A PHANTASY OF HEAVEN
Perhaps he plays with cherubs now,
Those little, golden boys of God,
Bending, with them, some silver bough,
The while a seraph, head a-nod,
Slumbers on guard; how they will run
And shout, if he should wake too soon,—
As fruit more golden than the sun
And riper than the full-grown moon,
Conglobed in clusters, weighs them down,
Like Atlas heaped with starry signs;
And, if they’re tripped, heel over crown,
By hidden coils of mighty vines,—
Perhaps the seraph, swift to pounce,
Will hale them, vexed, to God—and He
Will only laugh, remembering, once
He was a boy in Galilee!
Max Eastman
Max Eastman was born at Canandaigua, New York, January 4, 1883. Both his father and mother had been Congregationalist preachers, so it was natural that the son should turn from scholasticism to a definitely social expression. Eastman had received his A.B. at Williams in 1905; from 1907 to 1911 he had been Associate in Philosophy at Columbia University. But in the latter part of 1911, he devoted all his time to writing, studying the vast problems of economic inequality and voicing the protests of the dumb millions in a style that was all the firmer for being philosophic. In 1913, he became editor of The Masses which, in 1917, became The Liberator.
Child of the Amazons (1913) reveals the quiet lover of beauty as well as the fiery hater of injustice. The best of these poems, with many new ones, were incorporated in Colors of Life (1918). This volume is a far richer collection; a record of glowing hours, steadily burning truths.
Besides Eastman’s poems and essays, he has written one of the most clarifying—and most readable—studies of the period. Enjoyment of Poetry (1913) is invaluable as a new kind of text-book, the chief purpose of which, in the words of its preface, is to increase enjoyment. Eliminating the usual academic and literary classifications, Eastman accomplishes his object, which is to show that the poetic in everyday perception and conversation should not be separated from the poetic in literature.