A Dead Warrior

HERE sown to dust lies one that drave             [sic]

The furrow through his heart;

Now, of the fields he died to save

His own dust forms a part.

Where went the tramp of martial feet,

The blare of trumpets loud,

Comes silence with her winding sheet,

And shadow with her shroud.

His mind no longer counsel takes,

No sword his hand need draw,

Across whose borders peace now makes

Inviolable law.

So, with distraction round him stilled,

Now let him be content!

And time from age to age shall build

His standing monument.

Not here, where strife, and greed, and lust

Grind up the bones of men;

But in that safe and secret dust

Which shall not rise again.

Laurence Housman

Advertisement

WE want a man of forty for the job.

One who has enjoyed his little fill of romance.

And suffered intermittent indigestion ever since.

One whose memories are sufficiently cold

successfully to resist the embraces of truancy.

To whom a mountain

no longer looms an ideal

to scramble up and tumble down,

but is an actual thing made of stone

bristling with multitudinous edges

to bark one's shins or break one's neck upon.

To whom a lake or a river

or other body of water

no longer entices the search for one's likeness

(we only ask a man to be himself

and not go diving after phantoms),

but is a place one might readily drown in,

one's muscles no longer quite what they were.

Who has achieved

that ultimate disillusionment:

not to be able to differentiate

the respective features, limbs or what not

of his whilom Graces and Gwendolyns,             [sic]

or if he could wouldn't want to,

would devote the rest of his days to a desk

piled sky high with ledgers and cash books:

Such a man would be certain to stick,

We want such a man for the job.

Alfred Kreymborg

The Wanderer

OUT of the railroad eating house

Comes a lean brown man,

And putting down his pack

Sits smoking a cigarette.

The glow lights up his sensitive Voltaire face

Gazing moodily out on the trail:

The blue patches under his eyes

Show that he has not slept;

It is evident that he has not long to live

And that he knows it.

He will die sooner if he smokes cigarettes,

And that is the reason why he is smoking one.

Beulah May

May the Fruit Never Be Plucked

NEVER, never may the fruit be plucked from the bough

And gathered into barrels.

He that would eat of love must eat it where it hangs.

Though the branches bend like reeds,

Though the ripe fruit splash in the grass or wrinkle on the tree,

He that would eat of love may bear away with him

Only what his belly can hold,

Nothing in the apron,

Nothing in the pockets.

Never, never may the fruit be gathered from the bough

And harvested in barrels.

The winter of love is a cellar of empty bins,

In an orchard soft with rot.

Edna St. Vincent Millay

Luna

TOO soon the sunset comes; too soon

Opens the night its curious eyes,

Greedy to watch the maiden moon

Unloose her silver draperies

And walk upon the star-flowered fields.

Her cloudy garments one by one

To waiting winds she slowly yields,

And now, her last disrobing done,

Flashes lithe limbs across the sky

And flaunts the cold and slender grace

Of unconcerned virginity.

O now before her smiling grace

A thousand rivers, lakes and seas

Hold up their mirrors to her gaze:

A thousand moonlets there she sees

Float on a thousand starry ways.

Beneath her footfall light and free

The peeping star follows shake and fall;

Cold as her watery mirrors, she

Drinks admiration from them all.

In them her nakedness she views,

In love with her own limbs displayed,

And through the wondering night pursues

Her strange unreasonable parade.

Gerald Miller

On the Train

          I

THE lady in front of me in the car,

With little red coils close over her ears,

Is talking with her friend;

And the circle of ostrich foam around her hat,

Curving over like a wave,

Trembles with her little windy words.

What she is saying, I wonder,

That her feathers should tremble

And the soft fur of her coat should slip down over her shoulders?

Has her string of pearls been stolen,

Or maybe her husband?

          II

He is drunk, that man --

Drunk as a lord, a lord of the bibulous past.             [sic]

He shouts wittily from his end of the car to the man in the corner;

He bows to me with chivalrous apologies.

He philosophizes, plays with the wisdom of the ages,

Flings off his rags,

Displays his naked soul --

Athletic, beautiful, grotesque.

In the good time coming,

When men drink no more,

Shall we ever see a nude soul dancing

Stript and free

In the temple of his god?

          II

She comes smiling into the car

With irridescent bubbles of children.

She blooms in the close plush seats

Like a narcissus in a bowl of stones.

She croons to a baby in her lap --

The trees come swinging by to listen,

And the electric lights in the ceiling are stars.

Harriet Monroe

Men, Women, and Words

CHLORINDA in the slipping gown

Unblushingly parades her soul

For clinical inspection as

Example of the Sapphic rôle;

While Doris shudders gracefully

And droops against the man in black,

Confessing that she marvels at

His length of limb and breadth of back.

(Dear Doris: so ingenuous!

Emotionally so sincere!)

The man in black is wholly charmed,

And lends a firm, hedonic ear.

Repression is the moment's theme:

Gerald holds forth on Oedipus

And mentions dire catastrophies

That tastes of his may bring to us.

If we attempt to circumvent

Our fateful Attic heritage --

Wadding his argument around

With splendid Freudian verbiage.

The slim young man against the wall,

With pretty blushes epicene,

Evokes the shade of Socrates,

And lectures from the fire-screen.

Close by him sits Elizabeth,

Her pale hands bluely rectinerved:

Example virginal and wan

Of bunkered fuel too long reserved.

Elizabeth bewails her fate

With frankness not quite unafraid:

The room is tenderly inclined,

But no Satyros proffers aid.

And so from hand to eager hand

The facile ball of talk is sped.

One waits for, misses, and laments

The absent lover of the dead.

Black was the Hellespont those nights

When, for a priestess of Sestos,

Leander slipped into the flood

From the still town of Abydos.

What theories sustained his stroke

When all the world was overcast,

And Freud and Jung still humbly lurked

In unexpressed spermatoblast?

Did Orestes and Plyades,

While camping by their Grecian streams,

Exchange, interpret and set down

The revelations of their dreams?

Sappho, Jocasta, Oedipus --

Your names go round the room tonight,

Illuminated by our modern blaze

Of psychoanalytic light.

We pity you your sightless years,

And celebrate out learned day:

But Doris and the man in black,

With ancient wisdom, steal away.

Ben Ray Redman

I Was Made of This and This

(I WAS made of this and this --

An angel's prayer, a gipsy's kiss.)

My mother bore me prayerfully

And reared me sweet as a gift for God,

And taught me to look shudderingly

On ways my father trod.

They buried him long and long ago

(I just remember his eyes were blue),

He always did -- they say who know --

Things it was wrong to do.

He prayed no saints but the Little Folk,

Pan was his only god; ah me,

The times he laughed when my mother spoke

The beads on her rosary!

(I tend my roof-tree and I pray

The Maid who knew a mother's woe

To keep my feet in the gentile way

Her Son would have me go.)

He swore round oaths and drank black gin;

He held four things to his heart's delight:

The hills, the road, his violin,

An open sky at night.

He told strange tales that were never true

(They buried him long and long ago!)

It always seemed the things he knew

Were things it was wrong to know.

He scoffed at walls and a garden plot;

He held three things to his heart's desire:

The river's song, an open spot,

The smoke from a driftwood fire.

(I wonder would I greatly care --

Mary, keep my heart from sin! --

If babe of mine should come to swear

Round oaths and drink black gin?)

I grieve for my mother's every tear,

I weep for the hurt in my mother's breast,

But ever and ever at bud o' year

I love my father best.

(That I had never been made of this --

The angel's prayer, or the gipsy's kiss!)

Gertrude Robinson Ross

Moonlight

WHAT time the meanest brick and stone

Take on a beauty not their own,

And past the flaw of builded wood

Shines the intention whole and good,

And all the little homes of man

Rise to a dimmer, nobler span;

When colour's absence gives escape

To the deeper spirit of the shape,

-- Then earth's great architecture swells

Among her mountains and her fells

Under the moon to amplitude

Massive and primitive and rude:

-- Then do the clouds like silver flags

Stream out above the tattered crags,

And black and silver all the coast

Marshalls its hunched and rocky host,

And headlands striding sombrely

Buttress the land against the sea,

-- The darkened land, the brightening wave --

And moonlight slants through Merlin's cave.

Victoria Sackville-West

Orpheus

WHEN Orpheus with his wind-swift fingers

Ripples the strings that gleam like rain,

The wheeling birds fly up and sing,

Hither, thither echoing;

There is a crackling of dry twigs,

A sweeping of leaves along the ground,

Fawny faces and dumb eyes

Peer through the fluttering screens

That mask ferocious teeth and claws

Now tranquil.

As the music sighs up the hill-side,

The young ones hear,

Come skipping, ambling, rolling down,

Their soft ears flapping as they run,

Their fleecy coats catching in the thickets,

Till they lie, listening, round his feet.

Unseen for centuries,

Fabulous creatures creep out of their caves,

The unicorn

Prances down from his bed of leaves,

His milk-white muzzle still stained green

With the munching, crunching of mountain-herbs.

The griffin, usually so fierce,

Now tame and amiable again,

Has covered the white bones in his secret cavern

With a rustling pall of dank dead leaves,

While the salamander, true lover of art,

Flickers, and creeps out of the flame;

Gently now, and away he goes,

Kindles his proud and blazing track

Across the forest,

Lies listening,

Cools his fever in the flowing waters of the lute.

*     *     *     *     *     *

But when the housewife returns,

Carrying her basket,

She will not understand.

She misses nothing,

Hears nothing.

She will only see

That the fire is dead,

The grate cold.

*     *     *     *     *     *

But the child upstairs,

Alone, in the empty cottage,

Heard a strange wind, like music,

In the forest,

Saw something creep out of the fire.

Osbert Sitwell

Another Generation

THERE is a woman like a seed,

There is a man in embryo,

Whose spirits, faces, sex indeed

Their very mothers do not know.

Only their being is revealed,

They are: all else is hidden in gloom,

Fixed by authority, but sealed

Deep in the future and the womb.

Yet they are foreordained to be

One female, and other male,

And they will come the light to see,

And suck, and bite their fist, and wail,

And grow through childhood wondering still

At all the beauties of the earth,

And learn the exercise of will,

Mercy and truth and tears and mirth.

Season of youth! they'll live with joy

Through all our careless days of old,

But leave behind the girl and boy

Their dearest secrets still untold.

Separate still, they will not meet,

Though life be light, unsatisfied;

Not finding any, wise or sweet,

The born companions of thier pride:

Till destiny disguised as chance

Pricks out the hour with silver pin,

Decrees a dinner or a dance,

A house, a garden, or an inn.

Where they'll be left alone a space,

Strangers, and talk; and she will find

Him like herself, and he her face

The language of a perfect mind.

And once again with all the rest

They'll come together, and friends depart,

Congenuality confessed,

Each with a trouble at the heart.

And yet once more and they will know

A final wound: they are struck by love,

The god at last has drawn his bow,

And sent a shaft that will not move:

And he a whole night long will wake

Abased and helpless framing speech,

Made desperate by his heart's fierce ache

To ask a thing beyond his reach.

And she all trembling in her bed

Will search his strangeness, yearn and weep,

Loving him, filled with virgin dread,

And see the dawn, and find no sleep.

And pressed by thunder they will rise,

And when a few more hours have gone,

Her burning cheek and languid eyes,

Will tell him all his war is won.

Ah, but I know their months of bliss,

Their happy silence, happy talk;

How they will roam and pause and kiss,

Confess, discover, while they walk;

How they will stand by stream and lake,

And go, as though exchanging sight,

Through bluebell wood and primrose brake

Finding in all a new delight.

And watch the sunset from a gate,

And see the evening fade, and then

All of a sudden learn to hate

The evil that is done by men --

So they will mate, and they will get

A wondrous child, and several more,

The prettiest, strongest, gayest set

That mortal mother ever bore.

And love to watch this brood of theirs

Grow up, though they grow older too,

And laugh to find their first grey hairs

Since there is nothing else to do.

Each thought you guard, each pulse of mine

Will wake in them, but they not guess

We shared of old the immortal wine

Of their delight and their distress,

Who beyond question, also were

Wisest of all the race of Man,

One only comprehending pair,

Unique, since first the world began.

J.C. Squire

In the Orchard

I THOUGHT you loved me.

No, it was only fun.

When we stood there, closer than all?

Well, the harvest moon

Was shining and queer in your hair, and it turned my head.

That made you?

Yes.

      Just the moon and the light it made

Under the tree?

Well, your mouth too.

      Yes, my mouth?

And the quiet there that sang like the drum in the booth.

You shouldn't have danced like that.

Like what?

      So close,

With your head turned up, and the flower in your hair, a rose

That smelt all warm.

I loved you. I thought you knew

I wouldn't have danced like that with any but you.

I didn't know. I thought you knew it was fun.

I thought it was love you meant.

Well, it's done.

      Yes, it's done.

I've seen boys stone a blackbird, and watched them drown

A kitten -- it clawed at the reeds, and they pushed it down

Into the pool while it screamed. Is that fun, too?

Well, boys are like that -- Your brothers --

Yes, I know.

But you, so lovely and strong! Not you! Not You!

Muriel Stuart

The Stricken Peasant

DIM twilight here; and in her singing mind

Dim twilight too. Shut in this darkened room,

Over whose broad-beamed walls the shadows bloom,

All day she lies;

Yet will her sweet thoughts find

Nothing but praise to tell until she dies.

No footstep passes but she knows the tread,

And each some pastoral-memory awakes

Within her dreamy head.

Or when the barley-wains

Go rumbling past, darkly her old brain tells

Of other wagons jolting up the lanes

In days long since; then breaks

A tear from shrunken lids the while she dwells

On far-off romping harvests that she knew

Where Ned and she to their shy loving drew.

Sometimes, for hours, no company she knows

But chattering birds

That rustle in her eaves, when the wind blows

Sparrows and starlings, jostling, helter-skelter,

To the thatch for shelter;

Yet are their pipings plain to her as words.

Or she will turn to the window's leaded panes --

On loved scenes lingering long;

And whether sun makes bright the land, or rains

Close it in tremulous veils, one song

Is ever at her lips -- though mutely thrown

To the still air -- of love and love alone.

And when the twilight fades and wagons come

Wheeling their yellow lights about her room,

As to the farm they pass along,

Their very creaking is an evensong.

So, with their little circumstance, the days

Draw to a close; this nights dark vigil keep

Unblessed of sleep;

Yet is her every word a meed of praise.             [sic]

Such peace is hers, no knowledge gives,

Who, to no other end than loving, lives:

Such faith, no knowledge now can try,

With urgent Wherefor, Why,

To dim the brightness of her old belief.

Out of her very grief

Has grown this rich content,

Easing her soul in its lone banishment.

And often, in her dreams, the skies are riven

With a great light, till her accustomed eyes

Behold the blaze of heaven.

Upon her ears a singing breaks; the skies

Fold back and ever back; and flaxen-fair

The angels are, moving in beauty there.

The memory is so bright for her

That, waking, still she fears to stir

Lest this her room and these her hands should be

A borrowed dream out of Eternity.

C. Henry Warren

Excerpts from "Kensington Gardens"

        SPEKE

THE children play

at hide and seek

about the monument

to Speke.

And why should the dead

explorer mind

who has nothing to seek

and nothing to find?

        QUEEN VICTORIA

Queen Victoria's

statue is

the work of her

daughter Beatrice.

The shape's all wrong

and the crown don't fit,

But -- bless her old heart! --

she was proud of it.

        TAIL-PIECE

"Out! All out!"

Harsh echoes blow

from far. With wandering steps

and slow

once again their

garden leave

little Adam,

little Eve.

Humbert Wolfe

The Puritan's Ballad

MY love came up from Barnegat,

The sea was in his eyes;

He trod as softly as a cat

And told me terrible lies.

His hair was yellow as new-cut pine

In shavings curled and feathered;

I thought how silver it would shine

By cruel winters weathered.

But he was in his twentieth year,

Ths time I'm speaking of;

We were head over heels in love with fear

And half a-feared of love.

My hair was piled in a copper crown --

A devilish living thing --

And the tortise-shell pins fell down, fell down,

When that snake uncoiled to spring.

His feet were used to treading a gale

And balancing thereon;

His face was as brown as a foreign sail

Threadbare against the sun.

His arms were thick as hickory logs

Whittled to little wrists;

Strong as the teeth of a terrior dog

Were the fingers of his fists.

Within his arms I feared to sink

Where lions shook their manes,

And dragons drawn in azure ink

Lept quickened by his veins.

Dreadful his strength and length of limb

As the sea to foundering ships;

I dipped my hands in love for him

No deeper than the tips.

But our palms were welded by a flame

The moment we came to part,

And on his knuckles I read my name

Enscrolled with a heart.

And something made our wills to bend,

As wild as trees blown over;

We were no longer friend and friend,

But only lover and lover.

"In seven weeks or seventy years --

God grant it may be sooner! --

I'll make a hankerchief for you

From the sails of my captain's schooner.

We'll wear our loves like wedding rings

Long polished to our touch;

We shall be busy with other things

And they cannot bother us much.

When you are skimming the wrinkled cream

And your ring clinks on the pan,

You'll say to yourself in a pensive dream,

'How wonderful a man!'

When I am slitting a fish's head

And my ring clanks on the knife,

I'll say with thanks as a prayer is said,

'How beautiful a wife!'

And I shall fold my decorous paws

In velvet smooth and deep,

Like a kitten that covers up its claws

To sleep and sleep and sleep.

Like a little blue pigeon you shall bow

Your bright alarming crest;

In the crook of my arm you'll lay your brow

To rest and rest and rest.

Will he never come back from Barnegat

With thunder in his eyes,

Treading as soft as a tiger cat,

To tell me terrible lies?

Elinor Wylie

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