Girt with the fragile armor of Youth, Child, you must ride into endless wars, About you the world's despair will surge; Be to the hopeless years, a hope! Be to the darkened world, a flame; For out of its pain and tumult you came, PRAYER God, though this life is but a wraith, Ever insurgent let me be, Make me more daring than devout; From sleek contentment keep me free, And fill me with a buoyant doubt. Open my eyes to visions girt With beauty, and with wonder lit But let me always see the dirt, And all that spawn and die in it. Open my ears to music; let Me thrill with Spring's first flutes and drums But never let me dare forget The bitter ballads of the slums. From compromise and things half-done, Jean Starr Untermeyer Jean Starr was born at Zanesville, Ohio, May 13, 1886, and educated at the Putnam Seminary in the city of her birth. At sixteen, she came to New York City, pursuing special studies at Columbia. In 1907 she married Louis Untermeyer and, although she had written some prose previous to the poetic renascence, her first volume was published more than ten years later. Growing Pains (1918) is a thin book of thirty-four poems, the result of eight years' slow and self-critical creation. Perfection is almost a passion with her; the first poem in the book declares: I would rather work in stubborn rock All the years of my life; And make one strong thing And set it in a high, clean place, To recall the granite strength of my desire. But it is not only her keen search for truth and an equally keen eye for the exact word that make these poems distinctive. A sharp color sense, a surprising whimsicality, a translation of the ordinary in terms of the beautiful, illumine such poems as "Sinfonia Domestica," "Clothes," "Autumn." Her purely pictorial poems establish a swift kinship between the most romantic and most prosaic objects. The tiny "Moonrise" is an example; so is "High Tide," that, in one extended metaphor, turns the mere fact of a physical law into an arresting and noble fancy. Dreams Out of Darkness (1921) is a ripening of this author's powers with a richer musical undercurrent. This increase of melody is manifest on every page, possibly most obvious in the persuasive music and symbolism of "Lake Song." HIGH TIDE I edged back against the night. The sea growled assault on the wave-bitten shore. And the breakers, Like young and impatient hounds, Sprang with rough joy on the shrinking sand. Whimpering, into the dark. Then I saw who held them captive; And I saw how they were bound With a broad and quivering leash of light, As, calm and unsmiling, She walked the deep fields of the sky. AUTUMN (To My Mother) How memory cuts away the years, There was our back-yard, So plain and stripped of green, With even the weeds carefully pulled away From the crooked red bricks that made the walk, And the earth on either side so black. Autumn and dead leaves burning in the sharp air. Great jars laden with the raw green of pickles, Standing in a solemn row across the back of the porch, Exhaling the pungent dill; And in the very center of the yard, You, tending the great catsup kettle of gleaming copper, Where fat, red tomatoes bobbed up and down Like jolly monks in a drunken dance. And there were bland banks of cabbages that came by the wagon-load, Soon to be cut into delicate ribbons Only to be crushed by the heavy, wooden stompers. Such feathery whiteness-to come to kraut! And after, there were grapes that hid their brightness under a grey dust, Then gushed thrilling, purple blood over the fire; And enamelled crab-apples that tricked with their fra grance But were bitter to taste. And there were spicy plums and ill-shaped quinces, And long string beans floating in pans of clear water Like slim, green fishes. And there was fish itself, Salted, silver herring from the city. . And you moved among these mysteries, With the precision of a ritual. I like to think of you in your years of power LAKE SONG The lapping of lake water The lake falls over the shore So do we ever cry, A soft, unmutinous crying, When we know ourselves each a princess The lapping of lake water John Gould Fletcher John Gould Fletcher was born at Little Rock, Arkansas, January 3, 1886. He was educated at Phillips Academy (Andover, Massachusetts) and Harvard (1903-7) and, after spending several years in Massachusetts, moved to England, where, except for brief visits to the United States, he has lived ever since. In 1913, Fletcher published five tiny books of poems which he has referred to as "his literary wild oats," five small collections of experimental and faintly interesting verse. Two years later, Fletcher appeared as a decidedly less conservative and far more arresting poet with Irradiations-Sand and Spray |