HOW TO CATCH UNICORNS
Its cloven hoofprint on the sand
Will lead you—where?
Into a phantasmagoric land—
Beware!
There all the bright streams run up-hill.
The birds on every tree are still.
But from stocks and stones, clear voices come
That should be dumb.
If you have taken along a net,
A noose, a prod,
You’ll be waiting in the forest yet ...
Nid—nod!
In a virgin’s lap the beast slept sound,
They say ... but I—
I think (Is anyone around?)
That’s just a lie!
If you have taken a musketoon
To flinders ’twill flash ’neath the wizard moon.
So I should take browned batter-cake,
Hot-buttered inside, like foam to flake.
And I should take an easy heart
And a whimsical face,
And a tied-up lunch of sandwich and tart,
And spread a cloth in the open chase.
And then I should pretend to snore ...
And I’d hear a snort and I’d hear a roar,
The wind of a mane and a tail, and four
Wild hoofs prancing the forest-floor.
And I’d open my eyes on a flashing horn—
And see the Unicorn!
Paladins fierce and virgins sweet ...
But he’s never had anything to eat!
Knights have tramped in their iron-mong’ry ...
But nobody thought—that’s all!—he’s hungry!
ADDENDUM
Really hungry! Good Lord deliver us,
The Unicorn is not carnivorous!
John Hall Wheelock
John Hall Wheelock was born at Far Rockaway, Long Island, in 1886. He was graduated from Harvard, receiving his B.A. in 1908, and finished his studies at the Universities of Göttingen and Berlin, 1908-10.
Wheelock’s first book is, in many respects, his best. The Human Fantasy (1911) sings with the voice of youth—a youth which is vibrantly, even vociferously, in love with existence. Rhapsodic and obviously influenced by Whitman and Henley, these lines beat bravely; a singing buoyance arrests one upon opening the volume. A headlong ecstasy rises from pages whose refrain is “Splendid it is to live and glorious to die.” The Beloved Adventure (1912) is less powerful but scarcely less passionate. Lyric after lyric moves one by its athletic music and spiritual intensity.
Wheelock’s subsequent volumes are less individualized. Love and Liberation (1913) and Dust and Light (1919) are long dilutions of the earlier strain. The music is still here, but most of the magic has gone. Wheelock has allowed himself to be exploited by his own fluency, and the result is unbelievably monotonous. Yet even vast stretches of two hundred and thirty unvaried love songs cannot bury a dozen or more vivid poems which lie, half-concealed, in a waste of verbiage.
In spite of his lapses and lack of selective taste, Wheelock is often a stirring lyricist. The Human Fantasy is one of the most remarkable “first” books of the period.