UC-NRLF 
 
 Ethel. M:.: : ;Gois on 
 
ALVMNVS BOOK FYND 
 
HOW TO READ 
 POETRY 
 

to 
 
 BY 
 ETHEL M. COLSON 
 
 The magic light that springs 
 From the deep soul of things 
 When, called by their true nam r , 
 Their essence is set free; 
 The 'work, illuminate, 
 Showing the soul's estate, 
 Baring the hearts of men; 
 Poetry! 
 
 ANNIE LAURETTE LANEY 
 
 CHICAGO 
 
 A. C. McCLURG & CO. 
 
 1918 
 
Copyright 
 
 A. C. McClurg & Co. 
 1918 
 
 Published November, 1918 
 
 < 
 
 W. F. HALL PRINTING COMPANY, CHICAGO 
 
bear jWotijer 
 
 469906 
 
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 
 
 For permission to quote poems reprinted, 
 wholly or in part, in this volume, grateful 
 acknowledgments are tendered the following 
 publishers and poets: 
 
 The Poetry Lovers, New York, through Florence Wil- 
 kinson Evans: the poetic definition of "Poetry" by Annie 
 Laurette Laney used on title page. 
 
 The Youth's Companion Company: "Rainy Days" by 
 Mabel Earle. 
 
 Charles Scribner's Sons: " Invictus " from Poems by 
 W. E. Henley, " The Flight of Youth " by Richard Henry 
 Stoddard, and " Today I Went Among the Mountain 
 Folk " from The Cycle's Rim by Olive Tilf ord Dargan. 
 
 Ralph Fletcher Seymour: "Song of an April Fool" 
 from Songs of the Skokie and Other Poems by Anne Hig- 
 ginson Spicer and " The Shop " from Profiles from China 
 by Eunice Tietjens. 
 
 George H. Doran Company: "Trees" from Trees and 
 Other Poems by Joyce Kilmer. 
 
 The John C. Winston Company: "A Cyprian Woman," 
 also known as " Under Dusky Laurel Leaf " from The 
 Factories (with Other Lyrics by Margaret Widdemer. 
 
 The Independent Company for " The Cornucopia of 
 Red and Green Comfits " by Amy Lowell. 
 
 Alfred A. Knopf: "Women Before a Shop" from Ezra 
 Pound's Lustra. 
 
 Alfred A. Knopf and Alfred Kreymborg: "Ing" by 
 Walter Conrad Arensberg, included in Others, 1917. 
 
Acknowledgments 
 
 <n 
 
 Houghton Mifflin Company: " Oread " and " Sea Gods " 
 from Sea Garden by " H. D.," " Rain Poem " and " Over 
 the Roof -Tops " from Irradiations by John Gould Fletcher, 
 "Paradox" from The Door of Dreams by Jessie B. Rit- 
 tenhouse, and Longfellow's " Morituri Salutamus." 
 
 The Macmillan Company: " Elsa Wertman " and 
 " Hamilton Greene " from The Spoon River Anthology 
 by Edgar Lee Masters, " I Love My Life " from You 
 and I by Harriet Monroe, " Flammonde " from The Man 
 Against the Sky by Edwin Arlington Robinson, and 
 " Spring Night " from Rivers to the Sea by Sara Teasdale. 
 
 Henry Holt and Company: "Birches" from Mountain 
 Interval, and "October" from A Boy's Will by Robert 
 Frost, " Days," and " The Four Brothers " from Chicago 
 Poems, and "The Corn Huskers " by Carl Sandburg. 
 
 John ane Company: "The Soldier" from Rupert 
 Brooke's Poems, and "What of the Darkness?" from the 
 English Poems of Richard Le Gallienne. 
 
 D. Appleton and Company: " Thanatopsis " from the 
 Collected Poems of William Cullen Bryant. 
 
 Duffield & Company: "A Club Man's Requiem" by 
 ^^Martha Gilbert Dickinson Bianchi. 
 
 Zona Gale for "Mother." 
 
 Mitchell Kennerley: "It Rained All Day" from The 
 Quiet Singer and Other Poems by Charles Hanson Towne. 
 
 Frederick A. Stokes Company: "The Barrel Organ" 
 from the Collected Poems of Alfred Noyes. 
 
 The Century Co. for "The Night Court" by Ruth Com- 
 fort Mitchell. 
 
 John Vance Cheney: "The Happiest Heart." 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 It may be plainly stated, in beginning, that 
 this little book is in no sense a didactic or tech- 
 nical treatise, that it sheers humbly far away 
 from the academic or educational religion. 
 Textbooks, conveying formal poetic informa- 
 tion, offering best and most incontrovertible 
 of studious reasons for the why and how of 
 poetry reading, are thicker than flowers in 
 May or sad hearts in war time, but here is 
 no hint of addition to their number. 
 
 The best argument that can be advanced 
 in favor of marriage is that marriage has 
 been found happy. The best of all reasons 
 for reading poetry is because one loves it. 
 And the best way to read poetry is with the 
 love that, for love's sake, finds its own path- 
 way, works its own miracles of sympathy and 
 understanding. 
 
 The simple intent, therefore, of " How to 
 Read Poetry" is to assist the lay poetry 
 lover far more numerous and universal 
 
Foreword 
 
 than might be imagined to comprehend 
 and, if necessary, defend his affection; to 
 remove the curse too widely laid by scholastic 
 injunctions and " required reading;" to per- 
 suade the non-poetic reader who, for what- 
 ever reason, believes that he does not like 
 poetry that at heart he really does. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I Why Read Poetry? 3 
 
 II What Do We Seek in Poetry? . . . 18 
 
 III The "Old "Poetry, So-Called ... 37 
 
 IV The "New" Poetry, So-Called . . . 61 
 V Formal Poetry: the Sonnet, the Ode, 
 
 the Elegy, and Blank Verse . . .113 
 VI Narrative, Dramatic and Descriptive 
 
 Poetry 149 
 
 VII The Case for the Defense 176 
 
 INTERPOLATED POEMS 
 
 I Remember, I Remember 
 
 Thomas Hood ... I 
 
 Invictus William Ernest Henley 17 
 
 The Toys .... Coventry Patmore . 35 
 The Cornucopia of Red and Green Comfits 
 
 Amy Lowell 53 
 
 The Soldier . . . Rupert Brooke . . .ill 
 Spring Night . . . Sara Teasdale . . .147 
 In Flanders' Fields . John McCrae . . .175 
 The Happiest Heart . John Vance Cheney . 180 
 
HOW TO READ 
 POETRY 
 
 I REMEMBER, I REMEMBER 
 
 I remember, I remember 
 
 The house where I was born, 
 The little window where the sun 
 
 Came peeping in at morn; 
 It never came a wink too soon, 
 
 Nor brought too long a day; 
 But now I often wish the night 
 
 Had borne my breath away. 
 
 I remember, I remember, 
 
 The roses red and white, 
 The violets and the lily-cups, 
 
 Those flowers made of light! 
 The lilacs where the robins built, 
 
 And where my brother set 
 The laburnum on his birthday, 
 
 The tree is living yet ! 
 
How to Read Poetry 
 
 I remember, I remember, 
 
 Where I was used to swing, 
 And thought the air must rush as fresh 
 
 To swallows on the wing; 
 My spirit flew in feathers then 
 
 That is so heavy now, 
 The summer pool could hardly cool 
 
 The fever on my brow. 
 
 I remember, I remember, 
 
 The fir trees dark and high, 
 I used to think their slender spires 
 
 Were close against the sky: 
 It was a childish ignorance, 
 
 But now 'tis little joy 
 To know I'm farther off from Heaven 
 
 Than when I was a boy. 
 
 Thomas Hood. 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 WHY READ POETRY? 
 
 WHY read poetry? Because you love it. 
 Because every human being, at some 
 time, in some form, under some conditions, 
 feels and rejoices in the poetic impulse. 
 
 Why? Ask some mighty oracle, some 
 omniscient authority. We are dealing with 
 effects, not causes, with undying and world- 
 wide facts. 
 
 Proof? Of the simplest. The lyric love, 
 the lyric voice, was born with humanity. It 
 has persisted and proclaimed in all ages. 
 Never a tribe, a race, a nation but has had its 
 own special, individual poets and songs. 
 
 To pass to concrete examples, the child 
 who cared nothing for Mother Goose rhymes 
 would should be accorded immediate 
 medical attention; the little girl who crooned 
 not to her dolls, the little boy who never gave 
 vent to more or less melodious notes and 
 cries and calls would be unthinkable. The 
 
How to Read Poetry 
 
 college youth, the man of affairs, punctuates 
 his enthusiasms by rhythmic, frequently rhym- 
 ing " yells " and " slogans," the old folk com- 
 fort lonely or stimulate dreamy age by re- 
 calling half-forgotten songs and ballads and 
 chanteys. For yourself, good sir or madam 
 
 Which do you remember best and most 
 easily, the prose proverb or the poetic ad- 
 monition, the uncadenced " ad." or the ca- 
 denced appeal of the " Spotless Town" jin- 
 gles and kindred? For specific illustration: 
 
 American cities, some years ago, were 
 flooded by advertisements of a rubberized ar- 
 ticle whose virtues were acclaimed somewhat 
 after this manner: 
 
 Washable, dryable, 
 Durable, pliable ; 
 Pardon the English, but 
 Isn't it tryable? 
 
 Few now, perhaps, could give, offhand, the 
 name or nature of the advertised commodity. 
 All memory of the article advertised, all faint- 
 est recollection of its maker and character 
 may have been swept from the casual rnind 
 
Why Read Poetry? 
 
 by the obliterating waves of busy living, but 
 the jingle lingers. 
 
 And proves a point that in many ways, nat- 
 ural and scientific, may be firmly pressed 
 home. 
 
 Hickory, dickory dock, 
 
 The mouse ran up the clock, 
 
 The clock struck one, the mouse ran .down, 
 
 Hickory, dickory dock! 
 
 How many millions of delighted young- 
 sters have been saddled for life with the bur- 
 den of this simple ditty who, two seconds 
 after hearing the unadorned statement that 
 "The mouse ran up the clock and down 
 again," would have forgotten all about it? 
 How many millions have preserved through 
 life conscious or subconscious recollection of 
 the not entirely dissimilar legend concerning 
 the unknown "King of France " who, "with 
 all his thousand men," performed not entirely 
 dissimilar evolutions in regard to the "hill" 
 and the " swords " so fruitlessly ascended and 
 drawn? 
 
 What makes the jingles so long, so irresist- 
 
How to Read Poetry 
 
 ibly, remembered? The rhythm, good 
 friends, the rhythm! 
 
 Pursue the thought a little further. 
 Doesn't expression count for almost as much 
 as material, manner weigh almost as heavily 
 as matter, with most of us? Be outspoken, 
 be honest ! Doesn't it sometimes mean more ? 
 At all events, and duly observing all conserva- 
 tive proprieties, the way in which a given 
 thing is said surely matters much, at least in 
 the way of resultant impression. 
 
 Lovelace, " going to the wars " and inform- 
 ing his fair lady that " Because I am honor- 
 able, dear, I am able to love you so much," 
 would have affected an utterance to which, 
 in all probability, even the cherished Lucasta 
 would have paid little attention. 
 
 I could not love thee, Dear, so much 
 Loved I not Honor more, 
 
 made the sentiment unforgettable and Love- 
 lace famous. The beauty of the thought is 
 enriched by beauty of setting, the charm of 
 verbal music fixes the idea that, less impres- 
 sively presented, soon would be swept away. 
 
Why Read Poetry? 
 
 Why, to impale this thought irretrievably, 
 do we remember " Mandalay " so easily, long 
 and lovingly? Because of the swelling swing 
 and sway that frame, to indulge in excusable 
 mixing of metaphors, the vivid picture. 
 
 " Poetry," it has been well said, "is emo- 
 tion recollected in tranquillity." But poetry 
 also is emotion recollected and reflected 
 in and by the lilt and swell of song. 
 
 Here, then, are two basic and admirable 
 reasons for reading poetry. Poetry, nay, 
 even " verse and worse " as Lamb had it, may 
 make eternal beauty that might otherwise be 
 evanescent, may help, cause, compel us to pre- 
 serve "beyond chance of change" joys that 
 are in themselves of fleeting order. 
 
 But poetry does more. It quickens and in- 
 spires the sense of beauty, surely never more 
 needed than at present. We may not all 
 write poetry (though almost everybody does, 
 nowadays, and though certain happy poets 
 believe that children should be taught poetic 
 forms, as the elements of music, with creative 
 possibilities under prospective consideration) , 
 but we can all read it. And in the reading of 
 
8 How to Read Poetry 
 
 poetry, like virtue u its own exceeding rich 
 reward," we can enjoy all manner of delight- 
 ful thrills and impulses and vicarious senti- 
 ments and emotions even more easily than at 
 the " movies." The joy of reading poetry, as 
 practical, legitimate and reasonable as that 
 of the stage or painting, consists largely in the 
 increased power of making or realizing - 
 visualizing mental pictures. 
 
 " My mind to me a kingdom is," " I wan- 
 dered lonely as a cloud," " Over the hills and 
 far away," u The groves were God's first 
 temples," what hosts of lovely images rise in 
 response to these and other beautiful phrases ! 
 What vivid, varied, glorious "phantoms of 
 delight" are evoked by repetition, recollec- 
 tion of countless well-loved stanzas, poems, 
 lines ! 
 
 " We can hear without emotion of a child 
 slain in war so long as we merely understand 
 the fact without imagining," says Brian 
 Hooker, himself a true and delicate poet, dis- 
 cussing u The Practical Use of Poetry;" 
 u but the moment we ihiagine such a thing, 
 we begin to feel Poetry is 
 
Why Read Poetry? 
 
 not alone our common repository of past 
 experience, but to a degree far greater 
 than we realize our source of present action. 
 . . . . The facts of life change and 
 falsify and pass utterly away, but the truth 
 is poetry and shall prevail." 
 
 Because our feelings, and manner of feel- 
 ing, yes, even in war time, are as prone to be- 
 come standardized, to get into ruts, as our 
 physical habits, anything that aids, induces 
 feeling of right, of keen, of uplifting order 
 is of truest value to mankind. 
 
 Who, for commonplace, realistic example, 
 has not redeemed, transfigured a dripping day 
 through thought or repetition of some poem 
 by magic of words transmuting the gloom into 
 beauty? Dripping days recurring frequently 
 in the lives of most humans, such poems are 
 many and varied. Of the popular order most 
 fitting in present connection, Riley's u Why, 
 rain's my choice" and Loveman's "It 
 isn't raining rain to me" spring to mind 
 most readily. Equally inspiring, if less 
 famous, is Mabel Earle's lovable "Rainy 
 Days." 
 
io How to Read Poetry 
 
 Dear Lord, shall I remember up in 
 
 Heaven 
 How all the world grows sweet when 
 
 leaves are wet, 
 How the warm summer rain is dashed 
 
 and driven 
 
 Across my beds of fern and migno- 
 nette ? 
 Shall I remember there, when angels 
 
 wander 
 Shining, across Thy fields and singing 
 
 still, 
 How the wind sways the willow branches 
 
 yonder, 
 
 And the rain murmurs over field and 
 hill? 
 
 Shall I remember there, in Heaven, be- 
 holding 
 The light that rises not, nor sets, nor 
 
 pales, 
 How all this day the mists are folding, 
 
 folding, 
 
 Saintly and white, along the silent 
 vales? 
 
Why Read Poetry? 1 1 
 
 When all the Heavenly courts are 
 
 hushed and holy 
 With Thy deep peace, that stills the 
 
 sound of praise, 
 
 Will it be like the benediction lowly 
 Breathed in the blessedness of rainy 
 days? 
 
 Isn't anything worth while that puts such 
 glory into nature for those who, so unchal- 
 lenged, scarce might note the gray wonder, 
 the soft, dim loveliness of wet weather? 
 Edith Franklin Wyatt, in " City Whistles." 
 "City Vespers," "A City Swallow," and 
 " November in the City," performs a kindred 
 miracle in behalf of the busy townsmen to 
 whom thronging streets and metropolitan 
 bustle too often suggest only the harder and 
 harsher aspects of trade and barter, her in- 
 spiring contemporary note but echoing those 
 of many other city singers and purveyors of 
 poetic magic. Hood, Wordsworth, Towne, 
 Kilmer, Howells, it were vain to dream of 
 enumerating those who have thus provided 
 sight for the poetically blind. 
 
12 How to Read Poetry 
 
 Poems about roads, the sea, the fields, the 
 forest, the desert, the prairies, the mountains 
 are many and beloved as humanity's passion 
 for travel, as the wanderlust that redeems 
 from cloddish inertia countless comfort- 
 clogged children of modernity. The mighty 
 underlying impulses of love, death, sin, and 
 sorrow are interpreted, softened, hallowed, 
 by unnumbered and many-veined poems and 
 lyrics, the persistent if sometimes belittled 
 appeal of Tennyson or Longfellow or Whit- 
 tier or Wordsworth lies in their power of 
 evoking sympathetic feeling, of visioning 
 vivid pictures, of turning to black and gold 
 and rainbow colorings the universal life fig- 
 ments and pigments more commonly pre- 
 sented as dingy, dreary, drab. 
 
 Poetry, moreover, not only makes us feel, 
 but makes us feel in universal manner. " The 
 Colonel's lady and Julia O'Grady are sisters 
 under their skins " is Kipling's way of express- 
 ing a truth we must all realize upon occasion. 
 Needless to say the Colonel himself and 
 Julia's husband are of equally intrinsic kin- 
 ship. Poetry, wide as the world, flexible as 
 
Why Read Poetry? 13 
 
 the winds, fluid as water, not only expresses 
 but interprets for the inarticulate the great 
 general human emotions. It says for us 
 things that few of us can say for ourselves, 
 that, in naked prose, few of us would say 
 were the saying conventionally possible. It 
 endows the emotionally dumb with vicarious 
 eloquence, it lends to the unlettered the gift 
 of strange tongues. 
 
 Through the medium of poetry the voice- 
 less, whose most fervent moods and emotions 
 must remain personally unexpressed, who 
 perhaps never have been blessed with fervent 
 moods and emotions, may rejoice in the sim- 
 ple sweetness of "Annie Laurie," the kindly 
 power of all old and new heroes, the splendid 
 pride and prowess of all those through all 
 the ages celebrated in enshrining song. 
 
 The childless, the bereaved woman may 
 live through experiences never directly her 
 own in the lullabies and child poems quick 
 with the sacred mother impulse; the desolate 
 may find the lost grace of gladness, the sus- 
 tenance of faith in lyrics hymning the joyous 
 hope of others. 
 
14 How to Read Poetry 
 
 The lame, the halt, the blind may know the 
 bliss of open space, wide skies, free motion. 
 The prisoned may delight in sea and land and 
 mountains. Even the soldier heart shut in the 
 inadequate body may share the thrills of the 
 fighter. The aged may be youthful, the timid 
 may be brave. 
 
 All this through prose too? Yes, but in 
 lessened, inferior measure. " Friendship, " 
 runs the wise French proverb, " is love with- 
 out wings." Just so, prose sentiment too 
 often is wingless. Poetry is capable of won- 
 drous flights, usually, even when of uninspired 
 variety, can fly a little, at least can sug- 
 gest the illusion of leaving prosaic earth be- 
 hind. 
 
 That's why we all love it for surely, 
 now, you willingly admit the prevailing love 
 and need of poetry. From the minstrels of 
 earliest antiquity down to the newest of " new 
 poetry " singers, the poet's public always has 
 been more or less assured him, though not al- 
 ways during his lifetime. Successful maga- 
 zine editors are quite cognizant of the gen- 
 eral fondness for poetry. Magazine verses 
 
Why Read Poetry? 15 
 
 are not printed to solve the "filler" problem 
 alone. 
 
 And that's why because we all love 
 poetry that all of us read poetry upon 
 occasion and should read it. That's why the 
 classic poets never go out of fashion, why new 
 ones come into fashion continually. Pass- 
 ing by all the stock (and standard) argu- 
 ments for reading poetry because of its good 
 effect upon prose writing, for its cultural 
 value or other educational, bread and butter 
 reasons we read poetry yes, all of us at one 
 time or another! because we love it un- 
 less, indeed, something is wrong with our lov- 
 ing apparatus. 
 
 We may not, of course, all love the same 
 kinds of poetry; to do so would be as regret- 
 table as for all to love the same kinds of food 
 or friends. But if we don't love some kind of 
 poetry it's because we're not normal or be- 
 cause we're not reading or choosing aright. 
 
INVICTUS 
 
 Out of the night that covers me, 
 Black as the pit from pole to pole, 
 
 I thank whatever gods may be 
 For my unconquerable soul. 
 
 In the fell clutch of circumstance 
 I have not winced nor cried aloud. 
 
 Under the bludgeonings of chance 
 My head is bloody, but unbowed. 
 
 Beyond this place of wrath and tears 
 Looms but the Horror of the shade, 
 
 And yet the menace of the years 
 Finds and shall find me unafraid. 
 
 It matters not how strait the gate, 
 How charged with punishments the 
 
 scroll, 
 
 I am the master of my fate: 
 I am the captain of my soul. 
 
 William Ernest Henley. 
 
E 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 WHAT DO WE SEEK IN POETRY? 
 
 NJOYMENT, of course. (Was it not 
 agreed in the beginning that only the 
 " happy reasons " for reading poetry should 
 be considered? Let those who will read 
 poetry for purposes of education or culture 
 or conversational utility. We are concerned 
 alone with poetry reading for the sake of 
 fun.) 
 
 Enjoyment, then, is our object in poetry, 
 albeit, as J. B. Kerfoot sagely says, u One can 
 learn more about poetry from watching its 
 P squirms than from all the pronouncements of 
 all the pundits." And let it be said quickly, 
 before countless puzzled or dissentient voices 
 deafen with question or denial enjoyment 
 in the reading of poetry is possible to every 
 man, woman, and child in existence. Not, 
 of course, as previously suggested, the same 
 kind of enjoyment, nor, for that matter, the 
 same kind of poetry. Far from it. Enjoy- 
 
 iS 
 
What Do We Seek in Poetry? 19 
 
 ment as dissimilar, as diverse, as infinitely 
 varied as human nature or as poetry itself. 
 
 One of the most potent causes of the long 
 supposed unpopularity of poetry lies in the 
 fact that poetry almost universally is read and 
 studied with so little discrimination, such 
 careless selection, such slight attention to per- 
 sonal tendencies and taste. Another lies in 
 the fancy, frequent as absurd, that "good" 
 poetry, of whatever nature, must prove 
 equally pleasing to all tasteful readers, 
 whereas, human nature being cast into an in- 
 finite variety of shapes and patterns, the ex- 
 act reverse is and should be true. 
 
 There are as many good kinds of poetry 
 or kinds of good poetry as there are of 
 good music or good pictures. The lilting 
 ballad may be as fine in its way as a Beethoven 
 sonata ; the simplest of lyrics in its own field 
 may rank as high as, in another, Dante's 
 " Inferno" or " Paradise Lost." 
 
 Who would condemn a beautiful land- 
 scape, an entertaining cartoon, because it was 
 neither a portrait nor a still-life study? 
 Where would be the sense of condemning art 
 
2O How to Read Poetry 
 
 
 
 or the art lover because a certain style of 
 painting made no appeal to a single observer, 
 of deprecating all dramatic productions be- 
 cause comedy or tragedy failed of per- 
 sonal charm or application? Yet such prac- 
 tice would be quite as sensible as to decide that 
 one did not like or enjoy poetry because cer- 
 tain varieties lacked the power to hold or 
 please. 
 
 Frost's grave stories, Lindsay's spirited 
 trumpeMones, Harriet Monroe's polished 
 and tender thoughtfulness, Sara Teasdale's 
 poignant purity of mood and meter all, to 
 point the moral by present favorites, are ex- 
 cellent, each in its own manner, but their vir- 
 tue, by reason of their very individuality, is 
 by no means identical or synchronous. Dif- 
 ferentfeinds of poetry, as different poets, suit 
 differing temperaments, mentalities, times of 
 life, or the day. 
 
 Poetry, then, should be read, selected, fitted 
 to the person and mood as reasonably as 
 books or clothes or games or articles of diet. 
 The eager prospective bridegroom might not, 
 for the moment, find Bryant's u Thanatopsis " 
 
What Do We Seek in Poetry? 21 
 
 or Scott's " Lady of the Lake " absorbing, but 
 Christopher Morley's " Songs for a Little 
 House," while of lesser abstract value, might 
 prove quick with fascination. Because a 
 piquant anecdote about the last-named collec- 
 tion of verse suits so aptly it shall be quoted 
 here. 
 
 " I don't suppose you care for poetry," a 
 Morley admirer is reported as remarking to 
 a man who had always believed in the verac- 
 ity of the suggestion, "but," receiving the 
 expected negative, u you live in a little house, 
 doubtless you are fond of your wife, you 
 have chairs, a table, and, in all probability, 
 a cat. I believe you are the proud father of a 
 son, and it is likely that you sometimes stoke 
 the furnace. Now just let me read you a bit 
 of this." 
 
 'That's not poetry," the unconscious con- 
 vert exclaimed, presently, " that's just read- 
 ing" which assertion, incidentally, has been 
 made against Masters, Milton, and many an- 
 other poet "old" and "new." 
 
 So, too, with the man who in time of peace 
 cared little for war poetry, but who now, with 
 
22 How to Read Poetry 
 
 all the world thrilling to the war-call, reads all 
 the war poetry he encounters. So, again, with 
 the woman who, from the widened viewpoint 
 of happy or bereaved mother, suddenly finds 
 lullabies and poems of childhood irresistible. 
 So, yet again, with the adolescent youth or 
 maiden one day considering love poems " silly 
 rot" the next day devouring them avidly, if 
 in secret. Who but why continue? Com- 
 plete the argument by recalling the kind of 
 poems, verses, jingles you clipped and tucked 
 away in pocketbook or bureau drawer between 
 your fifteenth and twentieth birthdays, by con- 
 sidering the kind of poetry you clip and tuck 
 away (for everyone does it sometimes) now- 
 adays. 
 
 The finest of skating songs would have but 
 slight appeal in a northern blizzard, but who, 
 in such circumstance, could resist a June 
 poem? Think, for a moment, and for exam- 
 ple, upon Richard Henry Stoddard's "The 
 Flight of Youth." 
 
 k/ " n 
 
 There are gains for all our losses, 
 There are balms for all our pain, 
 
What Do We Seek in Poetry? 23 
 
 But when youth, the dream, departs, 
 It takes something from our hearts, 
 And it never comes again. 
 
 We are stronger, and are better 
 
 Under manhood's sterner reign, 
 Still, we feel that something fleet 
 Followed youth with flying feet, 
 And will never come again. 
 
 Something beautiful has vanished 
 
 And we sigh for it in vain. 
 We behold it everywhere, 
 In the earth and in the air, 
 
 But it never comes again. 
 
 Now, if you are on the hither side of forty 
 those haunting lines probably appear to you 
 as only academically graceful and tender. 
 Perhaps, even, the thought embodied seems 
 rather like sentimental if not stupid nonsense. 
 But if you are on the other side of forty, or 
 if, for any reason, the flight of time has been 
 pressed home to you, the almost inevitable 
 reaction will be that of keen appreciation, 
 
24 How to Read Poetry 
 
 touched with quick resentment or gently re- 
 sponsive sadness. If the u arid tableland of 
 middle life" looms vaguely near, or if it lies 
 so far behind as to have lost all sting and 
 sadness, quite another kind of enjoyment, that 
 of satisfied recognition, will follow the read- 
 ing. At all events, it is evident that spon- 
 taneous, superlative emotional pleasure scarce 
 could follow successive reading of the 
 quoted poem and of, for instance, Anne Hig- 
 ginson Spicer's u Song of an April Fool." 
 
 Across the fields I laugh and run. 
 I toss my heart up to the sun 
 And catch it back in my two hands. 
 All girdled round with golden bands 
 It is, and chains of sunny beams 
 That glitter like my childish dreams. 
 
 And if the day is filled with mist, 
 What care have I ? Where-e'er I list 
 I run and breathe soft depths of dew, 
 And feel the soft damp soak me through 
 Until my heart swells like a seed 
 And bursts to very bloom, indeed. 
 
What Do We Seek In Poetry? 25 
 
 There may be those who keep a state 
 
 Of dignity, and walk sedate, 
 
 Who do not laugh, and do not care 
 
 To meet Young April debonair 
 
 And smiling, like some shepherd swain 
 
 Who greets his love, or sun or rain. 
 
 Poor fools, I'll let them go their way 
 Unmindful of the April day. 
 There must be something that they prize 
 More than these rainbow April skies. 
 They shall not daunt me as I run 
 And toss my heart up to the sun. 
 
 Nor could the mood sympathetic to this 
 bit of nature-love incarnate, to Browning's 
 "Pippa Passes, " to MasefiekTs sea poems 
 prove equally sympathetic to many another 
 and equally depictive poem of nature. Take, 
 for example, Sidney Lanier's " Ballad of 
 Trees and the Master" and Joyce Kilmer's 
 " Trees." Here are two lovely poems, each 
 written in praise of trees, each instinct with 
 deep and simply expressed feeling, each in- 
 trinsically reverent in tone and expression, 
 
26 How to Read Poetry 
 
 yet what leagues, what eternities apart in the 
 essential verities that distinguish, differentiate 
 them! Lanier is most concerned with the 
 Master, Kilmer with the trees, and this di- 
 vergence of creative mood must arouse 
 equally marked divergence of sympathy and 
 comprehension on the part of the reader. 
 Lanier is the greater poet, doubtless, but is 
 there not something even more widely appeal- 
 ing, because more widely human, about the 
 simple Kilmer lines: 
 
 I think that I shall never see 
 A poem lovely as a tree. 
 
 A tree whose hungry mouth is prest 
 Against the earth's sweet flowing breast; 
 
 A tree that looks at God all day, 
 And lifts her leafy arms to pray; 
 
 A tree that may in Summer wear 
 A nest of robins in her hair; 
 
 Upon whose bosom snow has lain; 
 Who intimately lives with rain. 
 
What Do We Seek in Poetry? 27 
 
 Poems are made by fools like me, 
 But only God can make a tree. 
 
 Poems of tres and woods are almost as 
 numerous, as beloved as poems of the road 
 and the joys of travel, and for the simplest, 
 most understandable of reasons. Woods and 
 trees and roads bulk large in the life, at least 
 in the imaginative enjoyment, of almost every 
 human being. But poems of woods and trees 
 and roads must be vastly varied if they are 
 to range widest popular scope. So, too, 
 moreover, with all the unending poetic vari- 
 ants upon the best loved human themes. 
 
 Courage, to illustrate, is a virtue that all 
 men, all women, agree to admire, exalt 
 Herein lies the spell of certain much quoted 
 poems. It has been related that upon canvass 
 of a large and fairly representative gathering 
 of men Henley's intrepid "Invictus" was 
 drawn from several hundred pockets or hon- 
 ored by several hundred mouths as the favor- 
 ite poem of each person voting. These men 
 loved u Invictus " because it expressed a 
 thought, a theory, an attitude they had long 
 
28 How to Read Poetry 
 
 and deeply adored in less articulate man- 
 ner. Many women might like the idea with- 
 out caring for the form of the Henley chal- 
 lenge. Few brave, experienced women, per- 
 haps, could resist the subtle charm of Mar- 
 garet Widdemer's "A Cyprian Woman." 
 
 Under dusky laurel leaf, 
 
 Scarlet leaf of rose, 
 I lie prone, who have known 
 
 All a woman knows 
 
 Love and grief and motherhood, 
 Fame and mirth and scorn; 
 
 These are all shall befall 
 Any woman born. 
 
 Jewel-laden are my hands, 
 
 Tall my stone above; 
 Do not weep that I sleep 
 
 Who was wise in love; 
 
 Where I walk a shadow gray 
 
 Through gray asphodel, 
 I am glad, who have had 
 
 All that Life could tell. 
 
What Do We Seek in Poetry? 29 
 
 Because few women, however brave, how- 
 ever experienced, have known " all a woman 
 knows" the underlying, delicately suggested 
 sense of adventure, the hint of poignant pain 
 and passion incident to this " second epitaph 
 for Bilitis " will leave many a staid feminine 
 reader glad or gasping. Masculine readers, 
 on the other hand, may find it dull or repel- 
 lent, might unhesitatingly declare against 
 more than surface virtue or beauty in the 
 poem's connection. Other, deeper poems re- 
 lating to death might affect them far more 
 strongly. Yet the appeal, the message of Sir 
 Edwin Arnold's u He who died at Azan 
 sends," Wordsworth's u Our life is but a 
 sleep and a forgetting," and Alan Seeger's " I 
 Have a Rendezvous with Death" might not 
 be at all synonymous. Matthew Arnold's 
 classic " Strew on her roses, roses " has quick- 
 ened to delicious thrilling many whom the fol- 
 lowing sister-lyric might leave unstirred and 
 cold. 
 
 Here she lies where all must come, 
 After the days grow wearisome, 
 She that was Chrysanthemum. 
 
30 How to Read Poetry 
 
 Tulips falter in the wind; 
 With blown leaves her eyes are blind, 
 And her singing mouth is dumb. 
 Here she lies where all must come. 
 
 Lotus flower between her breasts 
 Rests as deeply as she rests; 
 Milky veil about her rolled 
 Feels seeds quicken in its fold: 
 Here she lies where all must come. 
 
 Little feet that danced so light 
 Music shall not stir tonight, 
 Though the strongest love of men 
 Lilted on the samisen. 
 Little hands men's hearts that led 
 Into snares that she had spread 
 After days grown wearisome 
 
 Little hands shall know no more 
 Closing door or opening door, 
 Keys of sorrow or of grief; 
 Lo ! they hold a withered leaf. 
 World, and where is thy distress? 
 One chrysanthemum the less ! 
 
What Do We Seek in Poetry? 31 
 
 World, what say'st thou? She is dumb, 
 She that was Chrysanthemum. 
 
 So, again, in regard to any or all of the 
 countless tastes, devotions, idiosyncrasies, en- 
 thusiasms variously delighting the children of 
 men. Poetry there is for the pleasing of all, 
 poetry capable of infinite variety of selection. 
 Art lovers, for example, to the end of time 
 will swear by the Kenyon Cox creed begin- 
 ning u Work thou for pleasure," or that 
 charming figuration of Edith M. Thomas, 
 " Of old the muses sat on high " 
 
 Lovers and friends of humanity's " little 
 brethren," dogs and cats, will never tire of 
 songs and sonnets that celebrate the goodness 
 and graces of these faithful or faithless dwell- 
 ers by the hearthstone or doorstep. 
 
 The religiously inclined and who, at 
 heart, in secret, does not incline toward some 
 kind or form of religion? will ever find in 
 religious poetry recurrent joy and strength 
 and solace. To the religious, as the loving, 
 the poems of Christina Rossetti always have 
 meant a very special delectation, as have the 
 
32 How to Read Poetry 
 
 poems of Francis Thompson, Alice Meynell, 
 and other religious singers. And so the tale 
 goes on. 
 
 Down or up or around the entire 
 list or gamut of human experience the poetry- 
 pleasure trail might be followed, but sufficient 
 illustrations have been provided for the satis- 
 faction of any open-minded, unprejudiced 
 reader. Any such who have followed the 
 thought-thread of the outlined thesis will be 
 ready to admit universal enjoyment of poetry, 
 pleasure in poetry reading always, be it 
 again understood, if matter be properly suited 
 to mood, material to situation. Dickens for- 
 mulated the facts in regard to poetry reading 
 when he caused R. Wilfer to excuse or ex- 
 plain his tragic wife to their daughter. 
 
 " Supposing .... that a man wanted 
 to be always marching, he would find your 
 mother an inestimable companion. But if he 
 had any taste for walking, or should wish at 
 any time to break into a trot, he might some- 
 times find it difficult to keep step with your 
 mother. Or take it this way, Bella, 
 supposing that a man had to go 
 
What Do We Seek in Poetry? 33 
 
 through life, we won't say with a companion, 
 but we'll say to a tune. Very good. Suppos- 
 ing that the tune allotted to him was the c Dead 
 March ' in ' Saul.' Well. It would be a very 
 suitable tune for particular occasions none 
 better but it would be difficult to keep time 
 with in the ordinary run of domestic transac- 
 tions. For instance, if he took his supper after 
 a hard day, to the * Dead March' in 'Saul,' 
 his food might be likely to set heavy on him. 
 Or, if he was at any time inclined to relieve 
 his mind by singing a comic song or dancing a 
 hornpipe, and was obliged to do it to the 
 ' Dead March ' in 4 Saul,' he might find himself 
 put out in the execution of his lively intentions." 
 
 Exactly. It need not be said again that 
 herein lies the secret of reading poetry with 
 enjoyment: suit the poetry to the needs and 
 uses of the time. 
 
 Is your mood solemn? Don't read trip- 
 ping ballads, sentimental triolets, gay vers de 
 societe, stirring war songs or even Edmund 
 Vance Cookers bracing " Impertinent Poems." 
 
 Are you in love ? Peruse all the love lyrics 
 and epithalamiums available, but seek not to 
 
34 How to Read Poetry 
 
 stay your soul with the biting sarcasm of Mas- 
 ters or the bludgeon strokes of Sandburg. 
 As well, when hungry, regale one's self with 
 whipped cream or, when throbbing with the 
 joy of life, curb your steps to some stately 
 chant or dirge. 
 
 Read poetry, in a word, as sensibly, hon- 
 estly, as you eat or drink or dress or dream or 
 talk or sleep or plan for the future. Then 
 there'll be no more nonsense about not enjoy- 
 ing poetry. 
 
 For whoso reads poetry in accordance 
 with these suggestions no more could avert 
 resultant enjoyment than he could leap into 
 the air and fly. 
 
THE TOYS 
 
 My little Son, who looked from thought- 
 ful eyes 
 
 And moved and spoke in quiet grown-up 
 wise, 
 
 Having my law the seventh time diso- 
 beyed, 
 
 I struck him, and dismissed 
 
 With hard words and unkissed, 
 
 His Mother, who was patient, being 
 dead. 
 
 Then, fearing lest his grief should hin- 
 der sleep, 
 
 I visited his bed, 
 
 But found him slumbering deep, 
 
 With darkened eyelids, and their lashes 
 yet 
 
 From his late sobbing wet. 
 
 And I, with moan, 
 
 Kissing away his tears, left others of my 
 own; 
 
 For, on a table drawn beside his head, 
 
 35 
 
36 How to Read Poetry 
 
 He had put, within his reach, 
 
 A box of counters and a red-veined stone, 
 
 A piece of glass abraded by the beach, 
 
 And six or seven shells, 
 
 A bottle with bluebells, 
 
 And two French copper coins, ranged 
 
 there with careful art, 
 To comfort his sad heart. 
 So when that night I prayed 
 To God, I wept, and said : 
 Ah, when at last we lie with tranced 
 
 breath, 
 
 Not vexing Thee in death, 
 And thou rememberest of what toys 
 We made our joys, 
 How weakly understood 
 Thy great commanded good, 
 Then, fatherly not less 
 Than I whom Thou has molded from 
 
 the clay, 
 
 Thou'lt leave Thy wrath, and say, 
 " I will be sorry for their childishness." 
 Coventry Eatmore. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 THE "OLD" POETRY, SO-CALLED 
 
 THE term "old" poetry is here used, 
 purely as a convenience, because of the 
 recent popular division of poetry into the sup- 
 posedly " old " and " new " varieties. But to 
 speak of "old" poetry in reality is as absurd 
 as it would be to speak, in the same sense, of 
 "old" sky or "old" sea or "old" sunshine 
 or any other general and universal character- 
 istic or quality of creation. For the poetry 
 now known as "old" is as ageless, deathless, 
 perpetual, and eternal as any of the powers 
 of nature noted. It began with the earli- 
 est dawns and stirrings of humanity; it 
 will persist, endure, as long as the human 
 race. 
 
 Even Miss Amy Lowell, avowed and ac- 
 credited apostle of the "new" school of 
 poetry, in "Tendencies in Modern Ameri- 
 can Poetry" admits that "Good poetry, if 
 not strikingly great poetry, marked the epoch 
 
 37 
 
38 How to Read Poetry 
 
 of Whittier, Bryant, Emerson, Longfellow, 
 and Holmes." 
 
 " The fundamentals of poetry," as William 
 Stanley Braithwaite aptly says, "are in the 
 folk chants of antiquity and the communal 
 chant of primitive peoples in the world today. 
 . . . . Poetry has advanced from the 
 oral communal chant to a highly developed 
 organism in which formal diction and forms 
 of fixed patterns are more or less standard- 
 ized." l And it' has advanced, in the English 
 poetic history which, at least until quite re- 
 cently, includes American poetic history, by 
 a progression distinctly orderly if not always 
 regular or measured. 
 
 From the earliest known English poems 
 such as " Sumer is icumen in," up through 
 the ballads, chants, and story-songs of the 
 wandering minstrels, up through Chaucer, 
 Hogg, Percy, the medieval, Elizabethan, 
 Georgian, Victorian and Edwardian poets to 
 the variously flowering and flourishing poets 
 of the twentieth century, the stream of Eng- 
 lish-couched poetry has steadily flowed and 
 risen. A similar course and progression 
 
The " Old" Poetry, So-Called 39 
 
 has marked the poetry tide of other lands and 
 races. And poetry, in all known ages and 
 stages of the world's progress, has followed, 
 reflected, sometimes foretold and forestalled 
 the changing course of humanity's life, experi- 
 ence, and thought. 
 
 When the world has been gay with roman- 
 ticism, quick with chivalry, overcharged with 
 sentiment, stirred by martial spirit, filled with 
 religious enthusiasm, disturbed by social 
 growing pains, poetry, faithful handmaid of 
 life, has ever been true to the growing aims 
 and ideals of her mistress. " For poetry," 
 well says Louis Untermeyer, himself a rare 
 and forceful poet, " is something more than 
 a graceful, literary escape from life" (al- 
 though, it may be interpolated, many a tired 
 human heart and soul has found " surcease 
 from care " in the poems of Longfellow or 
 other gentle singers, fresh courage and stimu- 
 lus and a bracing " way out " through the help 
 of more daring bards, poetry, like religion, 
 ministering, always, to deepest human need). 
 "It is a spirited encounter with it." 
 
 "A spirited sharing in life's encounter" 
 
40 How to Read Poetry 
 
 might, perhaps, come a shade nearer the 
 truth. 
 
 This it was that rendered the early Chris- 
 tian centuries so rich in religious poetry, that 
 brought forth the tender love lyrics of the 
 court singers, the nature worshiping of the 
 Lake Poets, the pure philosophizing of 
 Bryant and Whittier and Emerson; this it is 
 that now calls to war poems and chivalric out- 
 pourings, to surging acknowledgment of di- 
 vinity, the poets of the moment, that has 
 tuned so much recent and contemporary sing- 
 ing to the larger themes of the human race. 
 
 " There are just two great levelers in the 
 world poetry and death," is the dictum of 
 William Stanley Braithwaite, who might 
 have added love to their number. The co- 
 universal nature of the two or three ac- 
 counts for the fact of poetry's early beginning 
 and the concomitant fact that it will endure 
 as long as time. 
 
 Poetry, moreover, began and will per- 
 sist with form if not formality. The poets 
 of child races lacked the finished form of 
 their descendants, lineal and poetic, just as the 
 
The " Old" Poetry, So-Called 41 
 
 child poet of today frequently lacks the fin- 
 ished grace of his later production. But the 
 poetic child, racial or individual, always ex- 
 presses, consciously or otherwise, a striving 
 toward form, especially in its simplest rhym- 
 ing and rhythmic developments, a striving, be 
 it said, frequently most powerful and moving. 
 Pope by no means represents the sole singer 
 who " lisped in numbers, for the numbers 
 
 came.' 
 
 " Milton," according to Arthur Davison 
 Ficke, u knew what all poets will be wise to 
 recognize today; that certain effects in poetry 
 are wholly impossible without the use of regu- 
 lar rhythms and rhymes. " 
 
 "The reason for this fact," Mr. Ficke ex- 
 plains, "is derived from the very nature of 
 the art. It is based on the absolute necessity 
 of carrying the lulled spirit of the reader on 
 waves of recurrent sound into a state of sus- 
 pended consciousness a kind of visionary 
 trance in which the mind, deaf for a moment 
 to the distractions of the world around it, will 
 see singly and solely the dream which the poet 
 puts before it. The emotion-heightening, 
 
42 How to Read Poetry 
 
 hypnotic power of regular rhythms and recur- 
 rent rhymes is in many instances the whole 
 basis of that peculiar somnambulistic effect 
 which is the special magic of poetry. Emo- 
 tion is the secret of it all; and some emotions 
 answer to the call of rhyme and rhythm as to 
 almost nothing else. Rhyme seizes the thread 
 of one's thoughts as might a current, and in- 
 tertwines with it, and draws it down into re- 
 mote subterranean caverns of the spirit, un- 
 visited by the everyday consciousness. . . . 
 
 " When the mind is a blaze of sudden reve- 
 lation, and the poet's theme glows into thor- 
 ough transparency of white heat, he will usu- 
 ally find that what he has to say flows rapidly 
 and perfectly into the smooth mold of regu- 
 lar verse-forms." 
 
 This statement, of keen interest in connec- 
 tion with certain fascinating poetic phenomena 
 Lowell's "The Vision of Sir Launfal," it 
 will be remembered, was composed and fin- 
 ished in a day also has its value as suc- 
 cinctly controverting the claim so frequently 
 and vociferously made of late to the effect 
 that too meticulous devotion to form limits 
 
The " Old" Poetry, So-Called 43 
 
 freedom of expression, sometimes actually 
 maims the subject matter so treated. Imper- 
 fectly mastered technique must always, of 
 course, destroy grace if not power of expres- 
 sion, but the indicated claim, indirectly re- 
 sponsible, because of sundry ridiculous and 
 futile free verse monstrosities produced 
 under its spell, for much injury to its special 
 and cherished thesis, is not substantiated by 
 study, nor will it bear close analysis. 
 
 As well declare that because a volume of 
 air or water is too mighty for a pint pitcher 
 or safely to sail a tiny boat no other vessel 
 or craft may contain or use it, as to say that 
 because a poetic thought or mood over-runs 
 the triolet form, is too vast and sweeping for 
 the ballad, the chante royale, it may not gain 
 in effect by transmission through any other 
 form of precisely measured expression. The 
 Psalms of David, the sweeping roll of Isaiah 
 would lose greatly by reduction to a jogging 
 meter, gain nothing by the most dignified and 
 reverent of rhythmic settings, but they are not 
 therefore formless. Free verse enthusiasts 
 are the first to proclaim the wide difference 
 
44 How to Read Poetry 
 
 between vers libre and the majestic biblical 
 blank verse. 
 
 In this connection, it will readily be ac- 
 cepted that for each and every extant speci- 
 men of real poetry remains but one best, in- 
 evitable mold. 
 
 Wordsworth's " Ode on the Intimations 
 of Immortality," while in thought and trend 
 utterly unsuited to the purely lyric form, in- 
 dubitably is strengthened in force and appeal 
 by the form with which the mind of its crea- 
 tor naturally endowed it. Bryant's "Thana- 
 topsis," Meredith's u Love in the Valley," 
 Scott's " Lady of the Lake " or " Marmion," 
 Moore's "Lalla Rookh," Byron's " Childe 
 Harold," Noyes' " In Old Japan," Masefield's 
 " Dauber," how absurd to deny that these are 
 helped rather than hampered by the forms 
 that so well fit them. Should momentary con- 
 sideration leave slightest doubt of this idea 
 change the suggested poems into prose or 
 recall some of the terrible distortions into 
 which scholastic " practice work" has been 
 known to change them. The fact that it is 
 as dangerous to meddle with a single line of 
 
The "Old" Poetry, So-Called 45 
 
 real poetry as with the thought back of it 
 proves much in this regard. 
 
 An instructive sidelight may be obtained, 
 while on this subject, by perusal of such clever 
 parodies as those in which, for example, Car- 
 olyn Wells, is wont to indulge. Spring to 
 mind, at random, numbers of the representa- 
 tive and diabolically ingenious group setting 
 forth the "purple cow" motif as various 
 great poets might, conceivably, have framed 
 it. The mocking, mimicking lines cling to 
 mird and memory like limpets, but their mali- 
 ciojs lingering is offset by their irrefutable 
 tesimony as to the practical infallibility of 
 theoriginal expression of any real idea. 
 
 "he triolet, as has been suggested, is not as 
 a flle suitable to solemn and deep emotions. 
 Ye) a Chicago poet, not long since, seeking 
 podc outlet for welling sympathy with the 
 mo|ier of a youthful war martyr, found her- 
 sel irresistibly impelled to the triolet man- 
 net The result was surprisingly good. 
 
 \i the main, however, manner must be 
 suid to material which, after all, is but 
 thelmain contention of both "old" and 
 
46 How to Read Poetry 
 
 "new" poets. One does not feel drawn to 
 tripping steps while following a friend to the 
 grave, nor incline to stately harmonies for the 
 interpreting of a sentimental moment. Con- 
 sider, for example, the Tennysonian favorite, 
 "Break, Break, Break," that has been loved 
 and repeated almost into decay. 
 
 Here we have not only a succession oi pic- 
 tures the sea, the ships, the fishenran's 
 boy, etc. but we have also a tenderly vist- 
 ful idea and a music of words almost as sveet 
 as the Swinburnian phrases that might b 
 and frequently are read and enjoyed for 
 purely melodic reasons. And does not the 
 " Break, Break, Break," with its recurent 
 rhythm, harmoniously suggest the splash of 
 waves on the shore? 
 
 Reduce this poem to free verse an< an 
 admirable argument for the classic i>rm 
 would be in evidence. Or subject to sirilar 
 injustice the much quoted song of Pipa's 
 singing and note the resultant harm: 
 
 God reigns. Everything's all righi 
 A sterling sentiment, truly. With fair 
 
The " Old" Poetry, So-Called 47 
 
 exactitude and adequacy presenting the 
 beauty-filled idea of Browning. But 
 
 God's in His Heaven 
 All's right with the world! 
 
 Need more be said? 
 
 New light, again, upon the vexed question 
 of " old " and u new " poetry, of form or flex- 
 ibility, is shed by the fact that great emotions 
 do not, as reasonably might be deduced from 
 the frequent assertion that form cramps ex- 
 pression, find best general outlet in uncon- 
 trolled outpouring. Of the swelling flood of 
 real poetry called forth by the Great War, 
 comparatively little has conformed to free 
 verse standards. There have been many good 
 free verse productions, just as in all possible 
 human circumstance there will be anarchistic 
 productions powerful enough to justify their 
 existence, a serious hearing. Amy Lowell's 
 'The Cornucopia of Red and Green Com- 
 fits," and Louise Driscoll's "The Metal 
 Checks " are fine specimens of this order. 
 But the majority of the more renowned war 
 singers Brooke, Seeger, Ledwidge, Gib- 
 
48 How to Read Poetry 
 
 son, etc. have employed simple rhymes, 
 standard meters for the brave and vivid heart 
 songs that battle for the right as surely as 
 machine guns, "tanks," or cannon. 
 
 The urge and surge of social or socialistic 
 sympathies, as social or socialistic antago- 
 nisms, more often than not are "put over," 
 "gotten across" by aid of the time-honored 
 and time-hallowed rhythms, rhymes and 
 pulses v that have unending if not cumulative 
 power to stir human hearts, thrill human 
 nerves and souls and senses. Margaret Wid- 
 demer's "The Factories," and "The Face of 
 Teresina," Florence Wilkinson's "The 
 Flower Makers," Ruth Comfort Mitchell's 
 "The Night Court," Hood's "The Bridge 
 of Sighs," and " The Song of the Shirt," these 
 are but a few of the magnificent rhyming ser- 
 mons that recur instantly, that, once read, sel- 
 dom can be quite forgotten. Would Whit- 
 tier's slave poems, or the " Battle Hymn of 
 the Republic" be quite so effective without 
 their lilt, their pulsing swing? 
 
 Whitman, while scorning mere empty 
 rhyme, was so strongly endowed with the 
 
The "Old" Poetry, So-Called 49 
 
 rhythmic gift that many of his lines affect the 
 sensitive like the oncoming roll of thunder 
 or the sound of the sea, of a high wind in 
 the forest. Masefield, at times, has an ebb 
 and flow that brings the ocean tide into the 
 narrowest tenement. Kipling's stories in 
 rhyme certainly lose nothing through this 
 mode of expression. Bret Harte could be 
 vigorous enough without sacrificing either 
 rhyme or rhythm. Alfred Noyes, like Swin- 
 burne, is mainly music, yet, were no clear 
 thought to be found beneath their lovely 
 singing, who would consent to forego 
 " Proserpine " or "The Barrel-organ" for 
 this reason? 
 
 Yet never one of these poets, not even 
 Whitman at his most Whitmanesque and icon- 
 oclastic, would be granted " new poetry " hon- 
 ors. The poems of all belong to the field of 
 poetry which is neither old nor new because, 
 by its very nature and essence, it is of all time. 
 
 The truth is that humanity needs rhyme, 
 rhythm, cadence, the recurrent beauty of 
 matching lines as it needs every other kind 
 -of beauty. It needs these, moreover, as best 
 
50 How to Read Poetry 
 
 and sweetest means of pressing home lessons 
 that humanity must learn and that are most 
 easily pointed by this method. It needs them, 
 no less, to satisfy that hunger for artistic fin- 
 ish, perfection which, forsworn or fostered, 
 lies deep in every heart. 
 
 Blank verse, stately hexameters, the chis- 
 eled sonnet, these phases of the great uni- 
 versal gift of poetry we may reserve for our 
 greater moments, set aside for special occa- 
 sions, but the less majestic features that the 
 newer movement would, deny us we cannot 
 lose without starving. To sing is the first 
 human impulse in moments of joy, grief, be- 
 reavement, triumph, or disaster; to lift up the 
 voice in rhythmic flow is the impulse next to 
 come. 
 
 Impressionism, cubism, futurism (each, no 
 doubt, with its special message and lesson) 
 may pass, but the fundamental love of form 
 and color remains untroubled. Music with- 
 out harmonic verity, tone, or even "key f eel- 
 ing " may come and go, but the children of 
 men will never lose love or longing for music 
 that conforms to sundry basic and unchang- 
 
The "Old" Poetry, So-Called 51 
 
 ing rules and regulations. So, perhaps, 
 most markedly of all, in the realm of poetic 
 art. 
 
 " Poetry that is real, that is fit to survive 
 through the centuries, needs no defence," well 
 says John Curtis Underwood. And poetry 
 that, through tender or vigorous reality, has 
 proved its fitness by long and strong survival 
 stands in no fear, needs no defenders though 
 all the hosts of hypothetically "new" poets 
 and poetasters are arrayed against it, declare 
 its era ended, its glory gone. 
 
 The spell and magic of rhyme, whether in 
 the interpenetrative refrain of the folk song 
 or ballad, the tintinnabulating reiteration and 
 alliteration of Poe, the haunting, quivering, 
 pulse-quickening measures of Noyes or the 
 plangent, recurrent burden as Vachel Lind- 
 say in his " poem games " and folk-built poems 
 has relearned and reemployed it, was ever, 
 is ever, and ever will be strong to move and 
 call us. 
 
 All the wild, strange nations of the world, 
 from rim to rim, have had their rhyming, 
 rhythmic songs and spells and sagas, their 
 
52 How to Read Poetry 
 
 runes and muntras and national songs of love, 
 occupation, battle. 
 
 To the sway and surge of rhythmic war 
 songs and lullabies nation after nation has 
 marched and rocked to victory and happi- 
 ness, as nation after nation will march and 
 rock in eras too far ahead for present vision- 
 ing. 
 
 Even the "music of the spheres," far from 
 approaching or approving free verse disorder, 
 is set to swinging, splendid rhythm and 
 rhyme. 
 
THE CORNUCOPIA OF RED AND 
 GREEN COMFITS 1 
 
 Currants and Honey ! 
 
 Currants and Honey! 
 
 Bar-le-Duc in times of peace. 
 
 Linden-tassel honey, 
 
 Cherry-blossom, poppy-sweet honey, 
 
 And round red currants like grape clus- 
 ters, 
 
 Red and yellow globes, lustered like 
 stretched umbrella silk, 
 
 Money chinking in town pockets, 
 
 Louis d'or in exchange for dockets of 
 lading: 
 
 So many jars, 
 
 So many bushes shorn of their stars, 
 
 So many honey-combs lifted from the 
 hive-bars. 
 
 1 Miss Lowell's poem was inspired by the following 
 press report: 
 
 "In the town of Bar-le-Duc in the Province of the Meuse 
 in France the Prefect has issued instructions to the Mayor, the 
 schoolmasters and fhe schoolmistresses to prevent the children 
 under their care from eating candies which may be dropped 
 from German aeroplanes, as candies which were similarly scat- 
 tered in other parts of the war zone have been found to contain 
 poison and disease germs." 
 
 53 
 
How to Read Poetry 
 
 Straw-pale honey and amber berries, 
 Red-stained honey and currant cher- 
 
 ries, 
 Sweetness flowing out of Bar-le-Duc by 
 
 every train, 
 It rains prosperity in Bar-le-Duc in times 
 
 of peace. 
 Holy Jesus ! when will there be mercy, 
 
 when a ceasing 
 Of War! 
 The currant bushes are lopped and 
 
 burned, 
 
 The bees have flown and never returned, 
 The children of Bar-le-Duc eat no more 
 
 honey. 
 And all the money in the town will not 
 
 buy 
 
 Enough lumps of sugar for a family. 
 Father has two between sun and sun, 
 So has mother, and little Jeanne, one, 
 But Gaston and Marie they have 
 
 none. 
 Two little children kneeling between the 
 
 grape-vines, 
 Praying to the starry Virgin, 
 
Red and Green Comfits 
 
 They have seen her in church, shining 
 
 out of a high window 
 In a currant-red gown and a crown as 
 
 smooth as honey. 
 They clasp their hands and pray, 
 And the sun shines brightly on them 
 
 through the stripped Autumn vines. 
 
 Days and days pass slowly by, 
 
 Still they measure sugar in the grocery, 
 
 Lump and lump, and always none 
 
 For Gaston and Marie, 
 
 And for little Jeanne, one. 
 
 But listen, Children. Over there, 
 
 In blue, peaked Germany, the fairies 
 
 are. 
 
 Witches who live in pine-tree glades, 
 Gnomes deep in mines, with pickaxes 
 
 and spades. 
 Fairies who dance upon round grass 
 
 rings, 
 And a Rhine-river where a Lorelei 
 
 sings. 
 The kind German fairies know of your 
 
 prayer, 
 
56 H o<w to Read Poetry 
 
 They caught it as it went through the 
 
 air. 
 
 Hush, Children ! Christmas is coming. 
 Christmas, and fairies, and cornucopias 
 
 of sugar-plums ! 
 
 Hollow thunder over the Hartz moun- 
 tains. 
 
 Hollow thunder over the Black Forest. 
 
 Hollow thunder over the Rhine. 
 
 Hollow thunder over u Unter den Lin- 
 den." 
 
 Thunder kettles, 
 
 Swung above green lightning fires, 
 
 Forked and spired lightning 
 
 Cooking candy. 
 
 Bubble, froth, stew ! 
 
 Stir, old women ; 
 
 Stir, Generals and spur-heeled young 
 officers; 
 
 Stir, misshapen Kaiser, 
 
 And shake the steam from your up- 
 turned moustachios. 
 
 Streaked and polished candy you make 
 here, 
 
Red and Green Comfits 57 
 
 With hot sugar and other things; 
 
 Strange powders and liquids 
 
 Dropped out of little flasks, 
 
 Drop 
 
 Drop 
 
 Into the bubbling sugar, 
 
 And all Germany laughs. 
 
 For years the people have eaten 
 
 the currants and honey of Bar-le- 
 
 Duc, 
 Now they will give back sweetness for 
 
 sweetness. 
 
 Ha ! Ha ! Ha ! from Posen to Munich. 
 Ha ! Ha ! Ha I in Schleswig-Holstein. 
 Ha ! Ha ! Ha I flowing along with the 
 
 Rhine waves. 
 Ha ! Ha ! Ha ! echoing round the caves 
 
 of Riigen. 
 
 Germany splits its sides with laughing, 
 And sets out its candles for the coming 
 
 of the Christ-child. 
 
 :t Heilige Nacht ! " and great white birds 
 
 flying over Germany. 
 Are the storks returning in mid-Winter? 
 
58 How to Read Poetry 
 
 " Heilige Nacht ! " the tree is lit and the 
 
 gifts are ready. 
 Steady, great birds, you have flown past 
 
 Germany, 
 And are hanging over Bar-le-Duc, in 
 
 France. 
 
 The moon is bright, 
 The moon is clear, 
 Come, little Children, the fairies are 
 
 here. 
 The good German fairies who heard 
 
 your prayer, 
 
 See them floating in the star-pricked air. 
 The cornucopias shake on the tree, 
 And the star-lamps glitter brilliantly. 
 
 A shower of comfits, a shower of balls, 
 Peppermint, chocolate, marzipan falls. 
 Red and white spirals glint in the moon. 
 Soon the fairies answered you 
 Soon! 
 Soon! 
 
 Bright are the red and white streaked 
 candies in the moonlight : 
 
Red and Green Comfits 50) 
 
 White corpse fingers pointing to the sky, 
 Round blood-drops glistening like rubies. 
 Fairyland come true : 
 Just pick and pick and suck, and chew. 
 Sugar and sweetness at last, 
 Shiny stuff of joy to be had for the gath- 
 ering. 
 
 The blood-drops melt on the tongue, 
 The corpse fingers splinter and crumble. 
 Weep white tears, Moon. 
 Soon ! So soon ! 
 
 Something rattles behind a hedge, 
 
 Rattles rattles. 
 
 An old skeleton is sitting on its thigh- 
 bones 
 
 And holding its giggling sides. 
 
 Ha! Ha! Ha! 
 
 Bar-le-Duc had currants red, 
 
 Now she has instead her dead. 
 
 Little children, sweet as honey, 
 
 Bright as currants, 
 
 Like berries snapped off and packed in 
 coffins. 
 
 The skeleton dances, 
 
60 How to Read Poetry 
 
 Dances in the moonlight, 
 
 And his fingers crack like castanets. 
 
 In blue, peaked Germany 
 The cooks wear iron crosses, 
 And the scullery maids trip to church 
 In new ribbons sent from Potsdam. 
 
 Amy Lowell, 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE "NEW" POETRY, SO-CALLED 
 
 THE first thing to be said about the 
 "new" poetry is that its name is a mis- 
 nomer. The term vers libre free verse 
 may be new, but the thing itself is at least 
 as old as Milton. 
 
 In the " Samson Agonistes " choruses free 
 verse of the freest and finest is employed to 
 great effect and because, as the poetic revo- 
 lutionists of the present are loud in acclaim- 
 ing, Milton saw and knew that not every need 
 is filled by the regular rhythm. 
 
 Southey and Shelley both at times worked 
 in free verse or " rhythmus," as Harold W. 
 Gammans has called this form of poetic ex- 
 pression. The nineteenth century, antedat- 
 ing the free verse wave and notoriety, 
 saw much good work of the kind produced. 
 
 A regular rhythm, to state the formal 
 argument for free verse, is a sound-pattern, 
 and conventionalized patterns never can be 
 
 61 
 
62 How to Read Poetry 
 
 fitted to every kind and type or idea or mate- 
 rial. The strongest argument in favor of 
 free verse lies in the fact that poetry, as an 
 interpreter of life, must reproduce many 
 kinds and phases of life aspects. For those 
 emotional climaxes and crises which "strike 
 the poet in broken flashes" in swift, cha- 
 otic, fragmentary perceptions free verse 
 offers a medium undeniably fluid and fine. 
 
 It is' for this very reason that free verse, 
 " a verse-form based upon cadence," upon 
 balanced "flow and rhythm" and more or 
 less definite u time units" rather than upon 
 rhyme, in all probability gradually will claim 
 but its own place a place assured and 
 honored but perhaps not too large or promi- 
 nent in modern poetry. It has its own 
 distinct and special virtues, but for the 
 greater, more sustained events and emotions 
 its medium will not adequately suffice. 
 
 Whitman, long before the dawn of the 
 recent free verse enthusiasm, employed free 
 verse rhymes and cadences with absolute sure- 
 ness and spontaneity. "Leaves of Grass" 
 he described as " an attempt to give the spirit, 
 
The "New " Poetry, So-Called 63 
 
 the body, and the man, new words, new poten- 
 tialities of speech an American, a cosmo- 
 politan (for the best of America is the best 
 cosmopolitanism) range of self expression." 
 Whitman, therefore, antedated present use 
 of the " language of the street," with its 
 democratic revolt against conventionality and 
 conventional implications, in a manner that 
 did much to set free the contemporary poet 
 from the custom-forged fetters of the past. 
 
 "The Americans," again according to the 
 sturdy Walt, " are going to be the most fluent 
 and melodious-voiced people in the world 
 and the most fluent and the most perfect users 
 
 of words The .new times, the 
 
 new people, the new vista" how strange 
 and terrible and colossal a vista, moreover, 
 Whitman, although in a large sense prophet 
 no less than poet, never dreamed u need a 
 tongue according yes, and what is more, 
 they will have such a tongue." 
 
 Free verse, perhaps Whitman's "new 
 tongue," may be summed quite simply. It 
 means, in a word, little more than a combina- 
 tion of revolt against the possibly over-stated 
 
64 How to Read Poetry 
 
 but indubitable conventionality, mock mod- 
 esty and sentimental prettiness of the Vic- 
 torian era, and that periodical u return to the 
 soil" or root or fundamentals of things that 
 mankind experiences with cyclic and inevita- 
 ble regularity. Much of it is being written 
 for the same reason that the Elizabethan 
 dramatists wrote beautiful blank verse; be- 
 cause it represents the most easy and natural 
 mode for the writers as natural as the 
 buoyant optimism and confidence of Vachel 
 Lindsay, the grim pessimism of Masters or 
 the tragic tenderness of Olive Tilford Dar- 
 gan. Much more is being written because the 
 writers, feeling a strong poetic impulse, fail 
 to carry it to legitimate or logical conclusion, 
 to complete the inner processes of composi- 
 tion, or to take the pains necessary for poetic 
 perfection. Much, much more is being writ- 
 ten, has been written, from a desire to be in 
 the poetic fashion, to attract attention, to 
 achieve notoriety by becoming bold, brazen, 
 or bizarre. 
 
 The "new" poets themselves are greatly 
 at variance in regard to the purpose and vir- 
 
The "New " Poetry, So-Called 65 
 
 tues, or even quality and character, of free 
 verse. William Dean Howells, later the 
 author of successful free verse narratives, 
 once described free verse, rather contemptu- 
 ously, as " shredded prose." John Bur- 
 roughs, vitally interested in all serious poetic 
 developments, has gone on record as finding 
 that many of the free verse writers seem to 
 have no real message. 
 
 "They strive so awfully after form," he 
 told a recent seeker after information. ;t If 
 they had anything real to say, the form would 
 come of itself and there would be no need of 
 all this contortion and acrobation. Now, 
 there was an osseous frame to Whitman's 
 poetry. He had something so vital to say 
 that his message almost said itself" in the 
 manner, be it noted, that Mr. Ficke attributes 
 to poetic messages of far different order. 
 4 Yet I remember what a great reviser of his 
 own work he was. Loose as his verse form 
 may seem to some, he was as careful with 
 every syllable of it as though he were forg- 
 ing a delicate chain of gold." 
 
 On the other hand, Ezra Pound, one of 
 
66 How to Read Poetry 
 
 the earliest and most persistent of poetic in- 
 surgents, before the insurgent era of his 
 poetic development known as a writer of 
 delicate conventional poems and translations, 
 not only believes that the poet having " some- 
 thing real to say" can say it most effectively 
 in the free verse manner, but can advance tell- 
 ing arguments to support even the striving 
 " so awfully after form." 
 
 " Cart you teach the American poet," he 
 asked Harriet Monroe, successful poet of 
 more than one order and editor of Poetry, 
 when this now famous Chicago u Magazine 
 of Verse" was still in its tentative stage 
 " can you teach the American poet that poetry 
 is an art, an art with a technique, with media, 
 an art that must be in constant flux a con- 
 stant change of manner if it is to live? Can 
 you teach him that it is not a pentametric echo 
 of the sociological dogma printed in last year's 
 magazines?" 
 
 The art of much of Mr. Pound's poetry 
 surely is the art that conceals art, while his 
 technique is quite too uncertain or involved 
 for popular conception. But Mr. Pound 
 
The "New " Poetry, So-Called 67 
 
 and his followers, in getting away from cer- 
 tain belittling limitations of the majority of 
 their predecessors, in all reasonable probabil- 
 ity have rendered the poetic art good service. 
 Its career as a spectacular sensation ended 
 Pound, we remember, has admitted certain of 
 his earlier free verse work merely " a seven 
 days' wonder in Chicago " the right of 
 untrammeled poetic freedom established, 
 free verse may well settle down as a regular 
 and recognized branch of poetic expression. 
 Josephine Preston Peabody, exquisite poet 
 of the "old" order, feels that there is not so 
 much a "new movement" in poetry as " an 
 eddy, related to movement, or progress, as a 
 side-eddy is related to the main current of a 
 
 river." 
 
 The " working faith" of this veritable 
 " sweet singer" stands thus self character- 
 ized: "To the worker, his choice of tools. 
 To the reader, his own delights." 
 
 Sara Teasdale, another exquisite worker 
 with the standard poetic medium, voices a 
 similar catholicity of feeling. 
 
 "There is no surer sign of a vigorous art 
 
68 How to Read Poetry 
 
 than violent differences of opinion among the 
 people who practice it. So far as the respec- 
 tive merits of free verse and melodic rhymed 
 verse go, it seems to me that the question is 
 wholly one of the individuality of the poet 
 and of the nature of his subject. It is a ques- 
 tion of fitness. The idea of such a poem as 
 Burns' ' Ye Banks and Braes o' Bonnie Boon ' 
 in free verse is painful. On the other hand, 
 the war poem by Amy Lowell called 'The 
 Cornucopia of Red and Green Comfits ' [the 
 poem immediately preceding this chapter] is 
 so perfectly wedded to its form a vivid, 
 rapid, free verse with unexpected and most 
 telling rhymes that one could not conceive 
 how it could have been so powerful in any 
 other form." 
 
 Again, Edwin Arlington Robinson, in- 
 cluded by Amy Lowell among the six notable 
 American poets, all of later manner, studied 
 in her illuminating "Tendencies in Modern 
 American Poetry," yet who as frequently in- 
 dulges in beautiful rhyming as in free verse 
 rhythms, entertains similar ideas. 
 
 u You ask me," so the dictum included by 
 
The "New " Poetry, So-Called 69 
 
 Lloyd R. Morris in the interesting " anthol- 
 ogy of opinion on the aims and tendencies of 
 the American literature of today and tomor- 
 row" called u The Young Idea" and mainly 
 devoted to poetic matters, " if I think there is 
 a new movement in poetry, and my reply is 
 that there is always a new movement in 
 poetry. There is always a new movement in 
 everything, including each new inch of each 
 new revolution of the earth around the sun. 
 But if you mean to ask me if this new move- 
 ment implies necessarily any radical change 
 in the structure or in the general nature of 
 what the world has agreed to call poetry, I 
 shall have to tell you that I do not think so. 
 
 . . . In referring to a new movement 
 I assume that you refer primarily to vers 
 libre a form, or lack of form, that may or 
 may not produce pleasant results." 
 
 Miss Lowell herself, American high priest- 
 ess of the u new movement," says: 
 
 ' When people speak of the 4 New Poetry,' 
 they generally mean that poetry which is writ- 
 ten in the newer, freer form. But such a dis- 
 tinction is misleading in the extreme, for, 
 
70 How to Read Poetry 
 
 after all, forms are merely forms, of no par- 
 ticular value unless they are the necessary and 
 adequate clothing to some particular manner 
 of thought." 
 
 The "New Poetry" to Miss Lowell, then, 
 means, mainly, a new manner of poetic think- 
 ing, incidentally a new manner of expressing 
 that thinking in lines and words. 
 
 Some such basic understanding or concep- 
 tion is liighly necessary, surely, when consid- 
 ering such widely differing exponents of the 
 "new" poetic school as Robert Frost, and 
 Masters, as Ezra Pound and Eunice Tietjens, 
 or Carl Sandburg and " H. D." 
 
 Says Miss Lowell further: 
 
 "The modern poets are less concerned 
 with dogma and more with truth. They see 
 in the universe a huge symbol, and so absolute 
 has this symbol become to them that they 
 have no need to dwell constantly upon its 
 symbolic meaning. For this reason, the sym- 
 bol has taken on a new intensity, and is given 
 much prominence. What appear to be pure 
 nature poems are of course so, but in a differ- 
 ent way from most nature poems of the older 
 
The "New" Poetry, So-Called 71 
 
 writers; for nature is not now something sep- 
 arate from man, man and nature are recog- 
 nized as part of a whole, man being a part 
 of nature, and all falling into a place in a vast 
 plan, the key to which is natural science. 
 
 u ln some modern American poets this at- 
 :itude is more conscious than in others, but all 
 
 iave been affected by it; it has modified 
 poetry, as it is more slowly modifying the 
 whole of our social fabric. 
 
 'What sets the poets of today apart from 
 those of the Victorian era is an entire differ- 
 ence of outlook. Ideas believed to be funda- 
 mental have disappeared and given place to 
 others. And as poetry is the expression of 
 the heart of man, so it reflects this change to 
 the smallest particle." 
 
 All of which, of course, is but another man- 
 
 ter of saying that modern poetry, the poetry 
 of all nations, but especially, perhaps, of 
 America, is merely undergoing changes notice- 
 
 ible in all other forms of human existence 
 and development. But it should be noted, in 
 this connection, that not all modern poets 
 feel the need of the highly symbolic medium 
 
72 How to Read Poetry 
 
 so symbolic, in some cases, as to become 
 decidedly obscure. Consider, for illustration, 
 that doubly characteristic excerpt from the 
 "Lustra" of Ezra Pound, " Women Before 
 a Shop:" 
 
 The gew-gaws of false amber and false 
 
 turquoise attract them. 
 " Like to like nature : " those agglutinous 
 
 yellows ! 
 
 Which delightful fragment, like many of 
 its distinctly imagistic fellows, indubitably 
 means more to the writer than to the general 
 reader. The question is whether or not it is 
 wise or artistic to invade poetic areas with 
 material so bound, in Mr. Pound's own words 
 concerning certain of his own poems, to be- 
 come " a very depleted fashion, .... 
 A homely, transient antiquity." Such poetry, 
 if, for the moment and for the sake of argu- 
 ment, we concede the title, is not of the sort 
 that lives. 
 
 Or analyze, for second specimen, Walter 
 Conrad Arensberg's " Ing." 
 
The "New" Poetry, So-Called 73 
 
 Ing? Is it possible to mean ing? 
 Suppose 
 
 for the termination in g 
 
 a disoriented 
 series 
 of the simple fractures 
 
 in sleep. 
 
 Soporific 
 has accordingly a value for soap 
 
 so present to 
 sew pieces. 
 
 And p says: Peace is. 
 And suppose the i 
 
 to be big in ing 
 as Beginning. 
 
 Then Ing is to ing 
 as aloud 
 
 accompanied by times 
 and the meaning is a possibility 
 
 of ralsis. 
 
 Decidedly, distinctly, " revolutionary," not 
 to say interesting, that strange collection of 
 words. But is it poetry? Defer decisive 
 judgment by terse recapitulation of the 
 "new" poetry's principal tenets and aims as 
 expressed in the " Imagistic Creed " self ac- 
 claimed by the comparatively small group of 
 writers who, because of the marked peculiari- 
 ties of their chosen modes, have been credited 
 with more than their fair share of "new 
 poetry" glory and fame. 
 
 i. To use the language of common speech, 
 but to employ always the exact word, not the 
 
74 How to Read Poetry 
 
 near-exact, nor the merely decorative word. 
 
 2. To create new rhythms as the expres- 
 sion of new moods and not to copy old 
 rhythms, which merely echo old moods. We 
 do not insist upon u f ree verse" as the only 
 method of writing poetry. We fight for it as 
 a principle of liberty. We believe that the 
 individuality of a poet may often be better 
 expressed in free verse than in conventional 
 form. In poetry a new cadence means a new 
 idea. 
 
 3. To allow absolute freedom in the choice 
 of subject. It is not good art to write badly 
 of aeroplanes and automobiles, nor is it neces- 
 sarily bad art to write well about the past. 
 We believe passionately in the artistic values 
 of modern life, but we wish to point out that 
 there is nothing so uninspiring nor so old- 
 fashioned as an aeroplane of the year 1911. 
 
 4. To present an image (hence the name: 
 "Imagist"). We are not a school of paint- 
 ers, but we believe that poetry should render 
 particulars exactly and not deal in vague gen- 
 eralities, however magnificent and sonorous. 
 It is for this reason that we oppose the cosmic 
 
The "New " Poetry, So-Called 75 
 
 poet, who seems to us to shirk the real diffi- 
 culties of his art. 
 
 5. To produce poetry that is hard and 
 clear, never blurred nor indefinite. 
 
 6. Finally, most of us believe that concen- 
 tration is of the very essence of poetry. 
 
 The brief creed so expressed not 
 pledged by the primary Imagists was pre- 
 ceded by this significant declaration: 
 
 4 These principles are not new; they have 
 fallen into desuetude. They are the essen- 
 tials of all great poetry, indeed of all great 
 literature." 
 
 Miss Lowell amplifies: 
 
 "It is not primarily on account of their 
 forms, as is commonly supposed, that the Im- 
 agist poets represent a changed point of 
 view; it is because of their reactions toward 
 the world in which they live." 
 
 The "new" poetry, however, setting aside 
 the work of the Imagists, who, by their decla- 
 ration of poetic independence and practical 
 outworking of its tenets, would seem at once to 
 have "done their bit" and served their turn, 
 
How to Read Poetry 
 
 and such ephemeral ultra-novelty-mongers as 
 the Vorticists, Spectricists, etc. mainly, as 
 previously suggested, is concerned with new 
 ideas quite as much as with new modes of 
 expression which makes the task of distin- 
 guishing between followers of the " old" and 
 " new " schools occasionally rather difficult. 
 
 Miss Lowell, who must be admitted an au- 
 thority in such connection, includes in her 
 recent study only six poets, namely, Edward 
 Arlington Robinson, Robert Frost, Edgar 
 Lee Masters, Carl Sandburg, "H. D." or 
 Mrs. Richard Aldington (Hilda Doolittle), 
 and John Gould Fletcher paying but pass- 
 ing tribute to Vachel Lindsay, William Rose 
 Benet, Louis Untermeyer, James Oppenheim, 
 Eunice Tietjens, Ezra Pound, and others of 
 generally accredited "new poetry" ilk. 
 
 For general purposes, because the six poets 
 named typify all the combined and distin- 
 guishing characteristics of the newer poetic 
 era, her grouping may be maintained. 
 
 Mr. Robinson and Mr. Frost, in Miss 
 Lowell's opinion, " represent various things 
 in the 'new movement' realism, direct 
 
The "New" Poetry, So-Called 77 
 
 speech, simplicity, and the like." The work 
 of Mr. Masters and Mr. Sandburg she re- 
 gards as " being the most revolutionary that 
 America has yet produced." Fletcher and 
 "H. D.," of course, are Imagists pure and 
 simple. The English Imagists Miss Lowell 
 defines as Richard Aldington, F. S. Flint, and 
 D. H. Lawrence. (" H. D." though resident 
 in London, is o*f American rearing and birth.) 
 
 Since illustration is of all educational meth- 
 ods most useful, these and other representa- 
 tive "new" poets herewith shall be allowed 
 to speak for themselves. 
 
 Of all the "new" poetry no single ex- 
 ample, perhaps, has been so much, so vari- 
 ously quoted as the " Oread" of U H. D.," 
 largely because its six lines comprise such per- 
 fect specimen of the " cadenced verse " which 
 is really free verse in that it utterly relin- 
 guishes all thought of regulation meters and 
 rhymes. 
 
 Whirl up, sea 
 
 Whirl your pointed pines. 
 
 Splash your great pines 
 
78 How to Read Poetry 
 
 On our rocks. 
 
 Hurl your green over us 
 
 Cover us with your pools of fir. 
 
 " It will be quickly seen," says Miss Lowell, 
 discussing " Oread," " that this poem is made 
 up of five cadences, 4 Whirl up, sea ' is one 
 cadence; * Whirl your pointed pines,' is an- 
 other; ' Splash your great pines on our rocks,' 
 is a third; 'Hurl your green over us,' a 
 fourth; and the fifth, 'Cover us with your 
 pools of fir'." 
 
 Mr. and Mrs. Aldington, it is explained, 
 never " permit themselves occasional lines 
 which might be timed by the old scansion," 
 not even should these occur most naturally. 
 They are faithful to the newer u time units 
 which are in no sense syllabic," depending 
 upon the manner of reading the hurrying 
 or delaying of such words as seem necessary 
 to " fill out the swing of the lines." 
 
 "Sea Gods" is one of the flower poems 
 for which "H. D." is famous, and it also is 
 one of her most characteristic. Part of this 
 poem follows : 
 
The "New " Poetry, So-Called 79 
 
 But we bring violets, 
 Great masses single, sweet, 
 Wood-violets, stream-violets, 
 Violets from a wet marsh. 
 
 Violets in clumps from hills, 
 Tufts with earth at the roots, 
 Violets tugged from rocks, 
 Blue-violets, moss, cliff, river-violets. 
 
 Yellow violets' gold, 
 Burnt with a rare tint 
 Violets like red ash 
 Among tufts of grass. 
 
 We bring deep-purple 
 Bird-foot violets. 
 
 We bring the hyacinth-violets, 
 Sweet, bare, chill to the touch 
 And violets whiter than the in-rush 
 Of your own white surf. 
 
 Contrast this lovely offering of the violets 
 to the sea gods, its daringly beautiful reitera- 
 
80 How to Read Poetry 
 
 tion of the violet theme, with one of the 
 equally famous rain poems of John Gould 
 Fletcher, the other American Imagist best 
 known for this kind of work. 
 
 Over the roof-tops race the shadows of 
 
 clouds : 
 Like horses the shadows of clouds charge 
 
 down the street. 
 
 Whirlpools of purple and gold, 
 
 Winds from the mountains of cinna- 
 bar, 
 
 Lacquered mandarin moments, palan- 
 quins swaying and balancing 
 
 Amid the vermilion pavilions, against 
 the jade balustrades; 
 
 Glint of the glittering wings of dragon- 
 flies in the light; 
 
 Silver filaments, golden flakes settling 
 downwards, 
 
 Rippling, quivering flutters, repulse and 
 surrender, 
 
 The sun broidered upon the rain, 
 
 The rain rustling with the sun. 
 
The "New" Poetry, So-Called 81 
 
 Over the roof-tops race the shadows of 
 
 clouds : 
 Like horses the shadows of clouds charge 
 
 down the street. 
 
 To catch a glimpse of the scope and ver- 
 satility of this poet, who believes that " poetry 
 is capable of as many gradations in cadence 
 as music is in time," follow perusal of the just 
 given poem, with its strong, sweeping, rush- 
 ing movement, by perusal of the following, 
 also representing rather than describing 
 rain: 
 
 The spattering of the rain upon pale ter- 
 races 
 
 Of afternoon is like the passing of a 
 dream 
 
 Amid the roses shuddering 'gainst the 
 wet green stalks 
 
 Of the streaming trees the passing of 
 the wind 
 
 Upon the pale lower terraces of my 
 dream 
 
 Is like the crinkling of the wet gray 
 robes 
 
82 How to Read Poetry 
 
 Of the hours that come to turn over the 
 urn 
 
 Of the day and spill its rainy dream. 
 
 Vague movement over the puddled ter- 
 races: 
 
 Heavy gold pennons a pomp of sol- 
 emn gardens 
 
 Half hidden under the liquid veil of 
 spring: 
 
 Far trumpets like a vague rout of faded 
 roses 
 
 Burst 'gainst the wet green silence of dis- 
 tant forests: 
 
 A clash of cymbals then the swift 
 swaying footsteps 
 
 Of the wind that undulates along the 
 languid terraces. 
 
 Pools of rain the vacant terraces 
 
 Wet, chill, and glistening 
 
 Towards the sunset beyond the broken 
 doors of today. 
 
 It might almost be said that the whole 
 theory and philosophy of free verse, \from 
 origin to popular justification, lies in the pic- 
 
The "New " Poetry, So-Called 83 
 
 ture-making suggestions, the slow, languorous 
 rhythm of those lines. 
 
 Edgar Lee Masters, with his wonderful 
 psychology and power of character portrait- 
 ure, his hard, ironic humor, and his encroach- 
 ing obsession of sex, may be placed at the 
 gamut end farthest opposed to the position 
 occupied by Fletcher and " H. D." To many 
 his remarkable " Spoon River Anthology " 
 belongs rather in the realm of psychology 
 than of poetry, but the poetic beauty of count- 
 less included cadences, as the incisive appeal 
 of the haunting, embodying epitaphs, is unde- 
 niable. The tragedy that Mr. Masters loves 
 best in the " Anthology," indeed, is lit- 
 tle but tragedy, mental, physical, moral, spir- 
 itual, and that of the grimmest is well 
 expressed in u Elsa Wertman," piteous as 
 strong. 
 
 I was a peasant girl from Germany, 
 Blue-eyed, rosy, happy, and strong. 
 And the first place I worked was at 
 
 Thomas Greene's. 
 On a summer's day when she was away 
 
84 How to Read Poetry 
 
 He stole into the kitchen and took me 
 Right in his arms and kissed me on my 
 
 throat, 
 
 I turning my head. Then neither of us 
 Seemed to know what happened. 
 And I cried for what would become of 
 
 me. 
 And cried and cried as my secret began 
 
 to show. 
 
 One v day Mrs. Greene said she under- 
 stood, 
 
 And would make no trouble for me, 
 And, being childless, would adopt it. 
 (He had given her a farm to be still.) 
 So she hid in the house and sent out 
 
 rumors, 
 
 As if it were going to happen to her. 
 And all went well and the child was 
 
 born They were so kind to me. 
 Later I married Gus Wertman, and 
 
 years passed. 
 But at political rallies when sitters-by 
 
 thought I was crying 
 At the eloquence of Hamilton Greene 
 That was not it. 
 
The "New " Poetry, So-Called 85 
 
 No! I wanted to say: 
 
 That's my son! That's my son! 
 
 u Hamilton Greene," a subsequent epitaph, 
 gives another phrase of the indicated story 
 and rounds out the typical Masters manner 
 and idea. 
 
 I was the only child of Frances Harris 
 
 of Virginia 
 
 And Thomas Greene of Kentucky, 
 Of valiant and honorable blood both. 
 To them I owe all that I became, 
 Judge, member of Congress, leader in 
 
 the State. 
 
 From my mother I inherited 
 Vivacity, fancy, language; 
 From my father will, judgment, logic. 
 All honor to them 
 For what service I was to the people ! 
 
 The peculiar form in which the "Anthol- 
 ogy " poems supposedly written or spoken 
 by the dead folk in the cemetery are cast 
 
86 How to Read Poetry 
 
 provides opportunity for curious effects, 
 curiously quaint and impressive, but Mr. 
 Masters' half realistic, half romantic method 
 has been effectively employed in other ways. 
 Carl Sandburg, quite differently grim and 
 stern, yet with an underlying vein of tender- 
 ness clearly to be discerned by the sympa- 
 thetic, shall not here be represented by " Chi- 
 cago," which first brought him national if not 
 international reputation, but by excerpts from 
 u The Four Brothers," (forming part of the 
 later "Notes for War Songs") and from 
 the earlier group of poems generically en- 
 titled "Days." 
 
 Look! It is four brothers in joined 
 
 hands together, 
 
 The people of bleeding France, 
 The people of bleeding Russia, 
 The people of Britain, the people of 
 
 America 
 These are the four brothers, these are 
 
 the four republics. 
 
 At first I said it in anger as one who 
 clenches his fist in 
 
The "New " Poetry, So-Called 87 
 
 wrath to fling his knuckles in the face 
 of someone taunting; 
 
 Now I say it calmly as one who has 
 thought it over and over again at 
 night, among the mountains, by the 
 sea-combers in storm. 
 
 I say now, by God, only fighters today 
 will save the world, nothing but fight- 
 ers will keep alive the names of those 
 who left red prints of bleeding feet at 
 Valley Forge in Christmas snow. 
 
 On the cross of Jesus, the sword of 
 Napoleon, the skull of Shakespeare, 
 the pen of Tom Jefferson, the ashes of 
 Abraham Lincoln, or any sign of the 
 red and running life poured out by 
 the mothers of the world, 
 
 By the God of morning glories climb- 
 ing blue the doors of quiet homes, by 
 the God of tall hollyhocks laughing 
 glad to children in peaceful valleys, 
 by the God of new mothers wishing 
 peace to sit at windows nursing babies, 
 
 I swear only reckless men, ready to 
 throw away their lives by hunger, 
 
88 How to Read Poetry 
 
 deprivation, desperate clinging to a 
 single purpose imperturbable and un- 
 daunted, men with the primitive guts 
 of rebellion, 
 
 Only fighters gaunt with the red brand 
 of labor's sorrow on their brows and 
 labor's terrible pride in their blood, 
 men with souls asking danger only 
 these will save and keep the four big 
 brothers. 
 
 Goodnight is the word, goodnight to the 
 kings, the czars, 
 
 Goodnight to the kaiser. 
 
 The breakdown and the fade-away be- 
 gins. 
 
 The shadow of a great broom, ready to 
 sweep out the truth, is here. 
 
 One finger is raised that counts the 
 czar, 
 
 The ghost who beckoned men who come 
 no more 
 
 The czar has gone to the winds on God's 
 great dustpan, 
 
 The czar a pinch of nothing, 
 
 The last of the gibbering Romanoffs. 
 
The "New" Poetry, So-Called 
 
 Out and goodnight 
 The ghosts of the summer palaces 
 And the ghosts of the winter palaces ! 
 Out and out, goodnight to the kings, the 
 czars, the kaisers. 
 
 Another singer will speak, 
 
 And the kaiser, the ghost who gestures 
 
 a hundred million sleeping -waking 
 
 ghosts, 
 The kaiser will go onto God's great 
 
 dustpan 
 The last of the gibbering Hohenzol- 
 
 lerns. 
 Look! God pities this trash, God waits 
 
 with a broom and a dustpan, 
 God knows a finger will speak and count 
 
 them out. 
 
 " Under the Harvest Moon," one of the 
 "Days" group, shows Mr. Sandburg in dif- 
 ferent but equally characteristic mood. 
 
 Under the harvest moon, 
 When the soft silver 
 
90 How to Read Poetry 
 
 Drips shimmering 
 Over the garden nights, 
 Death, the gray mocker, 
 Comes and whispers to you 
 As a beautiful friend 
 Who remembers. 
 
 Under the summer roses 
 When the fragrant crimson 
 Lurks in the dusk 
 Of the wild red leaves, 
 Love, with little hands, 
 Comes and touches you 
 With a thousand memories, 
 And asks you 
 Beautiful, unanswerable questions. 
 
 Mr. Sandburg, it will be seen, is a poet of 
 large thoughts, large impulses, large ideas, 
 and large rhythms. Easy to understand why 
 not for him, virile to the point of brutality, 
 strong to the recurrent edge of crudeness, 
 rhyming, lilting line limits, or even the meas- 
 ured bounds and restrictions of majestic 
 blank verse. 
 
The "'New " Poetry, So-Called 9* 
 
 Remain, of Miss Lowell's grouping, only 
 Robert Frost and Edwin Arlington Robinson 
 to be considered. Robinson, musical, pol- 
 ished, brilliant, many-toned poet, shall be 
 more adequately considered later, his well- 
 earned poetic honors being by no means of 
 exclusively "new" order. But it may be 
 said, in passing, that Robinson is one of 
 the most intellectual contemporary English- 
 writing poets, just as Frost is one of the 
 most intuitive. The work of these two 
 men, indeed, has much in common, though 
 that of Robinson is more warmly colored. 
 Mr. Frost is a poetic intellectual too, but 
 to him much that Mr. Robinson carefully, 
 consciously records has become second na- 
 ture. Mr. Frost, again, is more distinctly 
 marked by the "New England influence," 
 in that, while he happened to be born in San 
 Francisco, much of his life has been passed 
 in Massachusetts, where he still resides. 
 
 Miss Lowell says that Frost is " as New 
 England as Burns is Scotch, Synge Irish, or 
 Mistral Provencal." Robinson in spirit, if 
 not in expression, suggests a wider range. 
 
92 How to Read Poetry 
 
 Frost, whose poems first knew English 
 publication, in " North of Boston," accord- 
 ing to its author a sadly piquant "book of 
 people," tells moving stories, generally un- 
 rhymed, about men, women, and happenings 
 inseparable from the stern soil whence they 
 sprang. These poems, which mark and typify 
 a poetic tendency distinctly new at the time of 
 their first appearance, and still distinctly im- 
 pressive, are too long for present repetition. 
 The Frost nature poems and pastorals, deli- 
 cately austere but delicately depictive and fine 
 as an exquisite etching, are subject to no such 
 restriction. They exemplify, moreover, the 
 gift for lovely rhyming with which this poet 
 is highly endowed and which he still does 
 not disdain to use upon occasion. Take, for 
 example, the graceful thought, less firm, clean 
 cut, and vigorous than many to come later, 
 but of indubitable poetic virtue, that makes so 
 real a fine October morning. 
 
 Retard the sun with gentle mist; 
 Enchant the land with amethyst. 
 Slow, slow! 
 
The "New " Poetry, So-Called 93 
 
 For the grapes' sake, if they were all, 
 Whose leaves already are burnt with frost, 
 Whose clustered fruit must else be lost 
 For the grapes' sake along the wall. 
 
 This fragment suggests anew that the line 
 of demarcation between "old" and "new" 
 poetry frequently lies rather in attitude than 
 outworking, save, of course, where the most 
 amazingly individual specimens are consid- 
 ered. Any real poet, of any age, of any order, 
 might, in so far as verbalism is concerned, 
 have written that stanza, though not every 
 real poet might have put into it just the dis- 
 tinguishing tone and spirit. A fair quotation 
 from the later " Birches " may suggest more 
 distinctive Frost material and mode. 
 
 When I see the birches bend to left and 
 
 right 
 Across the lines of straighter, darker 
 
 trees, 
 I like to think some boy's been swinging 
 
 them. 
 But swinging doesn't bend them down 
 
 to stay. 
 
94 How to Read Poetry 
 
 Ice-storms do that. Often you must 
 have seen them 
 
 Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning 
 
 After a rain. They click upon themselves 
 
 As the breeze rises, and turn many- 
 colored 
 
 As the stir cracks and crazes their 
 enamel. 
 
 Soon the sun's warmth makes them shed 
 crystal shells 
 
 Shattering and avalanching on the snow- 
 crust 
 
 Such heaps of broken glass to sweep 
 away 
 
 You'd think the inner dome of heaven 
 had fallen. 
 
 Fd like to get away from earth awhile 
 And then come back to it and begin over. 
 May no fate wilfully misunderstand me 
 And half grant what I wish and snatch 
 
 me away 
 Not to return. Earth's the right place 
 
 for love : 
 
The "New " Poetry, So-Galled 95 
 
 I don't know where it's likely to go 
 better. 
 
 I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree, 
 
 And climb black branches up a snow- 
 white trunk 
 
 Toward heaven, till the tree could bear 
 no more, 
 
 But dipped its top and set me down 
 again. 
 
 That would be good both going and 
 coming back. 
 
 One could do worse than be a swinger 
 of birches. 
 
 Mainly, it may be said, Frost is a poet of 
 tragedy, the hushed and hidden tragedy of 
 soul rather than body. But in his passion 
 for humanity, his love of nature, his sense 
 of human and earth values, he proves himself 
 a poet of all emotions, as, perhaps, of all 
 time. 
 
 The contention that, as Miss Lowell main- 
 tains, the " so-called 'new movement' in 
 American poetry is evidence of the rise of 
 a native school" receives substantial support 
 
96 How to Read Poetry 
 
 from the fact that so many American poets 
 now employ the newer medium that search 
 for characteristic examples suffers from em- 
 barrassment of riches. But from the wide 
 and full field offered, certain phases and pro- 
 ductions of two other unusual poets, Vachel 
 Lindsay and Eunice Tietjens, shall be briefly 
 surveyed. 
 
 Lindsay, true poet of his time, yet with 
 traditional traits inherited from the poets of 
 the ages, not only fulfils Macaulay's defini- 
 tion of poetry as " the art of employing words 
 in such a manner as to produce an illusion on 
 the imagination, the art of doing by means 
 of words what the painter does by means of 
 colors," but he apparently believes, with 
 Bailey, that 
 
 Poetry is itself a thing of God's; 
 He made His prophets poets. 
 
 For Lindsay has as clear a gift for the 
 kind of prophecy based on sympathetic com- 
 prehension and interpretation as for brave 
 and lyric singing. The Lindsay productions, 
 be they u poem games" like "The Potatoes," 
 
The "New " Poetry, So-Called 97 
 
 " King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba," 
 or such masterly efforts as u The Congo" 
 and " General Booth Enters Heaven," are 
 not only rhythmic and rhymeful but strongly 
 indicative and trenchant. Lindsay is a true 
 modern in regard to freshness of subject and 
 treatment, a true poet in his unfailing ability 
 to u produce an illusion on the imagination," 
 to read and reproduce the hearts and emo- 
 tions of his fellows. 
 
 'The Congo," 'This, my song is made 
 for Kerensky," here are great poems, of the 
 kind that makes for the rebuilding of human- 
 ity. 'The Chinese Nightingale" is real 
 poetry of another order, that which ''pro- 
 duces the illusion" of vivid color and move- 
 ment and strongly stimulates the fancy. "The 
 Congo," with its stirring, voodoo-like refrain, 
 'Then I saw the Congo creeping through 
 the black," should not be wronged by piece- 
 meal quotation, but a vision or so from the 
 breast of Chang, the San Francisco laundry- 
 man in "The Chinese Nightingale," dream- 
 ing of bygone glories to the music of the 
 " gray small bird" who 
 
H ow to Read Poetry 
 
 Sang as though for the soul of him 
 Who ironed away in that bower dim 
 
 may without injustice be shared. 
 
 "Where is the princess, loved forever, 
 Who made Chang first of the kings of 
 men?" 
 
 And'the joss in the corner stirred again; 
 And the carved dog, curled in his arms, 
 
 awoke, 
 Barked forth a smoke-cloud that whirled 
 
 and broke. 
 
 It piled in a maze round the ironing- 
 place, 
 
 And there on the snowy table wide 
 Stood a Chinese lady of high degree, 
 With a scornful, witching, tea-rose 
 
 face .... 
 
 Yet she put away all form and pride, 
 And laid her glimmering veil aside 
 With a childlike smile for Chang and 
 for me. 
 
The "New " Poetry, So-Called 99 
 
 Then this did the noble lady say : 
 
 " Bird, do you dream of our home- 
 coming day 
 
 When you flew like a courier on before 
 
 From the dragon-peak to our palace- 
 door, 
 
 And we drove the steed in your singing 
 path 
 
 The ramping Dragon of laughter and 
 wrath; 
 
 And found our city all aglow, 
 
 And knighted this joss that decked it so ? 
 
 There were golden fishes in the purple 
 river 
 
 And silver fishes and rainbow fishes. 
 
 There were golden junks in the laughing 
 river, 
 
 And silver junks and rainbow junks : 
 
 There were golden lilies by the bay and 
 river, 
 
 And silver lilies and tiger-lilies, 
 
 And tinkling wind-bells in the gardens of 
 the town 
 
 By the black-lacquer gate 
 
 Where walked in state 
 
IOO How to Read Poetry 
 
 The kind king Chang 
 
 And his sweet-heart mate .... 
 
 With his flag-born dragon 
 
 And his crown of pearl .... 
 and .... jade; 
 
 And his nightingale reigning in the mul- 
 berry shade, 
 
 And sailors and soldiers on the sea- 
 sands brown, 
 
 And priests who bowed them down to 
 your song 
 
 By the city called Han, the peacock 
 town, 
 
 By the city called Han, the nightingale 
 town, 
 
 The nightingale town." 
 
 ..... 
 
 " I have forgotten 
 
 Your dragons great, 
 
 Merry and mad and friendly and bold. 
 
 Dim is your proud lost palace-gate. 
 
 I vaguely know 
 
 There were heroes of old, 
 
 Troubles more than the heart could 
 hold, 
 
The "New" Poetry, So-Called 101 
 
 There were wolves in the woods 
 
 Yet lambs in the fold, 
 
 Nests in the top of the almond 
 tree .... 
 
 The evergreen tree and the mulberry 
 tree . . . . 
 
 Life and hurry and joy forgotten, 
 
 Years on years I but half remem- 
 ber .... 
 
 Man is a torch, then ashes soon, 
 
 May and June, then dead December, 
 
 Dead December, then again June. 
 
 Who shall end my dream's confusion? 
 
 Life is a loom, weaving illusion . . . . 
 
 I remember, I remember 
 
 There were ghostly veils and 
 laces .... 
 
 In the shadowy, bowery places . . . . 
 
 With lovers' ardent faces 
 
 Bending to one another, 
 
 Speaking each his part, 
 
 They infinitely echo 
 
 In the red cave of my heart. 
 
 " Sweetheart, sweetheart, sweetheart! " 
 
 They said to one another. 
 
IO2 How to Read Poetry 
 
 They spoke, I think, of perils past, 
 They spoke, I think, of peace at last. 
 One thing I remember : 
 " Spring came on forever, 
 Spring came on forever," 
 Said the Chinese nightingale. 
 
 Quite another interpretation and aspect of 
 China, as of "new" poetry, is suggested by 
 Eunice Tietjens in "The Shop," taken from 
 the slight yet rich collection of poetic " Profiles 
 from China," on which the present poetic 
 fame of the writer principally is based. The 
 articles sold in the shop specified " are to be 
 burned at funerals for the use of the dead 
 in the spirit world," and Mrs. Tietjens, ren- 
 dering them real as the weather, proves the 
 creative, memory-searing genius hers in no 
 slight degree. 
 
 The master of the shop is a pious man, 
 in good odor with the priests. 
 
 He is old and honorable, and his white 
 moustache droops below his chin. 
 
 Mencius, I think, looked so. 
 
The "New" Poetry, So-Called 103 
 
 The shop behind him is a mimic world, 
 a world of pieties and shams the 
 valley of remembrance the dwell- 
 ing place of the unquiet dead. 
 
 Here on his shelves are ranged the 
 splendor and the panoply of life, silk 
 in smooth gleaming rolls, silver in in- 
 gots, carving and embroidery and 
 jade, a scarlet bearer-chair, a pipe for 
 opium 
 
 Whatever life has need of, it is here, 
 
 And it is for the dead. 
 
 Whatever life has need of, it is here. 
 
 Yet it is here in sham, in effigy, in tor- 
 tured compromise. 
 
 The dead have need of silk. Yet silk is 
 dear, and there are living backs to 
 clothe. 
 
 The rolls are paper Do not 
 
 look too close. 
 
 The dead, I think, will understand. 
 
 The carvings, too, the bearer-chair, the 
 jade yes, they are paper; and the 
 shining ingots, they are tinsel. 
 
104 How to Read Poetry 
 
 Yet they are made with skill and loving 
 care! 
 
 And if the priest knows surely he must 
 know ! when they are burned they'll 
 serve the dead as well as verities. 
 
 So living mouths can feed. 
 
 The master of the shop is a pious man. 
 
 He has attained much honor and his 
 
 white moustache droops below his 
 
 chin. 
 " Such an one," he says, " I burned for 
 
 my own father. And such an one my 
 
 son will burn for me. 
 For I am old, and half my life already 
 
 dwells among the dead." 
 
 And, as he speaks, behind him in the 
 shop I feel the presence of a hovering 
 host, the myriads of the immortal 
 dead, the rulers of the spirit in this 
 land. . - . . . 
 
 For in this kingdom of the dead they 
 who are living cling with fevered 
 hands to the torn fringes of the 
 
The "New" Poetry, So-Called 105 
 
 mighty past. And if they fail a 
 little, compromise 
 
 The dead, I think, will understand. 
 
 Here, it will be seen, is an interesting and 
 ultra-individual variation of the newer poetry 
 manner, "at once realistic and romantic," 
 a variation of "polyphonic prose" alike 
 novel, dignified, and comprising at once the 
 best and most specialized characteristics of 
 that manner. Mrs. Tietjens is another of 
 the poetic artists who employ words much 
 as their fellows of the brush employ paint. 
 
 "New" poets of varied but worth while 
 tenor might be cited almost without number. 
 Few writers of any power, it would seem, 
 but have written at least one or two free 
 verse poems, finding therein, it may be, new 
 channel for the outpouring of poetic fervor 
 not readily to be restrained or restricted, new 
 outlet for the unnamed urge and surge that, 
 yeast-wise, affects contemporary humanity. 
 Many of these poems deserve to live, and 
 will live, long after the "new poetry" excite- 
 
106 How to Read Poetry 
 
 ment has attained just level, lost the meretri- 
 cious notoriety of faddism, and become a 
 recognized and accepted member of poetic 
 society. Many of the writers in all prob- 
 ability gradually will assume less prominent 
 but more assured poetic position as their 
 poetic uncertainties are left behind by the 
 calm maturing of the new poetic thought. 
 
 The, work of Miss Lowell, in this cinematic 
 glimpse to be fairly if not adequately repre- 
 sented by "The Cornucopia of Red and 
 Green Comfits," partakes of this nature. 
 Never a victim of the wildest poetic insur- 
 gency, the Lowell poetry already has attained 
 increasing strength, dignity, and sweetness, 
 year by year is becoming less bizarre, more 
 chastened, of richer, more spiritual flavor. 
 Another decade, two at most, and its arrest- 
 ing " newness " almost inevitably will have 
 been forgotten, while its sterling value to the 
 cause of poetic freedom and flexibility must 
 remain. 
 
 So, too, albeit differently, with the work of 
 that faithful and devoted acolyte at the altar 
 of poetic beauty, Harriet Monroe. 
 
The " 'New" Poetry, So-Called 107 
 
 Miss Monroe, because of the cordial hos- 
 pitality of her " Magazine of Verse," "Poet- 
 ry" to the "new" poets, in popular regard 
 quite naturally is ranged with the "new" 
 poets. But Miss Monroe, whose magazine 
 also has been generously hospitable to poetry 
 of more standard order, herself is limited to 
 no particular school or movement. She has 
 produced good poems of free, elastic nature, 
 but many of her best and best known num- 
 bers belong in more formal category. The 
 " Columbian Ode " written for the Colum- 
 bian Exposition not only antedated the u new 
 movement" by some years but stands far re- 
 moved from anything like "new poetry" 
 ideals and manner. One of the most widely 
 loved Monroe poems, the "Love Song" 
 that so well withstands careful criticism and 
 analysis, is of almost geometric perfection 
 and finish. This poem, as proving the point 
 that few real artists are restricted to any one 
 mood or manner, shall be here enjoyed. 
 
 I love my life, but not too well 
 To give it to thee like a flower, 
 
108 How to Read Poetry 
 
 So it may pleasure thee to dwell 
 
 Deep in its perfume but an hour. 
 I love my life, but not too well. 
 
 I love my life, but not too well 
 To sing it note by note away, 
 
 So to thy soul the song may tell 
 The beauty of the desolate day. 
 
 I love my life, but not too well. 
 
 I love my life, but not too well 
 To cast it like a cloak on thine, 
 
 Against the storms that sound and swell 
 Between thy lonely heart and mine. 
 
 I love my life, but not too well. 
 
 New and enchanting and infinitely varied 
 poetic voices, to carry the thought a little fur- 
 ther, continually arise and will arise among 
 the English-speaking people. The tale of 
 today must be sadly incomplete tomorrow, 
 as that of yesterday lacks much at the pres- 
 ent moment. For this reason alone, if for 
 no other, anything approaching a full cata- 
 logue of study of contemporary poets, u new " 
 
The "New" Poetry, So-Galled 109 
 
 or classic would be as absurd as impossible. 
 But here is no distant attempt at such study 
 merely a signpost modestly showing a way to 
 the poetic kingdom of wondrous glory and 
 " many mansions," suggesting as simplest sub- 
 stitutes for the long-lost magic carpet, certain 
 well-known and well-mannered guides. 
 
THE SOLDIER 
 
 If I should die, think only this of me: 
 That there's some corner of a foreign 
 
 field 
 
 That is forever England. There shall be 
 In that rich earth a richer dust con- 
 cealed; 
 A dust whom England bore, shaped, 
 
 made aware, 
 Gave, once, her flowers to love, her 
 
 ways to roam, 
 A body of England's, breathing English 
 
 air, 
 Washed by the rivers, blest by suns 
 
 of home. 
 And think, this heart, all evil shed 
 
 away, 
 
 A pulse in the eternal mind, no less 
 Gives somewhere back the thoughts 
 
 by England given; 
 
 Her sights and sounds; dreams happy 
 as her day; 
 
 in 
 
iia How to Read Poetry 
 
 And laughter, learnt of friends; and 
 
 gentleness, 
 
 In hearts at peace, under an English 
 heaven. 
 
 RUPERT BROOKE. 
 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 FORMAL POETRY: THE SONNET, THE ODE, 
 THE ELEGY, AND BLANK VERSE 
 
 THE appeal of strictly formal poetry 
 popularly is supposed to be extremely 
 limited. A tradition obtains to the effect that 
 formal poetry blank verse, the sonnet, 
 odes, epics, elegies, religious poems are 
 read only by the poetically elect, the academic, 
 the student, the " highbrow.'' As a matter 
 of fact, the exact reverse frequently is true. 
 
 The Bible, containing some of the finest 
 blank verse and unrhymed poetry in existence, 
 through long ages has been the solace of 
 many unlettered readers who frankly have 
 loved it as much for its manner as substance. 
 The twenty-third Psalm, the one hundred and 
 third Psalm, the u charity chapter" of Corin- 
 thians aye, even in the weakened version of 
 certain modernized renderings the "Song 
 of Solomon," various portions of Job and 
 Isaiah, these are among the numerous bib- 
 
 "3 
 
1 14 How to Read Poetry 
 
 lical extracts that, comprising poetry intrin- 
 sically good and moving, always have been 
 dear to the common heart. Let us quote, for 
 supporting illustration, the passage from the 
 "Song" exquisite as universally beloved. 
 
 Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come 
 away. 
 
 For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is 
 over and gone ; 
 
 The flowers appear* on the earth; the 
 time of the singing of birds is come, 
 and the voice of the turtle is heard in 
 our land; 
 
 The fig tree putteth forth her green figs, 
 and the vines with the tender grape 
 give a good smell. Arise, my love, 
 my fair one, and come away. 
 
 Think, again, of that equally cherished and 
 uplifting passage from Ecclesiastes : 
 
 In the day when the keepers of the house 
 shall tremble, and the strong men 
 shall bow themselves, and the grind- 
 
Formal Poetry 1 1 5 
 
 ers cease because they are few, and 
 those that look out of the windows 
 be darkened, 
 
 And the doors shall be shut in the streets, 
 when the sound of the grinding is 
 low, and he shall rise up at the voice 
 of the bird, and all the daughters of 
 musick shall be brought low; 
 
 Also when they shall be afraid of that 
 which is high, and fears shall be in 
 the way, and the almond tree shall 
 flourish, and the grasshopper shall be 
 a burden, and desire shall fail: be- 
 cause man goeth to his long home, and 
 the mourners go about the streets : 
 
 Or ever the silver cord be loosed, or the 
 golden bowl be broken, or the pitcher 
 be broken at the fountain, or the 
 wheel broken at the cistern. 
 
 Then shall the dust return to the earth 
 as it was : and the spirit shall return 
 unto God who gave it. 
 
 What could keep such poetry from the love 
 of all those, learned or unlearned, who are 
 
 / 
 
 n 
 
 V 
 
1 16 How to Read Poetry 
 
 awake to the beauty of high thought, of per- 
 fect imagery, of the prevailing needs and 
 impulses of human nature? Call it poetry, 
 call it scripture, call it what you will or nothing 
 at all, it still will be held dear for its calm 
 and classic beauty, for the perfect thing it is. 
 And that other splendid and almost equally 
 appreciated biblical poem, the prayer which 
 King Solomon made when he " kneeled down 
 upon his v knees before all the congregation of 
 Israel, and spread forth his hands toward 
 heaven." But a few verses must here repre- 
 sent that which deserves to be included in 
 poetic anthologies of many kinds. 
 
 If thy people go out to war against their 
 enemies by the way that thou shalt 
 send them, and they pray unto thee 
 toward this city which thou hast 
 chosen, and the house which I have 
 built for thy name ; 
 
 Then hear thou from the heavens their 
 prayer and their supplication, and 
 maintain their cause. 
 
 If they sin against thee, (for there is no 
 
Formal Poetry 1 17 
 
 man which sinneth not,) and thou be 
 angry with them, and deliver them 
 over before their enemies, and they 
 carry them away captives unto a land 
 far off or near; 
 
 Yet if they .... return to thee 
 with all their heart and with all their 
 soul in the land of their captivity, 
 whither they have carried them cap- 
 tives, and pray toward their land, 
 which thou gavest unto their fathers, 
 and toward the city which thou hast 
 chosen, and toward the house which I 
 have built for thy name : 
 
 Then hear thou from the heavens, even 
 from thy dwelling place, their prayer 
 and their supplications, and maintain 
 their cause, and forgive thy people 
 which have sinned against thee. 
 
 In passages such as this may be found at 
 once the reason and the justification of formal 
 poetry. It is the poetry of high moods, of 
 exalted thoughts and emotion. The verses 
 quoted, always majestic and impelling, would 
 
1 1 8 How to Read Poetry 
 
 be out of place in a gay gathering, out of 
 harmony upon such occasions as well might 
 be graced by the joyous lyric from the " Song 
 of Solomon." So, in like manner, might any 
 light or lively specimen of poetry, of what- 
 ever variety, lack appeal in life's solemn 
 moments without in slightest degree losing 
 specific appeal or virtue. The strongest 
 lover of poetry, as of music or art or human- 
 ity or' nature, wants not always the lighter, 
 more gladsome moods and aspects of his 
 charmer. Many a rare spirit, many a 
 temperament largely compound of tender- 
 ness and gaiety, at times might turn readily 
 from the lilting melody of u Pippa Passes" 
 to the stately measure, the spiritual grandeur 
 of Bryant's " Forest Hymn" or "Thana- 
 topsis." Note the simple majesty, the im- 
 pressive application of these lines from the 
 latter. 
 
 To him who in the love of Nature holds 
 Communion with her visible forms, she 
 
 speaks 
 A various language ; for his gayer hours 
 
Formal Poetry 119 
 
 She has a voice of gladness, and a smile 
 And eloquence of beauty, and she glides 
 Into his darker musings, with a mild 
 And healing sympathy, that steals away 
 Their sharpness, ere he is aware. When 
 
 thoughts 
 Of the last bitter hour come like a 
 
 blight 
 
 Over thy spirit, and sad images 
 Of the stern agony, and shroud, and 
 
 pall, 
 
 And breathless darkness, and the nar- 
 row house, 
 Make thee to shudder and grow sick at 
 
 heart; 
 Go forth, under the open sky, and list 
 
 To Nature's teachings 
 
 
 
 So shalt thou rest, and what if thou with- 
 draw 
 
 In silence from the living, and no friend 
 Take note of thy departure? All that 
 
 breathe 
 
 Will share thy destiny. The gay will 
 laugh 
 
I2O How to Read Poetry 
 
 When thou art gone, the solemn brood 
 
 of care 
 Plod on, and each one as before will 
 
 chase 
 His favorite phantom; yet all these shall 
 
 leave 
 Their mirth and their employments, and 
 
 shall come 
 An4 make their bed with thee. As the 
 
 long train 
 
 Of ages glides away, the sons of men 
 The youth in life's fresh spring, and he 
 
 who goes 
 In the full strength of years, matron, 
 
 and maid, 
 
 The speechless babe, and the gray- 
 headed man 
 Shall one by one be gathered to thy 
 
 side, 
 By those, who in their turn shall follow 
 
 them. 
 
 
 
 So live, that when thy summons comes to 
 
 join 
 The innumerable caravan, which moves 
 
Formal Poetry 1 2 1 
 
 To that mysterious realm, where each 
 
 shall take 
 
 His chamber in the silent halls of death, 
 Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at 
 
 night, 
 Scourged to his dungeon, but sustained 
 
 and soothed 
 By an unfaltering trust, approach thy 
 
 grave 
 Like one who wraps the drapery of his 
 
 couch 
 About him, and lies down to pleasant 
 
 dreams. 
 
 That last stanza perhaps has comforted, 
 soothed, stirred, and sustained more troubled 
 souls than even Henley's trumpet call " Invic- 
 tus" or the highly contemporary effusions of 
 Edmund Vance Cooke or Herbert Kaufman. 
 But not to every taste or occasion will it 
 prove most pleasing. Due enjoyment of 
 poetry, as previously suggested, depends no 
 little upon the reader's state of soul and 
 mind. 
 
 Those popular favorites, Wordsworth's 
 
122 How to Read Poetry 
 
 :< I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud," Newman's 
 u Lead, Kindly Light," and Wolfe's " Burial 
 of Sir John Moore," with countless diversely 
 touching poetic brethren, depend, for highest 
 appreciation, on the spiritual or intellectual 
 reactions of the reader, as do, indeed, hosts 
 of more strictly formal poems. The fact is 
 that formal poetry is to life and literature in 
 general what the sonata is to music or sculp- 
 ture is to art. 
 
 Formal poetry, to particularize, is the 
 poetry of unusual or specially stressed occa- 
 sions. One would not willingly spend entire 
 days listening to Beethoven or Handel or 
 Wagner, yet there are times when the lesser 
 musicians fail utterly to interpret soul condi- 
 tions, emotional attitudes, and strivings. To 
 live in a sculpture gallery would seem to the 
 majority exceedingly oppressive, but who has 
 not found some single statue or group of 
 statuary satisfying in the extreme? Thus it 
 is, naturally enough, in the realms of verbal 
 music and art. 
 
 When the glad spirit dances happily along 
 life's highways and byways, then the time 
 
Formal Poetry 123 
 
 for jocund songs and lightsome lyrics. When 
 moods are tempestuous, the currents of 
 thought or emotion too strong or resistless 
 for the bounding shores of regular meter, 
 then rhymeless poetry, free verse, has its sea- 
 son of delight and honor. When the rhythm 
 of life is dainty, staccato, tripping, the puls- 
 ing chante royale, the delicate triolet, the 
 quick-witted vers de societe may be sure of 
 warm welcome. When death, dramatic love, 
 glory or other superlative passion absorbs the 
 attention, then the formal, the classic poetry 
 of greatness is enjoyed and understood. To 
 each, in poetry as in all things, its own pure 
 moment and mood. 
 
 The sonnet, for example, has been greatly 
 wronged by too general misapprehension. 
 Younglings naturally loving poetry are 
 warned away from the sonnet as from some- 
 thing stiff and artificial. Men and women 
 who would find in it no difficulty if unpreju- 
 diced, fight shy of the sonnet because it has 
 been described to them as difficult of compre- 
 hension or construction. As a matter of fact, 
 the sonnet is no more artificial or rigid in con- 
 
124 How to Read Poetry 
 
 struction than any other standard verse form 
 if obediently followed. And the chiseled 
 elegance of the sonnet has a high, profound 
 beauty like that of a marble bust. 
 
 "A Shakespeare sonnet" sounds, perhaps, 
 decidedly formal. The poetry reading be- 
 ginner would not, it may be, feel especially 
 drawn toward it. And yet read 
 
 Love is not love 
 
 Which alters when it alteration finds, 
 
 or this, the eighteenth of those one hundred 
 and fifty-four Shakespeare sonnets, those in- 
 surpassable love poems, that attest the 
 "cold" sonnet's possible amatory warmth 
 and worth. 
 
 Shall I compare thee to a Summer's day? 
 
 Thou art more lovely and more tem- 
 perate : 
 
 Rough winds do shake the darling buds 
 of May, 
 
 And Summer's lease hath all too short 
 a date: 
 
 Sometime too hot the eye of heaven 
 shines, 
 
Formal Poetry 125 
 
 And often is his gold complexion 
 
 dimmed; 
 
 And every fair from fair sometime de- 
 clines, 
 By chance or nature's changing course 
 
 untrimmed: 
 
 But thy eternal Summer shall not fade 
 Nor lose possession of that fair thou 
 
 owest; 
 Nor shall Death brag thou wanderest in 
 
 his shade, 
 When in eternal lines to time thou grow- 
 
 est: 
 So long as men can breathe, or eyes can 
 
 see, 
 So long lives this, and this gives life to 
 
 thee. 
 
 Or glance, for ripe expression of sonneted 
 emotion of other, later order, over this jewel 
 from Olive Tilford Dargan's tenderly tragic 
 " Sonnets for One Drowned at Sea." 
 
 Today I went among the mountain folk 
 To hear the gentle talk most dear to me. 
 
ia6 How to Read Poetry 
 
 I saw slow tears, and tenderness that 
 
 woke 
 From sternest bed to light a lamp for 
 
 thee. 
 And " Is it true? " hope asked and asked 
 
 again, 
 
 And " It is true," was all that I could say, 
 And pride rose over love to hide gray 
 
 pain 
 As eyes tears might ungrace were turned 
 
 away. 
 
 So much they loved thee I was half de- 
 coyed 
 By human warmth, to feel thee near, but 
 
 when 
 
 I put my hand out all the earth was void, 
 And vanished even these near-weeping 
 
 men. 
 Thus each new time I find that thou art 
 
 gone, 
 Anew do I survive the world alone. 
 
 The realms of poetry, new and old alike, 
 are rich in sonnets giving the melodic lie to 
 all the old, depopularizing libels. It is but 
 
Formal Poetry 127 
 
 necessary to read with an open mind to know 
 this. The sonnet was a great favorite with 
 those "great lovers," that "nest of singing 
 birds," the Elizabethan poets. More than 
 two thousand sonnets were written within the 
 last ten years of the sixteenth century. Ed- 
 mund Spenser in a single year composed 
 fifty-eight sonnets celebrating his erotic ex- 
 periences and emotions. Sir Philip Sidney 
 wrote many besides that possibly best and 
 best known of his productions, "With how 
 sad steps, O Moon, thou climb'st the Skies ! " 
 All down and along the poetic ages the sonnet 
 has been treasured by those desiring to lend 
 high or fine thought fitting poetic expression. 
 Could better frame be provided chivalric loy- 
 alty than Rupert Brooke's "The Sqldier" 
 
 " If I should die, think only this of me " 
 
 or John McCrae's " In Flanders' Fields," the 
 recent swan songs and war sonnets that ren- 
 dered their writers instantaneously, undyingly 
 famous. The testimony of innumerable son- 
 nets not only of carven correctness but widely 
 beloved easily might be up-piled, arrayed. 
 The elegy, again, frequently has been ac- 
 
ia8 How to Read Poetry 
 
 cused of being too abstract, too remote to be 
 loved or " understanded of the common peo- 
 ple." Why? Once more because of the 
 traditional misbelief that it is ultra conven- 
 tional, cold, set far apart from ordinary hu- 
 man thoughts and feelings and issues. Well 
 might be offered, in opposing argument, these 
 lines from Milton's "Lycidas," noblest of 
 English elegiac works : 
 
 Yet once more, O ye Laurels, and once 
 
 more 
 
 Ye Myrtles brown, with Ivy never sere, 
 I come to pluck your Berries harsh and 
 
 crude, 
 
 And with forced fingers rude, 
 Shatter your leaves before the mellow- 
 ing year. 
 
 Bitter constraint, and sad occasion dear, 
 Compel me to disturb your season due : 
 For Lycidas is dead, dead in his prime, 
 Young Lycidas, and hath not left his 
 
 peer: 
 
 Who would not sing for Lycidas? he 
 knew 
 
Formal Poetry 129 
 
 Himself to sing, and build the lofty 
 
 rhyme. 
 He must not float upon his watery 
 
 bier 
 Unwept, and welter to the parching 
 
 wind, 
 Without the meed of some melodious 
 
 tear. 
 
 Now thou art gone, and never must re- 
 turn! 
 
 Thee, Shepherd, thee the Woods, and 
 desert Caves, 
 
 With wild Thyme and the gadding Vine 
 o'ergrown, 
 
 And all their echoes mourn. 
 
 The Willows and the Hazel Copses 
 green, 
 
 Shall now no more be seen, 
 
 Fanning their joyous Leaves to thy soft 
 lays. 
 
 As killing as the Canker to the Rose, 
 
 Or Taint-worm to the weanling Herds 
 that graze, 
 
130 How to Read Poetry 
 
 Or Frost to Flowers, that their gay 
 
 wardrobe wear, 
 
 When first the White-thorn blows ; 
 Such, Lycidas, thy loss to Shepherd's 
 
 ear. 
 
 What is found here but timeless, world- 
 wide feeling, natural as sympathetic, fittingly 
 worded and but fitly tinged and flavored by 
 the special thought and mode of Milton's 
 time? What, in "Adonais," Shelley's lovely 
 lament and elegy for Keats, but the universal, 
 world-old love of comrade for comrade, all 
 the deeper and richer for the wonderful 
 poetic setting of expression and verbal frame ? 
 
 I weep for Adonais he is dead! 
 Oh, weep for Adonais ! though our 
 
 tears 
 Thaw not the frost which binds so 
 
 dear a head! 
 And thou, sad Hour, selected from all 
 
 years 
 To mourn our loss, rouse thy obscure 
 
 compeers, 
 
Formal Poetry 131 
 
 And teach them thine own sorrow. 
 Say: " With me 
 
 Died Adonais ; till the Future dares 
 Forget the Past, his fate and fame 
 
 shall be 
 An echo and a light unto eternity! " 
 
 Oh, weep for Adonais! the quick 
 
 Dreams, 
 The passion-winged ministers of 
 
 thought, 
 Who were his flocks, whom near the 
 
 living streams 
 Of his young spirit he fed, and whom 
 
 he taught 
 The love which was its music, wander 
 
 not 
 Wander no more, from kindling brain 
 
 to brain, 
 But droop there, whence they sprung; 
 
 and mourn their lot 
 Round the cold heart, where, after 
 
 their sweet pain, 
 
132 How to Read Poetry 
 
 They ne'er will gather strength, or find 
 a home again. 
 
 He lives, he wakes 'tis Death is 
 
 dead, not he; 
 Mourn not for Adonais Thou 
 
 young Dawn, 
 Turn all thy dew to splendor, for from 
 
 thee 
 
 The spirit thou lamentest is not gone ; 
 Ye caverns and ye forests, cease to 
 
 moan! 
 Cease, ye faint flowers and fountains, 
 
 and thou Air, 
 Which like a mourning veil thy scarf 
 
 hadst thrown 
 O'er the abandoned Earth, now leave 
 
 it bare 
 Even to the joyous stars which smile on 
 
 its despair! 
 
 He is made one with Nature : there is 
 
 heard 
 His voice in all her music, from the 
 
 moan 
 
Formal Poetry 133 
 
 Of thunder, to the song of night's 
 sweet bird; 
 
 He is a presence to be felt and known 
 
 In darkness and in light, from herb 
 and stone, 
 
 Spreading itself where'er that Power 
 may move 
 
 Which has withdrawn his being to its 
 own; 
 
 Which wields the world with never- 
 wearied love, 
 
 Sustains it from beneath, and kindles it 
 above. 
 
 He is a portion of the loveliness 
 
 Which once he made more lovely; he 
 doth bear 
 
 His part, while the one Spirit's plas- 
 tic stress 
 
 Sweeps through the dull dense world, 
 compelling there, 
 
 All new successions to the forms they 
 wear; 
 
 Torturing the unwilling dross that 
 checks its flight 
 
134 How to Read Poetry 
 
 To his own likeness, as each mass may 
 
 bear, 
 And bursting in its beauty and its 
 
 might 
 From trees and beasts and men into the 
 
 Heaven's light. 
 
 Who, with a sweet and early-dead friend 
 and beloved in memory, spiritual vision, 
 would not thrill responsive to the mighty 
 music of the few quoted "Adonais" stanzas? 
 The popular message of the poem is in no 
 whit lessened because of its majestic rhythms, 
 its harmonious rhymes, its sweeping, splen- 
 did swing. Gray's "Elegy," with its sweet 
 succession of fine verses strung like rare 
 pearls on a delicate thought-thread; Tenny- 
 son's " In Memoriam," with its unforgettable 
 expression and strong if sentimental treat- 
 ment of a tenderly hallowed subject; Steven- 
 son's self-directed " Requiem," these are too 
 well known, too well loved to need merest 
 hint of quotation. Richard le Gallienne's 
 " What of the Darkness ? " dedicated to " the 
 happy dead people," strikes a similar note. 
 
Formal Poetry 
 
 What of the darkness? Is it very fair? 
 Are there great calms? and find we si- 
 
 lence there? 
 
 Like soft-shut lilies, all your faces glow 
 With some strange peace our faces never 
 
 know, 
 With some strange faith our faces never 
 
 dare 
 Dwells it in Darkness? Do you find it 
 
 there? 
 
 Is it a Bosom where tired heads may lie ? 
 Is it a Mouth to kiss our weeping dry? 
 Is it a Hand to still the pulse's leap? 
 Is it a Voice that holds the runes of 
 
 sleep? 
 Day shows us not such comfort any- 
 
 where 
 Dwells it in Darkness? Do you find it 
 
 there? 
 
 Out of the Day's deceiving light we 
 
 call 
 Day that shows man so great, and God 
 
 so small, 
 
136 How to Read Poetry 
 
 That hides the stars, and magnifies the 
 
 grass 
 
 O is the Darkness too a lying glass ! 
 Or undistracted, do you find truth there ? 
 What of the Darkness? Is it very fair? 
 
 Is not the Eternal Question here asked so 
 beautifully that the alarming elegiac feature 
 of the poem is forgotten? Practically every 
 human being, at some time, upon some occa- 
 sion, must know how to read, to enjoy such 
 setting. Even more modern, yet no less age- 
 less, is the note of "A Club-Man's Requiem, " 
 Martha Gilbert Dickinson Bianchi's highly 
 individual expression of a widely shared 
 thought. 
 
 Warren has gone; and we who loved him 
 best 
 
 Can't think of him as 
 
 " entered into rest." 
 
 But he has gone; has left the morning 
 street, 
 
 The clubs no longer echo to his feet, 
 Nor shall we see him lift his yellow wine 
 
Formal Poetry 137 
 
 To pledge the random host the purple 
 vine. 
 
 At doors of other men his horses wait, 
 His whining dogs scent false their master's 
 fate; 
 
 His chafing yacht at harbor mooring lies; 
 " Owner ashore," her idle pennant flies. 
 Warren has gone 
 
 Forsook the jovial ways 
 Of winter nights turned from his well- 
 loved plays, 
 
 The dreams and schemes and deeds of busy 
 brain, 
 
 And pensive habitations built in Spain. 
 Gone, with his ruddy hopes ! And we who 
 knew him best 
 Can't think of him as " entered into rest." 
 
 So when the talk dies out or lights burn 
 dim 
 
 We often ponder what is keeping him 
 What destiny that all-subduing will, 
 That golden wit, that love of life, fulfil? 
 For we who silent smoke, who loved him 
 best, 
 Can't fancy Warren " entered into rest." 
 
138 How to Read Poetry 
 
 Closely akin to elegiac poetry, equally mov- 
 ing and natural, is that which celebrates the 
 universal dread and dislike of growing old. 
 Stoddard's graceful "The Flight of Youth " 
 already has been quoted, but this no better 
 expresses the feeling of average humanity 
 when confronted by u the western slope " or 
 even the first gray hair than does Longfel- 
 low's " v Morituri Salutamus," with its artistic 
 and comforting suggestions of a change not 
 entirely sad. 
 
 But why, you ask me, should this tale 
 be told 
 
 To men grown old, or who are growing 
 old? 
 
 It is too late ! Ah, nothing is too late 
 
 Till the tired heart shall cease to palpi- 
 tate. 
 
 What then? Shall we sit idly down and 
 
 say 
 
 The night hath come ; it is no longer day ? 
 The night hath not yet come ; we are not 
 
 quite 
 
Formal Poetry 139 
 
 Cut off from labor by the failing light; 
 Something remains for us to do or dare ; 
 Even the oldest tree some fruit may 
 bear. 
 
 For age is opportunity no less 
 
 Than youth itself, though in another 
 
 dress, 
 
 And as the evening twilight fades away 
 The sky is filled with stars, invisible by 
 
 day. 
 
 Formal poetry? Yes, but of the kind that 
 creeps close to the heartstrings. Only formal, 
 like the commonplace but invaluable greet- 
 ing u Good morning ! " in custom and outline. 
 Really as warmly human, as full of sempi- 
 ternal human sympathy, comprehension and 
 solace as Swinburne's "Hertha" or Words- 
 worth's " Ode on the Intimations of Immor- 
 tality" parts of which, incidentally, shall 
 here serve as shining example of another 
 much feared and maligned poetic form, the 
 ode. 
 
140 How to Read Poetry 
 
 There was a time when meadow, grove, 
 
 and stream, 
 The earth, and every common sight, 
 
 To me did seem 
 Apparelled in celestial light, 
 The glory and the freshness of a dream. 
 It is not now as it hath been of yore 
 Turn whereso'er I may, 
 
 By night or day, 
 
 The things which I have seen I now can 
 see no more. 
 
 The Rainbow comes and goes, 
 
 And lovely is the Rose; 
 
 The Moon doth with delight 
 Look round her when the heavens are 
 bare; 
 
 Waters on a starry night 
 
 Are beautiful and fair; 
 The sunshine is a glorious birth; 
 But yet I know, where'er I go, 
 That there hath passed away a glory 
 from the earth. 
 
Formal Poetry 141 
 
 Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting; 
 The Soul that rises with us, our life's 
 
 Star, 
 Hath had elsewhere its setting, 
 
 And cometh from afar: 
 Not in entire forgetfulness, 
 And not in utter nakedness, 
 But trailing clouds of glory do we come 
 
 From God who is our home : 
 Heaven lies about us in our infancy! 
 Shades of the prison-house begin to close 
 
 Upon the growing Boy, 
 But he beholds the light, and whence it 
 
 flows, 
 
 He sees it in his joy; 
 The Youth, who daily farther from the 
 
 East 
 
 Must travel, still is Nature's Priest, 
 And by the vision splendid 
 Is on his way attended; 
 At length the Man perceives it die away, 
 And fade into the light of common day. 
 
 O joy ! that in our embers 
 
142 How to Read Poetry 
 
 Is something that doth live, 
 
 That nature yet remembers 
 
 What was so fugitive ! 
 The thought of our past years in me 
 
 doth breed 
 
 Perpetual benediction: not indeed 
 For that which is most worthy to be 
 
 blest 
 
 Delight and liberty, the simple creed 
 Of Childhood, whether busy or at rest, 
 With new-fledged hope still fluttering in 
 his breast 
 
 Not for these I raise 
 
 The song of thanks and praise ; 
 But for those obstinate questionings 
 
 Of sense and outward things, 
 
 Fallings from us, vanishings ; 
 
 Blank misgivings of a Creature 
 Moving about in worlds not realized, 
 High instincts before which our mortal 
 
 Nature 
 Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised : 
 
 But for those first affections, 
 
 Those shadowy recollections, 
 Which, be they what they may, 
 
Formal Poetry 143 
 
 Are yet the fountain-light of all our 
 
 day, 
 
 Are yet a master-light of all our seeing; 
 Uphold us, cherish, and have power 
 
 to make 
 Our noisy years seem moments in the 
 
 being 
 Of the eternal Silence : truths that wake, 
 
 To perish never; 
 
 Which neither listlessness, nor mad en- 
 deavor, 
 
 Nor Man nor Boy, 
 Nor all that is at enmity with joy, 
 Can utterly abolish or destroy! 
 
 Hence, in a season of calm weather, 
 
 Though inland far we be, 
 Our Souls have sight of that immortal 
 
 sea 
 
 Which brought us hither, 
 Can in a moment travel thither 
 And see the children sport upon the 
 
 shore, 
 
 And hear the mighty waters rolling ever- 
 more. 
 
144 How to Read Poetry 
 
 And O, ye Fountains, Meadows, Hills, 
 and Groves, 
 
 Forbode not any severing of our 
 loves ! 
 
 Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your 
 might; 
 
 I only have relinquished one delight 
 
 To live beneath your more habitual 
 sway. 
 
 I love the Brooks, which down their 
 channels fret, 
 
 Even more than when I tripped lightly 
 as they: 
 
 The innocent brightness of a new-born 
 
 Day 
 Is lovely yet; 
 
 The Clouds that gather round the set- 
 ting sun 
 
 Do take a sober coloring from an eye 
 
 That hath kept watch o'er man's mor- 
 tality ; 
 
 Another race hath been, and other palms 
 are won. 
 
 Thanks to the human heart by which we 
 live, 
 
Formal Poetry 145 
 
 Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and 
 
 fears, 
 To me the meanest flower that blows can 
 
 give 
 Thoughts that do often lie too deep for 
 
 tears. 
 
 u An ode! That an ode?" one can hear 
 certain surprised readers exclaiming. * Why, 
 I thought an ode was something dry or 
 deary or too classical for ordinary, every- 
 day understanding or pleasure ! And that's 
 delightfully good stuff." 
 
 So it is, dear friend and fellow sufferer 
 from too common poetic misapprehension, so 
 it is, and so are hosts of other fine " formal" 
 poems, to say nothing of the wide range of 
 religious poetry that need only here be sug^ 
 gested, and of classic translations, ancient 
 and modern, that need but to be known to be 
 enjoyed. 
 
 Many a supposedly languid poetry student, 
 induced to read poetry rightly, beginning in 
 the right place, would find him or herself in 
 the position of the Moliere character who 
 
146 How to Read Poetry 
 
 had talked prose all his life without knowing 
 it. "Good stuff " and good reading u just 
 reading" as the astonished Morley critic re- 
 marked in an earlier chapter abounds in 
 poetry that, because of its hypothetically dif- 
 ficult character, comparatively seldom gets 
 beyond the task-work of the high school 
 senior or college freshman "specializing in 
 English literature." 
 
 So read, it too often takes color, chameleon- 
 like, from its surroundings and is mentally 
 catalogued with the unhappy "skip" books 
 of our childhood. Read as it might and 
 should be, formal poetry would forge impor- 
 tant links in the pleasure armor fortifying 
 every normal human's soul. 
 
SPRING NIGHT 
 
 The park is filled with night and fog, 
 The veils are drawn about the world, 
 
 The drowsy lights along the paths 
 Are dim and pearled. 
 
 Gold and gleaming the empty streets, 
 Gold and gleaming the misty lake, 
 
 The mirrored lights like sunken swords, 
 Glimmer and shake. 
 
 Oh, is it not enough to be 
 Here with this beauty over me? 
 My throat should ache with praise, and I 
 Should kneel in joy beneath the sky. 
 Oh, beauty, are you not enough? 
 Why am I crying after love 
 With youth, a singing voice and eyes 
 To take earth's wonder with surprise? 
 Why have I put off my pride, 
 Why am I unsatisfied, 
 I for whom the pensive night 
 
 147 
 
148 How to Read Poetry 
 
 Binds her cloudy hair with light, 
 I for whom all beauty burns 
 Like incense in a million urns? 
 Oh, beauty, are you not enough? 
 Why am I crying after love? 
 
 Sara Teasdale, 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 NARRATIVE, DRAMATIC, AND DESCRIPTIVE 
 POETRY 
 
 NARRATIVE poetry, frequently listed 
 among the least popular of its breth- 
 ren, really is one of the most popular forms 
 of poetic expression. It began with the earli- 
 est known races of humanity; it will continue 
 while humanity inhabits the face of the globe. 
 Perennially declared dead, the narrative 
 poem as perennially arises anew and re- 
 freshed to confound its unjust judges. From 
 the primitive Anglo-Saxon "scop," who 
 originated his poetic stories and songs as he 
 delivered them, down through the profes- 
 sional or amateur gleeman who often repeated 
 the story-poems of others, the ancient min- 
 strels, the wandering ballad singers, and the 
 medieval troubadours to such later narrative 
 poets as Moore, Scott, Byron, Tennyson, 
 Browning, Longfellow, Frost, Noyes, Mase- 
 field, Gibson, Howells, Lindsay, and Mas- 
 
 149 
 
150 How to Read Poetry 
 
 ters, the course of narrative poetry may be 
 traced straight and true. 
 
 The same intent, the same spirit, more- 
 over, has informed all these successive dev- 
 otees of the poetic story. Chaucer's " Can- 
 terbury Tales " and Masefield's " The Widow 
 in the Bye-Street," Meredith's "Love in the 
 Valley," Henry B. Fuller's "Lines Long and 
 Short," Howells' "The Daughter of the 
 Storage," and Tennyson's " Godiva " all 
 are moved by the same springs, follow the 
 same well recognized if not always clearly 
 formulated natural and poetic laws. 
 
 The narrative poem, long or short, archaic 
 or ultra-modern, romantic or adventurous, is 
 eternally beloved of the people because it 
 satisfies two instinctive desires or tastes 
 perhaps needs of human nature. These 
 are story-hunger and harmonic feeling. The 
 mind is pleased by the narrative's progres- 
 sion, the senses stirred or soothed by cadences 
 rhythmic or rhyming. The narrative poem, 
 also, presents a concrete theme in a concrete 
 way. 
 
 And just as human fondness always has 
 
Narrative Poetry 151 
 
 crowned the narrative poem, so, always, the 
 narrative poem caters to the same aspects 
 and instincts of general human nature. The 
 narrative poem of the present day is pre- 
 cisely the same, allowing for due difference 
 of time, customs, conventions, as the narra- 
 tive poem of the middle ages. This, at least 
 in part, accounts for the unchanging popu- 
 larity of the great epics, such as the "Iliad" 
 and the " Odyssey," of the Scotch ballads out 
 of which " Marmion " and " The Lady of the 
 Lake" grew naturally, of "Hiawatha," 
 " The Ancient Mariner," and " Lalla Rookh," 
 of "The Idyls of the King," and the Norse 
 sagas, of the Indian, East Indian, and oriental 
 folk-tales and recitals, of all the semi-historic, 
 semi-romantic lyrics and legends of all the 
 human kindred and races and tongues. 
 
 Infants, as has been said before, delight 
 in rhyme, especially the rhyme that shapes 
 itself into a story. What natural child pre- 
 fers not a Mother Goose rhyme, a jingle, to 
 a plain prose statement of fact? 
 
 Infant races, as also has been said before, 
 delight in the rhyming story, the narrative 
 
152 How to Read Poetry 
 
 poem. Witness the popularity of the tribal 
 singer, the oriental story teller, the minstrel 
 in all ages and climes. 
 
 Growing and fully grown infants never 
 quite outgrow the love for the rhyming story, 
 nor do growing and fully grown races and 
 nations. War poems poems of war heroes 
 are as dear to the heart of humanity now 
 as during the Wars of the Roses, the period 
 of the Norman Conquest, the Viking era or 
 those far, fair, poetry-haloed days of early 
 Greece and Rome. 
 
 Narrative poems, to particularize lightly, 
 are almost as varied in kind, form, and nature 
 as prose narratives, or as human nature. 
 Briefly, they range themselves into the heroic 
 or romantic poem story of the primitive or 
 Middle Ages; the realistic poem story, of 
 blank verse, free verse or rhyming order, 
 that, under different titles and grades of ap- 
 preciation, has come down from the dawn- 
 days of mankind's beginning; the short and 
 simple story-lyric; and the episodic poem 
 story or poem story in little, in miniature, that 
 is as typically and almost solely characteristic 
 
 
Narrative Poetry 153 
 
 of America as the episodic prose short story 
 so dear to the American heart. 
 
 Perhaps the best, as one of the best known, 
 examples of this variety of poem is Edwin 
 Arlington Robinson's " Richard Cory," a 
 psychological-dramatic story interpretation 
 that for force, vitality, vivid depiction and 
 nutshell terseness scarce could further go. 
 
 Mr. Robinson in "Flammonde" tells an- 
 other, longer rhyming story that, as with 
 :< Richard Cory," is avidly devoured by men 
 and women wont, as a rule, to assert that 
 " poetry makes no appeal to me. 
 
 The man Flammonde, from God knows 
 
 where, 
 
 With firm address and foreign air 
 With news of nations in his talk 
 And something royal in his walk 
 With glint of iron in his eyes, 
 But never doubt, nor yet surprise, 
 Appeared, and stayed, and held his head 
 As one by kings accredited 
 
 until, by sheer force of personality, he had 
 transformed a tight little American town 
 
154 How to Read Poetry 
 
 through enlargement of its vision. Flam- 
 monde serves as hero intensely real though 
 always with that strange, haunting sense of 
 the remote about his vivid chronicle of an- 
 other almost exclusively American story 
 type, the type that indicates rather than act- 
 ually tells the embodied story. A suggestive 
 poem-sketch of very different key and tenor 
 but endowed with the same half-hinted vitality 
 is Zona Gale's " Mother." 
 
 I wish I had said more. So long, so long 
 About your simple tasks I watched you, 
 
 dear; 
 I knew you craved the word you did not 
 
 hear. 
 I knew your spirit, brave and chaste and 
 
 strong, 
 Was wistful that it might not do the 
 
 wrong; 
 
 And all its wistfulness and all its fear 
 Were in your eyes whenever I was 
 
 near. 
 And yet you always went your way with 
 
 song. 
 
Narrative Poetry 
 
 All prodigal of smiles for other eyes 
 I led my life. At last there came a day 
 When with some careless word I turned 
 
 away 
 From what you fashioned for a sweet 
 
 surprise. 
 
 Ah, now it is too late for me to pour 
 My vase of myrrh would God I had 
 
 said more! 
 
 Charles Hanson Towne's delicate poem- 
 sketch "It Rained All Day" enshrines an- 
 other mother in just this same loving 
 penumbra of faintly shadowed glory and 
 grace. 
 
 It rained all day, the day she died, 
 And yet she thought it sweet and fair; 
 She said the sunshine kissed her hair, 
 And then she slept, all satisfied. 
 
 It rained all day: She woke again 
 And whispered that the sky was blue. 
 Ah me ! Thank God she never knew 
 How cold and dreary fell the rain. 
 
156 How to Read Poetry 
 
 So like her life 1 It rained all day, 
 And yet she thought it all was bright; 
 She loved and toiled all day and night 
 She never thought the skies were gray. 
 
 And in the compressed beauty of Jessie B. 
 Rittenhouse's " Paradox" may not an entire 
 tragedy of the emotions be found? 
 
 I went out to the woods today 
 
 To hide away from you, 
 From you a thousand miles away 
 
 But you came, too. 
 
 And yet the old dull thought would stay, 
 
 And all my heart benumb 
 If you were but a mile away 
 
 You would not come. 
 
 Certain of Edgar Lee Masters' poems, 
 notably many of those in the "Anthology," 
 are true narrative poems in that through their 
 few and seemingly slight strokes the progress 
 of a whole life may be noted. An earlier, 
 less sharply cut narrative poem is Words- 
 
Narrative Poetry 157 
 
 worth's "Lucy," which gently, sweetly, tells 
 the story of a lovely little life from start to 
 close. The three stanzas herewith quoted 
 have been beloved by countless dissimilar hu- 
 mans; in all probability they will be remem- 
 bered and quoted long after the writer's 
 "Wanderer," "Yarrow Visited," "Yarrow 
 Revisited," and other far more pretentious 
 poems have gone the way of all flesh and 
 song. 
 
 She dwelt among the untrodden ways, 
 
 Beside the springs of Dove, 
 A maid whom there were none to praise 
 
 And very few to love : 
 
 A violet by a mossy stone 
 
 Half hidden from the eye ! 
 Fair as a star, w r hen only one 
 
 Is shining in the sky. 
 
 She lived unknown, and few could know 
 
 When Lucy ceased to be ; 
 But she is in her grave, and oh, 
 
 The difference to me ! 
 
158 How to Read Poetry 
 
 An interesting vista of poetic study and 
 conjecture is opened by comparison of 
 " Lucy " with Browning's " Evelyn Hope " 
 
 Beautiful Evelyn Hope is dead, 
 Sit and watch by her side an hour 
 
 another superlatively tender, simple, and lov- 
 ing life-study of a sweet young girl. 
 
 For Contrasting example of that which 
 might be called the " grand manner" in re- 
 gard to narrative poetry may be instanced 
 Meredith's " Love in the Valley " that long 
 and colorful poem so splendid in substance 
 and style. 
 
 Tennyson's narrative poems, u Locksley 
 Hall," "Godiva," "In the Children's Hos- 
 pital," "The North Countryman," "Riz- 
 pah," etc., are better known, perhaps, than 
 almost any other modern narrative poems, 
 and they, too, occasionally partake of the 
 grand manner. In marked contrast, and even 
 more musical, is the simple, singing verse, 
 rioting in rhyme as a flowering plant in bios- 
 
Narrative Poetry 159 
 
 soms, of Alfred Noyes. Noyes is at his best, 
 perhaps, in "The Barrel Organ" and "In 
 Old Japan." Of the former, in one sense 
 rather a descriptive than a true narrative 
 poem, in another truest narrative poem in 
 that it tells the whole story of a city, a gener- 
 ously appetizing excerpt shall be given here. 
 
 There's a barrel-organ caroling across a 
 
 golden street, 
 
 In the City as the sun sinks low; 
 And the music's not immortal; but the 
 
 world has made it sweet 
 And fulfilled it with the sunset glow. 
 And it pulses through the pleasure of 
 
 the City and the pain 
 That surrounds the singing organ like 
 
 a large eternal light; 
 And they've given it a glory and a part 
 
 to play again 
 
 In the Symphony that rules the day 
 and night. 
 
 Yes; as the music changes, 
 Like a prismatic glass, 
 
160 How to Read Poetry 
 
 It takes the light and ranges 
 
 Through all the moods that pass ; 
 
 Dissects the common carnival 
 Of passions and regrets, 
 
 And gives the world a glimpse of all 
 The colors it forgets. 
 
 Go down to Kew in lilac-time, in lilac- 
 time, in lilac-time; 
 
 Go down to Kew in lilac-time (it isn't far 
 from London!) 
 
 And you shall wander hand in hand with 
 love in summer's wonderland; 
 
 Go down to Kew in lilac-time (it isn't far 
 from London!) 
 
 The cherry-trees are seas of bloom and 
 
 soft perfume and sweet perfume, 
 The cherry-trees are seas of bloom (and 
 
 oh, so near to London!) 
 And there they say, when dawn is high 
 
 and all the world's a blaze of sky 
 The cuckoo, though he's very shy, will 
 
 sing a song for London. 
 
Narrative Poetry 161 
 
 The nightingale is rather rare and yet 
 
 they say you'll hear him there 
 At Kew, at Kew in lilac-time (and oh, so 
 
 near to London!) 
 The linnet and the throstle, too, and 
 
 after dark the long halloo 
 And golden-eyed tu-whit, tu-whoo of 
 
 owls that ogle London. 
 
 
 There's a thief, perhaps, that listens 
 
 with a face of frozen stone, 
 In the City as the sun sinks low; 
 There's a portly man of business with a 
 
 balance of his own, 
 There's a clerk and there's a butcher of 
 
 a soft, reposeful tone, 
 And they're all of them returning to the 
 
 heavens they have known; 
 They are crammed and jammed in 
 
 busses and they're each of them 
 
 alone 
 In the land where the dead dreams go. 
 
 There's a very modish woman and her 
 smile is very bland, 
 
162 How to Read Poetry 
 
 In the City as the sun sinks low; 
 
 And her hansom jingles onward, but her 
 little jeweled hand 
 
 Is clenched a little tighter and she can- 
 not understand 
 
 What she wants or why she wanders to 
 that undiscovered land, 
 
 For the parties there are not at all the 
 
 sort of thing she planned, 
 In.the land where the dead dreams go. 
 
 There's a laborer that listens to the 
 
 voices of the dead 
 In the City as the sun sinks low ; 
 And his hand begins to tremble and his 
 
 face is rather red 
 As he sees a loafer watching him and 
 
 there he turns his head 
 And stares into the sunset where his 
 
 April love is fled, 
 For he hears her softly singing and his 
 
 lonely soul is led 
 Through the lands where the dead 
 
 dreams go. 
 
Narrative Poetry 163 
 
 There's an old and hardened demi-rep, 
 
 it's ringing in her ears, 
 In the City as the sun sinks low ; 
 With the wild and empty sorrows of the 
 
 love that blights and sears, 
 Oh, and if she hurries onward, then be 
 
 sure, be sure she hears, 
 Hears and bears the bitter burden of the 
 
 unforgotten years, 
 And her laugh's a little harsher and her 
 
 eyes are brimmed with tears 
 For the land where the dead dreams 
 
 go- 
 
 There's a barrel-organ caroling across a 
 
 golden street 
 
 In the City as the sun sinks low; 
 Though the music's only Verdi there's a 
 
 world to make it sweet 
 Just as yonder sunset where the earth 
 
 and heaven meet 
 Mellows all the sooty City! Hark, a 
 
 hundred thousand feet 
 Are marching on to glory through the 
 
 poppies and the wheat 
 
164 How to Read Poetry 
 
 In the land where the dead dreams go. 
 
 Come down to Kew in lilac-time, in lilac- 
 time, in lilac-time; 
 
 Come down to Kew in lilac-time (it isn't 
 far from London!) 
 
 And you shall wander hand in hand with 
 Love in summer's wonderland, 
 
 Come down to Kew in lilac-time (it isn't 
 v far from London!) 
 
 Another remarkable and sharply con- 
 trasted poem-story of the soul of a city, like 
 that of Noyes in its psychologic insight and 
 interpretation, wondrously unlike in all else, 
 Ruth Comfort Mitchell names "The Night 
 Court" 
 
 " Call Rose Costara !" 
 
 Insolent, she comes. 
 The watchers, practiced, keen, turn down 
 
 their thumbs. 
 
 The walk, the talk, the face that sea- 
 shell tint 
 
 It is old stuff; they read her like coarse 
 print. 
 
Narrative Poetry 165 
 
 Here is no hapless innocence waylaid. 
 
 This is a stolid worker at her trade. 
 
 Listening, she yawns; half smiling, un- 
 dismayed, 
 
 Shrugging a little at the law's delay, 
 
 Bored and impatient to be on her way. 
 
 It is her eighth conviction. Out beyond 
 the rail 
 
 A lady novelist in search of types turns 
 pale. 
 
 She meant to write of them just as she 
 
 found them, 
 And with no tears or maudlin glamor 
 
 round them, 
 In forceful, virile words, harsh, true 
 
 words, without shame, 
 Calling an ugly thing, boldly, an ugly 
 
 name; 
 Sympathy, velvet glove, on purpose, iron 
 
 hand. 
 But eighth conviction! All the phrases 
 
 she had planned 
 Fail; "sullen," "vengeful," no, she isn't 
 
 that. 
 
i66 How to Read Poetry 
 
 No, the pink face beneath the hectic hat 
 Gives back her own aghast and sickened 
 
 stare 
 
 With a detached and rather cheerful air, 
 And then the little novelist sees red. 
 From her chaste heart all clemency is 
 
 fled. 
 " Oh, loathsome ! venomous ! Off with 
 
 her head! 
 Call Rose Costara ! " But before you 
 
 stop, 
 And shelve your decent rage, 
 
 Let's call the cop. 
 
 Let's call the plain-clothes cop who 
 
 brought her in. 
 The weary-eyed night watchman of the 
 
 law, 
 
 A shuffling person with a hanging jaw, 
 Loose-lipped and Sallow, rather vague 
 
 of chin, 
 Comes rubber-heeling at his Honor's 
 
 rap. 
 He set and baited and then sprung the 
 
 trap 
 
Narrative Poetry 167 
 
 The trap by his unsavory report. 
 Let's ask him why but first 
 
 Let's call the court. 
 
 Not only the grim figure in the chair, 
 Sphinx-like above the waste and wreck- 
 age there, 
 
 Skeptical, weary of a retold tale, 
 But the whole humming hive, the false, 
 
 the frail 
 
 An old young woman with a weasel face, 
 A lying witness waiting in his place, 
 Two ferret lawyers nosing out a case, 
 Reporters questioning a Mexican, 
 Sobbing her silly heart out for her man, 
 Planning to feature her, "lone, desper- 
 ate, pretty " 
 Yes, call the court. But wait ! 
 
 Let's call the city. 
 
 Call the community ! Call up, call down, 
 Call all the speeding, mad, unheeding 
 
 town ! 
 Call rags and tags and then call velvet 
 
 gown! 
 
i68 How to Read Poetry 
 
 Go, summon them from tenements and 
 clubs, 
 
 On office floors and over steaming tubs! 
 
 Shout to the boxes and behind the 
 scenes, 
 
 Then to the push-carts and the limou- 
 sines ! 
 
 Arouse the lecture-room, the cabaret ! 
 
 Confound them with a trumpet-blast and 
 say, 
 
 u Are you so dull, so deaf and blind in- 
 deed, 
 
 That you mistake the harvest for the 
 seed?" 
 
 Condemn them for but stay ! 
 
 Let's call the code 
 
 The facile thing they've fashioned to 
 their mode : 
 
 Smug sophistries that smother and be- 
 fool, 
 
 That numb and stupefy; that clumsy 
 thing 
 
 That measures mountains with a three- 
 foot rule, 
 
Narrative Poetry 169 
 
 And plumbs the ocean with a pudding- 
 string 
 
 The little, brittle code. Here is the 
 root, 
 
 Far out of sight, and buried safe and 
 deep, 
 
 And Rose Costara is the bitter fruit. 
 
 On every limb and leaf, death, ruin, 
 creep. 
 
 So, lady novelist, go home again. 
 Rub biting acid on your little pen. 
 Look back and out and up and in, and 
 
 then 
 Write that it is no job for pruning- 
 
 shears. 
 Tell them to dig for years and years and 
 
 years 
 The twined and twisted roots. Blot out 
 
 the page; 
 
 Invert the blundering order of the age; 
 Reverse the scheme : the last shall be the 
 
 first. 
 Summon the system, starting with the 
 
 worst 
 
i JO How to Read Poetry 
 
 The lying, dying code ! On, down the 
 
 line, 
 
 The city, and the court, the cop. Assign 
 The guilt, the blame, the shame I Sting, 
 
 lash, and spur! 
 Call each and all 1 Call us ! And then 
 
 call her! 
 
 Who, with a heart to feel, a mind to think, 
 a soul v to strain at its leashing conventions, 
 could help being moved by such a poem, 
 whether or no previously arrayed against 
 poetry in the abstract? Leaving these, with 
 inevitable memory of Hood's tragic " Bridge 
 of Sighs, " Florence Wilkinson's u The 
 Flower Makers," and kindred stirring themes 
 of the city; with Masefield's u The Daffodil 
 Fields" and Robert Frost's New England 
 story-poems to perform similarly suggestive 
 service in behalf of the poetic realism of less 
 metropolitan regions : let us think, for a mo- 
 ment, of those romantic poems, both of pre- 
 vious and the present era, that are so closely 
 akin to poetic drama. 
 
 The " Canterbury Tales," the Arthurian 
 
Narrative Poetry 171 
 
 poem-legends, the Icelandic Sagas, are all, of 
 course, impossible of present reproduction 
 as the folk-songs of our own Red Indians 
 although the reader sickened with war, bored 
 by business, and wearily longing for genuine 
 intellectual refreshment is earnestly recom- 
 mended to them; but poem-stories like By- 
 ron's " Manfred," Hogg's "Kilmeny" and 
 Scott's " Marmion," to say nothing of such 
 present-day kin as sundry Kipling tale- 
 ballads and Masefield's " Dauber," are 
 rich in the quickening qualities of stirring 
 event and rapid action that most of us, 
 whether in prose or poetry, greatly prize. 
 Actual dramas, even though in poetic form 
 strictly belonging to poetry's sister art of the 
 theater, need not now receive attention, but 
 the dramatic poems instanced, with others 
 by John G. Neihardt, Lindsay, and countless 
 contemporary and classic poets at least will 
 bridge the friendly chasm for those who 
 would follow poetry across the narrow bor- 
 der to the poem-drama realm. 
 
 To this realm the Browning classics, too 
 well known to need even passing mention, 
 
172 How to Read Poetry 
 
 and such contemporary specimens as Mase- 
 field's u Philip the King," Lily A. Long's 
 " Radisson," and Josephine Preston Pea- 
 body's incomparable u The Piper," with 
 poetic-dramatic fantasies such as Cloyd 
 Head's "Grotesques" and the queer 
 u Mines " of Alfred Kreymborg, will provide 
 delightful introduction. Again such hero- 
 tales as Masefield's " Rosas " and Noyes' 
 " Drake" may well be employed in the 
 friendly capacity of bridge. 
 
 Since practically every poet of distinction 
 has done good work in the way of poetic 
 description, natural, imaginative or psycho- 
 logic; since lines, stanzas, poems, must spring 
 at will to the memory of almost every reader ; 
 and since indication rather than technical 
 showing forth is the present object, descrip- 
 tive poetry, as such alone, shall not now be 
 directly analyzed or considered. Plentiful 
 example has occurred in connection with 
 other poetic phases. Apt and fascinating 
 quotation might run on forever. But few, 
 surely, could conclude this bird's-eye glimpse 
 of the picked poetic area without conscious 
 
Narrative Poetry 173 
 
 impulsion to make this wide and fascinating 
 area their own. 
 
 Let those uncertain as to just what kind 
 of poetic fare will prove most pleasing begin 
 with the simpler, more dramatic or descrip- 
 tive narrative poems that have proved such 
 long and sterling friends to other readers. 
 From such beginning has dawned and dated 
 many a strong love of poetry in all its many 
 forms. 
 
IN FLANDERS' FIELDS 
 
 In Flanders' fields the poppies blow 
 Between the crosses, row on row, 
 That mark our place ; and in the sky 
 The larks, still bravely singing, fly 
 Scarce heard amid the guns below. 
 
 We are the Dead. Short days ago 
 We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow, 
 Loved and were loved, and now we lie 
 In Flanders' fields. 
 
 Take up our quarrel with the foe : 
 To you from falling hands we throw 
 The torch; be yours to hold it high. 
 If ye break faith with us who die 
 We shall not sleep, though poppies blow 
 In Flanders' fields. 
 
 JOHN MCCRAE. 
 
 175 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE CASE FOR THE DEFENSE 
 
 HERE, then, is the conclusion of the 
 whole matter: 
 
 Everybody should read poetry. 
 
 Why? 
 
 Because everybody loves it. (For particu- 
 lars see Chapter I.) 
 
 Again, why? 
 
 Because everybody loves, needs, desires, 
 seeks enjoyment, and the reading of poetry, 
 properly performed and pursued, makes for 
 universal enjoyment of high, rich, rare, inex- 
 pensive, highly diversified, never-ending and 
 ever-vernal order. (For further particulars 
 see Chapter II. 
 
 How, then, to extract this enjoyment from 
 poetry, to cause poetry reading to yield its 
 rare treasures in plain and painless manner, 
 in a word, "How to Read Poetry?" 
 
 Why, good sir or madam, perfectly simple 
 and easy. Read poetry just as you would 
 
 176 
 
The Case for the Defense 177 
 
 bathe or dress or write a letter or eat your 
 dinner or play golf or take a car down town. 
 
 Suit the action to the time, the food to the 
 appetite, the clothing to the weather, the 
 poetry to the mood, the nature, the taste. 
 
 If you like "old" poetry, read "old" 
 poetry and don't be ashamed to admit that 
 you like and read it. 
 
 If you prefer "new" poetry, read that 
 and don't be ashamed of reading it, either. 
 
 If you naturally enjoy standard poetry of 
 grave or classic order, so much the better; 
 you have much to enjoy and may rejoice in 
 a life supply of the preferred poetic dainty. 
 
 If your taste runs to the simplest of verse, 
 to tender love lyrics, the least impressive of 
 "home and mother" jingles, the most primi- 
 tive of war songs or "poems of passion," 
 why, have you not still great cause for rejoic- 
 ing? You are indubitably fortunate in that 
 the supply always will more than equal the 
 demand. 
 
 If you like poetry of all kinds, read poetry 
 of all kinds and don't think the case requires 
 apology, explanation, nor any attention other 
 
178 How to Read Poetry 
 
 than matter-of-fact, pleased and natural ac- 
 ceptance. Why should one deprecate or ex- 
 plain intellectual, emotional likings any more 
 than physical appetites in the way of food or 
 drink? 
 
 In a word, once more, read whatever 
 poetry you like, and if you don't think you 
 really like any begin at once to experiment, 
 to read all kinds until you discover as you 
 surely will sooner or later and probably 
 sooner which kind you like best. (For 
 encouraging assistance read Chapters ill, IV, 
 v, and VI.) 
 
 But don't, as you would do yourself justice, 
 read Byron when your soul hungers for spir- 
 itual sustenance, nor Keats with the war-guns 
 roaring, nor Masters when you long to 
 be stirred or stimulated or soothed. The 
 music of a pipe organ, remember, is admir- 
 ably fitted for inspiring or encouraging re- 
 ligious meditation, but it is not well suited to 
 quickstep marching or the dancing of a fan- 
 dango; a fife and drum corps, similarly, 
 would provide but a poor lullaby or waltz 
 measure. There are times when Noyes' 
 
The Case for the Defense 179 
 
 lovely lilting cloys the stiffened senses like 
 honey, when the rhythmic realism of Sand- 
 burg is maddening, the Tennysonian senti- 
 mentality quite too much to bear. 
 
 In a word, yet once more, read poetry with 
 reason, with the invaluable support of this 
 chapter, and, in addition, with the aid of this 
 (softly whispered) watchword and secret: 
 
 Use Your Common Sense. 
 
THE HAPPIEST HEART 
 
 Who drives the horses of the sun 
 
 Shall lord it but a day; 
 Better the lowly deed were done, 
 
 And kept the humble way. 
 
 The rust will find the sword of fame, 
 The dust will hide the crown ; 
 
 Ay, none shall nail so high his name 
 Time will not tear it down. 
 
 The happiest heart that ever beat 
 
 Was in some quiet breast 
 That found the common daylight sweet, 
 
 And left to Heaven the rest. 
 
 JOHN VANCE CHENEY. 
 
 180 
 
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