Out of a struggle - into strife;
Out of a darkness into doubt.

Girt with the fragile armor of Youth,

Child, you must ride into endless wars, With the sword of protest, the buckler of truth, And a banner of love to sweep the stars.

About you the world's despair will surge;
Into defeat you must plunge and grope -
Be to the faltering, an urge;

Be to the hopeless years, a hope!

Be to the darkened world, a flame;
Be to its unconcern a blow!
For out of its pain and tumult you came,
And into its tumult and pain you go.

STAND WITH ME HERE

Stand with me here and listen. Close your lips.
The world is shut out by these pasture-bars.
We cannot heal our wounds; our words are whips
That flay half-opened scars.

Stand where the sun strokes the contented turf,
And listen to the mumbling surf

Of bees among the buckwheat, the consoling
Silence of rocks among the rolling

Bluster of winds. Let this grave-bosomed cloud

Press through your anger till the proud

Passions that rend are crumbled down and pass

Into the humble pride of grass.

Your fire need not be smothered; you will learn

How to preserve that flame and burn

Quietly as the unaffected glow

Of partridge-berries in the snow.

Here is fulfilment. This old mullein stalk

Has more of life than all our talk;

And here, poised on this windy poplar tree, Mocking our insecurity,

Is-plain as milk and bolder than belief The confident laughter of a leaf.

Open your lips again. The wordy wars
And all the aftermath of hate and fear
Are shut out by two broken pasture-bars.
Stand with me here.

PRAYER

God, though this life is but a wraith,
Although we know not what we use,
Although we grope with little faith,
Give me the heart to fight and lose.

Ever insurgent let me be,

Make me more daring than devout; From sleek contentment keep me free, And fill we 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,
Keep me, with stern and stubborn pride;

And when, at last, the fight is won,
God, keep me still unsatisfied.

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" and "Autumn." Her purely pictorial poems establish a swift kinship between the most romantic and the most prosaic objects.

Dreams Out of Darkness (1921) and Steep Ascent (1927) reveal an intensification and 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." As in the case of Kreymborg and other writers of free verse, practically all of Mrs. Untermeyer's later poetry is in rhyme and a definitely regular rhythm.

AUTUMN

(To My Mother)

How memory cuts away the years,
And how clean the picture comes
Of autumn days, brisk and busy;
Charged with keen sunshine.
And you, stirred with activity,
The spirit of those energetic days.

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.
And winter comforts coming in like a pageant.
I shall not forget them:

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 fragrance 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,
Absorbed and smiling and sure;
Stirring, tasting, measuring,
With the precision of a ritual.

I like to think of you in your years of
You, now so shaken and so powerless
High priestess of your home.

power

LAKE SONG

The lapping of lake water
Is like the weeping of women,
The weeping of ancient women
Who grieved without rebellion.

The lake falls over the shore
Like tears on their curven bosoms.
Here is languid, luxurious wailing;
The wailing of kings' daughters.

So do we ever cry,

A soft, unmutinous crying,

When we know ourselves each a princess
Locked fast within her tower.

The lapping of lake water
Is like the weeping of women,
The fertile tears of women
That water the dreams of men.

ONE KIND OF HUMILITY

Shall we say heaven is not heaven

Since golden stairs are rugged and uneven?

Or that no light illuminates a star
That swings in other regions than we are?

Deny with soured breath enduring God
Because we cling so rankly to the sod?

No. Cleanse with weeping, fasting and with prayer. Praise God. Look starward. Mount the stair!