<7 University of California Berkeley SOPHIA TRENTON A MORAL POEM BY LEONARD BACON [Phi Beta Kappa Poem at Stanford University, June 19, 1920 Reprinted from the Chapter Proceedings] SOPHIA TRENTON A MORAL POEM BY LEONARD BACON [Phi Beta Kappa Poem at Stanford University, June 19, 1920 Reprinted from the Chapter Proceedings] SOPHIA TRENTON A MORAL POEM "The relation of organism to organism is the most important of all relations." DARWIN, The Origin of Species. 1. The Autumn sun streamed through the lecture-room. Girls swished into their seats with clicks and clatters. Without, the trolleys rushed by with a boom, As if intent upon tremendous matters. A gay wind bent the maple's ragged plume Against the window, tossing the leaves in tatters. Sophia Trenton in the foremost row Felt strange and homesick and extremely low. 2. She was not like a flower, (my heroines Are painted as a homely muse dictates), Nor wicked as the seven deadly sins, Nor the sweetest of girl-undergraduates. Nor was she one with ruthless hand that spins The twisted thread of other people's fates. Frankly in talents, as in form and face, Sophia was a little commonplace. 3. Still she had freshness and a morning-look. "Everyone," say the French, "is fair at twenty." Her bosom, as she bent above her book, Had the right curve to please the cognoscenti, And her mouth's corner had a pleasant crook, Implying dimples, when she smiled, in plenty. She was not smiling now. Of all things human, Nothing's so lonely as a shy freshwoman. Y K A ti E U -T 1 S 'It /; 3 U V SOPHIA TRENTON 4. She thought of the white house in Schuyler Falls And morning-glories by the picket-fence. It only made Columbia's clanging halls Seem more impersonal and more immense. Dull times there are when memory appalls. And she was overwhelmed by the cold sense That she had lost more than could e'er be garnered At Morningside, particularly at Barnard. 5. She thought of the "apartment" twelve by ten, That gave upon the grimy court and chill, Of dawn she had not hated until then, Of a heavy sun that somehow lacked the will To scale uninteresting skies again, Of coal-dust-flecked milk-bottles on her sill, Of cats, at midnight in adjacent yards, Howling their passions much like modern bards. 6. Just then all point device, and brisk, and right Upon the dot, the lecturer came in A startling man to her, for any might Have startled her, who checked pale thought within. Perhaps the future held some haggard light. Quiet came o'er the rustle and the din. It might be glory had not all departed. A street car clanged far off. The lecture started. 7. The lecturer's voice was good. Its pleasant sound Came sweet upon her ears a mellow timbre That suited well his theme somehow, who round The mountains of Romance appeared to clamber, And to walk safe upon enchanted ground Where he found treasures of pure gold and amber, Which he revealed to awestruck contemplation As the true basis of an education. A MORAL POEM 8. The lecture was a poem in its way, At least free verse, unusually free, Although in this it differed, I must say, Being allusive in a high degree. He quoted much from poets grave and gay, And his voice leaped when he said 'poetry/ So that Sophia taxed her wandering wit, Wondering if he perhaps were fond of it. 9. And much she heard that struck her with amazement, Queer phrases full of sounds and fever-heats, Catchwords of ecstasy and of abasement In which the imprisoned spirit throbs and beats. He slammed the sash of many a magic casement. (Little Sophia had not read her Keats, Although sad Ruth was never more forlorn, Sick sick for her home amid the alien corn.) 10. He told them Shelley was the pioneer Of spiritual poetry, whose ways Led over heights so awful that men fear To follow that his verse was all ablaze With light and that the pure in spirit hear A faery melody in Adonais, And the world-revolution's dreadful sound Trumpeting when Prometheus is unbound. 11. Then with a swift transition on he went. Nothing is swifter than a swift transition; Not Congress on appropriation bent, Nor troops that storm an enemy's position, Nor financiers on dividends intent, Nor the rightabout of a skilled politician. When changing ground, a lecturer of tact Beats these and wireless everything in fact. SOPHIA TRENTON 12. "The Greeks," he said, "Parthenon violet crown Sappho" he lingered with a languorous air On the words as though he loved them. Up and down Her spine she tingled, flushing to her hair. And though she might have wondered, I must own, As Pope says, "how the devil he got there," She was much thrilled instead, though by the way, She thought that Sappho was a lewd French play. 13. Now many a half-thought was half-suggested, And now he paused on demi-dreams to dwell. Sophia thought that she was interested, Although in what it had been hard to tell. Somehow she felt the powers of evil bested, And the big devil bound fast again in Hell With chains of words, although I can't conjecture How this could be accomplished by a lecture. 14. Those Greeks he spoke of with her shining eyes She saw them suddenly. They ceased to be The half-tone figures of school histories. Now they gleamed out upon her flamingly. Large, gracefully audacious, calm and wise Creatures she thought of, and could almost see Halfway between the actual and ideal. Suddenly she knew that they had once been real. 15. This be it known the lecturer did not know, And never had been led even to suspect. He was not a bad fellow as men go, But frankly he was after an effect, A practice which is apt to bring men low. Witness how many poets have been wrecked Upon that rock. He had woven all his web Out of the bowels of Sir Richard Jebb, A MORAL POEM 16. And Gilbert Murray. Twenty years before Himself to learning had John Percy given, A sacrifice to literary lore, By the fierce whips of the twin-devils driven, Poverty and Vanity, who overbore Judgment. And it had seemed a glimpse of heaven That vision of long academic calm, Laborious, earnest, pleasant as a palm. 17. So he was actor on that meaner stage Whose sole prop is the professorial chair. He played his part, expounding many a page Where never difficulty lurked in lair. Thence many a notion did he disengage, Especially notions that were not there. (In the interests of the stricter metricality Notion I wrote instead of triviality.) 18. And he was very greatly to be pitied, And yet more pitiable, alas ! he knew it, For he had been irrevocably committed To talk about a thing and not to do it. Men suffer thus however nimble-witted, And find not, though they seek peace and ensue it, Their minds in a perpetual bereavement, Wanting the strong embraces of achievement. 19. Not that he was not highly publicatious, Each year a volume more or less he tallied The simulacrum of a book, but Gracious ! What reader e'er so hardy ever rallied His forces to the sticking-point audacious, And faced that ghost of learning thin and pallid? Ah ! never, never shall that reader be Saving perhaps another Ph. D., 8 20. Who with great show of learning shall refute That which already has been self-refuted, And multiply the matter in dispute, Merely to be himself in turn disputed. So rushes on the circular pursuit, And will I fear till Gabriel's horn is tooted. But the interruption of the Day of Doom Once o'er, I'm sure the champions will resume. 21. Here to be frank, like Sterne I own I hanker After digressions. This is a confession. They help one when the cerebellum's blanker Than minds of students at the summer-session. When the brains are out, then there is no sheet-anchor To windward better than a long digression. And I have noted all men more or less Display a disposition to digress. 22. My pseudo-hero, whom I have compounded Out of the traits of several men I know, My pseudo-heroine, in short, dumbfounded. She felt her whole mentality a-glow. Her ship was on a sea unknown, unbounded, Where the trade-winds of easy doctrine blow In the mind's tropic. Nor was there one to say How very near the listless doldrums lay. 23. That term she harked to Percy's every lecture, And read the poets that he indicated, As if you could by reading them effect your Spirit's salvation, and be elevated To sit with saints in robes of seamless texture. And now and then after the hour she waited To ask him how she could improve her themes, And, inadvertently, revealed small dreams, 24. Shy little verses which were all her art. (Briefness was the sole beauty not refused them,) And Percy of the goodness of his heart Quoted them at the Club where he perused them Each noon, until the ritual grew a part Of luncheon. With much humor he abused them. And poor Sophia's rondelays and ballads Came on the menu like the fruits and salads. 25. He said she was a type. Beware of him Who says that anybody is a type Of anything. It means his sight is dim And all his fruitage of the mind unripe. Though Individuals wither life is grim They yet retain the individual stripe. And the different manners in which people act Is what makes up the fun of life in fact. 26. He atnt her to the College Magazine With a smart letter to the smart Jew Editor, Buttering her verse with oleomargarine. But she had wanted flattery, and he fed it her, Till she was happy as a movie-queen. Never was debtor gratefuller to creditor For ten days grace than she, who now by dint Of her simplicity appeared in print. 27. And thus she met the undergraduate poet, And worse the undergraduate poetess, Self-styled originals who thought to show it In eccentricity of hair and dress. Their aim was moderate, but they hit below it. They loved their lucubrations none the less. And in a down-town tavern once a week They gathered for high discourse on technique. 10 SOPHIA TRENTON 28. Technique ! The very word is like the shriek Of outraged Art. It is the idiot name Given to effort by those who are too weak, Too weary, or too dull to play the game. The mighty have no theory of technique, But leave it to the blind, the halt, the lame, "Mental non-combatants," and paralytics, Second-story men of letters and small critics. 29. Though why distinguish ? Since the birth of time Critics have been by definition small, Wishing rather to commit a little crirne Than never to commit a crime at all. Therefore they rob the schoolgirl of her dime, But freely give the two-gun man the wall, Though when he's past, under their breath they mutter Small insults that aloud they dare not utter. 30. The Sappho of those Lesbians was a Jewess, Swarthy and bosomed like a pouter-pigeon. Israel is lean sometimes, but what more true is Than that maids tend to fat in that religion ? Moses, a lawgiver who surely knew his People in a most unproductive region Observed that some waxed fat and were grown thick And that the corpulent were apt to kick. 31. And Rachel Stein forsook the God who made her, Esteeming lightly the Rock of her Salvation Just like Jeshurun. From the social nadir Of Twentieth Street she had reached the elevation Of Barnard. She prosed much. Once some one paid her For a sloppy article on immigration And the melting-pot. Accordingly her standing Throughout Columbia's Grub Street was commanding. A MORAL POEM 11 32. And she was dull, but then her friends were duller. She could be silent with a certain patness Better than speech. And her talk had a color That in some sort disguised its natural flatness. Her Rabbi father thought her beautifuller Than Leah, or than Ruth, despite her fatness, But he was an old man, gentle and kind, And from reading in the Talmud nearly blind. 33. Rachel and he had come where the roads fork. She was a modern. His was the old law. It's hard with naught but teeth to pull a cork, It's hard for youth to view old worth with awe, It's hard to be religious in New York. His happiness had only known one flaw She made a point of being extra chipper All through the celebration of Yom Kippur. 34. Sophia found her an enchanting thing, Full of suggestions pseudo-oriental. It was delight to her 'neath Rachel's wing To chase ideas small and sentimental, And sing her song and fling her little fling. And Rachel was so comfortable and gentle That I am much inclined to wonder whether A softer pair of softs e'er came together. 35. They were inseparable. They shared in all There was to share of pleasure and of lore. They went to concerts in Carnegie Hall. Theirs was one passion for Jack Barrymore. They heard Caruso bay and Garden squall. And Noyes and Masefield thrilled them to the core When night-gown clad they yielded to the spell Of many a verse and many a caramel. 12 SOPHIA TRENTON 36. And so Sophia grew a Sophomore, Emerging moth-like from the gray cocoon Of pale freshwomanhood. And in a score Of ways she showed it. The soft airs of June Brought her on rapidly. The Minotaur Of Education does not strike too soon. When the victim's lost in labyrinthine ways, Leaping from ambush, if he can he slays. 37. Now she must choose her specialty. Of course She stuck to Percy and the School Romantic, Drawn to the man by some vague moral force, And the hope that if her effort proved gigantic, He might perhaps her dearest wish endorse, Which swelled like the circulation of the "Atlantic," And, grant her O Wagon hitched to what a star Admission to his Shelley seminar, 38. When in due season she should graduate. Professor Percy kept an eye upon her. He found her admiration adequate, A sentiment, he felt, which did her honor. So when revolving years brought round the date, And the President's scrawled turkey-tracks were on her Parchment, and a moderate modiste had fitted her Sprigged graduation muslin, he admitted her. 39. And all that summer for twelve golden weeks Little Sophia Trenton walked on air, Having been admitted to that class of freaks, Nicknamed by Percy's chief, who had a flair For pun and epigram, "Percy's Reliques," So many cast school-mistresses came there, So many brainless intellectuals drifting Midway between makeshifting and uplifting. A MORAL POEM 13 40. September came once more. And with September Sophia to her oracle returned, Sunburnt, and full of ardor to dismember Shelley till all his mystery she discerned. In the seminar she blew the little ember Of dumb enthusiasm till it burned. But there was too much mental C O 2 , So even Sophia's flame was rather blue. 41. At the yellow table-end delivering doom Sate Percy, chin on hand, calm mid their vaporing. His brow, deep scars of intellectual gloom Had temporarily entrenched. Such capering As made him famous in the lecture-room He scorned, having now the air of one wall-papering With perfect taste the chambers of the soul. They worshipped him in this severer role. 42. The papers that they wrote, they read, alas ! There was much talk of source and bibliography. Sophia overwhelmed the wondering class With a bright specimen of the new monography, The subject chosen by herself. It was Entitled "Shelley's Knowledge of Geography." Percy, in whom Shelley ne'er stirred one pulse, Praised the design, but doubted the results. 43. Here let me state in categoric terms That though he swayed her with a power hypnotic As a snake's when toward the warbler's nest he squirms, Her mind contained no trace of the erotic. The blow-fly does not mate with angle-worms. Moreover, Percy had a wife despotic And moral, who, I am reasonably sure Would never have permitted an amour. 14 SOPHIA TRENTON 44. But mentally she grew his odalisk, A slave in his belles-letterish hareem. His bland reproof she no more dared to risk, Than to have practiced with the football team. An asteroid, at due distance from the disk Of its great primary, would sooner dream Of breaking from its orbit some fine day, And doing business in the Milky Way, 45. Than would Sophia of venturing an opinion Professor Percy had not guaranteed As sterling currency in the dominion Of Literature. His verdict was her creed. Italians fleeing from the Abyssinian Or Austrian onslaught never paid more heed To personal safety than Sophia paid To Percy's literary gasconade. 46. This he saw quickly, and he told his wife Of the dimensions of his influence Upon his students, how he waked to life And stirred the sleepy channels of their sense Till they were fit for intellectual strife. He did not tell her, though, that accidents Even in that bloodless struggle find a place, And the ghost of shame and the shadow of disgrace. 47. His consort snorted as she combed her hair. She had heard all that before and was inclined To say so, but, deciding to forbear, Got into bed, apparently resigned To listen to his tale of how and where A thesis-subject came into his mind, On which to date no specialist had hit, And how Sophia had just jumped at it. A MORAL POEM 15 48. Sophia had in fact, as leaps the trout Besprent with rainbow dyes, leaped from the stream Pedantic at the fly, with never a doubt, Though it was a brown hackle of a theme That in her innocence she singled out. A change came o'er the spirit of her dream. There was a shining goal in sight, and she Resolved to labor for a Ph. D. 49. Her thesis was I have forgot no matter ! Something she had decided to demonstrate. Wreaths about Shelley's urn she yearned to scatter, Though the victim had he known might well remonstrate. For, though in some ways madder than a hatter, In normal times he had his headpiece on straight, And both his eyes had in fine frenzy rolled, If ever in his life he had been told 50. That dryasdusts would moralize his song, Reading the meaning out and Plato in, Interpreting the simplest symbol wrong, Missing the gold and treasuring the tin, Dwelling upon the trivial so long, And spinning allegory out so thin That the line parts, and neither brawn nor brain Can splice the mainbrace of the mind again. 51. What was the theme that Percy had suggested ? Aha ! I have it. The investigations Of Dowden left one area uninfested, Namely, Shelley in his musical relations. Sophia her small capital invested, After some most inspiring conversations With Percy, in this cramped and arid field, Which gave no promise of a ten-fold yield. 16 52. Ah, smile not ! There are theses yet absurder Than poor Sophia's pile of tinsel tissue. They move the man of common sense to murder Not only the perpetrator but his issue. When folly speaks, be sure the fools have heard her. And if you don't believe me, then I wish you Would read a thesis that displays to us Wagner's indebtedness to Aeschylus. 53. Sophia's plan was this. She catalogued Exhaustively the lines where Shelley made Mention of music. Shelley's waterlogged With music. Through the sun and through the shade Unweariedly his winged words she dogged. When he wrote 'melody,' or 'serenade,' Or 'song,' or 'Music when sweet voices die,' She tagged them all for reference bye and bye. 54. Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard To her were sweeter. Soon she could detect Under the mask of almost any word Allusion to a musical effect. She tortured opposites till they concurred In sense the poet never could suspect. And the work sped, and she was never weary Of her new musical-aesthetic theory. 55. She drew an interesting parallel Between his songs and arias from Gltick Whose Orpheus drew Eurydice from Hell, Yet lost her by an inadvertent look. Haydn and Handel played their part as well. Beethoven cut a figure in her book. She showed the exposition was a gem In what light Shelley had regarded them. A MORAL POEM 17 56. And she was happy laboring day by day With Percy's bland approval for a spur. Only one obstacle before her lay, And it was of a sort that troubled her, For Rachel Stein her friend had gone away And much she missed her plump philosopher, Who was in love with a pale, ineffectual, And unattractive Christian intellectual, 57. Who loved the human race, himself in chief. Sophia, sorting literary rubble, Often gave way to sympathetic grief, As she thought about poor Rachel and her trouble. She would have died to give her some relief, To have gained her wish, or prick the silly bubble Of Rachel's tragic amorous eccentricity, But could do nothing, which was her felicity. 58. Another trouble soon upon her grew. The thunder of those battles over sea With which America had naught to do, Ruffled her meditation fancy free. She dreamed of them, although she held the view That both sides were as guilty as could be. This theory, by the way, she had acquired From Rachel and the man Rachel admired, 59. Who, though he was the weakest of weak sisters, Yet was in this consistent, for he bragged That he would be most passive of resisters, If into war America were dragged. And his tongue soon had callouses and blisters From being so perpetually wagged And twisted into the convenient attitudes Appropriate to pacifistic platitudes. 18 SOPHIA TRENTON 60. Our intellectual's name was Dana Phipps, And naturally his mind so-called, was cluttered With phrases that came glibly from the lips. But poor Sophia felt that he had uttered Much that was true. Though at this point he slips From the tale, she often pondered, as she puttered At her notes, on his acuteness, and the craft With which he finally outran the draft. 61. The folded buds of Nineteen-seventeen Brought spices to the April day again, But few beheld that avenues were green, And the bright Spring come in. Men saw too plain What lay before, and all that it must mean, The slaughter, and the pestilence, and pain, And the hawk famine on destruction's fist. They saw it all and hastened to enlist. 62. The river filled with ships that passed by night, Unseen and silent as a thief may come, Slinking down the darkling flood without a light. The college woke to trumpet and to drum, And dressed itself in khaki trig and tight. And overhead Sophia heard the hum Of aeroplanes that dropped on the bystander A thousand flying leaves of propaganda. 63. Sophia's heart was somehow not inclined To labor on amid that martial bustle. She felt as though she had been left behind And never would catch up without a hustle. But Percy reassured her wavering mind. With fresh conviction she began to tussle With piles of references as before, While Young America went off to War. A MORAL POEM 19 64. Then one June evening as she journeyed lone Over a quite unusually arid Desert of notes, where not the whitened bone Remained of any poor idea miscarried, Her landlady called out, "Miss Trenton 'phone !" A voice said : "I am going to be married. It's Rachel, dear. Tonight ! We had no warning Come right away. He sails tomorrow morning." 65. Half an hour later mild Sophia found Herself in Rachel's new and shining flat. Upon the hatrack as she gazed around She saw a spick and span new service-hat. Rachel an unknown Rachel trimly gowned, And radiant, and very much less fat, Swept in. There was a new light in her eyes. She had been looking at realities. 66. And close behind her in the garb of war A really quite magnificent young Jew, A sergeant in the quartermaster corps. Oh Dana Phipps ! The heart that ached for you, I'm reasonably sure will ache no more. Rachel with an ecstatic gurgle threw Her arms about Sophia. The embrace Made up in vigor what it lacked in grace. 67. Weddings in Nineteen-seventeen were swift. Rachel and Moe Rabinovitch were wed Swiftly as any. The apartment-lift Bore them downstairs. The waiting taxi fled To some hotel. A momentary rift Let light fall on them through the clouds of dread, Grimly upon their marriage-night withdrawn. Eight hours were theirs. His leave was up at dawn. 20 SOPHIA TRENTON 68. The hollow subway roared and clamored round Sophia. Rachel's grief and exaltation Shocked her almost, as pensive, homeward bound, She gave a loose to her imagination. Life seemed a riddle rather too profound To be good taste. She almost passed her station, She was so lost in thought. I can't say why Sophia felt greatly inclined to cry. 69. But her hands shook as she unloosed her hair, Alone before the mirror in her room. And the dumb shadows shifting here and there Filled her with vague presentiments of gloom. The present seemed as empty as despair, The future as productive as a tomb. A dry sob shook her maiden diaphragm. She went to bed and slumbered like a lamb. 70. Next morning she was at her task once more. As a weed floats in with the tide, so did Her thesis float in with the tide of war. To change the figure, her ephemerid Developed fast. Its larval stage was o'er. Soon it must issue from the chrysalid, And undertake the adventure that awaits All inarticulate invertebrates. 71. She passed her doctorate examination. Percy presided over two or three Faint colleagues, who possessed no information Apt to embarrass in the least degree. Though she had thrilled with dreadful expectation, She met the test, and I may say that she Created a distinctly good impression Of quiet and painstaking self-possession. A MORAL POEM 21 72. And yet her soul misgave her, for the book That went at last to the Columbia Press Had in the galley-proof to her a look Of dull and real ineffectiveness. Percy, to whom her troubled heart she took, Laughed lightly at her symptoms of distress, And when he had their origin inquired, Said with some sympathy that she was tired. 73. He was in fact the cause of her fatigue, Though neither's thought wandered in that direction. He had meshed her in a spiritual intrigue, Where plodding pedantry replaced affection And humor and all things that are in league With natural youth. The months of proof-correction Past in processional of pages rolled, That made Sophia feel chilly and grown old, 74. And as if she had missed much. At last her book Came out full-blown. It did not cause a ruction. Physically it had a solid look. A thing that lived by literary suction, A critic namely, kindly undertook To puff it. He quoted from the introduction And quit. Less florid scribes a value set Upon the work, to-wit, "Three dollars net." 75. A pebble cast into the central sea Would drive a larger wave against the beach Of the utmost continent. But she was free From laboring after things beyond her reach. Now that her task was done, she hoped that she Might have an opportunity to teach. But Sophia, when she put the millstone by, Found she regained her freedom with a sigh. 22 SOPHIA TRENTON 76. And like a wild thing tamed, that dares not go Far from the cage, she lingered still about The seat of wisdom she had come to know. The whole disastrous world was wild without. But here all things were gradual and slow, And one was left at liberty to doubt Whether one's views on Shelley were of such Importance as to matter very much. 77. All that red Fall Sophia dwelt alone And solitary in her cloister pale. Then one dull evening the cracked telephone Rang. It was Rachel's voice. A broken wail Came over the wire. The agonizing tone Pierced through Sophia like a red-hot nail. There was another casualty she knew. What did it matter, fire, or flood, or 'flu' ? 78. In the downtown flat she found wild Rachel weeping, As once in Ramah, not to be comforted, Amid a general wreck of light housekeeping. Sophia somehow got her into bed. And when, collapsed, Rachel at length was sleeping, She washed the dishes, picked things up, and read A telegram, delivered in the mail, Containing no elaborate detail. 79. Three dreadful days Sophia nursed the wraith Of Rachel, and found her ministry exciting, For washing dishes in the house of death Beats any quantity of thesis-writing. She drew more ardently a fiercer breath, Like one among the captains and the fighting. On the fourth day she sped up town in haste, To get a nightgown and a clean shirt-waist. A MORAL POEM 23 80. . And as she went across town to her train, With Rachel in her thought, and Rachel's woe, The passing crowd went suddenly insane. A soldier yelled, "I tell you it is so." Sirens began to scream like souls in pain. From office-windows, like a storm of snow, On the Autumn air came drifts of paper falling O'er paranoiacs bellowing and bawling 81. That the war was over. Soldier-boys rocked high On the shoulders of a crowd of yelling 'gobs.' Street-girls, with meretricious hair awry And tear-tracked rouge, laughed shrill between their sobs, And waved wild arms to the November sky. And hordes and hosts and multitudes and mobs Poured up Fifth Avenue with career and caper Under the cataracts of fluttering paper, 82. That like the nightmare of a Ph. D. From the thronged windows without stint descended, Swamping the asphalt in a shallow sea. The city raved hysterical and splendid. Somehow there was appalling irony With all that desperate rejoicing blended, For it takes many a Moe Rabinovitch To tune a people up to concert pitch. 83. False tidings, too ! Two long months dragged away. Rachel at last began somewhat to mend. Sophia, who had nursed her night and day, Had not an ounce of energy to spend, And would be ill if she prolonged her stay. She kissed the forehead of her stricken friend, And after words like ointment sweet departed, Herself most comfortless and heavy-hearted. 24 SOPHIA TRENTON 84. She reached her room. A scanty pile of mail Seemed to be all that was expectant of her, An oil-promoter's legendary tale, Four bills, and a review in a brown cover. Wearily she unknotted her grey veil, And with a half mechanic hand turned over The dreary, drab, manila-wrapped collection, Which promised no nepenthe for dejection. 85. There was not much of anything to do. She felt she was too tired to go to bed. A restless lassitude upon her grew, And there was a strained feeling in her head. With trembling hands she picked up the review, And without thought or understanding read, Till with a shock of consciousness she came, Crusoe-like, on a footprint her own name. 86. A flying-man, whose inadvertent 'stall' Becomes a tail-spin, knows a ghastly thrill In the first nick of the appalling fall, And the just expectation of a spill. I do not say Sophia had at all The same emotion. But her heart stood still As death, and her sad eyes filled with the tears Of all the backed-up toil of seven years. 87. For the reviewer violently ripped The veil of her inconsequence away. There were live scorpions on the lash that whipped Her naked spirit in the light of day. Swift came the arrowy phrases poison-tipped With savage indignation, mixed with play More savage yet, judgment conjoined with gibe. He held to the tradition of his tribe. A MORAL POEM 25 88. What hurt most was a sentence at the end, Where after having thoroughly disjointed Her frame of things, he felt that he must mend His manners, and accordingly anointed Her wounds, somewhat in the manner of a friend. She quailed before that pity triple-pointed. He said : "Miss Trenton's venture was ill-starred. It is a pity she has worked so hard 89. At so preposterous a task." Sophia Dropped the three-column page. Could such things be? Was this indeed the end of her desire ? Here was another stroke of irony. A landbird when his storm-struck pinions tire Above the waste of infinite purple sea, And he sinks fluttering through the hopeless air, Gives way to no more innocent despair. 90. The keystone in the arch of her distress Was that she knew the gay indictment just, Good measure pressed down, neither more nor less. On what a quicksand had she built her trust ! "A gulf a void sense of senselessness" Enclosed her. She had written in the dust A poor scrawl, which the whirlwind from the waste Had in a moment utterly effaced. 91. With an "effort like an athlete's" she choked back The sentimental sob of her self-pity. She pulled her trunk out and began to pack. She would depart the miserable city. She would forget that she had been a hack, And that Percy once had seemed both wise and witty. She would go back to Schuyler Falls among The morning-glories, where once she had been young. 26 SOPHIA TRENTON 92. In April dogwood-trees would blossom there And the young beech put forth, and daffodils, She knew, that come before the swallows dare, And the arbutus patches in the hills Would take with beauty soft winds everywhere. She had ground so long at these mechanic mills For such a nugatory amount of grist That now she thought it proper to desist. 93. There were some books that must be carried back To the librarian. Without delay She snatched them up, and took the well-trod track For the nine hundredth and last time. Her way Wound, mid the architectural bric-a-brac Collegiate, through a lecture-hall that lay Across her path. She passed an open door And paused, for with a shock she heard once more 94. A mellow voice uplifted, pleasant, clear, That uttered many a seductive phrase, Fitted to charm the undergraduate ear, And set the imagination all ablaze. "Shelley," the voice said, "was a pioneer Of spiritual poetry, whose ways Lay through a region we approach with awe." Sophia looked within the room and saw 95. Amid the throng a girl who sat enthralled, With parted lips and fascinated eyes, And now and then, breathless with interest, scrawled Something that struck her with a fresh surprise. Pity rose in her as the seconds crawled Into the overpast eternities. Then Percy saw her, and whether from repentance Or other reason, staggered in his sentence. A MORAL POEM 27 96. Their eyes met. But he saw she understood That which throughout his lifetime he had striven To hide. She knew why all the sallow blood Flushed in his cheek. She knew that he had driven Her ship ashore amid a falling- flood, And what was even more, she had forgiven. That hurts. "My word," she thought, "the man's a bore." Smiling she turned away and shut the door. STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS