambrosia if 
 there s nothing else. You come right up and Well, 
 look who s here! If it ain t Juanita Haydock and 
 Rita Simons all dressed up and no place to go. Where 
 you been, ladies? Stand and deliver an open con 
 fession, you know, is good for the soul." 
 
 "Oh, it s nothing very improper," giggled Rita, 
 "we ve been over to the Bernard Shaw Heaven to hear 
 him read the preface to his latest drama of religion 
 and the race. Back to the Protoplasm, he calls it. 
 An awful bore. Shaw is getting frightfully dull, don t 
 you think? And so sentimental!" 
 
 "It isn t his old-fashioned sentiment that I object 
 to," Juanita Haydock contributed in her high cackle, 
 "it does him credit, poor dear. It s his public-school 
 
The Heaven of Mean Streets 69 
 
 ideas! I suppose there was a time when the man was 
 amusing, but his trick of stating the obvious in terms 
 of the scandalous (you remember the wicked phrase 
 in The Tart Set) is really too provincial." 
 
 "That s true," Carol hurriedly assented, "his influ 
 ence on the Neighborhood Heaven has been anything 
 but the best. It used to be such a lovely, experimental 
 centre for newly-incubated prose poems and plastiques. 
 But ever since he and Dunsany have been helping them 
 put on their bills, there s practically no chance for the 
 younger writer not that I am in any hurry to see my 
 few things produced (and I would simply have to have 
 the right atmosphere) but it s too bad to see how 
 they are pandering to the most commonplace and con 
 ventional tastes." 
 
 "Yes!" chimed in Rita, "could anything be more 
 bourgeois than Reigen or those other Schnitzler plays 
 they gave last week?" 
 
 "Or those hackneyed monodramas by Evreinof," 
 flung out Juanita, "with outmoded settings by Gordon 
 Craig. Next, I suppose they ll trot out a back-number 
 like Reinhardt and have him put on things that have 
 been done to death like Hardy s Dynasts. If it 
 weren t for you, Carol, they d be trying to foist that 
 sort of half-baked fare on our own Drama League." 
 
 "Yes," agreed Rita, "if it weren t for you" 
 
 "I suppose, Mrs. Kennicott," I interrupted, "that you 
 
70 Heavens 
 
 are the god I should say the goddess of this par 
 ticular Nirvana." 
 
 "She certainly ought to be if she isn t," Carol s 
 henchwomen chorused. 
 
 "The fact is," added the doctor, "you ve opened up 
 a rather sore topic that s just coming to a head. As 
 things are, there re too many claimants to the so-to- 
 speak throne. Course there s no question who s en 
 titled to it. Before Carrie came here, what sort of 
 place was this, anyway? A kidney-colored, slab-sided 
 dump that might have been Paradise to a poor white 
 like Hugh McVey but hopeless for any live, art-loving 
 guys. Beauty, hell! None in a million miles and no 
 one around with enough nerve or gumption to find any. 
 Along comes this little lady, stirs up a lot of old Scan- 
 dahoofians, puts pep into a bunch of hexes and grinds 
 that only think of getting the world s work done, fills 
 this dried-up burg with a real honest-to-God pride in 
 itself, puts her shoulder to the job and digs in. And 
 to-day Well-1-1." He waved a proud and compre 
 hensive arm with a gesture that lost a little of its con 
 fidence as its sweep met the figure of a tall, lean man 
 with a shambling gait and a long, serious face. "Sorry, 
 McVey, didn t see you coming." 
 
 "That s all right," said Hugh. "That s all right." 
 
 A lump arose in Hugh s throat and for a moment 
 
The Heaven of Mean Streets 71 
 
 he was torn with silence and self-pity. He thought of 
 the old days in heaven before the coming of Carol, and 
 of the old days on earth before the coming of industry, 
 before the time of the mad activities, before the Wines- 
 burgs and Picklevilles had grown into the Daytons, 
 the Akrons and all the shrill new towns scattered over 
 the flat lands. He thought of the time when a quiet 
 light used to play over the men and women walking 
 on country roads and moonlit hills, working in the 
 fields, hooking rag rugs, making shoes, believing in a 
 God and dreaming great and serious dreams. From 
 all sides, to-day, he heard the clamor of a swifter age 
 shouting at him in a voice that spoke of huge numbers 
 in a terrible, mechanical definiteness. He witnessed 
 the erection of new systems and movements that were 
 demolished as fast as they were put up. He saw men, 
 massed in some gigantic machine, cutting and grind 
 ing their way through other men. He saw the crushed 
 bodies, heard the unuttered cries of the defeated and 
 trampled millions. 
 
 "I guess you re right," he said at last, "it s your 
 place, not mine. I ain t fitten for it. It was too much 
 for me down there. And it s too fancy up here. I 
 ain t fitten for it." 
 
 "But surely, Mr. McVey," I objected, "you don t 
 intend to renounce your claim so lightly. If you were 
 the presiding Genius of this Heaven, you could easily 
 
72 Heavens 
 
 invent something that would turn these mean streets 
 into ambling roads as quickly as Mrs. Kennicott has 
 changed them into brisk boulevards." 
 
 "Thanks. But it wouldn t be right. I ain t much 
 of a hand at running things. Besides, I promised 
 Clara to get out of politics. I ain t fitten for it. Clara 
 and I are pulling for some one we can understand." 
 
 "Which means?" 
 
 "Meaning that I m withdrawing in favor of this 
 lady here." He indicated an olive-colored woman, 
 once handsome, with a flat chest and eyes that wa 
 vered between being wistful and determined, a woman 
 who had drifted noiselessly to where they were stand 
 ing. "I mean Miss Lulu Bett." 
 
 The other members of the group gasped. Carol 
 shuddered. "Uh but dear Lulu doesn t know a thing 
 about city-planning or eugenics or community kitchens 
 or Keats or intensive recreation or how to put on a 
 Morris Dance or Motherhood Endowment or Pageants 
 for the Poor or " 
 
 "Oh, no," Lulu disclaimed. "Of course I don t know 
 anything about such things. I suppose there s lots 
 of other things I d better know, too. But I did see 
 some dances. It was in Savannah. Savannah, Geor 
 gia. I don t know the names of all the different dances 
 they did but there were a good many. And they were 
 real pretty." 
 
The Heaven of Mean Streets 73 
 
 Never a skilled conversationalist, Lulu paused, con 
 scious of the fact that the topic was not quite ex 
 hausted. Then she gulped and went on, "There was 
 a large band playing, too. I don t know how many 
 musicians they had in it, but there were a good many. 
 It was in a big hotel and the room was too crowded. 
 We" she flushed suddenly "my first husband and 
 I I think it was my first husband, although the play 
 and the book the lady wrote about me mixed me up 
 sort of about myself we were watching the dancing. 
 I was ashamed at first. I started to get up. Then I 
 set down. I made up my mind to see what there was. 
 I said I was going to learn all I could from Savannah, 
 Georgia. I did." 
 
 "And is that all you learned?" Carol smiled, not 
 without a thin coating of ice about the question. 
 
 "Oh, no," Lulu answered with even more of her 
 usual innocence. "After my second marriage " she 
 gulped again, turning a dull brick color, "I either mar 
 ried Mr. Cornish who kept music or I re-married Mr. 
 Deacon the lady got me confused about it and I m 
 not sure which well, we came to New York City, New 
 York. We stayed there five days. I liked it. They 
 had some lovely views there and there were a lot of 
 people in the streets all the time. And it was too 
 hot." 
 
74 Heavens 
 
 "And the result of your metropolitan researches " 
 Carol proceeded remorselessly. 
 
 "Well, we went to a lot of little places to eat. Mostly 
 down in cellars with candles. They had queer names. 
 One of them was like a ship and the waiters were 
 dressed like pirates. It was just like a play. And 
 everybody talked. They didn t do anything. They 
 talked about what you said. About pageants" [Lulu 
 pronounced it "payjunts"] "and the state s babies and 
 why the City Hall should be done over by a I think 
 they said Compressionist, and " 
 
 "She s right." This was Felix Fay, a slim young 
 man, careless as to dress and yet both conscious and 
 proud of his carelessness. A shock of insurgent hair 
 and the eyes of a dreamer coming slowly face to face 
 with reality. 
 
 "She s right. Main Street or Greenwich Village; it 
 is only a difference of longitude and in both senses 
 of the word latitude. You flatter yourselves that 
 you are advanced, that you have acquired social con 
 tacts or social consciousness. But what are you, un 
 derneath this veneer of culture? Carol, adrift on a 
 rose-water sea of dreams, Hugh stumbling darkly 
 among his own machines Moon-calves, all of you 
 even poor Lulu, lost in her childish fantasies. Worst 
 of all, Carol ! Crying not only for the moon you see, 
 even here, the significant symbol but wailing for a 
 
The Heaven of Mean Streets J$ 
 
 new earth and a whole new set of constellations! If 
 you really want a god " 
 
 "I suppose, young man, you could suggest the can 
 didate," sneered Dr. Kennicott. 
 
 "I could," returned Felix unabashed, "and I will. 
 What we need in this place is air lots of it salt 
 breezes to sweep out these musty fantasies. We need 
 a harsher, a more pragmatic realism; a combination, 
 if you can stand it, of Karl Marx, Rabelais and Fried- 
 rich Nietzsche." 
 
 "And you got the nerve to suggest that you " 
 
 "Not at all," calmly continued Felix, "I propose 
 H. L. Mencken, the wild Webster of the American 
 language." 
 
 "Mencken?" gasped the others and "Mencken?" 
 spluttered Kennicott with sudden exasperation, "why 
 that s impossible. He s too er vulgar, he ain t 
 got the right idea at all. He s clever enough oh, I ll 
 admit that but when it comes to the things that count, 
 the big things like reverence and uplift and respect 
 for women and civic pride and patriotism, why, he isn t 
 there at all! Besides, what right has he got in a 
 Middle Western Heaven? Ain t he from Baltimore?" 
 
 "And if I am," retorted a voice, well oiled with in 
 dignation and Pilsner, a voice that emanated from a 
 heavy-set individual who seemed to be a combination 
 of a visiting privat-docent and a seraphic butcher-boy, 
 
76 Heavens 
 
 "what if I am, my masters, originally a citizen of the 
 great Sahara of the South? Did I not bang the drum 
 for every Westerner who lifted himself by sheer mule- 
 power above the run of jackasses and old maids of both 
 sexes? Did I not champion Dreiser s Illinois before 
 he suffered from delusions of grandeur, when any one 
 engaged in such a crusade was howled down and ac 
 cused of sedition, free love, hello gab alisme, obstruct 
 ing the traffic in cheap fiction, obscenity, loss of critical 
 manhood, moral turpitude, anarchy, inciting to riot 
 and mayhem? Finally, did I not trek through the 
 sodden hinterland to discover Chicago and hail it as 
 America s literary center?" 
 
 "But," I interposed, "Mr. Kennicott thinks that 
 your standards might find more appreciative audiences 
 in er less sanctified centers than Heaven." 
 
 "Bah!" snapped Mencken, "even Brander Mat 
 thews would know better than that! What this place 
 needs is a little force majeure to free it from its blub 
 bering Sklavenmoral. It would be vastly more 
 dignified and downright entertaining if we could get 
 rid of the rumble-bumble of the pious snouters, the 
 gaudy bombast of the malignant moralists, the obtuse 
 and snivelling taradiddle, the absurd hogwallowing, the 
 balderdash, the pishposh, the abracadabra, the hocus- 
 pocus, the blaa-blaa and cavortings of all whoopers 
 and snorters, of the rabble-rousers, bogus rosicrucians, 
 
The Heaven of Mean Streets 77 
 
 ku-kluxers, well-greased tear-squeezers, parlor pundits 
 and boob-bumpers. 
 
 "The quackery, hugger-mugger idealism, and bump 
 tiousness of a so-called democratic heaven is pathetic. 
 Worse, it is grotesque. In the course of a mere score 
 of years we have been lamentably intrigued by a dozen 
 messianic delusions; we have allowed ourselves to be 
 caressed impartially and in turn by the shibboleths of 
 Tolstoy, Pastor Wagner, Drs. Palladino, Maeterlinck, 
 Metchnikoff, Bergson, the Emanuel Movement, 
 Eucken, Veblen, Dalcroze, Isadora Duncan, Tagore, 
 Freud and half a hundred other visiting boudoir- 
 swamis, studio-psychics, jitney messiahs. . . . We are 
 constantly being bussed and bemused by the hope 
 lessly mediocre. We have a prodigious appetite to be 
 fooled, tricked, bamboozled and double-crossed, in 
 short, to be ignominiously but thoroughly horns- 
 woggled. Hence, we swallow, with unconcealed gusto, 
 the pious garglings of the Sunday afternoon sentimen 
 talists, the windy platitudes and hollow stuff of any 
 gaudy romanticism as long as it is soothing. Hence, 
 the local peasantry grows more and more inclined to 
 the cackle and clowning of every cheap- jack, punchi- 
 nello, mountebank and booby, and hence sinks in its 
 own soughs of booming and asinine fol-de-rol. The 
 boobery has a positive genius for scorning whatever 
 is genuine or first-rate. It holds beauty to be unbusi- 
 
78 Heavens 
 
 ness-like, decorative, distracting and hence immoral; 
 its anaesthesia to the arts is invariably one hundred 
 percent. It is as unintelligent as a senator or a boy- 
 orator fresh from the chautauquas; it is the chief actor 
 in a bawdy farce, a seborrhea on the face of Nature, 
 a gawky villager who sees Love only as the divine 
 Shadchen, a tragic dill-pickle, a snitcher, a smut-hound, 
 in brief, an ass. Consider the way it has consistently 
 lauded the adenoidal tenors of American literature and 
 has shut the door in the faces of such rare but in 
 dubitable genii as Poe, Hearn, Whitman and the seri 
 ous side of God save the Mark! Twain. Consider 
 the reception accorded Dreiser s Sister Carrie. Or 
 Norris s McTeague. Or Conrad s Heart of Dark 
 ness. Or Sandburg s Chicago Poems. The thing 
 is incredible, stupendous, fantastic, unglaublich, gar 
 gantuan, kolossal but nevertheless true." 
 
 "And what," Kennicott rejoined with more than the 
 suspicion of a sneer, "are you going to do about it?" 
 
 "First," replied Mencken, "I shall pay a visit to the 
 presiding Stammvater and lay before him my plans for 
 draining the body politic of its virulent glycosuria. 
 Next I will broach somewhat gingerly a scheme to 
 plough through the ranks, and weed out all those who 
 suffer from comstockery, megalomania, right-thinking, 
 the itch-to-reform, chemical purity, belief in the soul or 
 share, in any way, the bovine honor and complacency 
 
The Heaven of Mean Streets 79 
 
 of the herd. I have various suggestions as to a sweet 
 and soulful euthanasia. I, myself, once proposed 
 wholesale lynchings, volunteering to string up half the 
 community of a small town in Maryland at the local 
 opera house and sell tickets to the other half at five 
 dollars per capita. It promised to be a profitable ven 
 ture and a good show. ... I throw out the sugges 
 tion and pass on. Next, I will exhibit a machine, de 
 signed by myself and Bernard Shaw out of Nietzsche, 
 which will effectually apply the slapstick to the pos 
 terior elevation of poets, cabots, Shakespearian cuties, 
 Southerners and other such pretty fellows and, as the 
 late General Grant has it somewhere, give them a kick 
 in the kishgiss. For one thing, I will make everybody 
 listen to daily concerts confined to the quartets of 
 Papa Haydn, the lieder of Richard Strauss, the nine 
 symphonies of the immortal Ludwig. For another, I 
 will show them that Man, for all his flashy chivalry 
 which invariably bites in the clinches, is capable of 
 appreciating fine letters, the sensuous ebb and flow of 
 syllables, the beautiful if polygamous marriage of 
 nouns and adjectives, verbs, adverbs, prepositions, pro 
 nouns, exclamations, articles, participles, infinitives, 
 possessives, conjunctions. I will read them the files 
 of The Smart Set and strike a responsive chord of Eb 
 major in the dumb breasts of janitors, soda-clerks, 
 mouzhiks, Methodists, book-salesmen, officers of the 
 
80 Heavens 
 
 Elks and duly elected members of the House of Rep 
 resentatives. Even the college professors will feel a 
 stir of life. I do not say that I can pump up sufficient 
 energy to destroy, at one blow, all the malaises and 
 bugaboos that inhibit these provinces. I do say that, 
 once my campaign is in full swing, I will tear off the 
 tin halos and false whiskers of the Puritan " 
 
 He got no further. The last word seemed to inflame 
 his listeners with amazing vigor. Although a unanim 
 ity of opinion was evident, each one was so eager to 
 pay his tribute of invectives that the air thickened 
 with fragments like . . . "glib dunderheads" . . . 
 "pious hypocrites" . . . "You ve got a Puritan com 
 plex yourself." . . . "filthy and blackmailing crusa 
 ders God save us all!" . . . "drown them in cold 
 tea in Puritannic acid!" . . . "Consider, also . . ." 
 . . . "To the Puritan all things are impure!" 
 
 The crowd was growing larger, the exclamations 
 louder. Mencken, banging a bass-drum which he had 
 hidden beneath his overcoat, began whistling the 
 Marche des "Davidsbundler" contre les Philistins. 
 Carol Kennicott and Felix Fay unfurled banners with 
 screaming slogans while Hugh McVey tore off his jacket 
 to display a flaming red undershirt. A shot was fired 
 then others. Possibly, they were blank cartridges; 
 but I was taking no chances. "If this is Heaven," I 
 gasped to my companion, "give me " 
 
The Heaven of Mean Streets 81 
 
 But my mentor had vanished. My heart lost sev 
 eral beats before I saw him. He was slipping out the 
 back-door. I agreed with him. He was an excellent 
 guide. 
 
FIVE PREVIEWS 
 
A Note on Previewing 
 
 A PREVIEW is, as its name implies, the opposite of a 
 review. It is, in short, an anticipatory consideration 
 of an (as yet) uncreated piece of work. A review is, 
 by the very necessity of its prefix, a backward glance 
 over tilled fields; the preview, gazing ahead at still 
 unbroken soil, is essentially far more forward-looking. 
 
 Previewing, in spite of its possibilities, has had few 
 practitioners. And this is strange, for its advantages 
 are obvious. For one thing, no one can accuse the 
 previewer of being a merely destructive critic; his 
 creation is implicit in his criticism. For another 
 thing, he never need skim the publisher s note or the 
 first chapters of a book before formulating his theories 
 of the volume he need not even confine himself to the 
 printed page; his range of interest is not cribbed, 
 cabined or confined by anything but the limits of his 
 imagination. A further advantage is the previewer s 
 freedom from any code or canon of critical conduct. 
 He need fear neither ethical indiscretions or legal 
 libels; the unwritten word is his unwritten law. 
 
 What a library these unwritten books would make! 
 No previewer s astral shelves would be complete with- 
 
 85 
 
86 Five Previews 
 
 out George Moore s privately conceived and privately 
 printed version of Paul and Virginia, G. K. Chester 
 ton s religious romance of a billiard-room called The 
 Ball and the Cue, an anthology of The World s Worst 
 Poetry, edited by H. L. Mencken, a collection of 
 angry reactionary essays on liberalism by Paul Elmer 
 More, entitled New Republicans and Sinners, an ex 
 haustive appreciation, The Art of David Belasco by 
 the denunciatory George Jean Nathan, What I Owe 
 Henry by Fanny Hurst, President Harding by Lytton 
 Strachey. ... An ardent previewer, by the very 
 force of his feelings and the intensity of his fore 
 casts, may actually will such books into being. It is 
 in the hope of stimulating such effort of quickening, as 
 it were, this stunted branch of literature that the fol 
 lowing five previews are presented without further 
 protest or preamble. 
 
WOODROVIAN POETRY 1 
 
 IT was a happy though somewhat belated thought 
 to bring together the eighteen poets here assembled 
 and to present their latest work not only as a revelation 
 to the new world but as a challenge to the old. Obvi 
 ously taking its cue from the various anthologies that 
 have been coming over from England and, more di 
 rectly, from The Lloyd-Georgians (the left wing se 
 cession of a group well-known in the late teens), this 
 volume aims to do for contemporary Americans what 
 has already been done for our transatlantic cousins. 
 But the anonymous editor is far more catholic. He 
 writes, in his Prefatory Note, "The object of Wood- 
 rovian Poetry is to give, first, a survey of the work 
 written in the last two years by some of our more au 
 thoritative poets; second, to show, by its very differ 
 ences in taste, form, temper and subjects, the varie 
 gated vigor of the most athletic of our arts." The 
 editor s catholicity is illustrated more sharply by his 
 inclusions. Thus Theodosia Garrison appears alpha 
 betically between Robert Frost and Orrick Johns. The 
 
 1 Woodrovian Poetry. A Biennial. Washington, D. C. The 
 Printers , Proofreaders and Publishers Soviet; Branch 16. 
 
 87 
 
88 Five Previews 
 
 easy-selling patterns of Berton Braley follow the three 
 involuted tone-poems by Conrad Aiken and precede 
 the cloisonne fantasies of Maxwell Bodenheim. "It is 
 not intended," argues the editor, "to place emphasis on 
 any particular group or tendency. On the contrary, 
 if an honest appraisal of national culture is desired, 
 one must receive the popular with the same enthusi 
 asm that, in these times, one extends to the bizarre; 
 the contributors to The Saturday Evening Post are 
 surely no less representative or racy than those of The 
 Littlest Review." 
 
 The volume itself is, as might be expected, a strange 
 medley of achievement and mere effort; it is by turns 
 "different" and indifferent. Turn to the twenty pages 
 allotted to Vachel Lindsay. The first four poems are 
 in his most metallic and moralizing vein; I doubt 
 whether he has ever written anything less worthy of 
 print and paper than "The Poison Weed" which is 
 dedicated to The Springfield Chapter of the Anti-To 
 bacco League. But the other pages give us this lusty 
 singer in his best and most whimsical voice. His rol 
 licking Afro-American version of The Song of Songs 
 entitled "The Shimmying Shulamite" is only surpassed 
 by that highly-colored chant which concludes his group, 
 "The Noah s Ark Blues." This poem contains Lind 
 say s three R s, his own blend of Rhyme, Ragtime and 
 Religion. But a new ingredient is added a restraint 
 
Woodrovian Poetry 89 
 
 that gives these lines the fire of a cause and the inev 
 itability of a nursery-rhyme. The mechanics are even 
 simpler than those of "The Congo." Obviously in 
 spired by a trip to Coney Island with The Russian 
 Ballet, it begins with variations on the old jingle: 
 
 The animals went in two by two, 
 (Good-bye, my lover, good-bye.) 
 
 The camel, the cat and the kangaroo; 
 (Good-bye, my lover, good-bye.) 
 
 But the first section, with its broadly humorous 
 catalog, is followed by a wilder and more fanciful 
 flight. In this part, the souls of the animals reveal 
 themselves and, in Lindsay s not too subtle symbolism, 
 become identified with their human prototypes. It 
 is a glorious melange of color, motion and metaphysics. 
 The snake s hiss makes a pattern that is crossed by the 
 lion s roar; the Chinese nightingales cry with a bar 
 baric sweetness against a background of twittering and 
 purring. 
 
 And hiss, sang the cobras, 
 
 Hiss . . . hisss . . . hissss. . . . 
 
 The craven-hearted gander surprised the salamander 
 
 By turning round and hissing in a dozen different keys. 
 
 Hiss. . . . Hisss. . . . Hisssss. . . . 
 
 The polar-bears, the bisons, the buffaloes and bees 
 
90 Five Previews 
 
 Began a mighty bumbling, 
 And roaring and rumbling, 
 And fumbling and snoring, 
 And eagles, tired of soaring, 
 Came tumbling to their knees. 
 Rrrrrrrr. , . Hisss. . . Rrrrrrrr. 
 
 The end of the poem is even more surprising. The 
 apotheosis comes suddenly in the very midst of this 
 lyric turbulence; a glorification that turns the clangor 
 to a burst of ecstasy. 
 
 Through the honied heavens I could see them drive 
 
 All the buzzing planets to a golden hive; 
 
 Bees and bears among the stars were burning constellations, 
 
 Lighting up the jungles and the new-born nations. 
 
 Every swooping eagle was a flaming sun, 
 
 Shining like a hero when the fight is won . . . 
 
 And, above the ramparts of The Holy Wall, 
 
 The White Dove of Beauty shone upon them all. 
 
 Miss Lowell s contributions are even more uneven 
 in quality. Craftsmen will undoubtedly be interested 
 in her experiments in post-Eurasian monorhymes, but 
 the unprofessional poetry-lover will find little to excite 
 him in these metronomic rhythms. Similarly puzzling 
 is her interpretation of Prokofieff s Grotesque for Two 
 Bassoons, Concertina and Snare-drums which Miss 
 Lowell has rendered a in the high-pitched timbre of 
 
Woodrovian Poetry 91 
 
 the neo-Javanese." It is not always easy to follow 
 such intricately embroidered lines as: 
 
 A sulphur-yellow chord of the eleventh 
 
 Twitches aside the counterpane. 
 
 Blasts of a dead chrysanthemum, 
 
 Blur. 
 
 Whispers of mauve in a sow s ear ; 
 
 Snort of a daffodil, 
 
 Bluster of zinnias hurtling through nasal silences, 
 
 Steeplejack in a lace cassock 
 
 Pirouetting before a fly-blown moon. 
 
 Soap-bubble groans where the wheezing planets 
 
 Abandon the jig. 
 
 But Miss Lowell is not always so cryptic. The six 
 short poems in contrapolyphonic verprose (grouped 
 under the appropriate title "Mice and Mandragora") 
 are brilliant examples of her staccato idiom. I quote 
 the first of these. 
 
 WALLFLOWER TO A MOONBEAM 
 
 In the pause 
 
 When you first came 
 
 The stillness rang with the clashing of wine-cups. 
 
 You spoke 
 
 And jonquil-trumpets blew dizzy bacchanals. 
 
 You smiled 
 
 And drunken laughter 
 
 Spilled over the edges of the gauffered night. 
 
92 Five Previews 
 
 Now you have gone, 
 
 The dusk has lost its sparkle; 
 
 My days are trickling water, 
 
 Tepid and tasteless. 
 
 But I am no longer thirsty. 
 
 Most of the other poets seem to be marking time. 
 James Oppenheim s extended "Psalm for the New Cos 
 mos" gives one the same impression that we have al 
 ready received from his later work a vision of Je 
 hovah taking lessons in psychoanalysis from Walt 
 Whitman. These are the first notes of the opening 
 chorus: 
 
 Yes, I say, to the dance of the stars! 
 
 Yes to the sexual warmth of our mother, the sun; 
 
 Yes, I shout, to the many- voiced longing which is life ; 
 
 Yes, I declare, to Creation! 
 
 Who shall publish the dark heart of Chaos, 
 
 And lay bare the secrets of Night? 
 
 Edgar Lee Masters^ noble "Ode to Prohibition" 
 (dedicated to William Jennings Bryan) has all this au 
 thor s early fire but it is marred in places by the hor 
 tatory enthusiasm of the recent convert. William 
 Rose Benet continues to commute between Hell Gate 
 and Helicon on his four-cylinder unicorn. Willard 
 Wattles of Kansas is a welcome addition (alphabet!- 
 
Woodrovian Poetry 93 
 
 cally, at least) to the line of famous W. W. s that in 
 cludes William Wordsworth, Walt Whitman, William 
 Watson and Woodrow Wilson. Theodosia Garrison s 
 lyrics still read as if they were composed on an auto 
 matic cash-register. Mr. Braley, it is evident, has 
 availed himself of the Improved Graphomotor attach 
 ment for Tired Typewriters. E. A. Robinson, having 
 exhausted the Arthurian legends, has gone back to the 
 fall of Troy. Louis Untermeyer is still loudly and 
 repetitively amazed at the liveliness of life, and John 
 Hall Wheelock is still musically enchanted with the 
 loveliness of death. 
 
 Carl Sandburg is the only one of the sixteen who, 
 while retaining his own voice, has added some unsus 
 pected quality to it. Few of his poems will rank 
 higher than his "Nine Pieces from Sappho" which 
 Sandburg has rendered into modern Chicago speech. 
 Not since Wharton s collection, has any one done so 
 much to revitalize what Palgrave called "the sweet la 
 ment of Lesbian love." Sandburg avoids the pitfalls 
 of sentimentality which trapped Merivale and Sy- 
 monds; Sappho, in his versions, is as throbbing and 
 breathless as any girl late for her appointment on 
 State Street. Particularly characteristic is his treat 
 ment of the second ode in Sapphic metre, the one which 
 is even better known in Catullus s imitation. This is 
 Sandburg s rendition: 
 
94 Five Previews 
 
 I m telling you. 
 
 That man who trails along with you 
 Is better off than the governor of Idaho. 
 He sits close 
 
 And hears you laughing a giggler, God knows, a gig 
 gler 
 
 And his troubles are as gone as yesterday, 
 And the past is a scuttle of cinders. 
 
 That s what I hanker after. 
 
 But when I get one slant at you, 
 
 I can t speak. 
 
 Dust gets in my throat; 
 
 My tongue breaks down in jabberings; 
 
 The flame in my right wrist and the fires in my left wrist 
 run along my arms and legs. 
 
 My ears ring; I go blind; drops come out on my fore 
 head; I shake all over. I m afraid of going nuts. 
 
 Get this. 
 
 I want to chance everything. 
 
 I want to say there s a place out here with potato- 
 blossoms and young frogs calling and nobody home 
 but a red sun spilling hallelujahs over the prairie. 
 
 I want to dance and sing: Shine All Over God s Heaven. 
 
 But something chokes me. 
 
 I can t act like I used to. 
 
 I go yellow as grass when there s no rain in July; 
 
 All in ... ab-so-lute-ly all in ... no use, boy, no use. 
 I m telling you. 
 
Woodrovlan Poetry 95 
 
 It is difficult to understand why Robert Frost is rep 
 resented by only one poem, and that one ("The 
 Dried-up Spring") obviously a product of his middle 
 or Franconian period. Perhaps it is because of Frost s 
 distrust of groups particularly his own. Or perhaps 
 he himself is the anonymous editor. Whatever the rea 
 son, and in spite of other omissions (the air around 
 Washington Square will be a violent cobalt with the 
 indignations of Alfred Kreymborg s adherents!), the 
 collection will take its place as one of the fifty-seven 
 "unique and notable books of the year." In its chaste 
 binding of red, white and blue, it should appeal to both 
 the intelligent student of native art and the reader of 
 the editorials of the New York Times. Whatever else 
 the Woodrovian era has lost, it has found its singers. 
 
THE MANUFACTURE OF VERSE 1 
 
 IT was bound to come. And here, a solid four hun 
 dred and fifty page royal octavo, it is. Professor 
 Harper Grenville s calmly-entitled The Manufacture 
 of Verse is not so much a book as it is a calculated 
 literary explosion; an astounding combination of man 
 ual, pattern-maker and hand-book containing Two 
 Hundred Secrets of The Trade. Professor Grenville, 
 who has returned after a sojourn in these nitid states 
 to his chair at Monrovia University, begins with an 
 ingenuous foreword in which he submits the proposi 
 tion, revolutionary in its simplicity, that. . . . But let 
 him speak for himself. 
 
 "Before returning to Africa," begins the professor, 
 "I spent four sabbatical years reading the poetry in 
 every magazine from The Atlantic Monthly to The 
 Ginger Jar; attending (so far as geography would per 
 mit) every meeting of every Poetry Society; studying, 
 in short, the entire problem of supply and demand in 
 
 1 The Manufacture of Verse ; including a Preface on Weights 
 and Measures, a Rhyming Dictionary for Vers Librists, and a 
 Three Weeks Course for Beginners. By Harper Grenville, 
 Litt.D., Monrovia, Liberia. Printed by the Author. 
 
 97 
 
98 Five Previews 
 
 what, as far as America is concerned, has grown to be 
 not only a major occupation but an essential industry. 
 And I was struck, first of all, by the shocking inef 
 ficiency and waste in the manufacture as well as in the 
 marketing of this staple product. What surprised me 
 most was the utterly unsystematic method of assem 
 bling, the useless duplication, the uncoordinated and 
 almost unconscious similarity. Surely a country run 
 by time-clocks, Babson reports, memory courses, con 
 servation committees and the Taylor System must real 
 ize that its poetry cannot be allowed to lag behind 
 in the old haphazard, write-as-the-mood-seizes-you 
 gait! Something is needed for the double purpose of 
 standardizing quality and speeding up production. It 
 is in the hope of filling this only too evident need that 
 the following chapters have been prepared." 
 
 Thus Professor Grenville s stark little prologue. 
 Without pausing for breath, he goes into action on the 
 first page of the first chapter, which deals with Maga 
 zine Verse and is brusquely entitled At the Usual Rate 
 per Line. 
 
 "It is not too late, even in an age of conquering 
 ideals," he begins, "to be realistic. For better or for 
 worse, the magazine sonnet, the rotund meditation, the 
 sentimental fillers exist. What is more, they persist. 
 There is a market for these wares; they live because 
 people like them, because there is a genuine demand 
 
The Manufacture of Verse 99 
 
 for such merchandise. Obviously, our duty is to show 
 how to meet that demand without the fumblings and 
 faint strivings for originality that have characterized 
 the past." Whereupon the Professor begins to cata 
 log, to codify, to quote. Great names are thrown about 
 with a magnificent nonchalance; nobody escapes. The 
 present reviewer wishes he had space to reprint Pro 
 fessor Grenville s analysis of "that cornerstone of 
 journalistic prosody, The Lush and Rhetorical Son 
 net," regretting that the readers must content them 
 selves with the learned doctor s conclusions. 
 
 "The fourteenth line" [I am detaching a segment 
 from page 21] "should always be written first; the 
 first line next. The rest is mere stuffing. Of late 
 there has been a tendency to build sonnets around the 
 third or fourth line, on the theory that editors never 
 get as far as the last line. This is an innovation which, 
 in spite of its plausibility, I must condemn. For one 
 thing, it tends to deviate from that conformity which, 
 as I have pointed out, is the very goal at which we are 
 aiming. Nothing should be done to disturb the liquid 
 flow of a thought that begins nowhere and, after mean 
 dering through fourteen well-worn grooves, ends there. 
 Vague abstractions and vaguer wings that beat/ sil 
 vern melodies/ alliterative generalities and archaic em 
 bellishments like I wis/ hark/ fain/ etc., will go far 
 to fill in the gap between the first phrase of the octave 
 
IOO Five Previews 
 
 and the last rhyme of the sestet. Here, by Clinton 
 Scollard, is an almost perfect example: 
 
 AT THE VERGE OF MARCH 
 
 It is not ever that the outer ear 
 
 Bears us the joy for which our hearts are fain; 
 
 Sometimes we sense the music of the rain 
 Ere its first silvern melody we hear. 
 Sometimes we feel the grieving sea is near 
 
 Before we hark its never silent strain; 
 
 Sometimes we mark the veering of the vane 
 Ere the wind-trumpets sound their clamour clear. 
 
 So now I am inscrutably aware 
 
 Of moving wings that beat against the day, 
 Of swift migrations stirring from afar; 
 
 The clouds betray strange murmurings in the air, 
 Breathings seep up from out the frozen clay, 
 And there are whisperings from the twilight star. 
 
 "But," continues our guide, "there is another type 
 of sonnet which requires less care and which yields 
 even more gratifying results. And that is the Mouth- 
 Filling and Mystic Sonnet. During the war there was 
 a noticeable slump in these goods but, with the in 
 creased popularity of spiritualism, they have risen 
 steadily in favor. They can be manufactured in 
 quantity with the aid of the ordinary, domestic ouija 
 board. Or, if a slower but somewhat more satisfactory 
 
The Manufacture of Verse io: 
 
 method is desired, they can be turned out in this fash 
 ion: Collect and arrange a score of hyper-literary, re 
 sounding and (preferably) obsolete words words like 
 nenuphar, thrid, levin, rathe, immemorial, 
 palimpsest. Scatter these through the pattern, leav 
 ing space for rhymes. Use any good dictionary and 
 season to suit. An almost endless variety can thus be 
 produced, of which the following is a sample a com 
 posite of twenty-three different variations of this pop 
 ular model: 
 
 RESURGAM 
 
 Athwart the hectic sunset s plangent crown, 
 
 The rathe and daedal moon is vaguely seen; 
 
 The ghosts of twilight strow the skies with green 
 
 And listlessly the evening sinks adown. 
 
 The driven day forgets its furrowed frown 
 
 And shimmers in the frail and xanthic sheen; 
 
 Life s banners ope the shades porphyrogene, 
 
 Dank and disheveled, clutch the night and drown. . . . 
 
 So did I once behold Love s gyving spells 
 Flashing from amaranthine star to star ; 
 While, from the limbo of forgotten hells, 
 The immarcescible passions surged afar. . . . 
 What fulgid lure awoke the asphodels? 
 Behind the gibbering night what avatar?" 
 
 I skip, with ill-concealed impatience, to page 425 
 and Professor Grenville s instructive remarks on Capi- 
 
IO2 Five Previews 
 
 talizing Beauty with a Capital B. "What is more 
 gratifying to the modern reader, harassed by machin 
 ery and newspaper editorials, than a thumping glori 
 fication of the past? By that I do not mean the recent 
 past, which has been dealt with in a previous chapter 
 and which finds its climactic cri de cceur in refrains 
 like: 
 
 And it s oh for the hills of Ida, and the sigh of the 
 Zuyder Zee! 
 
 "I refer to the sonorous stanzas which, with a de 
 lightful ambiguity, mingle epochs, geography, and his 
 torical land-marks in a list of confused but dazzling 
 splendor. It is unnecessary to analyze or even de 
 fine this impressive type. Every student acquainted 
 with the rudiments of scientific management and ma 
 chine piece-work will be able to construct love-poems 
 as resonant, high-pitched and, purple-patched as this 
 free-hand improvisation: 
 
 THE PAGAN HEART 
 
 Here, in Egyptian night, you hang 
 Above me, sphinx without a home; 
 
 Whiter than Helen as she sang 
 
 And burned the golden isles of Rome. 
 
The Manufacture of Verse 103 
 
 The breath of perfumed Sidon slips 
 From your Greek body s wizardry; 
 
 Persepolis is on your lips, 
 
 And your bright hair is Nineveh. 
 
 Enchantress, you have drawn upon 
 The world s dream and its old desire 
 
 The brazen pomps of Babylon, 
 The purple panoply of Tyre!" 
 
 It is impossible to give the fine flavour of this vol 
 ume by meagre quotations. It is equally impossible 
 to quote it in toto. And yet one cannot resist tearing 
 a fragment from Professor Grenville s advice concern 
 ing The English Lyric. "By the English lyric, I mean 
 that type of song which (in contradistinction to that 
 written in the American idiom) is sought after chiefly 
 in the United States. Whether the pattern is vernal 
 (see Spring Style No. 53) or merely rustic and rumi 
 native (vide Songs of the Open Road, designs 62 to 
 225), all one needs is a small but select vocabulary 
 ready for substitution. The proper air is given and 
 the effect achieved by changing the common American 
 blackbird to the poetically Georgian merle/ the lark 
 to the laverock/ song-thrush to mavis/ wood to 
 wold/ and liberally strewing the rest of any outdoor 
 jingle (see passages on Wanderlust, Broad-Highway, 
 Vagbondia, etc.) with references to gorse/ heather/ 
 
104 Five Previews 
 
 furze, whin/ and so on. ... The following intro 
 ductory stanzas are an approximation of this standard 
 and always effective design: 
 
 LAVEROCKS 
 
 The winter sun has run its wavering course, 
 The giddy mavis tries its vernal wing; 
 
 While from the green heart of the radiant gorse 
 The laverocks sing. 
 
 High on the moor the blossomy heather wakes 
 The gillyflower laughing in the furze; 
 
 And, in the bramble thickets and the brakes, 
 Old magic stirs. 
 
 Ah, love, could we but once more be a part 
 Of May! In tune with bracken and with ling! 
 
 Then, from the flaming thickets of my heart, 
 Laverocks would sing!" 
 
 It would be a pleasure to go all the way with Pro 
 fessor Grenville. But that pleasure must be reserved 
 for the student, the apprentice, and the eight-hour-day 
 versifiers rather than the casual reader. There are 
 times when the author, especially in his efforts to re 
 duce the number of easy-selling models, grows a trifle 
 doctrinaire; there are other times when one almost sus 
 pects him of letting his tongue slip toward his cheek, 
 as when, in the passage on How to Achieve Glamour, 
 
The Manufacture of Verse 105 
 
 he writes: "Inversion is the surest method; the fur 
 ther away one gets from the spoken language, the 
 nearer one is to that mode of stilted speech which even 
 the comic weeklies recognize as poetry a masterpiece 
 of its kind being the first two lines of a poem by Mr. 
 Louis V. Ledoux: 
 
 A moonlit mist the valley fills, 
 Though rides unseen herself the moon/ " 
 
 In spite of the few flies in Professor Grenville s 
 preparation of the "divine emollient," one and I dare 
 say, a great many more must be grateful to him. 
 Such chapters as Rhyme Without Reason, Archaism s 
 Artful Aid, Home-Grown Exotics, will do much to help 
 the latter-day minstrel up the slopes of Parnassus in 
 high. 
 
 The Manufacture of Verse is, in every sense, a 
 profitable book. At least, it ought to be. 
 
THE LOWEST FORM OF WIT 1 
 
 THIS curious volume, in which we meet with so many 
 old friends that it is as if we had suddenly entered 
 our second childhood, is let me be brutally candid 
 a disappointment. It is, as all admirers of Dr. 
 Thyme would expect, a good book. But it could have 
 been a great one. The eminent psychoanalytical lit 
 terateur was about to plumb strange and fascinating 
 depths. He explored the entrance, noted (with some 
 what too scrupulous detail) the surrounding territory 
 and began to descend. And then something happened. 
 The search, so brilliantly begun, was abandoned for 
 a series of divagations, circuitous by-paths, pleasant 
 but unprofitable excursions into the familiar. Briefly, 
 what happened was this : the researcher became lost in 
 his own labyrinth; the critic yielded to the compiler. 
 The last half of Dr. Thyme s thesis (devoted to five 
 hundred classic and modern puns) is a lamentable 
 falling-off from the dazzling promise of his early chap 
 ters. And this is more than a pity; it is a kind of 
 
 1 The Pun, Its Principles, Possibilities, and Purposes; with 
 500 examples of this Popular Pastime. By Justin Thyme, M.A. 
 Scribbler & Bros., Boston. 
 
 107 
 
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 literary tragedy. For we have not yet been given 
 and we badly need what this book pretends to be: a 
 careful and complete analysis of the pun, its princi 
 ples, its purpose, its possibilities. 
 
 No one disputes the definition: "Punning is the 
 lowest form of wit." The axiom is universally ap 
 plauded, quoted and upheld. The scorn of the pun 
 is common in every civilized country and at least 
 so it seems to the addicts of this easily acquired habit 
 astonishingly vindictive. And why? The reasons 
 are various; every critical consultant will give you 
 equally valid (and equally contradictory) explanations. 
 H. L. Mencken will assure you that the hatred of 
 punning lies in man s inherent Puritanism. He will 
 discover for you that the booboisie as well as the vice- 
 crusaders, smut-hounds, snitchers and members of the 
 B.P.O.E., scent something pleasurable in the practise 
 and hence abhor in public what they enjoy in private. 
 He will convince you that a race which is anaesthetic 
 to art or beauty in any form has forced itself to erect 
 taboos against this form of innocent gratification until 
 it has become a refuge of the cheap-jacks, punchi- 
 nellos, chautauquans, drummers and senators; a gaudy 
 and hollow laugh-provoking device. . . . Upton Sin 
 clair will tell you, with great heat and even greater 
 detail, that the low state to which the pun has fallen 
 is due to the machinations of the capitalist press. Sin- 
 
The Lowest Form of Wit 109 
 
 clair will show that punning, one of the few privileges 
 of the labor class, has been reviled, ridiculed and lied 
 about by a conspiracy of paid professors, city editors 
 and rewrite men. He will tell, as proof of his charges, 
 how a pun of his, after being quoted in the afternoon 
 edition of the New York Evening Post, was dropped 
 in subsequent editions and never printed elsewhere, 
 the Associated Press refusing to carry the story or an 
 swer his letters. . . . Dr. Sigmund Freud will explain 
 the aversion to the pun by referring you to his tome 
 on Wit and Its Relation to the Unconscious; establish 
 ing the dark nature of the pleasure mechanism, the 
 hidden psychogenesis of humour and the unsuspected 
 nature of the Lach-effekt. Reinforced by Ueber- 
 horst s Das Komische, the analyst will show that the 
 desire to pun is basically sexual, a form of exhibition 
 ism and that, therefore, the moral censor continually 
 tries to repress the impulse. He will proceed to show 
 how that repression, deepened by the punster s conse 
 quent inferiority complex, has been responsible for 
 many delusions and neuroses. . . . And so on, down 
 the list of critics, interpreters and other antagonists. 
 But no one has ever gone or thought of going 
 to the source. Now I, for instance, am an inveterate 
 punster. I know the causes. And, having been 
 shocked at the violence with which these inoffensive 
 plays on words are received, I have evolved a theory 
 
HO Five Previews 
 
 or, to be finickingly precise, a set of theories about 
 this diversion and its overwhelming unpopularity. 
 
 (1) Punning is the most unsportsmanlike of indoor 
 exercises. It is a game that can only be played by 
 one. Therefore the others, who cannot join, begin by 
 hating the solo player s jocular (should it be "jugu 
 lar?") vein and end by wishing to tear him limb from 
 lymph. It is a truism that no one ever enjoys any 
 one s puns but his own. The exception which proves 
 the rule is G. K. Chesterton. But Chesterton leads 
 up to his puns so gradually, so patiently prepares the 
 dullest reader for his most brilliant explosion that, 
 by the time the piece is set off, the reader, anticipat 
 ing the detonation, has acquired almost a proprietary 
 interest and actually feels the pun is, with a little 
 help from Chesterton, his own. 
 
 (2) Punning is an illicit form of verse. K. Fisher 
 says "a pun does not play with the word as a word, 
 but merely as a sound." In its effort to find simi 
 larities of vowels and differences in consonants, it is 
 a species of rhyme. Therefore those who dislike the 
 very suggestion of poetry (approximately 99 9/10% of 
 the race) bear the pun an added grudge. 
 
 (3) Punning is a parade of mental superiority. 
 Every word has a string of connotations, overtones, 
 associations. As soon as A and B, two intellectually 
 alert persons, hear a sentence, their brains begin work- 
 
The Lowest Form of Wit in 
 
 ing (half consciously) among the possibilities pre 
 sented. While B, the less flexible mind, is still grop 
 ing among the verbal reflexes, A triumphantly releases 
 his bolt and confronts B with his (B s) lethargic and 
 generally inferior mind. Hence B (representing the 
 majority of mankind) hates all that A stands for. 
 
 (4) Punning is a coarse commentary on . . . But 
 let me discard the categoric and impersonal. This pre 
 view is, after all, not so much a general inquiry as a 
 fiercely personal outcry. I am, I confess, a passionate 
 punster. I cannot hear a phrase without desiring to 
 turn it upside down; twist it about; wring its neck, if 
 necessary. Can I change the habit of a lifetime? Do 
 I want to? Even in solitude, I think of queer verbal 
 acrobatics; my system is a hot-bed of unassimilated 
 jeux d esprit s. How am I going to get rid of them? 
 What am I going to do about it? 
 
 There is the pun that came to me in of all places 
 for intellectual athletics! a book-store. I was think 
 ing about the derivative American composers the 
 Loefflers, Carpenters, et al who keep poking and pry 
 ing in modern French music. I want to call them 
 American Debussybodies. But do I dare? 
 
 There is the mot in connection with a roulade of 
 beef prepared by a famous chef for a catered dinner. 
 The Irish waitress refuses to serve it because she fa 
 vours Home Roulade. I shall never use that one. 
 
112 Five Previews 
 
 There is the temptation concerning the native au 
 thor of "Betelguese." This American epic, subtitled 
 "A Trip Through Hell," is written in a sort of home 
 spun terza rima. I want to call the author "A Yankee 
 Doodle Dante." But I have not the courage. 
 
 There is the opportunity that presented itself in the 
 
 summer camp of R , the composer. I held that all 
 
 nature-sounds not only were musical but had a tonal 
 structure and definite form. He denied it. "And 
 what," he mocked as our controversy was interrupted 
 by the baying of our neighbor s hounds, "what sort of 
 musical composition would you call that?" It was on 
 the tip of my tongue to reply, "A Barkarolle." But, 
 valuing his friendship, I restrained myself. 
 
 For some time I have wanted to speak of Beardsley s 
 "Pierroticism." I want to refer to Wilde s mechan 
 ically clever dialogues as "scratchy records played on 
 a creaking epigramophone." I want to dismiss the gro 
 tesque, heavy-footed imitations of Poe as "elephan- 
 tastic." I want to brand Trotzky s idea of teaching 
 the young socialists how to shoot as "a poor piece of 
 Marxmanship." . . . And yet I never will. 
 
 Then there is the tour de force concerning. . . . But 
 you are not listening. You have already turned away 
 from my still-born puns. I understand. You are 
 thinking of one of your own. 
 
VERSED AID TO THE INJURED * 
 
 HARPER GRENVILLE, Litt.D., of Monrovia, Liberia, 
 has done it again. The efficiency expert of modern 
 poetry whose The Manufacture of Verse caused such 
 a technical sensation a year ago, has evolved some new 
 and even more startling methods for "standardizing 
 and speeding up production of this staple item." This 
 time Professor Grenville turns directly to the unpub 
 lished versifier and, scorning such antique affectations 
 as mood, inspiration and even talent, addresses him 
 self to "those who, unable to find an audience or a pub 
 lisher, feel naturally insulted and injured." A Manual 
 of Versed Aid, or How to Become A Practising Poet in 
 Seven Lessons, begins without preamble: 
 
 "Often, dear reader, you have been asked (or have 
 asked yourself) why shouldn t every one write poetry? 
 And by that you meant not unofficial, amateur and 
 personal poetry but public or publishable verse. The 
 answer is absurdly simple. Every one should any 
 one can. To become a successful contributor to maga- 
 
 *A Manual of Versed Aid; with Helpful Hints for the Young 
 Poet. By Harper Grenville, Litt.D. Privately printed. 
 
114 Five Previews 
 
 zines as divergent and leading as Terrible Tales and 
 Home and Hearthside, all one needs is (i) the desire 
 to write and (2) patience and not very much of the 
 latter. The desire to write (and, I should add, a casual 
 study of the chapters on Fixed Forms and Pattern- 
 Making) is paramount and this Manual is designed 
 to give aid to those who have, as yet, no technique, 
 ideas, craftsmanship, emotions, purpose or any power 
 beyond that desire." 
 
 Whereupon Professor Grenville, after a somewhat 
 too detailed consideration of the profits to be derived 
 from following his System of Simplification, introduces 
 the unlettered as well as the literati to the first for 
 mula which he explains thus succinctly: "Nothing is 
 more likely to prevent the salability of your work than 
 the practise of writing poetry by ear. I cannot stress 
 too strongly the danger of this habit which often leads 
 to a perverse way of stating things, a clumsy differen 
 tiation which is commonly called originality. I would 
 advise precisely the opposite method: Poetry by Eye. 
 Do not let yourself listen for novel chords and un 
 usual cadences, but observe closely the shape and 
 structure of as much magazine verse as you can read. 
 Then begin and write your verses as close as possible 
 to your models. I would suggest starting with a Spring 
 Song. Here is the opening stanza of one the first 
 
Versed Aid to the Injured 115 
 
 effort of a student who had never written anything 
 but insurance which is worthy of study. 
 
 The skies have lost their wintry gray, 
 
 In every tree the robins sing; 
 Children and lambs unite to play ; 
 
 All Nature wakes and it is Spring. 
 
 "This, I submit, is practically perfect. There is not 
 a phrase here but is as recognizable and classic as a 
 familiar melody. One knows it by heart as soon as it 
 is read; one can actually whistle it upon the third repe 
 tition. But what is even more to the point is the 
 solidity of its structure. Every clause fits into place 
 so neatly that the lines can be read in any order with 
 out marring the music or the meaning. The verse is 
 just as effective if the penultimate line is followed by 
 the first, if the second couplet precedes the initial one 
 or as a final triumphant test if the entire quatrain 
 is begun backward, letting the lines follow haphazardly. 
 Thus: 
 
 All Nature wakes and it is Spring. 
 
 Children and lambs unite to play ; 
 
 The skies have lost their wintry gray; 
 In every tree the robins sing! 
 
 "This," says the canny instructor, "is the secret: 
 keep to the perennial and expected essentials." And 
 
Il6 Five Previews 
 
 in the following chapter on Occasional Sonnets the 
 poetic pedagogue reveals an even sharper and more 
 condensed simplification. "To be able to take a poem 
 apart and put it together in any combination of lines 
 is the first step. But/ he continues, "it is not enough. 
 Study the ever-popular sonnet especially the Memo 
 rial or Anniversary Sonnet as an example. There is 
 a steady demand for this article which, with a little 
 diligence, can be supplied in quantity. The Compos 
 ite Method is one which makes the production of this 
 pattern fairly easy. But there is an even less tiresome 
 system which I have found to yield still better results. 
 And that is this: Take the inevitable phrase O thou 
 as the impetus and starting point of your sonnet, choose 
 a series of dictionary rhymes, place a word or two to 
 suggest the thought at the beginning of each line 
 and fill in the gaps at your leisure. It is surprising 
 how many variations can be written around such a 
 framework as: 
 
 TO 
 
 O thou birth 
 
 Great land, 
 
 Stern command 
 
 Wisdom mirth. 
 
 Noble worth, 
 
 Future * planned, 
 
 All men understand 
 
 Throughout earth. 
 
Versed Aid to the Injured 117 
 
 Inscrutably designed, 
 
 Glorious sea to sea; 
 
 Foes blind 
 
 Nations free 
 
 Lover mankind, 
 
 Thy fame eternity. 
 
 "Another and even speedier mode of composition," 
 remarks the professor in the section devoted to Noc 
 turnes and Lullabies, "is to dispense with all words 
 except the final one in each line. Thousands of slum 
 ber-songs have been written by beginning only with 
 the indispensable monosyllable Rest, jotting down a 
 set of blank lines and letting the rhymes write them 
 selves. The possibilities and permutations in these 
 skeleton structures are unlimited. An example: 
 
 SUNSET CROON 
 
 dies, 
 
 west, 
 
 skies, 
 
 Rest. 
 
 calls, 
 
 nest ; 
 
 falls. 
 
 Rest. 
 
Ii8 Five Previews 
 
 alarms, 
 
 breast; 
 
 arms, 
 
 Rest. 
 
 love; 
 
 best. 
 
 above 
 
 Rest." 
 
 It would be a service to consider Professor Gren- 
 ville s book in microscopic detail; there is not a dull or 
 (in every sense of the word) unprofitable paragraph in 
 his 250 pages. But such a consideration would de 
 generate into a series of quotations punctuated by noth 
 ing more critical than applause. And yet the tempta 
 tion to quote is too strong to resist particularly when 
 one reaches a section in the chapter on The Diminu 
 tive Lyric. "This type of lyric," proceeds this com 
 mercial counsellor, "is continually being called for, 
 especially by the more determinedly feminine maga 
 zines. Its chief characteristics are a clinging and cloy 
 ing tenderness (which, under no circumstance, must be 
 allowed to become genuinely poignant), a wistful sen 
 timent that is only distantly acquainted with passion 
 and a plentiful use of the word little and its conno 
 tations. An added value is attained by giving the last 
 line a fillip, a light twist in the O. Henry manner (some 
 
Versed Aid to the Injured 119 
 
 of the lady specialists in this type have been called 
 The O. Henriettas) with the suggestion of a sigh. After 
 two or three experiments, it will be found that love 
 songs like the following are far easier to write than not. 
 
 LOVE IN APRIL 
 
 The little winds of April 
 
 Swing up the little street; 
 But there s no spring within my heart, 
 
 No dancing in my feet. 
 
 The little songs of April 
 
 Laugh through each little lane; 
 
 But I am deaf to singing lips 
 And will not sing again. 
 
 The little loves of April 
 
 Follow my steps . . . But oh, 
 
 How can I give my heart to him 
 Who lost it long ago!" 
 
 This is a volume to be treasured not only as a piece 
 of research but as a literary landmark. It marks the 
 end of the mute Miltons, the shamefaced Shelleys, the 
 silent Sapphos. From now on, there will be absolutely 
 no excuse for anybody s absence from Anyone s An 
 nual Anthology of Magazine Verse. In the guise of 
 what seems to be a text-book for unpublished 
 
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 poetasters, a great blow has been struck for the de 
 mocracy of the arts. This is the forerunner of a poetry 
 for the people, of the people, by the people. Some 
 future singing generation will erect odes and tablets to 
 Harper Grenville, Litt. D., of Monrovia, Liberia. 
 
RHYME AND RELATIVITY 1 
 
 IN spite of the seriousness with which this collec 
 tion has been received, we cannot relinquish our sus 
 picion that the entire book is a hoax. Not even Mr. 
 Breathweight s succinct and chiselled sentences can de 
 ceive us. We are still skeptical when this hardy and 
 perennial anthologist writes : "Up to the last six months 
 it is apparent that none of the American poets have 
 realized how large a part Einstein and the entire mat 
 ter of Relativity were playing in their lives, and al 
 though we may cling empirically to the tradition that 
 artistic standards must be imported, forgetting that 
 the proverb de gustibus non disputandum proves that 
 Europe has no monopoly of taste, in all the poems I 
 have read it is only recently that I have found this 
 most modern and vital aspect of contemporary life 
 rhythmically as well as idealistically promulgated and 
 communicated altogether adequately in direct propor 
 tion to the remarkable subject dealt with." 
 
 We are moved by such a sentence. But we are not 
 
 1 Rhyme and Relativity: An Anthology of American Poems 
 Apostrophising the Theories of Einstein. Collected and edited 
 by Warren Stoddard Breathweight. Small, Little & Klein. 
 
 121 
 
122 Five Previews 
 
 convinced. It seems incredible this communion of 
 poets lifting their voices in tuneful unanimity on any 
 given topic, especially on so abstractly scientific a 
 theme. One is willing to excuse even if one cannot 
 always follow the poets in their flights through the 
 technical empyrean; one can understand their desire 
 to explore continually higher altitudes. But higher 
 mathematics ! Here, frankly, we part company. It 
 is our opinion that the representative American poets 
 whose names (significantly maimed by missing let 
 ters) embellish this collection have had little, if any 
 thing, to do with it. Of course we may be mistaken. 
 The Times vouches for the authenticity of the work 
 and the publisher consistently refuses to answer any 
 inquiries, fearing that it may cause undue publicity. 
 In such a situation all sides should be heard. Let the 
 affirmative speak. Thus the publisher s paper-jacket: 
 
 "This is the era of anthologies. There is 
 scarcely an animal, school of thought, experiment 
 in technique, locale or topic of conversation that 
 has not been made the excuse for a collection of 
 verse. We have anthologies of songs by women, 
 songs for men, jingles for children; anthologies 
 of prose poems, ghost poems, horse poems, cat 
 poems, doggerels; anthologies of poems about war, 
 the dance, gardens, Christianity and Kansas. 
 
Rhyme and Relativity 123 
 
 "It is all the more amazing to realize that no 
 one heretofore has made a timely collection of 
 poems inspired by the Einstein Theory of Rela 
 tivity. The fact that there are, as yet, few such 
 poems to be gathered is beside the point. The 
 verses which have been collected here call atten 
 tion to new and profound impulses which are stir 
 ring this generation; they reflect such provocative 
 phenomena as Relative Motion, Substitutes for 
 Gravitation, The Michelson-Morley Experiments, 
 Time as a Fourth Dimension, Deflected Light- 
 Rays, non-Euclidean Warps in Space and The 
 Shifting of Spectral Lines toward the Red." 
 
 Now the negative side. ... But it occurs to us, 
 rather suddenly, that we can prove our point not so 
 much by argument as by quotation. The following 
 examples, chosen more or less haphazardly from the 
 first and least abstruse section, should support our 
 contention. We reprint them verbatim without fur 
 ther comment and, confident of the intelligent verdict 
 of our readers, we rest our case. 
 
RELATIVITIES 
 
 By Edw-n Arlin-ton Robins-n 
 
 WHAT wisdom have we that by wisdom all 
 Sources of knowledge which the years suggest, 
 Hidden in rubric, stone or palimpsest, 
 Will turn and answer us because we call? 
 About us planets rise and systems fall 
 Where, lost to all but matter, Newtons rest; 
 And who are we to label worst and best 
 While all of force is gravitational? 
 
 Held by a four-dimensional concern, 
 
 He gropes among the atoms to beseech 
 
 A swifter sublimation that may reach 
 
 A little further than the funeral urn. 
 
 And we, who always said that we could teach, 
 
 Have nothing much to say and more to learn. 
 
 125 
 
GUESSERS 
 By C-rl Sandb-rg 
 
 OLD man Euclid had em guessing. 
 
 He let the wise guys laugh and went his way. 
 
 Planes, solids, rhomboids, polygons 
 
 Signs and cosines 
 
 He had their number; 
 
 Even the division of a circle s circumference by its 
 
 diameter never fazed him 
 It was Pi to him. 
 
 Galileo told em something. 
 
 "You re nuts," they said, "you for the padded cell, you 
 
 for the booby hatch and the squirrel 
 
 cage." 
 
 "Have your laugh," he answered. 
 "Have your laugh and let it ride. 
 
 Let it ride ... for a thousand years 
 
 Newton let em grin and giggle. 
 He smiled when they chuckled, "Nobody home," 
 
 126 
 
Guess ers 127 
 
 He looked em over 
 
 and went on listening to damsons, lis 
 tening to autumn apples falling with 
 their "now you see it, now you don t." 
 
 "Maybe," is all he told em, "perhaps is all the an 
 swer . . . perhaps and . . . who knows 
 ... in a thousand years." 
 
 And now, bo, here s this Einstein; 
 
 Good for a laugh in all the funny sections, 
 
 Sure-fire stuff in movies, comic-operas, burlesque, jazz 
 parlors, honky tonks, two-a-day. 
 
 Somebody asks him "How about Euclid? . . . Was he 
 all twisted? . . . and is it true your kink 
 in space will put the kibosh on Coper 
 nicus?" 
 
 Einstein looks em over and tells em "Maybe . . . 
 and then again . . . perhaps." 
 
 He says "The truth is all supposing ... the truth 
 is all ... come back and ask me ... 
 in a thousand years." 
 
THE SAGGING BOUGH 
 By Rob-rt Fr-st 
 
 THERE, where it was, we never noticed how, 
 Flirting its tail among the smoothed-off rocks, 
 
 The brook would spray the old, worm-eaten bough, 
 That squeaked and scratched like puppies in a box. 
 
 Whether the black, half-rotted branch leaned down, 
 Or seemed to lean, for love, or weariness 
 
 Of life too long lived out, or hoped to drown 
 Its litter of last year s leaves, we could not guess. 
 
 Perhaps the bough relaxed as though it meant 
 To give its leaves their one taste of depravity; 
 
 Or, being near the grave itself, it bent 
 Because of nothing more than gravity. 
 
 128 
 
THE TIME-SPACE JAZZ 
 
 By Vach-1 Lin-say 
 
 To 
 
 WHEN Lincoln was a little boy, 
 
 _ . ,, , i with a touch of 
 
 In Springfield, pomposity: 
 
 Illinois, 
 
 The land was torn with slavery and dissension. 
 
 Fort Sumter had not fallen to the foe. 
 
 No one would dare discuss the fourth dimension. 
 
 "Uncle Tom s Cabin" came to Mrs. Stowe. 
 
 Commodore Perry started for Japan. 
 
 The Whigs now dubbed themselves "Republican." 
 
 Stephen A. Douglas, called "The Little Giant." 
 
 Brought fire and civil war to bleeding Kansas. 
 
 John Brown and his three sons became defiant. 
 
 Whittier dreamed and wrote his deathless stanzas. 
 
 But though the heart of truth was beating there, 
 
 Transfusing all the air, 
 
 There was no beauty, fantasy or joy, 
 
 In Springfield, 
 
 Illinois. 
 
 129 
 
130 The Time-Space Jazz 
 
 And nOW tO-day, Oratoricallv. 
 
 When Science holds its mighty sway, 
 
 On Springfield corners and in Springfield streets, 
 
 Where er the village passion beats, 
 
 In lowly chapels or electric signs, 
 
 The new gods have their shrines. 
 
 John L. Sullivan and old Walt Whitman, 
 
 Mark Twain, Roosevelt, Waldo Emerson, 
 
 Pocahontas and Booth and Bryan, 
 
 Einstein, with prophecies of space and Zion 
 
 Their names are spelled in characters of light, 
 
 Their names are legends; 
 
 Their names are glory; 
 
 Their names are blazoned on the sky at night. 
 
 Their spirits strengthen every blade of grass, 
 
 The lost souls rise and cheer them when they pass 
 
 Star-hearted Lucifer takes off his hat, 
 
 Saints so holy are prostrated flat. 
 
 Daniel and his lions do a ragtime dance; 
 
 Jazz-jumping angels have to shout and prance. 
 
 Adam and Eve learn the snake-dance there; 
 
 Old Elisha does the toddle with the bear. 
 
 All creation is a-swaying to and fro 
 
 Andrew Jackson comes with Old Black Joe, 
 
 Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. . . . 
 
The Time-Space Jazz 131 
 
 While the tune of the spheres is a cosmic Kallyope. 
 Bringing hope, bringing hope, bringing hope, bringing 
 
 hope, 
 
 Singing joy, singing joy, singing joy. 
 To every heart that still may grope 
 In Springfield, 
 Illinois. 
 
EINSTEIN 
 By Edw-n Markh-m 
 
 WE drew our circle that shut him out, 
 This man of Science who dared our doubt, 
 But ah, with a fourth dimensional grin, 
 He squared a circle that took us in! 
 
 132 
 
FROM "THE OHM S DAY-BOOK" 
 By Edg-r L-e Mast-rs Later Style 
 
 TAKE any spark you see and study it; 
 It brightens, trembles, spurts and then goes out. 
 The light departs and leaves, we say, behind 
 Who knows? 
 
 Succinctly, then, great men and little sparks 
 Are all the same in some vast dynamo 
 Of humming ether, ringed with unseen coils. 
 Now here am I, the smallest unit of 
 Electrical resistance. What to me, 
 You d say, are systems of coordinates, 
 Or spectral lines, or vibgyor or all 
 The Morley-Michelson experiments? 
 Just this, the tiniest flash of energy, 
 Started beyond the furthest reach of snace, 
 Makes ripples that will spread until the rings 
 Circling in that black pool of time, will touch 
 All other forms of energy and light. 
 Everything is related, all must share 
 Uncommon destinies. 
 
 133 
 
134 From " The Ohm s Day-Book" 
 
 The problem is 
 
 To find the hidden soul, it s with ourselves 
 Within ourselves, if we know where to look; 
 A fourth dimension of reality. 
 But let us take an instance: Some one s shot. 
 Where? At Broadway and Forty-second Street. 
 The placed is fixed by two coordinates, 
 Crossing at sharp right angles in a plane, 
 But was it on the ground or in the air, 
 Below the surface or the thirtieth floor 
 Of that gray office-building? Knowing this, 
 Fixes the third dimension. But we must 
 Still find a fourth to make it definite; 
 Concretely, Time. If then we trace the source 
 And, having clearly mapped what s physical, 
 We turn to instinct, phototropic sense, 
 And glimpse a moment through the crumbling veil, 
 The soul, democracy, America; 
 A new Republic. . . . 
 
 (and so on for 357 lines) 
 
EMPTY SPACES 
 By Ed-a St. Vinc-nt Mill-y 
 
 LOVE has gone as water goes, lisping over gravel, 
 Oh, I knew that he was false, with eyes that shifted 
 
 so 
 
 All that s free is out of me, I have no wish to travel; 
 How can I remain here? and I don t know where 
 
 to go. 
 
 What are time and space to me, mass or gravitation; 
 My days are all a crumbling smoke, I neither think 
 
 nor feel. 
 Neighbors knock and cousins mock, but life has lost 
 
 relation 
 Here or there or anywhere, the world s no longer real. 
 
 Warped all out of shape I am, burned away completely. 
 Weeds are in the lettuce-beds; I cannot mend or 
 
 bake . . . 
 But it s an art to have a heart that breaks so well and 
 
 neatly, 
 And ah, it s good to have a mind that laughs and lets 
 
 it break. 
 
 135 
 
EAST IS WEST: AND THE GREAT WORLD 
 SHRINKS 
 
 By Amy Low-11 
 
 TLOP tlop clatter clatter! . . . "Hi there, stop! 
 What s the matter? Have you gone mad that you 
 clash against the pages and lash your verbs and nouns 
 in hot rages of sounds? Zounds !" cries the astounded 
 reader, "Are there no laws for such a speeder? Will 
 she never pause as her sixty-horse power Pegasus 
 courses madly on the earth here or the sky there? 
 . . . Hi, there !" 
 
 But the warning is vain. The intrepid rider, scorn 
 ing conventions, is out of hearing. Clearing the three 
 dimensions of space, her racer thunders sonorously out 
 of Boston and is lost in new flights over Peru. As 
 cending and tossed in smoke, it blunders through what 
 Mary Austin calls "our Amerind folk-lore." It soars 
 over the parched wall of China; strips the starched 
 borders of eighteenth century artifice; skips to the 
 balladists 1 Middle Ages; burns through the pallid pages 
 of sages and returns, as unwearied as when it hastened 
 forth, to north of Brookline and Points Adjacent. The 
 abused beast never trips although the Muse applies the 
 
 136 
 
East Is West 137 
 
 whip remorselessly. The strong horse flies as though 
 each poem were a gruelling race; his headlong pace is 
 a gallop, at best. Every step is a dazzle of light; a 
 bright adventure in excitement. He is pressed on ... 
 and on. ... A zest that crackles and knows no rest. 
 
 Everything fares the same; it shares this unrelieved 
 tension. At the mention of a name, of an enamel- 
 studded frieze, budded fruit trees or flower gardens 
 everything suddenly hardens, shoots, flames, spins, 
 turns and burns with an almost savage intensity. Na 
 ture seems to have lost its usual stature; it becomes an 
 immense contrapuntal series of frontal attacks; an un- 
 relaxed assault of suns that clang like gongs, clouds 
 that crash and splinter, boughs that clash and rouse 
 their roots, a lark that "shoots up like a popgun ball." 
 ... It is all rigorously fortissimo, enthralling in its 
 vigor; appallingly energetic. 
 
 Musically alone, the tones of it are full of uncanny 
 changes. A strange and unearthly symphony is heard 
 here; queer tympani add their blows to this polyphonic 
 prose. There is the patter of clicking bones and the 
 quick, dry chatter of xylophones, the hiss of tam 
 bourines, the cymbals shivering kiss, the high quiver 
 of triangles, the clack and mutter of drum-sticks tap 
 ping on slackened guts. 
 
 And colors! Nothing duller than bright blue, new 
 white, light green of an almost obscene brilliance; mil- 
 
138 East Is West 
 
 lions of reds and purples that blaze and splutter; but 
 tercup-yellows and iris-tinted fires that mellow the pol 
 ished sides of space. One fades, and fresh shades 
 spring up in its place. Jades like the wings of a 
 dragonfly resting on young lily-pads. Crimson like 
 the tongue of carmine that skims on the tips of rusty 
 peonies. Lilac with the faint dust that slips over the 
 wistaria blossoms. Silver as magnolias stroked by 
 moonlight, blue-mauve, dove-gray, livid azaleas, fire 
 ball dahlias . . . all of them shouting their vivid prom 
 ises. Let the doubting Thomases scatter their seeds 
 of distrust. Matter is matter. Who needs further af 
 firmation? Let the stars shatter themselves, heedless 
 of gravitation; there is an end even to infinity. 
 Straight lines bend not only in a poet s rhymes. Times 
 have changed. Science is ranged on the side of the 
 singer who has learned to distort the widely assorted 
 phenomena of life. Circles are no longer round. Sound 
 can be seen. Light can be weighed. Black is made 
 white; the last have come first. The worst, one thinks, 
 may be the best. East is West: and the great world 
 shrinks. 
 
WIND GARDENS 
 By "H. D." 
 
 WHERE now 
 
 are time and space, 
 
 frailer than clove-pinks, 
 
 or sprays of dittany, 
 
 or citron-flowers or myrrh 
 
 from the smooth sides of Erymanthus. 
 
 Rigid and heavy, 
 
 the three dimensions press against us. 
 
 But what of a fourth? 
 
 Can myrrh-hyacinths blossom within it, 
 
 or violets with bird-foot roots; 
 
 can nereids lose themselves 
 
 in its watery forests, 
 
 can wood-daemons splash through a surf 
 
 of silver saxifrage 
 
 and dogwood petals? 
 
 Here is no beauty. 
 There is no scent of fruit 
 nor sound of broken music, 
 
 139 
 
Wind Gardens 
 
 sharp and astringent, 
 
 in this place. 
 
 For this light, 
 
 colder than frozen marble, 
 
 thin and constricted, 
 
 is light without heat. 
 
 O fire, descend on us, 
 cut apart these theories; 
 shower us with breath of pine 
 and freesia buds. 
 
THE DANCE OF DUST 
 By Conr-d Aik-n 
 
 So, to begin with, ghosts of rain arise 
 And blow their muffled horns along the street . . . 
 Who is it wavers through this nebulous curtain, 
 Floating on watery feet? 
 
 Wind melts the walls. A heavy ray of starlight, 
 Weighed down with languor, falls. Black trumpets 
 
 cry. 
 
 The dancers watch a murder. Cool stars twinkle. 
 In a broken glass, three faded violets die. 
 
 And so, says Steinlin, the dust dissolves, 
 Plots a new curve, strikes out tangentially, 
 Builds its discordant music in faint rhythms 
 Under a softly crashing sea. 
 
 "I am the one," he cries, "who stumbles in twilight, 
 I am the one who tracks the anfractuous gleam" . . . 
 The futile lamps go out. The night is a storm of si 
 lence. . . . 
 
 What do we wait for? Is it all a dream? 
 
 141 
 
ADVICE TO THE FOURTH DIMENSION 
 By Maxw-11 Bod-nheim 
 
 REGION of shiftless equilibrium, 
 
 The curtly undulating worlds 
 
 Weave insolently in your heart, 
 
 Like icily-forgotten tunes of atoms. 
 
 Time, with a slanting hunger, gropes 
 
 And, in a virginal precision, takes your hand. 
 
 Circles, no longer arrogantly round, 
 
 But like a battered primrose dripping flame, 
 
 Are warps in nature. 
 
 No line is straight 
 
 But lifts long, passionless rhythms till it meets 
 
 Its parallel in drab exuberance. 
 
 Region of shiftless equilibrium, 
 Be not concerned by tricks of time and space. 
 Only you can twist an acrid meaning out of words 
 Or into them. 
 
 142 
 
ROUND 
 By Alfr-d Kr-ymborg 
 
 WORLDS, you must tell me 
 
 What? 
 
 What is the answer to it all? 
 
 Matter. 
 
 Matter, answer me 
 
 What? 
 
 What are the secrets of your strength? 
 
 Molecules. 
 
 Molecules, be honest 
 
 What? 
 
 What may be groping at your roots? 
 
 Atoms. 
 
 Atoms, I ask you 
 
 What? 
 
 What have you hidden in your hearts? 
 
 Electrons. 
 
 143 
 
144 Round 
 
 Electrons, I charge you 
 
 What? 
 
 What are you building in your wombs? 
 
 Worlds. 
 
 Worlds, you must tell me 
 
CANZONE 
 By Ezr- Po-nd 
 
 All acquisto di gloria e di jama. . . . 
 Early Italian. 
 
 COME, my songs, distorted, spoken against, 
 
 Come, let us pity those who have one-dimensional 
 
 minds, 
 Let us pity those who move smugly 
 
 in two or even three dimensions, 
 Bound to a relative mortmain. 
 
 Ma si morisse! 
 
 Take thought of the dull, the hopelessly-enmeshed; 
 The young enslaved by the old, 
 The old embittered by the young. 
 
 Go, with a clashing of many echoes and accents, 
 Go to Helicon on the Hudson. 
 Perform your naked rites, your cephalic dances; 
 Shout your intolerant cat-calls from the bus-tops, 
 (We have kindred in common, Walt Whitman) 
 Parade your tag-ends and insolences, 
 Cry them on State Street: 
 Ch e be a. . . .* 
 
 * Bella. 
 
 145 
 
146 Canzone 
 
 Take no thought of being presentable. 
 Lest they say you grow shabby, 
 I shall find fresh raiment for you 
 
 out of time and spaciousness; 
 
 A shirt out of Provence, green slippers from Cathay, 
 Assorted mantles, slightly worse for wear, from Mont- 
 
 parnasse, 
 
 And fillets, somewhat dusty, out of Ithaca. 
 Who shall say you have become 
 A slave to your technique 
 
 like Chloris, who would flirt 
 Even with her own shadow? 
 Who proclaims this? 
 
 B-a-a-a-a-amen. 
 
EINSTEIN AMONG THE COFFEE-CUPS 
 By T. S. Eli-t 
 
 DEFLECTIVE rhythm under seas 
 
 Where Sappho tuned the snarling air; 
 
 A shifting of the spectral lines 
 Grown red with gravity and wear. 
 
 New systems of coordinates 
 Disturb the Sunday table-cloth. 
 
 Celestine yawns. Sir Oliver 
 Hints of the jaguar and sloth. 
 
 A chord of the eleventh shrieks 
 
 And slips beyond the portico. 
 The night contracts. A warp in space 
 
 Has rumors of Correggio. 
 
 Lights. Mrs. Blumenthal expands; 
 
 Diaphragm and diastole. 
 The rector brightens. Tea is served; 
 
 Euclid supplanted by the sole. 
 
 147 
 
LOVE S RELATIVITY 
 By S-ra Teasd-le 
 
 THE moon is in love with the nightingale, 
 And the nightingale worships the rose; 
 
 But the red rose bleeds for the young and pale 
 Queen of the garden close. 
 
 The young queen turns to a singing clown 
 
 Whose lips have a single tune; 
 She leans to him like a ray bent down. 
 
 But he is in love with the moon. 
 
 148 
 
THE NEW ATOM 
 By Lou-s Unterm-yer 
 
 AND suddenly analysis 
 
 Grows futile; thought and language rasp. 
 And all dimensions are contained in this 
 
 One restless body that I clasp. 
 
 Atoms disintegrate while drums 
 
 Beat their red lightnings through each vein. 
 Each angry crowded molecule becomes 
 
 A world, a bleeding battle-plain. 
 
 A thousand orbits twist and glow, 
 The flesh reveals its secret den. . . . 
 
 And so (in rhyme) I leave the earth, and so 
 I come to your white breast again. 
 
 149 
 
THE SPELL OF THE ELECTRON 
 By Rob-rt W. Serv-ce 
 
 Now this is the spell the philosophers tell 
 
 When you re puzzled by all their revisions: 
 The laws that we knew are not always true, 
 
 We must change them to suit the conditions. 
 Though you roar as you eat only red-blooded meat 
 
 And thrill with each virile sensation, 
 No atom or ape, no figure or shape, 
 
 By God! can escape gravitation. 
 
 For this is the lesson of Einstein; 
 
 Answer Death s grin with a scoff. 
 Glaring and tearing at all you resent, 
 Fight though the light is battered and bent 
 
 Fight till the flesh drops off! 
 
 You may clench your fists at the scientists, 
 
 At calculus, cubes or quadratics; 
 You may curse and thrash since the old laws clash 
 
 With relativist kinematics; 
 You may goad your sides till the blood-red tides 
 
 Run off and the dry bones clatter 
 150 
 
The Spell of the Electron 
 
 At the end of the grind with a reeling mind, 
 By God! you will find only matter! 
 
 For this is the lesson of Einstein; 
 
 Drink at no coward s trough. 
 Sneering and jeering will bring no delight; 
 You re here to make everything cheerful and bright 
 And for carfare and comfort and sweetness and light, 
 
 Fight till the flesh drops off! 
 
INDEX OF VICTIMS 
 
 Aiken, Conrad, 141. Markham, Edwin, 132. 
 
 Anderson, Sherwood, 70-72. Masters, Edgar Lee, 133-4. 
 
 Mencken, H. L., 75-80, 108. 
 Bodenheim, Maxwell, 142. Millay, Edna St. Vincent, 
 
 135- 
 
 Cabell, James Branch, 49-60. Moore, George, 31-43- 
 Chesterton, G. K., 7-17. 
 
 Oppenheim, James, 92. 
 Pound, Ezra, 145-6. 
 Robinson, E. A., 125. 
 
 Dell, Floyd, 74-75- 
 
 Eliot, T. S., 147- 
 
 Frost, Robert, 128. 
 
 Gale, Zona, 72-74. 
 
 "H. D.", 139-140. 
 
 Kreymborg, Alfred, 143-4- Teasdale, Sara, 148. 
 
 Sandburg, Carl, 93-94, 126-7. 
 Scollard, Clinton, 101. 
 Service, Robert W., 150-1. 
 
 Lewis, Sinclair, 63-75. 
 
 Lindsay, Vachel, 88-90, 129- Untermeyer, Louis, 149- 
 
 131- 
 
 Lowell, Amy, 91-92, 136- Watson, William, 104. 
 138. Wells, H. G., 19-29. 
 
 153 
 
BY LOUIS UNTERMEYER 
 
 INCLUDING HORACE 
 
 (Second Printing. $1.60 net) 
 
 This volume of parodies comes by its name honestly. For, 
 though it is supposed to be a series of paraphrases of the odes 
 of Horace, more than thirty other poets ancient and modern 
 appear in it. The serious poet turns juggler here; balancing 
 Horace while keeping one theme, two methods and a score of 
 schools in the air. 
 
 "Untermeyer is not merely a clever rhymester; he is a pene 
 trating critic and here he operates upon the poets without 
 anaesthetics, burlesquing every shade of their manner and ex 
 posing their smallest mannerisms with joyful ferocity. . . . 
 The man s extraordinary technical skill has taken him round the 
 whole field of verse-making. In brief, the book is a tour de 
 force of devastating humor a truly impressive exhibition of 
 virtuosity." H. L. Mencken in The Baltimore Sun. 
 
 " Including Horace is much more than clever ; it touches 
 actual inspiration at points. The odes are translated with a 
 wealth of racy idiom and a profusion of adroit rhyme. . . . 
 This is workmanship of a delicate and distinguished sort." 
 Pittsburgh Press. 
 
 "Horace has never not even by Eugene Field or Franklin P. 
 Adams been more vivaciously echoed. The book is rich in 
 brilliant work and excellent fun." Christopher Morley in The 
 N. Y. Evening Post. 
 
 "Mr. Untermeyer is one of the severest taskmasters that the 
 world of poetry knows. All the more extraordinary, then, that 
 a poet-critic who takes things so seriously can turn aside and 
 write the cleverest parodies of any one in the ring." The 
 Bookman. 
 
 "Mr. Untermeyer is a master of parody." The N. Y. Times. 
 
 HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY 
 
 PUBLISHERS NEW YORK 
 
BY LOUIS UNTERMEYER 
 
 THE NEW ADAM 
 
 (Second Printing. $1.75 net) 
 
 "Louis Untermeyer is the most versatile writer in America, of 
 that there can be no shadow of a doubt. But he is more he is 
 one of the small band of young writers who are slowly shaping 
 our literature into a new era." Amy Lowell in The New York 
 Times. 
 
 There is in this recent work of Mr. Untermeyer s a note that 
 is singular in American poetry. It shows a writer who is curious 
 about the soul. . . . Here is love expressed in modern fashion. 
 The old veils have been stripped from it and a new Adam cries 
 out before the reader." Herbert S. Gorman in The Freeman. 
 
 "The calm irony, and the passion that runs like lightning 
 through The New Adam. . . . The ecstatic agony of Free, the 
 simplicity of Walls Against Eden could hardly have been 
 written before the twentieth century. This new Adam is strug 
 gling fiercely, intensely, to regain a late and larger Paradise. " 
 Babette Deutsch in The Literary Review. 
 
 "Sometimes it is an angry protest; sometimes a tribute of 
 child-like gratitude to her bodily sweetness ; sometimes a piece 
 of ironic mockery at their failure to make two selfish wishes 
 meet in one perfection. But always it is a real emotion that is 
 dealt with always a reflection of an experience that can recog 
 nizably be found in the life of any mortal lover." Floyd Dell 
 in The Bookman. 
 
 CHALLENGE 
 
 (Fifth Printing. $1.50 net) 
 
 "He is imbued with the spirit of social revolt, but he does not 
 lose his head in it. And, except for Masefield, we know no 
 other poet of late years in whom is so strikingly revealed the 
 magic power of rhyme and rhythm to set thought on fire." 
 N. Y. Tribune. 
 
 "Love and democracy are his favorite themes, and few living 
 poets are worthier to sing them." The Literary Digest. 
 
 HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY 
 
 PUBLISHERS NEW YORK 
 
BY LOUIS UNTERMEYER 
 
 MODERN AMERICAN POETRY 
 
 (Revised and Enlarged Edition. $2.00 net) 
 
 A new printing of a collection which has grown from 178 to 
 410 pages, which includes almost 100 poets with examples of their 
 best work and critical as well as biographical introductions. 
 
 "This anthology is the most intelligible introduction to the 
 poetry of the United States since the Civil War." The London 
 Times Literary Supplement. 
 
 "Mr. Untermeyer has been in much the same position toward 
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 prose. . . . Mr. Mencken has been more prolific. But he has 
 never done anything more valuable for American literature than 
 has been done by Mr. Untermeyer in preparing these latest col 
 lections. They probably represent the furthest development in 
 this country of this type of publication." Stirling Bowen in 
 Detroit News. 
 
 "The most unusual part of Mr. Untermeyer s book is perhaps 
 the biographical sketches with which he has prefaced his selec 
 tions from each author." The Observer (England). 
 
 "A guide to the best new poetry of America." Seattle Post 
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 MODERN BRITISH POETRY 
 
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 Almost two hundred poems from Henley and Housman through 
 Brooke and Masefield to the youngest of the Georgians. 
 
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 but an anthology. If we must have anthologies, let us have them 
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 that it is possible for a layman to sit down, read straight through 
 and arise from the arm-chair with a grateful sense of knowledge 
 swiftly and easily gained." The Literary Review (N. Y. Post). 
 
 "His introduction is the best cursory sketch of the progress of 
 English poetry that has appeared since 1870." The N. Y. Times. 
 
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