The Second Book of Modern Verse Part 40

The crying of gannets, The shrieking of terns, Are keening his dying High over the burns.

Grey silence of waters And wasting of lands And the wailing of music Down to the sands,

The wailing of music, And trailing of wind, The waters before him, The mountains behind, --

Alone at the gathering, Silent he stands, And the wail of his piping Cries over the lands,

To the moan of the waters, The drone of the foam, Where his soul, a white gannet, Wings silently home.

The Provinces. [Francis Carlin]

~O G.o.d that I May arise with the Gael To the song in the sky Over Inisfail!~

Ulster, your dark Mold for me; Munster, a lark Hold for me!

Connaght, a 'caoine'

Croon for me; Lienster, a mean Stone for me!

~O G.o.d that I May arise with the Gael To the song in the sky Over Inisfail!~

Omnium Exeunt in Mysterium. [George Sterling]

The stranger in my gates -- lo! that am I, And what my land of birth I do not know, Nor yet the hidden land to which I go.

One may be lord of many ere he die, And tell of many sorrows in one sigh, But know himself he shall not, nor his woe, Nor to what sea the tears of wisdom flow; Nor why one star is taken from the sky.

An urging is upon him evermore, And though he bide, his soul is wanderer, Scanning the shadows with a sense of haste -- Where fade the tracks of all who went before: A dim and solitary traveller On ways that end in evening and the waste.

Moth-Terror. [Benjamin De Ca.s.seres]

I have killed the moth flying around my night-light; wingless and dead it lies upon the floor.

(O who will kill the great Time-Moth that eats holes in my soul and that burrows in and through my secretest veils!) My will against its will, and no more will it fly at my night-light or be hidden behind the curtains that swing in the winds.

(But O who will shatter the Change-Moth that leaves me in rags -- tattered old tapestries that swing in the winds that blow out of Chaos!) Night-Moth, Change-Moth, Time-Moth, eaters of dreams and of me!

Old Age. [Cale Young Rice]

I have heard the wild geese, I have seen the leaves fall, There was frost last night On the garden wall.

It is gone to-day And I hear the wind call.

The wind? . . . That is all.

If the swallow will light When the evening is near; If the crane will not scream Like a soul in fear; I will think no more Of the dying year, And the wind, its seer.

Atropos. [John Myers O'Hara]

Atropos, dread One of the Three, Holding the thread Woven for me;

Grimly thy shears, Steely and bright, Menace the years Left for delight.

Grant it may chance, Just as they close, June may entrance Earth with the rose;

Reigning as though, Bliss to the breath, Endless and no Whisper of death.

Biographical Notes

[The format of these notes has been slightly altered. Most notably, dates (hopefully correct, but not entirely certain for the lesser known poets) have been added -- when available -- in square brackets after each name, and the number of entries for that author in this anthology is in parentheses.

In some cases there are several short poems under one entry.

These notes (first included in 1920, whereas the selections were made in 1919) combined with the searchability of electronic texts, renders the original Indexes of Authors and of First Lines obsolete, and so both have been dropped. Occasionally, relevant comments follow in angled brackets. -- A. L., 1998.]

Aiken, Conrad. [1889-1973] (3) Born at Savannah, Ga., Aug. 5, 1889. Received the degree of A.B.

from Harvard University in 1912 and in August of the same year married Miss Jessie McDonald, of Montreal, Canada. Mr. Aiken's first volume of poetry, "Earth Triumphant", was published in 1914, and has been followed by "Turns and Movies", 1916; "Nocturne of Remembered Spring", 1917; and "The Charnel Rose", 1918. Mr. Aiken is a keen and trenchant critic, as well as a poet, and his volume on the modern movement in poetry, "Skepticisms", is one of the finest and most stimulating contributions to the subject.

[Conrad Aiken won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1930 for "Selected Poems".

-- A. L., 1998.]

Akins, Zoe. [1886-1958] (1) Born at Humansville, Mo., Oct. 30, 1886. Educated at home and at Monticello Seminary, G.o.dfrey, Ill. Miss Akins began her literary work by contributing poems and critical articles to 'Reedy's Mirror', St. Louis, and in 1911 published her volume of poems, "Interpretations". The drama, however, soon began to absorb her, and she has had several plays produced, including "The Magical City", "Papa", a comedy, and "Decla.s.se", which won a great success with Ethel Barrymore in the leading role.