No More Learning

? The Project Gutenberg EBook of American Poetry, 1922, by
Edna St. Vincent Millay and Robert Frost

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www. gutenberg. org


Title: American Poetry, 1922
A Miscellany

Author: Edna St. Vincent Millay
Robert Frost

Release Date: June 23, 2008 [EBook #25880]
[Date last updated: January 2, 2009]

Language: English


*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AMERICAN POETRY, 1922 ***




Produced by David Starner, Huub Bakker, Stephen Hope and
the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
http://www. pgdp. net (This book was produced from scanned
images of public domain material from the Google Print
project. )





Transcriber's Notes

Some text styles have been preserved in this text by enclosing between
special characters. Italics uses _underlines_ and small caps uses
~tildes~.

Font sizes are not preserved.






AMERICAN POETRY

1922

A MISCELLANY


[Illustration]


NEW YORK

HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY




COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY
HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY, INC.


PRINTED IN THE U. S. A. BY
THE QUINN & BODEN COMPANY
RAHWAY, N. J.




A FOREWORD


When the first Miscellany of American Poetry appeared in 1920,
innumerable were the questions asked by both readers and reviewers of
publishers and contributors alike. The modest note on the jacket
appeared to satisfy no one. The volume purported to have no editor, yet
a collection without an editor was pronounced preposterous. It was
obviously not the organ of a school, yet it did not seem to have been
compiled to exploit any particular phase of American life; neither
Nature, Love, Patriotism, Propaganda, nor Philosophy could be acclaimed
as its reason for being, and it was certainly not intended, as has been
so frequent of late, to bring a cheerful absence of mind to the
world-weary during an unoccupied ten minutes. Again, it was exclusive
not inclusive, since its object was, evidently, not the meritorious if
impossible one of attempting to be a compendium of present-day American
verse.

But the publisher's note had stated one thing quite clearly, that the
Miscellany was to be a biennial. Two years have passed, and with the
second volume it has seemed best to state at once the reasons which
actuated its contributors to join in such a venture.

In the first place, the plan of the _Miscellany_ is frankly imitative.
For some years now there has been published in England an anthology
entitled Georgian Poetry. The Miscellany is intended to be an American
companion to that publication. The dissimilarities of temperament, range
and choice of subjects are manifest, but the outstanding difference is
this: _Georgian Poetry_ has an editor, and the poems it contains may be
taken as that editor's reaction to the poetry of the day. The
_Miscellany_, on the other hand, has no editor; it is no one person's
choice which forms it; it is not an attempt to throw into relief any
particular group or stress any particular tendency. It does disclose the
most recent work of certain representative figures in contemporary
American literature. The poets who appear here have come together by
mutual accord and, although they may invite others to join them in
subsequent volumes as circumstance dictates, each one stands (as all
newcomers also must stand) as the exponent of fresh and strikingly
diverse qualities in our native poetry. It is as if a dozen unacademic
painters, separated by temperament and distance, were to arrange to have
an exhibition every two years of their latest work. They would not
pretend that they were the only painters worthy of a public showing;
they would maintain that their work was, generally speaking, most
interesting to one another. Their gallery would necessarily be limited;
but it would be flexible enough to admit, with every fresh exhibit,
three or four new members who had achieved an importance and an idiom
of their own. This is just what the original contributors to the
_Miscellany_ have done.

The newcomers--H. D. , Alfred Kreymborg, and Edna St. Vincent
Millay--have taken their places with the same absence of judge or jury
that marks any "society of independents. " There is no hanging committee;
no organizer of "position. " Two years ago the alphabet determined the
arrangement; this time seniority has been the sole arbiter of
precedence. Furthermore--and this can not be too often repeated--there
has been no editor. To be painstakingly precise, each contributor has
been his own editor. As such, he has chosen his own selections and
determined the order in which they are to be printed, but he has had no
authority over either the choice or grouping of his fellow exhibitors'
contributions. To one of the members has been delegated the merely
mechanical labors of assembling, proof-reading, and seeing the volume
through the press. The absence of E. A. Robinson from this year's
_Miscellany_ is a source of regret not only to all the contributors but
to the poet himself. Mr. Robinson has written nothing since his
Collected Poems with the exception of a long poem--a volume in
itself--but he hopes to appear in any subsequent collection.

It should be added that this is not a haphazard anthology of picked-over
poetry. The poems that follow are new. They are new not only in the
sense that (with two exceptions) they cannot be found in book form, but
most of them have never previously been published. Certain of the
selections have appeared in recent magazines and these are reprinted by
permission of _The Century_, _The Yale Review_, _Poetry: A Magazine of
Verse_, _The New Republic_, _Harper's_, _Scribner's_, _The Bookman_,
_The Freeman_, _Broom_, _The Dial_, _The Atlantic Monthly_, _Farm and
Fireside_, _The Measure_, and _The Literary Review_. Vachel Lindsay's "I
Know All This When Gipsy Fiddles Cry" is a revised version of the poem
of that name which was printed in _The Enchanted Years_.




CONTENTS


_A Foreword_ _III_

AMY LOWELL

Lilacs _3_

Twenty-four Hokku on a Modern Theme _8_

The Swans _13_

Prime _16_

Vespers _17_

In Excelsis _18_

La Ronde du Diable _20_

ROBERT FROST

Fire and Ice _25_

The Grindstone _26_

The Witch of Coos _29_

A Brook in the City _37_

Design _38_

CARL SANDBURG

And So To-day _41_

California City Landscape _49_

Upstream _51_

Windflower Leaf _52_

VACHEL LINDSAY

In Praise of Johnny Appleseed _55_

I Know All This When Gipsy Fiddles Cry _66_

JAMES OPPENHEIM

Hebrews _75_

ALFRED KREYMBORG

Adagio: A Duet _79_

Die Kuche _80_

Rain _81_

Peasant _83_

Bubbles _85_

Dirge _87_

Colophon _88_

SARA TEASDALE

Wisdom _91_

Places _92_
_Twilight_ (Tucson)
_Full Moon_ (Santa Barbara)
_Winter Sun_ (Lenox)
_Evening_ (Nahant)

Words for an Old Air _97_

Those Who Love _98_

Two Songs for Solitude _99_
_The Crystal Gazer_
_The Solitary_

LOUIS UNTERMEYER

Monolog from a Mattress _103_

Waters of Babylon _110_

The Flaming Circle _112_

Portrait of a Machine _114_

Roast Leviathan _115_

JOHN GOULD FLETCHER

A Rebel _127_

The Rock _128_

Blue Water _129_

Prayers for Wind _130_

Impromptu _131_

Chinese Poet Among Barbarians _132_

Snowy Mountains _133_

The Future _134_

Upon the Hill _136_

The Enduring _137_

JEAN STARR UNTERMEYER

Old Man _141_

Tone Picture _142_

They Say-- _143_

Rescue _144_

Mater in Extremis _146_

Self-Rejected _147_

H. D.

Holy Satyr _151_

Lais _153_

Heliodora _156_

Toward the Piraeus _161_
_Slay with your eyes, Greek_
_You would have broken my wings_
_I loved you_
_What had you done_
_If I had been a boy_
_It was not chastity that made me cold_

CONRAD AIKEN

Seven Twilights _171_
_The ragged pilgrim on the road to nowhere_
_Now by the wall of the ancient town_
_When the tree bares, the music of it changes_
_"This is the hour," she says, "of transmutation"_
_Now the great wheel of darkness and low clouds_
_Heaven, you say, will be a field in April_
_In the long silence of the sea_

Tetelestai _184_

EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY

Eight Sonnets _193_
_When you, that at this moment are to me_
_What's this of death, from you who never will die_
_I know I am but summer to your heart_
_Here is a wound that never will heal, I know_
_What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why_
_Euclid alone has looked on Beauty bare_
_Oh, oh, you will be sorry for that word! _
_Say what you will, and scratch my heart to find_

BIBLIOGRAPHY _201_




AMY LOWELL




LILACS


Lilacs,
False blue,
White,
Purple,
Color of lilac,
Your great puffs of flowers
Are everywhere in this my New England.
Among your heart-shaped leaves
Orange orioles hop like music-box birds and sing
Their little weak soft songs;
In the crooks of your branches
The bright eyes of song sparrows sitting on spotted eggs
Peer restlessly through the light and shadow
Of all Springs.
Lilacs in dooryards
Holding quiet conversations with an early moon;
Lilacs watching a deserted house
Settling sideways into the grass of an old road;
Lilacs, wind-beaten, staggering under a lopsided shock of bloom
Above a cellar dug into a hill.
You are everywhere.
You were everywhere.
You tapped the window when the preacher preached his sermon,
And ran along the road beside the boy going to school.
You stood by pasture-bars to give the cows good milking,
You persuaded the housewife that her dish-pan was of silver
And her husband an image of pure gold.
You flaunted the fragrance of your blossoms
Through the wide doors of Custom Houses--
You, and sandal-wood, and tea,
Charging the noses of quill-driving clerks
When a ship was in from China.
You called to them: "Goose-quill men, goose-quill men,
May is a month for flitting,"
Until they writhed on their high stools
And wrote poetry on their letter-sheets behind the propped-up
ledgers.
Paradoxical New England clerks,
Writing inventories in ledgers, reading the "Song of Solomon" at
night,
So many verses before bedtime,
Because it was the Bible.
The dead fed you
Amid the slant stones of graveyards.
Pale ghosts who planted you
Came in the night time
And let their thin hair blow through your clustered stems.
You are of the green sea,
And of the stone hills which reach a long distance.
You are of elm-shaded streets with little shops where they sell
kites and marbles,
You are of great parks where every one walks and nobody is at home.
You cover the blind sides of greenhouses
And lean over the top to say a hurry-word through the glass
To your friends, the grapes, inside.

Lilacs,
False blue,
White,
Purple,
Color of lilac,
You have forgotten your Eastern origin,
The veiled women with eyes like panthers,
The swollen, aggressive turbans of jeweled Pashas.
Now you are a very decent flower,
A reticent flower,
A curiously clear-cut, candid flower,
Standing beside clean doorways,
Friendly to a house-cat and a pair of spectacles,
Making poetry out of a bit of moonlight
And a hundred or two sharp blossoms.

Maine knows you,
Has for years and years;
New Hampshire knows you,
And Massachusetts
And Vermont.
Cape Cod starts you along the beaches to Rhode Island;
Connecticut takes you from a river to the sea.
You are brighter than apples,
Sweeter than tulips,
You are the great flood of our souls
Bursting above the leaf-shapes of our hearts,
You are the smell of all Summers,
The love of wives and children,
The recollection of the gardens of little children,
You are State Houses and Charters
And the familiar treading of the foot to and fro on a road it knows.
May is lilac here in New England,
May is a thrush singing "Sun up! " on a tip-top ash-tree,
May is white clouds behind pine-trees
Puffed out and marching upon a blue sky.
May is a green as no other,
May is much sun through small leaves,
May is soft earth,
And apple-blossoms,
And windows open to a South wind.
May is a full light wind of lilac
From Canada to Narragansett Bay.

Lilacs,
False blue,
White,
Purple,
Color of lilac,
Heart-leaves of lilac all over New England,
Roots of lilac under all the soil of New England,
Lilac in me because I am New England,
Because my roots are in it,
Because my leaves are of it,
Because my flowers are for it,
Because it is my country
And I speak to it of itself
And sing of it with my own voice
Since certainly it is mine.




TWENTY-FOUR HOKKU ON A MODERN THEME


I

Again the larkspur,
Heavenly blue in my garden.
They, at least, unchanged.


II

How have I hurt you?
You look at me with pale eyes,
But these are my tears.


III

Morning and evening--
Yet for us once long ago
Was no division.


IV

I hear many words.
Set an hour when I may come
Or remain silent.


V

In the ghostly dawn
I write new words for your ears--
Even now you sleep.


VI

This then is morning.
Have you no comfort for me
Cold-colored flowers?


VII

My eyes are weary
Following you everywhere.
Short, oh short, the days!


VIII

When the flower falls
The leaf is no more cherished.
Every day I fear.


IX

Even when you smile
Sorrow is behind your eyes.
Pity me, therefore.


X

Laugh--it is nothing.
To others you may seem gay,
I watch with grieved eyes.


XI

Take it, this white rose.
Stems of roses do not bleed;
Your fingers are safe.


XII

As a river-wind
Hurling clouds at a bright moon,
So am I to you.


XIII

Watching the iris,
The faint and fragile petals--
How am I worthy?


XIV

Down a red river
I drift in a broken skiff.
Are you then so brave?


XV

Night lies beside me
Chaste and cold as a sharp sword.
It and I alone.


XVI

Last night it rained.
Now, in the desolate dawn,
Crying of blue jays.


XVII

Foolish so to grieve,
Autumn has its colored leaves--
But before they turn?


XVIII

Afterwards I think:
Poppies bloom when it thunders.
Is this not enough?


XIX

Love is a game--yes?
I think it is a drowning:
Black willows and stars.


XX

When the aster fades
The creeper flaunts in crimson.
Always another!


XXI

Turning from the page,
Blind with a night of labor,
I hear morning crows.


XXII

A cloud of lilies,
Or else you walk before me.
Who could see clearly?


XXIII

Sweet smell of wet flowers
Over an evening garden.
Your portrait, perhaps?


XXIV

Staying in my room,
I thought of the new Spring leaves.
That day was happy.




THE SWANS


The swans float and float
Along the moat
Around the Bishop's garden,
And the white clouds push
Across a blue sky
With edges that seem to draw in and harden.

Two slim men of white bronze
Beat each with a hammer on the end of a rod
The hours of God.
Striking a bell,
They do it well.
And the echoes jump, and tinkle, and swell
In the Cathedral's carved stone polygons.

The swans float
About the moat,
And another swan sits still in the air
Above the old inn.
He gazes into the street
And swims the cold and the heat,
He has always been there,
At least so say the cobbles in the square.
They listen to the beat
Of the hammered bell,
And think of the feet
Which beat upon their tops;
But what they think they do not tell.

And the swans who float
Up and down the moat
Gobble the bread the Bishop feeds them.
The slim bronze men beat the hour again,
But only the gargoyles up in the hard blue air heed them.

When the Bishop says a prayer,
And the choir sing "Amen,"
The hammers break in on them there:
Clang! Clang! Beware! Beware!
The carved swan looks down at the passing men,
And the cobbles wink: "An hour has gone again. "
But the people kneeling before the Bishop's chair
Forget the passing over the cobbles in the square.

An hour of day and an hour of night,
And the clouds float away in a red-splashed light.
The sun, quotha? or white, white
Smoke with fire all alight.

An old roof crashing on a Bishop's tomb,
Swarms of men with a thirst for room,
And the footsteps blur to a shower, shower, shower,
Of men passing--passing--every hour,
With arms of power, and legs of power,
And power in their strong, hard minds.
No need then
For the slim bronze men
Who beat God's hours: Prime, Tierce, None.
Who wants to hear? No one.
We will melt them, and mold them,
And make them a stem
For a banner gorged with blood,
For a blue-mouthed torch.
So the men rush like clouds,
They strike their iron edges on the Bishop's chair
And fling down the lanterns by the tower stair.
They rip the Bishop out of his tomb
And break the mitre off of his head.
"See," say they, "the man is dead;
He cannot shiver or sing.
We'll toss for his ring. "

The cobbles see this all along the street
Coming--coming--on countless feet.
And the clockmen mark the hours as they go.
But slow--slow--
The swans float
In the Bishop's moat.
And the inn swan
Sits on and on,
Staring before him with cold glass eyes.
Only the Bishop walks serene,
Pleased with his church, pleased with his house,
Pleased with the sound of the hammered bell,
Beating his doom.
Saying "Boom! Boom! Room! Room! "
He is old, and kind, and deaf, and blind,
And very, very pleased with his charming moat
And the swans which float.




PRIME


Your voice is like bells over roofs at dawn
When a bird flies
And the sky changes to a fresher color.

Speak, speak, Beloved.
Say little things
For my ears to catch
And run with them to my heart.




VESPERS


Last night, at sunset,
The foxgloves were like tall altar candles.
Could I have lifted you to the roof of the greenhouse, my Dear,
I should have understood their burning.




IN EXCELSIS


You--you--
Your shadow is sunlight on a plate of silver;
Your footsteps, the seeding-place of lilies;
Your hands moving, a chime of bells across a windless air.

The movement of your hands is the long, golden running of light from
a rising sun;
It is the hopping of birds upon a garden-path.

As the perfume of jonquils, you come forth in the morning.
Young horses are not more sudden than your thoughts,
Your words are bees about a pear-tree,
Your fancies are the gold-and-black striped wasps buzzing among red
apples.
I drink your lips,
I eat the whiteness of your hands and feet.
My mouth is open,
As a new jar I am empty and open.
Like white water are you who fill the cup of my mouth,
Like a brook of water thronged with lilies.

You are frozen as the clouds,
You are far and sweet as the high clouds.
I dare reach to you,
I dare touch the rim of your brightness.
I leap beyond the winds,
I cry and shout,
For my throat is keen as a sword
Sharpened on a hone of ivory.
My throat sings the joy of my eyes,
The rushing gladness of my love.

How has the rainbow fallen upon my heart?
How have I snared the seas to lie in my fingers
And caught the sky to be a cover for my head?
How have you come to dwell with me,
Compassing me with the four circles of your mystic lightness,
So that I say "Glory! Glory! " and bow before you
As to a shrine?

Do I tease myself that morning is morning and a day after?
Do I think the air a condescension,
The earth a politeness,
Heaven a boon deserving thanks?
So you--air--earth--heaven--
I do not thank you,
I take you,
I live.
And those things which I say in consequence
Are rubies mortised in a gate of stone.




LA RONDE DU DIABLE


"Here we go round the ivy-bush,"
And that's a tune we all dance to.
Little poet people snatching ivy,
Trying to prevent one another from snatching ivy.
If you get a leaf, there's another for me;
Look at the bush.
But I want your leaf, Brother, and you mine,
Therefore, of course, we push.

"Here we go round the laurel-tree. "
Do we want laurels for ourselves most,
Or most that no one else shall have any?
We cannot stop to discuss the question.
We cannot stop to plait them into crowns
Or notice whether they become us.
We scarcely see the laurel-tree,
The crowd about us is all we see,
And there's no room in it for you and me.
Therefore, Sisters, it's my belief
We've none of us very much chance at a leaf.

"Here we go round the barberry-bush.
The dissimilarities of temperament, range
and choice of subjects are manifest, but the outstanding difference is
this: _Georgian Poetry_ has an editor, and the poems it contains may be
taken as that editor's reaction to the poetry of the day. The
_Miscellany_, on the other hand, has no editor; it is no one person's
choice which forms it; it is not an attempt to throw into relief any
particular group or stress any particular tendency. It does disclose the
most recent work of certain representative figures in contemporary
American literature. The poets who appear here have come together by
mutual accord and, although they may invite others to join them in
subsequent volumes as circumstance dictates, each one stands (as all
newcomers also must stand) as the exponent of fresh and strikingly
diverse qualities in our native poetry. It is as if a dozen unacademic
painters, separated by temperament and distance, were to arrange to have
an exhibition every two years of their latest work. They would not
pretend that they were the only painters worthy of a public showing;
they would maintain that their work was, generally speaking, most
interesting to one another. Their gallery would necessarily be limited;
but it would be flexible enough to admit, with every fresh exhibit,
three or four new members who had achieved an importance and an idiom
of their own. This is just what the original contributors to the
_Miscellany_ have done.

The newcomers--H. D. , Alfred Kreymborg, and Edna St. Vincent
Millay--have taken their places with the same absence of judge or jury
that marks any "society of independents. " There is no hanging committee;
no organizer of "position. " Two years ago the alphabet determined the
arrangement; this time seniority has been the sole arbiter of
precedence. Furthermore--and this can not be too often repeated--there
has been no editor. To be painstakingly precise, each contributor has
been his own editor. As such, he has chosen his own selections and
determined the order in which they are to be printed, but he has had no
authority over either the choice or grouping of his fellow exhibitors'
contributions. To one of the members has been delegated the merely
mechanical labors of assembling, proof-reading, and seeing the volume
through the press. The absence of E. A. Robinson from this year's
_Miscellany_ is a source of regret not only to all the contributors but
to the poet himself. Mr. Robinson has written nothing since his
Collected Poems with the exception of a long poem--a volume in
itself--but he hopes to appear in any subsequent collection.

It should be added that this is not a haphazard anthology of picked-over
poetry. The poems that follow are new. They are new not only in the
sense that (with two exceptions) they cannot be found in book form, but
most of them have never previously been published. Certain of the
selections have appeared in recent magazines and these are reprinted by
permission of _The Century_, _The Yale Review_, _Poetry: A Magazine of
Verse_, _The New Republic_, _Harper's_, _Scribner's_, _The Bookman_,
_The Freeman_, _Broom_, _The Dial_, _The Atlantic Monthly_, _Farm and
Fireside_, _The Measure_, and _The Literary Review_. Vachel Lindsay's "I
Know All This When Gipsy Fiddles Cry" is a revised version of the poem
of that name which was printed in _The Enchanted Years_.




CONTENTS


_A Foreword_ _III_

AMY LOWELL

Lilacs _3_

Twenty-four Hokku on a Modern Theme _8_

The Swans _13_

Prime _16_

Vespers _17_

In Excelsis _18_

La Ronde du Diable _20_

ROBERT FROST

Fire and Ice _25_

The Grindstone _26_

The Witch of Coos _29_

A Brook in the City _37_

Design _38_

CARL SANDBURG

And So To-day _41_

California City Landscape _49_

Upstream _51_

Windflower Leaf _52_

VACHEL LINDSAY

In Praise of Johnny Appleseed _55_

I Know All This When Gipsy Fiddles Cry _66_

JAMES OPPENHEIM

Hebrews _75_

ALFRED KREYMBORG

Adagio: A Duet _79_

Die Kuche _80_

Rain _81_

Peasant _83_

Bubbles _85_

Dirge _87_

Colophon _88_

SARA TEASDALE

Wisdom _91_

Places _92_
_Twilight_ (Tucson)
_Full Moon_ (Santa Barbara)
_Winter Sun_ (Lenox)
_Evening_ (Nahant)

Words for an Old Air _97_

Those Who Love _98_

Two Songs for Solitude _99_
_The Crystal Gazer_
_The Solitary_

LOUIS UNTERMEYER

Monolog from a Mattress _103_

Waters of Babylon _110_

The Flaming Circle _112_

Portrait of a Machine _114_

Roast Leviathan _115_

JOHN GOULD FLETCHER

A Rebel _127_

The Rock _128_

Blue Water _129_

Prayers for Wind _130_

Impromptu _131_

Chinese Poet Among Barbarians _132_

Snowy Mountains _133_

The Future _134_

Upon the Hill _136_

The Enduring _137_

JEAN STARR UNTERMEYER

Old Man _141_

Tone Picture _142_

They Say-- _143_

Rescue _144_

Mater in Extremis _146_

Self-Rejected _147_

H. D.

Holy Satyr _151_

Lais _153_

Heliodora _156_

Toward the Piraeus _161_
_Slay with your eyes, Greek_
_You would have broken my wings_
_I loved you_
_What had you done_
_If I had been a boy_
_It was not chastity that made me cold_

CONRAD AIKEN

Seven Twilights _171_
_The ragged pilgrim on the road to nowhere_
_Now by the wall of the ancient town_
_When the tree bares, the music of it changes_
_"This is the hour," she says, "of transmutation"_
_Now the great wheel of darkness and low clouds_
_Heaven, you say, will be a field in April_
_In the long silence of the sea_

Tetelestai _184_

EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY

Eight Sonnets _193_
_When you, that at this moment are to me_
_What's this of death, from you who never will die_
_I know I am but summer to your heart_
_Here is a wound that never will heal, I know_
_What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why_
_Euclid alone has looked on Beauty bare_
_Oh, oh, you will be sorry for that word! _
_Say what you will, and scratch my heart to find_

BIBLIOGRAPHY _201_




AMY LOWELL




LILACS


Lilacs,
False blue,
White,
Purple,
Color of lilac,
Your great puffs of flowers
Are everywhere in this my New England.
Among your heart-shaped leaves
Orange orioles hop like music-box birds and sing
Their little weak soft songs;
In the crooks of your branches
The bright eyes of song sparrows sitting on spotted eggs
Peer restlessly through the light and shadow
Of all Springs.
Lilacs in dooryards
Holding quiet conversations with an early moon;
Lilacs watching a deserted house
Settling sideways into the grass of an old road;
Lilacs, wind-beaten, staggering under a lopsided shock of bloom
Above a cellar dug into a hill.
You are everywhere.
You were everywhere.
You tapped the window when the preacher preached his sermon,
And ran along the road beside the boy going to school.
You stood by pasture-bars to give the cows good milking,
You persuaded the housewife that her dish-pan was of silver
And her husband an image of pure gold.
You flaunted the fragrance of your blossoms
Through the wide doors of Custom Houses--
You, and sandal-wood, and tea,
Charging the noses of quill-driving clerks
When a ship was in from China.
You called to them: "Goose-quill men, goose-quill men,
May is a month for flitting,"
Until they writhed on their high stools
And wrote poetry on their letter-sheets behind the propped-up
ledgers.
Paradoxical New England clerks,
Writing inventories in ledgers, reading the "Song of Solomon" at
night,
So many verses before bedtime,
Because it was the Bible.
The dead fed you
Amid the slant stones of graveyards.
Pale ghosts who planted you
Came in the night time
And let their thin hair blow through your clustered stems.
You are of the green sea,
And of the stone hills which reach a long distance.
You are of elm-shaded streets with little shops where they sell
kites and marbles,
You are of great parks where every one walks and nobody is at home.
You cover the blind sides of greenhouses
And lean over the top to say a hurry-word through the glass
To your friends, the grapes, inside.

Lilacs,
False blue,
White,
Purple,
Color of lilac,
You have forgotten your Eastern origin,
The veiled women with eyes like panthers,
The swollen, aggressive turbans of jeweled Pashas.
Now you are a very decent flower,
A reticent flower,
A curiously clear-cut, candid flower,
Standing beside clean doorways,
Friendly to a house-cat and a pair of spectacles,
Making poetry out of a bit of moonlight
And a hundred or two sharp blossoms.

Maine knows you,
Has for years and years;
New Hampshire knows you,
And Massachusetts
And Vermont.
Cape Cod starts you along the beaches to Rhode Island;
Connecticut takes you from a river to the sea.
You are brighter than apples,
Sweeter than tulips,
You are the great flood of our souls
Bursting above the leaf-shapes of our hearts,
You are the smell of all Summers,
The love of wives and children,
The recollection of the gardens of little children,
You are State Houses and Charters
And the familiar treading of the foot to and fro on a road it knows.
May is lilac here in New England,
May is a thrush singing "Sun up! " on a tip-top ash-tree,
May is white clouds behind pine-trees
Puffed out and marching upon a blue sky.
May is a green as no other,
May is much sun through small leaves,
May is soft earth,
And apple-blossoms,
And windows open to a South wind.
May is a full light wind of lilac
From Canada to Narragansett Bay.

Lilacs,
False blue,
White,
Purple,
Color of lilac,
Heart-leaves of lilac all over New England,
Roots of lilac under all the soil of New England,
Lilac in me because I am New England,
Because my roots are in it,
Because my leaves are of it,
Because my flowers are for it,
Because it is my country
And I speak to it of itself
And sing of it with my own voice
Since certainly it is mine.




TWENTY-FOUR HOKKU ON A MODERN THEME


I

Again the larkspur,
Heavenly blue in my garden.
They, at least, unchanged.


II

How have I hurt you?
You look at me with pale eyes,
But these are my tears.


III

Morning and evening--
Yet for us once long ago
Was no division.


IV

I hear many words.
Set an hour when I may come
Or remain silent.


V

In the ghostly dawn
I write new words for your ears--
Even now you sleep.


VI

This then is morning.
Have you no comfort for me
Cold-colored flowers?


VII

My eyes are weary
Following you everywhere.
Short, oh short, the days!


VIII

When the flower falls
The leaf is no more cherished.
Every day I fear.


IX

Even when you smile
Sorrow is behind your eyes.
Pity me, therefore.


X

Laugh--it is nothing.
To others you may seem gay,
I watch with grieved eyes.


XI

Take it, this white rose.
Stems of roses do not bleed;
Your fingers are safe.


XII

As a river-wind
Hurling clouds at a bright moon,
So am I to you.


XIII

Watching the iris,
The faint and fragile petals--
How am I worthy?


XIV

Down a red river
I drift in a broken skiff.
Are you then so brave?


XV

Night lies beside me
Chaste and cold as a sharp sword.
It and I alone.


XVI

Last night it rained.
Now, in the desolate dawn,
Crying of blue jays.


XVII

Foolish so to grieve,
Autumn has its colored leaves--
But before they turn?


XVIII

Afterwards I think:
Poppies bloom when it thunders.
Is this not enough?


XIX

Love is a game--yes?
I think it is a drowning:
Black willows and stars.


XX

When the aster fades
The creeper flaunts in crimson.
Always another!


XXI

Turning from the page,
Blind with a night of labor,
I hear morning crows.


XXII

A cloud of lilies,
Or else you walk before me.
Who could see clearly?


XXIII

Sweet smell of wet flowers
Over an evening garden.
Your portrait, perhaps?


XXIV

Staying in my room,
I thought of the new Spring leaves.
That day was happy.




THE SWANS


The swans float and float
Along the moat
Around the Bishop's garden,
And the white clouds push
Across a blue sky
With edges that seem to draw in and harden.

Two slim men of white bronze
Beat each with a hammer on the end of a rod
The hours of God.
Striking a bell,
They do it well.
And the echoes jump, and tinkle, and swell
In the Cathedral's carved stone polygons.

The swans float
About the moat,
And another swan sits still in the air
Above the old inn.
He gazes into the street
And swims the cold and the heat,
He has always been there,
At least so say the cobbles in the square.
They listen to the beat
Of the hammered bell,
And think of the feet
Which beat upon their tops;
But what they think they do not tell.

And the swans who float
Up and down the moat
Gobble the bread the Bishop feeds them.
The slim bronze men beat the hour again,
But only the gargoyles up in the hard blue air heed them.

When the Bishop says a prayer,
And the choir sing "Amen,"
The hammers break in on them there:
Clang! Clang! Beware! Beware!
The carved swan looks down at the passing men,
And the cobbles wink: "An hour has gone again. "
But the people kneeling before the Bishop's chair
Forget the passing over the cobbles in the square.

An hour of day and an hour of night,
And the clouds float away in a red-splashed light.
The sun, quotha? or white, white
Smoke with fire all alight.

An old roof crashing on a Bishop's tomb,
Swarms of men with a thirst for room,
And the footsteps blur to a shower, shower, shower,
Of men passing--passing--every hour,
With arms of power, and legs of power,
And power in their strong, hard minds.
No need then
For the slim bronze men
Who beat God's hours: Prime, Tierce, None.
Who wants to hear? No one.
We will melt them, and mold them,
And make them a stem
For a banner gorged with blood,
For a blue-mouthed torch.
So the men rush like clouds,
They strike their iron edges on the Bishop's chair
And fling down the lanterns by the tower stair.
They rip the Bishop out of his tomb
And break the mitre off of his head.
"See," say they, "the man is dead;
He cannot shiver or sing.
We'll toss for his ring. "

The cobbles see this all along the street
Coming--coming--on countless feet.
And the clockmen mark the hours as they go.
But slow--slow--
The swans float
In the Bishop's moat.
And the inn swan
Sits on and on,
Staring before him with cold glass eyes.
Only the Bishop walks serene,
Pleased with his church, pleased with his house,
Pleased with the sound of the hammered bell,
Beating his doom.
Saying "Boom! Boom! Room! Room! "
He is old, and kind, and deaf, and blind,
And very, very pleased with his charming moat
And the swans which float.




PRIME


Your voice is like bells over roofs at dawn
When a bird flies
And the sky changes to a fresher color.

Speak, speak, Beloved.
Say little things
For my ears to catch
And run with them to my heart.




VESPERS


Last night, at sunset,
The foxgloves were like tall altar candles.
Could I have lifted you to the roof of the greenhouse, my Dear,
I should have understood their burning.




IN EXCELSIS


You--you--
Your shadow is sunlight on a plate of silver;
Your footsteps, the seeding-place of lilies;
Your hands moving, a chime of bells across a windless air.

The movement of your hands is the long, golden running of light from
a rising sun;
It is the hopping of birds upon a garden-path.

As the perfume of jonquils, you come forth in the morning.
Young horses are not more sudden than your thoughts,
Your words are bees about a pear-tree,
Your fancies are the gold-and-black striped wasps buzzing among red
apples.
I drink your lips,
I eat the whiteness of your hands and feet.
My mouth is open,
As a new jar I am empty and open.
Like white water are you who fill the cup of my mouth,
Like a brook of water thronged with lilies.

You are frozen as the clouds,
You are far and sweet as the high clouds.
I dare reach to you,
I dare touch the rim of your brightness.
I leap beyond the winds,
I cry and shout,
For my throat is keen as a sword
Sharpened on a hone of ivory.
My throat sings the joy of my eyes,
The rushing gladness of my love.

How has the rainbow fallen upon my heart?
How have I snared the seas to lie in my fingers
And caught the sky to be a cover for my head?
How have you come to dwell with me,
Compassing me with the four circles of your mystic lightness,
So that I say "Glory! Glory! " and bow before you
As to a shrine?

Do I tease myself that morning is morning and a day after?
Do I think the air a condescension,
The earth a politeness,
Heaven a boon deserving thanks?
So you--air--earth--heaven--
I do not thank you,
I take you,
I live.
And those things which I say in consequence
Are rubies mortised in a gate of stone.




LA RONDE DU DIABLE


"Here we go round the ivy-bush,"
And that's a tune we all dance to.
Little poet people snatching ivy,
Trying to prevent one another from snatching ivy.
If you get a leaf, there's another for me;
Look at the bush.
But I want your leaf, Brother, and you mine,
Therefore, of course, we push.

"Here we go round the laurel-tree. "
Do we want laurels for ourselves most,
Or most that no one else shall have any?
We cannot stop to discuss the question.
We cannot stop to plait them into crowns
Or notice whether they become us.
We scarcely see the laurel-tree,
The crowd about us is all we see,
And there's no room in it for you and me.
Therefore, Sisters, it's my belief
We've none of us very much chance at a leaf.

"Here we go round the barberry-bush. "
It's a bitter, blood-red fruit at best,
Which puckers the mouth and burns the heart.
To tell the truth, only one or two
Want the berries enough to strive
For more than he has, more than she.
An acid berry for you and me.
Abundance of berries for all who will eat,
But an aching meat.
That's poetry.
And who wants to swallow a mouthful of sorrow?
The world is old and our century
Must be well along, and we've no time to waste.
Make haste, Brothers and Sisters, push
With might and main round the ivy-bush,
Struggle and pull at the laurel-tree,
And leave the barberries be
For poor lost lunatics like me,
Who set them so high
They overtop the sun in the sky.
Does it matter at all that we don't know why?



ROBERT FROST




FIRE AND ICE


Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To know that for destruction ice
Is also great,
And would suffice.




THE GRINDSTONE


Having a wheel and four legs of its own
Has never availed the cumbersome grindstone
To get it anywhere that I can see.
These hands have helped it go and even race;
Not all the motion, though, they ever lent,
Not all the miles it may have thought it went,
Have got it one step from the starting place.
It stands beside the same old apple tree.
The shadow of the apple tree is thin
Upon it now; its feet are fast in snow.
All other farm machinery's gone in,
And some of it on no more legs and wheel
Than the grindstone can boast to stand or go.
(I'm thinking chiefly of the wheelbarrow. )
For months it hasn't known the taste of steel,
Washed down with rusty water in a tin.
But standing outdoors, hungry, in the cold,
Except in towns, at night, is not a sin.
And, anyway, its standing in the yard
Under a ruinous live apple tree
Has nothing any more to do with me,
Except that I remember how of old,
One summer day, all day I drove it hard,
And some one mounted on it rode it hard,
And he and I between us ground a blade.

I gave it the preliminary spin,
And poured on water (tears it might have been);
And when it almost gayly jumped and flowed,
A Father-Time-like man got on and rode,
Armed with a scythe and spectacles that glowed.
He turned on will-power to increase the load
And slow me down--and I abruptly slowed,
Like coming to a sudden railroad station.
I changed from hand to hand in desperation.

I wondered what machine of ages gone
This represented an improvement on.
For all I knew it may have sharpened spears
And arrowheads itself. Much use for years
Had gradually worn it an oblate
Spheroid that kicked and struggled in its gait,
Appearing to return me hate for hate.
(But I forgive it now as easily
As any other boyhood enemy
Whose pride has failed to get him anywhere. )
I wondered who it was the man thought ground--
The one who held the wheel back or the one
Who gave his life to keep it going round?