The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century Part 24

Tide that comes flooding up, Fill me a stirrup cup, Pledge me a parting sup, Now I go free.

Wall of the Palisades, I know where greener glades, Deeper glens, darker shades, Hemlock and pine, Far toward the morning lie Under a bluer sky, Lifted by cliffs as high, Haunts that are mine.

Marshes of Hackensack, See, I am going back Where the Quinnipiac Winds to the bay, Down its long meadow track, Piled in the myriad stack, Where in wide bivouac Camps the salt hay.

Spire of old Trinity, Never again to be Seamark and goal to me As I walk down; Chimes on the upper air, Calling in vain to prayer, Squandering your music where Roars the black town:

Bless me once ere I ride Off to G.o.d's countryside, Where in the treetops hide Belfry and bell; Tongues of the steeple towers, Telling the slow-paced hours-- Hail, thou still town of ours-- Bedlam, farewell!

Those who are familiar with Professor Beers's humour, as expressed in _The Ways of Yale,_ will wish that he had preserved also in this later book some of his whimsicalities, as in the poem _A Fish Story,_ which begins:

A whale of great porosity, And small specific gravity, Dived down with much velocity Beneath the sea's concavity.

But soon the weight of water Squeezed in his fat immensity, Which varied--as it ought to-- Inversely as his density.

Professor Charlton M. Lewis was born at Brooklyn on the fourth of March, 1866. He took his B.A. at Yale in 1886, and an LL.B at Columbia in 1889. For some years he was a practising lawyer in New York; in 1895 he became a member of the Yale Faculty. In 1903 he published _Gawayne and the Green Knight_, a long poem, in which humour and imagination are delightfully mingled. His lyric _Pro Patria_ (1937) is a good ill.u.s.tration of his poetic powers; it is indeed one of America's finest literary contributions to the war.

PRO PATRIA

Remember, as the flaming car Of ruin nearer rolls, That of our country's substance are Our bodies and our souls.

Her dust we are, and to her dust Our ashes shall descend: Who craves a lineage more august Or a diviner end?

By blessing of her fruitful dews, Her suns and winds and rains, We have her granite in our thews, Her iron in our veins.

And, sleeping in her sacred earth, The ever-living dead On the dark miracle of birth Their holy influence shed....

So, in the faith our fathers kept, We live, and long to die; To sleep forever, as they have slept, Under a sunlit sky;

Close-folded to our mother's heart To find our souls' release-- A secret coeternal part Of her eternal peace;--

Where Hood, Saint Helen's and Rainier, In vestal raiment, keep Inviolate through the varying year Their immemorial sleep;

Or where the meadow-lark, in coy But calm profusion, pours The liquid fragments of his joy On old colonial sh.o.r.es.

Professor Edward B. Reed, B.A. 1894, published in 1913 a tiny volume of academic verse, called _Lyra Yalensis_. This contains happily humorous comment on college life and college customs, and as the entire edition was almost immediately sold, the book has already become something of a rarity. In 1917, he collected the best of his more ambitious work in _Sea Moods_, of which one of the most impressive is

THE DAWN

He shook his head as he turned away-- "Is it life or death?" "We shall know by day."

Out from the wards where the sick folk lie, Out neath the black and bitter sky.

Past one o'clock and the wind is chill, The snow-clad streets are ghostly still; No friendly noise, no cheering light, So calm the city sleeps to-night, I think its soul has taken flight.

Back to the empty home--a thrill, A shudder at its darkened sill, For the clock chimes as on that morn, That happy day when she was born.

And now, inexorably slow, To life or death the hours go.

Time's wings are clipped; he scarce doth creep.

Tonight no drug could bring you sleep; Watch at the window for the day; 'Tis all that's left--to watch and pray.

But I think the prayer of an anguished heart Must pierce that bleak sky like a dart, And tear that pall of clouds apart.

The poplars, edging the frozen lawn, Shudder and whisper: "Wait till dawn."

Two spirits stand beside her bed Softly stroking her curly head.

Death whispers, "Come"--Life whispers, "Stay."

Child, little child, go not away.

Life pleads, "Remember"--and Death, "Forget."

Little child, little child, go not yet.

By all your mother's love and pain, Child of our heart, child of our brain, Stay with us; go not till you see The Fairyland that life can be.

The poplars, edging the frozen lawn, Are dancing and singing. "Thank G.o.d--the Dawn!"

Professor Frederick E. Pierce, B.A. 1904, has produced three volumes of poems, of which _The World that G.o.d Destroyed_ exhibits an epic sweep of the imagination. He imagines a world far off in s.p.a.ce, where every form of life has perished save rank vegetation. One day in their wanderings over the universe, Lucifer and Michael meet on this dead ball. A truce is declared and each expresses some of the wisdom bought by experience.

The upas dripped its poison on the ground Harmless; the silvery veil of fog went up From mouldering fen and cold, malarial pool, But brought no taint and threatened ill to none.

Far off adown the mountain's craggy side From time to time the avalanche thundered, sounding Like sport of giant children, and the rocks Whereon it smote re-echoed innocently.

Then in a pause of silence Lucifer Struck music from the harp again and sang.

"I am the shadow that the sunbeams bring, I am the thorn from which the roses spring; Without the thorn would be no blossoming, Nor were there shadow if there were no gleam.

I am a leaf before a wind that blows, I am the foam that down the current goes; I work a work on earth that no man knows, And G.o.d Works too,--I am not what I seem.

"There comes a purer morn whose stainless glow Shall cast no shadow on the ground below, And fairer flowers without the thorn shall blow, And earth at last fulfil her parent's dream.

Oh race of men who sin and know not why, I am as you and you are even as I; We all shall die at length and gladly die; Yet even our deaths shall be not what they seem."

Then Michael raised the golden lyre, and struck A note more solemn soft, and made reply.

"There dwelt a doubt within my mind of yore; I sought to end that doubt and laboured sore; But now I search its mystery no more, But leave it safe within the Eternal's hand.

The tiger hunts the lamb and yearns to kill, Himself by famine hunted, fiercer still; And much there is that seems unmingled ill; But G.o.d is wise, and G.o.d can understand.

"All things on earth in endless balance sway; Day follows night and night succeeds the day; And so the powers of good and evil may Work out the purpose that his wisdom planned.

Eternal day would parch the dewy mould, Eternal night would freeze the lands with cold; But wise was G.o.d who planned the world of old; I rest in Him for He can understand.

"Yet good and evil still their wills oppose; And serving both, we still must serve as foes On yon far globe that teems with human woes; And sin thou art, though G.o.d work through thy hand.

But here the race of man is now no more; The task is done, the long day's work is o'er; One hour I'll dream thee what thou wert of yore, Though changed thou art, too changed to understand."

All day sat Michael there with Lucifer Talking of things unknown to men, old tales And memories dating back beyond all time.

And all night long beneath the lonely stars, That watched no more the sins of man, they lay, The angel's lofty face at rest against The dark cheek scarred with thunder.

Morning came, And each departed on his separate way; But each looked back and lingered as he pa.s.sed.

Some of his best work, however, appears in short pieces that might best be described as lyrics of the farm, or, to use a t.i.tle discarded by Tennyson, _Idylls of the Hearth_. Mr. Pierce knows the lonely farm-houses of New England, both by inheritance and habitation, and is a true interpreter of the spirit of rural life.

One of the best-known of the group of Yale poets is Brian Hooker, who was graduated from Yale in 1902, and for some years was a member of the Faculty. His _Poems_ (1915) are an important addition to contemporary literature. He is a master of the sonnet-form, as any one may see for himself in reading

GHOSTS

The dead return to us continually; Not at the void of night, as fables feign, In some lone spot where murdered bones have lain Wailing for vengeance to the pa.s.ser-by; But in the merry clamour and full cry Of the brave noon, our dead whom we have slain And in forgotten graves hidden in vain, Rise up and stand beside us terribly.

Sick with the beauty of their dear decay We conjure them with laughters onerous And drunkenness of labour; yet not thus May we absolve ourselves of yesterday-- We cannot put those clinging arms away, Nor those glad faces yearning over us.

Mr. Hooker also includes in this volume a number of _Turns_, which he describes as "a new fixed form: Seven lines, in any rhythm, isometric and of not more than four feet; Rhyming AbacbcA, the first line and the last a Refrain; the Idea (as the name suggests) to Turn upon the recurrence of the Refrain at the end with a different sense from that which it bears at the beginning." For example: