Buffers of land, breakers of sea, say it and Tie your hat to the saddle and ride, ride, ride, O Rider. The worn tired stars say you shall die early and die dirty. you shall die late and die clean. The runaway stars say you shall never die at all, ADELAIDE CRAPSEY Adelaide Crapsey was born, September 9, 1878, at Rochester, New York, where she spent her childhood. She entered Vassar College in 1897, graduating with the class of 1901. In 1905 she went abroad, studying archæology in Rome. After her return she essayed to teach, but her failing health compelled her to discontinue and though she became instructor in Poetics at Smith College in 1911, the burden was too great for her. In 1913, after her breakdown, she began to write those brief lines which, like some of Emily Dickinson's, are so precise and poignant. She was particularly happy in her "Cinquains," a form that she originated. These five-line stanzas in the strictest possible structure (the lines having, respectively, two, four, six, eight and two syllables) doubtless owe something to the Japanese hokku, but Adelaide Crapsey saturated them with her own fragile loveliness. She died at Saranac Lake, New York, on October 8, 1914. Her small volume Verse appeared in 1915, and a part of an unfinished Study in English Metrics was posthumously published in 1918. Listen THREE CINQUAINS November Night With faint dry sound, Like steps of passing ghosts, The leaves, frost-crisp'd, break from the trees These be Three silent things: Triad The falling snow . . the hour Before the dawn .. the mouth of one Just dead. Just now, The Warning Out of the strange Still dusk as strange, as still . . A white moth flew. Why am I grown So cold? ON SEEING WEATHER-BEATEN TREES Is it as plainly in our living shown, By slant and twist, which way the wind hath blown? GRACE HAZARD CONKLING Grace Hazard Conkling was born in 1878 in New York City. After graduating from Smith College in 1899, she studied music at the University of Heidelberg (1902-3) and Paris (1903-4). Since 1914 she has been a teacher of English at Smith College, where she has done much to create an alert interest in poetry. Mrs. Conkling's Afternoons of April (1915) and Wilderness Songs (1920) are full of a graciousness that seldom grows cloying. There is fragrant whimsicality, a child-like freshness in poems like "The Whole Duty of Berkshire Brooks," and "Frost on a Window,” which remind one of the manner of her daughter, Hilda (see page 268). Her later volumes, Ship's Log (1924) and Flying Fish (1926), are more determinedly colorful but seem less spontaneous. FROST ON A WINDOW This forest looks the way Tall larches lilt and sway The chuckle of the nightingale Is like this elfin wood. Even as his gleaming trills assail The spirit's solitude, These leaves of light, these branches frail Are music's very mood. The song of these fantastic trees, VACHEL LINDSAY (Nicholas) Vachel Lindsay was born in Springfield, Illinois, November 10, 1879. From the window where Lindsay did most of his writing, he saw many Governors come and go, including the martyred John P. Algteld, whom he has celebrated in one of his finest poems. He graduated from Springfield High School, attended Hiram College (1897-1900), studied at the Art Institute at Chicago (1900-3) and at the New York School of Art (1904). After two years of lecturing and settlement work, he took the first of his long tramps, walking through Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas, preaching "the gospel of beauty," and formulating his unique plans for a communal art. (See Preface.) Like a true revivalist, he attempted to wake in the people he met a response to beauty; like Tommy Tucker, he sang, recited and chanted for his supper, distributing a little pamphlet entitled "Rhymes to be Traded for Bread." But the great audiences he was endeavoring to reach did not hear him, even though his collection General Booth Enters Into Heaven (1913) struck many a loud and racy note. Lindsay broadened his effects, developed the chant and, the following year, published his The Congo and Other Poems (1914), an infectious blend of Lindsay's three R's: Rhyme, Religion and Ragtime. In the title-poem and, in a lesser degree, the three companion chants, Lindsay struck his most powerful — and most popular vein. These gave people (particularly when intoned aloud) that primitive joy in syncopated sound which is at the very base of song. The Chinese Nightingale (1917) begins with one of the most whimsical pieces Lindsay has ever devised. And if the subsequent The Golden Whales of California (1920) is less distinctive, it is principally because the author has written too much and too speedily to be self-critical. It is his peculiar appraisal of loveliness, the rollicking high spirits joined to a stubborn evangelism, that makes Lindsay so representative a product of his environment. Collected Poems (1923) is a complete exhibit of Lindsay's best and worst. That Lindsay has lost whatever faculty of self-criticism he may ever have possessed is evidenced by page after page of flat crudities; entire poems proceed with nothing more creative than mere physical energy whipping up a trivial idea. Going to the Sun (1924), Going to the Stars (1925) and The Candle in the Cabin (1926), following each other in too rapid succession, betray Lindsay's uncritical loquacity. These volumes are distinguished chiefly by the whimsical drawings which the poet has scattered among the feeble verses. Much of Lindsay will die; he will not live as either a prophet or a politician. But the vitality which impels the best of his galloping meters will persist; his innocent wildness of imagination, outlasting his naïve programs, will charm even those to whom his brassy declamations (religious at the core) are no longer a novelty. Besides his original poetry, Lindsay has embodied his experiences and meditations on the road in two prose volumes, A Handy Guide for Beggars (1916) and Adventures While Preaching the Gospel of Beauty (1914), as well as an enthusiastic study of the “silent drama,” The Art of the Moving Picture (1915). A curious document, half rhapsody, half visionary novel, entitled The Golden Book of Springfield, appeared in 1920. 1 THE EAGLE THAT IS FORGOTTEN (John P. Altgeld. Born December 30, 1847; died March 12, 1902) Sleep softly. . . eagle forgotten . . . under the stone, Time has its way with you there, and the clay has its own. We have buried him now," thought your foes, and in secret rejoiced. 66 They made a brave show of their mourning, their hatred unvoiced. They had snarled at you, barked at you, foamed at you, day after day, Now you were ended. They praised you, away. The others that mourned you in silence and terror and truth, The widow bereft of her pittance, the boy without youth, The mocked and the scorned and the wounded, the lame and the poor That should have remembered forever, more. remember no Where are those lovers of yours, on what name do they call under the stone, Sleep softly, . . . eagle forgotten, 1 Reprinted by permission of the publishers, The Macmillan Company, from General William Booth Enters into Heaven and Other Poems by Vachel Lindsay. |