OLD MANUSCRIPT The sky is that beautiful old parchment in which the sun and the moon keep their diary. To read it all, one must be a linguist more learned than Father Wisdom and a visionary more clairvoyant than Mother Dream. But to feel it, one must be an apostle: one who is more than intimate in having been, always, the only confidant like the earth or the sea. DAWNS I have come all the way up to humility. The hill was more terrible than ever before. This is the top; there is the tall, slim tree. It is only looking back. under that tree, still another me of mine was buried. Waiting for me to come again, of what I bring next, it looks down. Badger Clark Badger Clark was born at Albia, Iowa, in 1883. He moved to Dakota Territory at the age of three months and now lives in the Black Hills of South Dakota. Clark is one of the few men who have lived to see their work become part of folk-lore, many of his songs having been adapted and paraphrased by the cowboys who have made them their own. Sun and Saddle Leather (1915) and Grass-Grown Trails (1917) are the expression of a native singer; happy, spontaneous and seldom "literary." There is wind in these songs; the smell of camp-smoke and the colors of prairie sunsets rise from them. Free, for the most part, from affectations, Clark achieves an unusual ease in his use of the local vernacular. 1 1 From Sun and Saddle Leather by Badger Clark. Copy right, 1915. Richard G. Badger, Publisher. When on the picture who should ride, But High-Chin Bob, with sinful pride "Oh, glory be to me," says he That lion licked his paw so brown And dreamed soft dreams of veal- "Oh, glory be to me," laughs he. 'Way high up the Mogollons That top-hawse done his best, Through whippin' brush and rattlin' stones, From canyon-floor to crest. But ever when Bob turned and hoped A limp remains to find, A red-eyed lion, belly roped "Oh, glory be to me," grunts he. Could stop to holler: 'Nuff!" Three suns had rode their circle home Beyond the desert's rim, And turned their star-herds loose to roam The ranges high and dim; Yet up and down and 'round and 'cross Bob pounded, weak and wan, For pride still glued him to his hawse And glory drove him on. "Oh, glory be to me," sighs he. 'Way high up the Mogollons A prospect man did swear That moonbeams melted down his bones And hoisted up his hair: A ribby cow-hawse thundered by, A lion trailed along, A rider ga'nt but chin on high, Yelled out a crazy song. "Oh, glory be to me!" cries he, Oh, stranger tell my pards below Harry Kemp Harry (Hibbard) Kemp, known as "the tramp-poet," was born at Youngstown, Ohio, December 15, 1883. He came East at the age of twelve, left school to enter a factory, but returned to high school to study English. A globe-trotter by nature, he went to sea before finishing his high school course. He shipped first to Australia, then to China, from China to California, from California to the University of Kansas. After a few months in London in 1909 (he crossed the Atlantic as a stowaway) he returned to New York City, where he has lived ever since, founding his own theater in which he is actor, stage-manager, playwright and chorus. His first collection of poems, The Cry of Youth (1914), like the subsequent volume, The Passing God (1919), is full of every kind of poetry except the kind one might imagine Kemp would write. Instead of crude and boisterous verse, here is a precise and almost over-polished poetry. Chanteys and Ballads (1920) is riper and more representative. The notes are more varied, the sense of personality is more pronounced. STREET LAMPS Softly they take their being, one by one, Has dropped to dusk . . . like little flowers they bloom Who he who lights them is, I do not know, |