IN PASSING
Through the dim window, I could see
The little room—a sordid square
Of helter-skelter penury:
Piano, whatnot, splintered chair....
It is so small a room that I
Seem almost at the woman’s side:
Galled jade—too fat for vanity,
And far too frankly old for pride.
Her greasy apron ’round her waist;
The dish cloth by her on the chair;
As if in some wild headlong haste,
She has come in and settled there.
Grimly she bends her back and tries
To stab the keys, with heavy hand;
A child’s first finger exercise
Before her on the music stand.
David Morton
David Morton was born at Elkton, Kentucky, February 21, 1886. He graduated from Vanderbilt University in 1909, engaging in newspaper work immediately thereafter. After ten years of writing for various papers in the South, Morton came to New Jersey, where he now lives, being teacher of English at Morristown High School.
The greater part of Morton’s work is in the sonnet form, a form into which he has carried a new warmth without sacrificing the old dignity. The best of these verses are to be found in his first volume, Ships in Harbor and Other Poems.
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Beautiful words, like butterflies, blow by,
With what swift colors on their fragile wings!—
Some that are less articulate than a sigh,
Some that were names of ancient, lovely things.
What delicate careerings of escape,
When they would pass beyond the baffled reach,
To leave a haunting shadow and a shape,
Eluding still the careful traps of speech.
And I who watch and listen, lie in wait,
Seeing the cloudy cavalcades blow past,
Happy if some bright vagrant, soon or late,
May venture near the snares of sound, at last—
Most fortunate captor if, from time to time,
One may be taken, trembling, in a rhyme.