J A WHAT THE POETS ARE SAYING VOICES OF THE LIVING POETS SCIENTIFIC department conducted as a literary department is conducted, with no consideration of the achievements of the last thirty years, would be a disgrace to any college." So writes some one who signs simply the initials "A. C. H.," in Poetry. It is a harsh saying, and the writer proceeds to make it harsher by adding: "College students in literary courses remind one of rows of bleaching celery, banked and covered with earth: they are so carefully protected from any coloring contact with the ideas of the living present." This is one of the penalties every artist has to pay for the glorious permanence of art. Each painter and sculptor and musician, and, to a less degree for some reason not quite clear to us, each dramatist is in direct competition with all those who have gone before. But the poet is in closer competition with those of the past than are any of the other artists. Colors will fade and stone will crumble. The art of Praxiteles has become a memory. But the poems of Horace and even of Homer remain with all their pristine charm. Thirty years is a very brief period in the history of the poetic art, and the universities can easily be judged too severely for not dwelling too strongly upon the last thirty years. Nevertheless it is the duty of a university as well as of an editor to add directly to the recognition and appreciation of what is new as well as what is old, and we think that "A. C. H." is right in criticizing American universities for coming short of their duty in this respect. If Art is to be a living thing and to have a message to living men and women, it must be taught as something belonging to our own day and our own country. In their professional schools our universities are very much awake to the claims of modern achievement. In their schools of art and literature most of them can see nothing nearer than a generation ago. Several months ago, to change the subject, we printed a stirring "Chant of Hate," by a German poet, Ernst Lissauer, who has recently been honored by the Kaiser. It was a chant of hatred for England. Below is a worthy reply by an American poet. We find it in the Atlantic Monthly: Glory of thought and glory of deed, Glory of Hampden and Runnymede; Glory of ships that sought far goals, Glory of swords and glory of souls! Glory of songs mounting as birds, Glory immortal of magical words; Glory of Milton, glory of Nelson, Tragical glory of Gordon and Scott; Glory of Shelley, glory of Sidney, Glory transcendent that perishes not,— Hers is the story, hers be the glory, England! Shatter her beauteous breast ye may; Where is the giant shot that kills Another war poem that conveys a striking effect in an almost crude way is the following in The Masses: BUTTONS. BY CARL SANDBURG. HAVE been watching the war map slammed up for advertising in front of the newspaper office. Buttons red and yellow buttons blue and black buttons-are shoved back and forth across the map. 201 a poet!" Despite Mr. Pound's liking for the Anthology we also like it, and find in it a wonderfully vivid series of transcripts from real life. We printed a number of these many months ago, when the series first began to be printed in the St. Louis Mirror. They can hardly, it seems to us, be styled great poetry, or even fine poetry; but they are real literature, very original in conception, and come nearer to being poetry than anything else. Webster Ford, by the way, is a pen-name. The author is a lawyer in Chicago. Here is one of his "poems" that excites in Mr. Pound especial admiration. For that reason, if for no other, it must be counted remarkable: One died in shameful childbirth, One at the hands of a brute in a brothel, A laughing young man, sunny with freck- in the crowd, And then fixes a yellow button one inch west And follows the yellow button with a black button one inch west. (Ten thousand men and boys twist on their bodies in a red soak along a river edge, Gasping of wounds, calling for water, some rattling death in their throats.) Who by Christ would guess what it cost to move two buttons one inch on the war map here in front of the newspaper office where the freckle-faced young man is laughing to us? The "Spoon River Anthology" seems to be making some stir. Vachel Lindsay, in a speech at the Poetry Society dinner in New York several weeks ago, spoke of it with enthusiasm, and Ezra Pound, writing in The Egoist, begins a long review of it-characteristically jaundiced as to America in generalwith the ejaculatory sentence: "At last! At last America has discovered heart's desire, I LITTLE FLOWERS FROM A MILLINER'S BOX. BY SADE IVERSON. HAVE been making a little hat; Red and brown leaves edge it, And the crown is like brown moss. Ah, the sweep of the sun-burned meadow Ah, the drift of golden beech-leaves, I throw up my hands to it, I fling kisses heavenward, To Something, to Somebody, Who made beauty-who made Youth! Will there never again come a day sky, Who made beauty, and little golden leaves, And brown nuts falling in the Autumn woods? A volume of "Poems," by Katherine Howard, the author of that adorable little "Book of the Serpent," has recently appeared (Sherman, French & Company). It is full of poetic stuff, tho the author's pen and fancy are both too facile to take as much pains as should be taken with any particular poem. Her fancy races ahead too rapidly for that, and her pen seems to hurry in order to keep up. Here is one of the best things in the book: Τ TO LITTLE THINGS. BY KATHARINE HOWARD. HEY are the little rains that slowly seep Ringing with the songs of Nature's Crowned with love of goddess and of Calling to them through the trooping shadows, Beautiful, undimmed of Age or Fear, Those who with them through the golden meadows, In their morn of Manhood cloudless- To roots of flowers, which comfort Long ago behind the peerless Fionn, Even as the flower is fed by morning dew, Rocked by the little wind-most dear of all. Dear little things, with little tender ways That are not known, that have no lauds of praise, But when we turn to go-they softly call. All the Celtic poetry is by no means produced in London and Dublin. No one-with the exception of Yeats and Fiona McLeod-has woven into pleasing rhyme more of the Celtic wistful longing and mystery than appear in "A Hosting of Heroes," by Eleanor Cox, which, tho printed in Dublin (Sealy, Bryers & Walker), is written. in America. Here is a sample of her work: THE LAST OF THE FIANNA. "They lay down on the side of the hill at Teamhair, and put their lips to the earth, and died."-Gods and Fighting Men. O the dewy earth they turned their faces, T° Sweet, green Mother of their old delight; They for whom in Erin no more place was They the once strong bulwarks of her might; Scarce a good man's stone-throw from where Tara Reared its shining splendor on the height. Golden-shod the hours in that fair palace Danced like maidens to a festal song, But for them who drained Life's bitter chalice There upon the hill the day was long: Till sweet Death came down in the gray twilight, Death, whose kind kiss heals all human wrong. Kissing now their lids of drowsing vision With a Dream of Life as it had been, Glowing with the joy of swift decision, Radiant with the flash of sword-blades keen, So Night set her seal upon their dreaming, Of brave days and deeds for ever gone, So they passed, the men of god-like seem ing, With their faces set towards the Dawn, They whose like in all her future story, Nevermore their land should look upon. One of our Chicago subscribers, on reading Mr. Oppenheim's poem, “A Handful of Dust," printed in this department in October, was moved to which he finds in "A Book of Poems," send us a poem with the same title by Wilbur D. Nesbit, published in 1906. Tho Mr. Oppenheim uses the same theme and title, his treatment is so different as to arouse no suspicion of imitation. The theme, indeed, has been a public property for poets ever since Shakespeare reminded us that "Imperious Caesar, dead and turned to clay, Might stop a hole to keep the wind away." Mr. Nesbit's poem is worth reprinting: THE SENEGALESE AGAINST THE ENEMY But no one remembers the words that she said, In this handful of dust. So hide your puling imbeciles, And I never can be beautiful again! A handful of dust-it is death, it is birth, It is naught; it is all since the first day of earth; In golden gushes of delicious light- Hush-here are deeps of green, where rapture stills, Sheathing itself in veils of amber dusk; With hint of heaven pushing through her It is life, it is love, it is laughter and Ah, joy's not stopped! 'Tis only more in And it holds all the mystery lost in the Here where Creation's ardors all conyears― A handful of dust. The poetry of Angela Morgan, when collected together in a volume ("The Hour Has Struck and Other Poems," The Astor Press, N. Y.), gives one the impression of an emotional intensity that threatens at times to become hectic. There is a little too much white heat in this volume. While no one poem has, perhaps, too much of it, the cumulative effect grows displeasing. One of the best of the poems is this: G JUNE RAPTURE. BY ANGELA MORGAN. dense; Here where I crush me to the radiant sod, The life that thrills its trembling leaves There's not a pleasure pulsing through its veins That does not sting me with ecstatic pains. Kept me aflame and raw to beauty's touch. Gave me so often agony for mate; REEN! What a world of green! Tore from my heart the things that make Panting for beauty long denied, Leaps in a passion of high grati- To meet the wild embraces of the wood; In bounteous crescendos of delight, To where the sun its highest rapture Cascades of color tumbling down the height men glad Praised be the gods! If I at last, by such The anguished rapture of an hour like Smite me, O Life, and bruise me if thou Mock me and starve me with thy bitter But keep me thus aquiver and awake, And this the reason I was born, I say- You DONOGHU'S HOUR-A STORY Altho this story by Donn Byrne was published only a few months ago (in the Smart Set), appearing, in fact, just as the European war began, it seems so fast have events moved to belong to a historical period long since passed. Donoghu was an Irishman enlisted in the French army to fight the British! That sounds incredible now. It sounded very plausible a year or so ago. In any event, the story stands on its merits as a vivid and dramatic tale. We have abridged it somewhat, omitting the part that tells why this particular Irishman had grown lustful for vengeance against the British. OU will take fifty of your Senegalese. You will take a machine gun. You will be out of the camp in ten minutes." "You will then hold the position until "Report by runner, will you?" The old colonel was always brusque as he never changed the cut of his Napoleon. Donoghu knew that to get to the questioned frontier before the advance guard of the British column, his Senegalese would have to march quick time nearly all the thirty miles. They had already done eighteen that day. The Senegalese were already being lined up by the young Dahomey sergeant; the machine gun men were raising the tripods. Their long, vicious Lebel rifles were shouldered. Swarthy Kabyles and Berbers of the Turco companies raised their hook noses and spat at the negroes in disgust. A group of Foreign Legion men grumbled at ceding the advance guard to the Senegalese. The battalion raised a cheer as the quarter-company started off. The Legion men gave a delighted shout of "Ce bon Irlandais!" The officers whispered "Remember Fashoda" as Donoghu swung past. He nodded. Then they stepped out into the desert. The men were all delighted-Donoghu could see that. They had had no real fighting for years, beyond an occasional punitive expedition against remote Kabyle tribes, or hunting down slaves along the frontier of the Belgian Congo. They were off to fight organized troops, as the Zouaves went to the Crimea. The little corporal who was carrying the colors in their oilskin case forgot discipline for a moment and grinned delightedly at the captain. The young Dahomey sergeant had thrown back his shoulders until his blue Zouave jacket was near to bursting. He whistled "The Marseillaise" viciously between his clenched teeth. D ONOGHU knew every man of his His sergeant he had captroop. tured from an Arab slave trader when he was a sous-lieutenant of Spahis. He had trained him until he was the best sergeant of the native regiments. His little corporal he had saved from the stakes at the hands of Ugandese raiders. Nearly every one of the men had come into the fortress a naked savage and been transformed under his eye into an efficient infantryman in baggy blue pants and red cummerbund and chéchia. And they looked on the tall, hawk-nosed, grizzled Irish officer as nothing short of a deity. The column had moved on from Abecher on instructions from the Quai d'Orsay. One of the periodical frontier problems of the hinterland of the Sahara had risen, and a battalion had been despatched to hold the line. Hostilities would precipitate an international conflict that might develop into a Continental shambles. If Donoghu won his race against the advance guard of the English force that had left Khartum on the same errand, he would obviate most of the difficulties. Smooth-shaven, shifty men would parley in the chancelleries of Europe and settle the question according to the dictates of diplomacy. If he arrived too late, his orders were explicit: he was to attack. Messages would rip and crackle along thousands of miles of telegraph wire, and within a day troops would be mobilizing along the Breton dunes and squat gray cruisers would hurry from the slips of Portsmouth. The camp was lost behind the waves of white sand. The troop tramped forward with the rapid, nervous step of the African of the desert. The long midday rest had refreshed the men, and they were as strong as tho they had just left their barracks. Donoghu could see that they wanted fight. They would strain every nerve to win, but they hoped to arrive too late. Their foot-falls sounded in unison, with the dull thud of a mallet beating clothes. "Attention. Rout step." They could get along faster now. Their captain would utilize their native instinct of hunting. That would help in reaching the oasis first. The men broke the formation with a shuffling sound as of dancers on a sanded floor. They spread out like a pack of hunting wolves. TH HEY were barely twenty minutes out of the camp but they had gone nearly two miles. The sun would go down in another forty minutes. It hung in a vague scarlet blotch behind them, and colored the white sand yellow before them. It was as tho they were dashing through a limitless field of ripening wheat. The desert rose in waves as far as they could see, and in little hills and in gullies and chasms. There was a long clear rift where a sandstorm had passed. Heat struck upward. At sundown the men would stop for evening prayer and for their quarter-hour rest after the hour's march. Then Donoghu planned another hour's burst before nightfall. "Attention. Quick time." The shuffle grew faster. They bent forward like hounds straining at a leash. They closed up into a blur of blue. In the middle of the troop the black cover of the standard rose like the mast of a ship. There was no hard breathing. There was no sound at all beyond the soft crumbling pad of the hundred white-clad feet and the flap of the bayonets against the men's thighs. make, they knew they were going to fight in the morning. The prayer rose in a sonorous, triumphant murmur. He wondered what really would happen. They had broken up now, and were sitting cross-legged talking in subdued murmurs. They were debating the prospects of meeting the British. He saw the tall private who had acted as muezzin inflaming their Mohammedanism. God, if those Senegalese were unloosed against an enemy, they would tear them limb from limo! He had seen twentyfive of them once attack two hundred armed Kabyles, and remembered how no Kabyle captives were taken and no Kabyle combatants escaped. What chance would the debilitated British have against troops of whom even the Foreign Legion was envious? What chance would an English detachment have against those savages with the promise of the Prophet rising like a flame within them? Darkness was creeping up now. He would make another dash before night broke, and then rest until moonrise. He gave the order to fall in. The sergeant repeated it with a snap like a snarl. The Shadows were closing around. men moved as in a huge spot of light that would contract little by little. Darkness crept on like a cloak of soft black velvet. Donoghu could merely feel it fall about them. The men moved onward in a blot of dark color. They changed rifles from one hand to the other with a soft click as barrel struck against palm. They resembled a huge insect crawling forward. The Dahomey sergeant was still in advance. The staff of the standard towered up from the mass like some grotesque weapon. There was the soft glug of T The young sergeant was several yards water in canteens. in advance of the troop. Occasionally he would break into a lope and gain on the men, and then slow up until they were just behind him. Then he would lean forward and begin his lope again. He had taken his rifle from his shoulder and was carrying it in his hand. Donoghu looked back at the sun. Only half of it was above the violet horizon line. The yellow was changing to pink along the sand hills. Muezzins would now be chanting from the minarets of Algiers. It was time for prayer. HE prospect of action in the morning affected Donoghu with a wild feeling of elation. Queer spasmodic shivers ran through him. He had a desire to sing. The crumbling sand sprang under his feet like elastic. His fifteen years in Africa had shown him much fighting: sharp night attacks against Moorish tribes, stealthy jungle stalking for raiders and occasional campaigns into the desert; but, like his men, he had had no hostile contact with foreign troops. The troop was swinging forward in step. The moonlight gave the dunes a white, leprous look. The men had the appearance of giants in the Thousand and One Nights. They threw gigantic shadows behind them. The standard pole cast a long black line that ended in a faint thread fifty feet behind. The moonbeams drew little glints of silver from the barrels of the rifles. They struck flashes from the Maxim that was being carried on its tripod in the rear, like some horrible squat serpent borne by priests in a barbaric processional. A faint breeze had risen and was stirring the fine sand with a noise like the ACROSS THE RIDGE IN TIME TO FIGHT rustle of dry leaves. A little sand owl hooted derisively in the distance. Now and again the machine gun carriers gave grunts of effort. From a clump of palm trees in front a marabout bird that had strayed far inland from the marshes rose with a raucous caw. They could see its long bill in the moonlight. It threw back its legs and flapped off eastward. It seemed to be flying straight into the white disk of the moon. I T WAS midnight now. The men had come fifteen miles. That made thirtythree that day. They were shuffling on in a rapid trot. The Dahomey sergeant still kept ahead of the troop like the bellwether of a herd of sheep. Only the frequent shifts at the machine gun and the standard showed that the troop was tired. They were near a group of stunted palm trees and a little spring. Donoghu gave the order to fall out and bivouac. They were due two hours' sleep now. Then they would have to be up and on the march if they were to keep in the race. Arms were stacked with a clashing rattle. The troop sat down and munched the rations from their haversacks. The six sentries took up their posts. The sergeant made his rounds. Somewhere a pair of jackals howled. The moon was high now. Against the black of the sky stars stood out like patches of white fire. Faint silver twinklings came from the dusty leaves of the palm trees. Water rose from the spring in a soft bubble. It flowed out in a little silver river that grew fainter and fainter and finally disappeared in the sand. Donoghu wondered how the English detachment was getting along. He knew now how a cat felt while it waited for a mouse. The men had unrolled their blankets and lain down on their faces. In their center were the machine gun and the stack of rifles. At intervals the sentries stood bolt upright with their fingers on their triggers. Donoghu hollowed himself a place in the sand and settled himself in it. He could not sleep. He felt that the next day was too big. He remembered he felt like that going over on the mail boat to the guards' barracks. He wanted to save himself as much as he could. He crushed his kepi down over his eyes and lay still. And then forms and faces rose before him. There was the old colonel of guards sitting stifly before his desk, and a first lieutenant of guards, and there was Edith Grierson. And there was an old foxhunting major of Enniskilling Dragoons, and a group of Trinity students, and an old lecturer in Greek with a stained monograph in his hand. And there was a thin line of khaki troopers centered about a marabout's tomb with a few stunted date palms and a brackish stream. Occasionally he heard a soft thud as the sentries grounded arms against the The moon had passed well overhead now. H E FELT the young Dahomey ser- "Shall the men fall in ?" 205 Occasionally they rested mechanically. Then they stood rigid and looked eastward. No one spoke. H AMMERS seemed to clank in Donoghu's brain. There was a singing in his ears. Then they saw the khaki line. The black sergeant raised his voice and howled like a wolf. The troop was running now. Three more helped to rush the gun. They took "Go back and lie down," Donoghu di- tl.e standard on their shoulders. rected. Another hour passed. Donoghu looked around. Most of the men were awake. They lay around, squatting on their haunches and lying on their elbows, and waited. Donoghu still gave no order. Four hours had passed before they were under way again. The air was raw. The horizon was touched with faint splotches of gray. The troop moved forward rhythmically in step. The sergeant paced alongside with quick, nervous strides. Donoghu noticed that his bayonet was fixed. A sharp breeze moved westward. From behind a clump of scrub there came the twitter of a sand partridge. Donoghu felt calm now. It was as if, after countless ages, a scale that had been jolted had come to perfect balance. He threw his shoulders back and looked straight forward. About his troops was the dignity of men going into battle. Tints of rose and gray and emerald were filling the sky. A flock of starlings passed high over their heads. They could hear the rapid pitapat of wings. In the east the sun rose in a crimson blotch. Clouds took the shape of heavy artillery and of massed regiments. They hovered to and fro like smoke from heavy ordnance. Then they suddenly parted and the sun flashed out like a huge crimson balloon. They lost sense of time and space. Distance became so many steps to be taken until they met a thin khaki line. The troup routed step and scattered. The sergeant ran forward with nervous steps and whined like a bloodhound. The machine gun was dropped every quarter of an hour by its bearers, and others rushed to it and carried it forward. Every quarter of an hour the pole would be wrenched from the hands of the standard bearer. Donoghu glanced at his troop from time to time. Their faces were set and rigid. Teeth were clenched. Furrows ran down glistening black jaws. Huge white eyeballs rolled. He himself felt as if his fists grasped thunderbolts. He was an irresistible power hastening down the alleyways of the world to avenge woeful centuries. The corporal at his left was gibbering in Arabic. He was reciting verses from the Koran that told of the conquest of the Feringhee and of the victory of Islam. Donoghu halted them and drove them into rank. He knew they needed a rest. They stood tense and quivering, with teeth bared. He was near enough now to distinguish the British advance guard. They had scattered out over two hundred yards. A trim, slight officer was walking up and down. He could see that it was an English, not a native, detachment. He wondered how they would face these black fighters, whose bulk and uniform made them look like old-time djinn. He marched them forward in quick time. The line grew more distinct. He could see the khaki caps. They were the type whose salute had seemed insults. He had no redress then. He was going to have it now. The khaki line had dropped on their stomachs and were fingering their LeeEnfields. They were taking no chances. If Donoghu did not attack, he could imagine his reception. The young officer would come forward with a smile. "Sorry, old man. Here first, you see. Fortune of war!" The khaki troops would examine his Senegalese curiously and then draw aside with a snicker. The line was lost to view behind a sand ridge. In a minute they would top it. The defense would not be more than one hundred and fifty yards away. The Senegalese were drawn up in a quivering line. The teeth of the little corporal were chattering in frenzy. One or two of the men were frothing at the lips. They fixed their chéchias and tightened cummerbunds. Beyond the ridge they could hear the young officer and his sergeant deliver quick orders. Donoghu wasn't listening to them. He was listening to the voice of a young woman in a conservatory at a ball fifteen years ago. The Senegalese were waiting impatiently, their eyes focused upon him. "Fix bayonets," he rasped. His throat seemed to have gone dry. There was a swish as the blades left the scabbards and a succession of sharp clicks as they were locked on the rifle barrels. The young Dahomey sergeant was poised on the balls of his feet. His bayonet was at the charge. He swayed backward and forward. He looked at Donoghu. Donoghu nodded. They topped the ridge and raced downward. |