NIRVANA
Sleep on, I lie at heaven’s high oriels,
Over the stars that murmur as they go
Lighting your lattice-window far below;
And every star some of the glory spells
Whereof I know.
I have forgotten you long, long ago,
Like the sweet silver singing of thin bells
Vanished, or music fading faint and low.
Sleep on, I lie at heaven’s high oriels,
Who loved you so.
Joyce Kilmer
(Alfred) Joyce Kilmer was born at New Brunswick, New Jersey, December 6, 1886. He was graduated from Rutgers College in 1904 and received his A.B. from Columbia in 1906. After leaving Columbia he became, in rapid succession, instructor of Latin at Morristown High School, editor of a journal for horsemen, book salesman, book-reviewer, lexicographer, æsthete, interviewer, socialist and churchman.
After Kilmer became converted to Catholicism, his conception of the church was the Church Militant. “His thought,” writes his biographer, Robert Cortes Holliday, “dwelt continually on warrior-saints.... As he saw it, there was no question as to his duty.” In 1917 Kilmer joined the Officers’ Reserve Training Corps, but he soon resigned from this. In less than three weeks after America entered the world war, he enlisted as a private in the Seventh Regiment, National Guard, New York. Shortly before the regiment left New York for Spartanburg, South Carolina, Kilmer was transferred at his own request to the 165th Infantry. In spite of his avowed militancy, Kilmer was “a poet trying to be a soldier;” he made no effort to glorify war; his one hope was to wring some spiritual satisfaction out of the brutality.
On July 28, 1918, the five-day battle for the mastery of the heights beyond the river Ourcq was begun. Two days later, Sergeant Kilmer was killed in action.
Death came before the poet had developed or even matured his gifts. His first volume, Summer of Love (1911), is wholly imitative; it is full of reflections of a dozen other sources, “a broken bundle of mirrors.” Trees and Other Poems (1914) contains the title-poem by which Kilmer is best known and, though various influences are still strong (one cannot miss the borrowed accents of Patmore, Belloc, Chesterton, Housman and—vide “Martin”—E. A. Robinson), a refreshing candor lights up the lines. Main Street and Other Poems (1917) is less derivative; the simplicity is less self-conscious, the ecstasy more spontaneous.
Besides his own poetry, Kilmer edited a selection of Verses by Hilaire Belloc (1916) and Dreams and Images, An Anthology of Catholic poets (1917).
TREES[[55]]
I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.
A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the sweet earth’s flowing breast;
A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;
A tree that may in summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;
Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.
Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.
MARTIN[[56]]
When I am tired of earnest men,
Intense and keen and sharp and clever,
Pursuing fame with brush or pen
Or counting metal disks forever,
Then from the halls of shadowland
Beyond the trackless purple sea
Old Martin’s ghost comes back to stand
Beside my desk and talk to me.
Still on his delicate pale face
A quizzical thin smile is showing,
His cheeks are wrinkled like fine lace,
His kind blue eyes are gay and glowing.
He wears a brilliant-hued cravat,
A suit to match his soft gray hair,
A rakish stick, a knowing hat,
A manner blithe and debonair.
How good, that he who always knew
That being lovely was a duty,
Should have gold halls to wander through
And should himself inhabit beauty.
How like his old unselfish way
To leave those halls of splendid mirth
And comfort those condemned to stay
Upon the bleak and sombre earth.
Some people ask: What cruel chance
Made Martin’s life so sad a story?
Martin? Why, he exhaled romance
And wore an overcoat of glory.
A fleck of sunlight in the street,
A horse, a book, a girl who smiled,—
Such visions made each moment sweet
For this receptive, ancient child.
Because it was old Martin’s lot
To be, not make, a decoration,
Shall we then scorn him, having not
His genius of appreciation?
Rich joy and love he got and gave;
His heart was merry as his dress.
Pile laurel wreaths upon his grave
Who did not gain, but was, success.
Shaemas O Sheel
Shaemas O Sheel (Shields) was born September 19, 1886, in New York City. After graduating from high school, he revived the ancient Gaelic form of his family name and identified himself with the cause of Ireland in America.
O Sheel’s two volumes, The Blossomy Bough (1911) and The Light Feet of Goats (1915), owe their chief impetus to the Celtic renascence and to W. B. Yeats in particular. But O Sheel’s poetry, although influenced, is not merely derivative. His ancestry speaks through him with unmistakable accents; he is typically the Irish bard of whom Chesterton has written:
For the great Gaels of Ireland
Are the men that God made mad;
For all their wars are merry
And all their songs are sad.
A recurring if sometimes too determined mysticism and a muffled heroism individualize the best of his work.