PRAISE

Dear, they are praising your beauty,

The grass and the sky:

The sky in a silence of wonder,

The grass in a sigh.

I too would sing for your praising,
Dearest, had I

Speech as the whispering grass,

Or the silent sky.

These have an art for the praising

Beauty so high.

Sweet, you are praised in a silence,
Sung in a sigh.

Charlotte Mew

One of the most amazing figures in modern poetry is Charlotte Mew. She has published only one book, yet that one small collection contains some of the finest poetry of our times. In 1916, The Farmer's Bride, a paper-covered pamphlet, appeared in England. It contained just seventeen poems, the pruned fruit of many years. Saturday Market (1921) is the American edition of this volume with eleven poems added. Had Miss Mew printed nothing but the original booklet, it would have been sufficient to rank her among the most distinctive and intense of living poets. Hers is the distillation, the essence of emotion, rather than the stirring up of passions. Her most memorable work is in dramatic projections and poignant monologues (unfortunately too long to quote) like "The Changeling," with its fantastic pathos, and that powerful meditation, "Madeleine in Church." But lyrics as swift as "Sea Love" or as slowly hymn-like as "Beside the Bed," are equally sure of their place in English literature.

They are, like all of Miss Mew's contributions, disturbing in their direct beauty; full of a speech that is profound without ever being pompous.

BESIDE THE BED

Someone has shut the shining eyes, straightened and folded The wandering hands quietly covering the unquiet

breast:

So, smoothed and silenced you lie, like a child, not again to be questioned or scolded;

But, for you, not one of us believes that this is rest.

Not so to close the windows down can cloud and deaden The blue beyond: or to screen the wavering flame sub

due its breath:

Why, if I lay my cheek to your cheek, your grey lips, like dawn, would quiver and redden,

Breaking into the old, odd smile at this fraud of death. Because all night you have not turned to us or spoken, It is time for you to wake; your dreams were never very deep:

I, for one, have seen the thin, bright, twisted threads of them dimmed suddenly and broken.

This is only a most piteous pretense of sleep!

SEA LOVE

Tide be runnin' the great world over:

'Twas only last June month I mind that we

Was thinkin' the toss and the call in the breast of the

lover

So everlastin' as the sea.

Heer's the same little fishes that sputter and swim,
Wi' the moon's old glim on the grey, wet sand;
An' him no more to me nor me to him
Than the wind goin' over my hand.

Harold Monro

Harold Monro, who describes himself as "author, publisher, editor and book-seller," was born in Brussels in 1879. Monro founded The Poetry Bookshop in London in 1912 and his quarterly Poetry and Drama (discontinued during the war and revived in 1919 as The Chapbook, a monthly) was, in a sense, the organ of the younger men.

Monro's poetry is impelled by a peculiar mysticism, a mysticism that depicts the play between the worlds of reality and fantasy. His Strange Meetings (1917) and Children of Love (1915) present, with an originality rare among Monro's contemporaries, the relation of man not only to the earth he rose from, but to the inanimate things he moves among. Even the most whimsical of this poet's concepts have an emotional intensity beneath their skilful rhythms.

EVERY THING

Since man has been articulate,

Mechanical, improvidently wise,

(Servant of Fate),

He has not understood the little cries

And foreign conversations of the small

Delightful creatures that have followed him

Not far behind;

Has failed to hear the sympathetic call

Of Crockery and Cutlery, those kind

Reposeful Teraphim

Of his domestic happiness; the Stool

He sat on, or the Door he entered through:
He has not thanked them, overbearing fool!
What is he coming to?

But you should listen to the talk of these.
Honest they are, and patient they have kept;

Served him without his Thank you or his Please .
I often heard

The gentle Bed, a sigh between each word,

Murmuring, before I slept.

The Candle, as I blew it, cried aloud,

Then bowed,

And in a smoky argument

Into the darkness went.

The Kettle puffed a tentacle of breath:-
"Pooh! I have boiled his water, I don't know

Why; and he always says I boil too slow.
He never calls me 'Sukie, dear,' and oh,
I wonder why I squander my desire
Sitting submissive on his kitchen fire."

Now the old Copper Basin suddenly
Rattled and tumbled from the shelf,
Bumping and crying: "I can fall by myself;
Without a woman's hand

To patronize and coax and flatter me,
I understand

The lean and poise of gravitable land."
It gave a raucous and tumultuous shout,
Twisted itself convulsively about,
Rested upon the floor, and, while I stare,
It stares and grins at me.

The old impetuous Gas above my head
Begins irascibly to flare and fret,
Wheezing into its epileptic jet,
Reminding me I ought to go to bed.

The Rafters creak; an Empty-Cupboard door
Swings open; now a wild Plank of the floor
Breaks from its joist, and leaps behind my foot.
Down from the chimney, half a pound of Soot
Tumbles and lies, and shakes itself again.
The Putty cracks against the window-pane.
A piece of Paper in the basket shoves
Another piece, and toward the bottom moves.
My independent Pencil, while I write,
Breaks at the point: the ruminating Clock
Stirs all its body and begins to rock,

Warning the waiting presence of the Night,
Strikes the dead hour, and tumbles to the plain
Ticking of ordinary work again.

You do well to remind me, and I praise
Your strangely individual foreign ways.
You call me from myself to recognize
Companionship in your unselfish eyes.
I want your dear acquaintances, although
I pass you arrogantly over, throw

Your lovely sounds, and squander them along
My busy days. I'll do you no more wrong.

Purr for me, Sukie, like a faithful cat.
You, my well trampled Boots, and you, my Hat,
Remain my friends: I feel, though I don't speak,
Your touch grow kindlier from week to week.
It well becomes our mutual happiness

To go toward the same end more or less.