THE FANATIC
Well, here it is: you call for me: I come,
But with an eagerness not quite my own;
Propelled by that decisive martyrdom
That pleased the saints upon their faggot throne.
You see them smiling in the cruel flame
That exquisitely licks their willing limbs,
And finding some sad pleasure in the game
Not quite embodied in their lusty hymns.
And so I come: and though I go, be sure
That I will come again to-morrow, too;
And, Love’s fanatic, hasten to endure
The littleness that is so great in you.
I am the weakling of that helpless strength
That throws this broken body you despise
Before your carelessness, to find at length
The faith that sleeps behind your faithless eyes.
Babette Deutsch
Babette Deutsch, one of the most promising of the younger poet-critics, was born September 22, 1895, in New York City. She received her B.A. at Barnard College in 1917, doing subsequent work at the new School for Social Research. Since 1916, a year before she took her degree, Miss Deutsch has been contributing poems and critical articles to The New Republic, The Dial, The Yale Review, etc.
Banners (1919) is the title of her remarkable first book. The rich emotional content is matched by the poet’s intellectual skill. Unusually sensitive, most of these lines strive for—and attain—a high seriousness.
THE DEATH OF A CHILD[[64]]
Are you at ease now,
Do you suck content
From death’s dark nipple between your wan lips?
Now that the fever of the day is spent
And anguish slips
From the small limbs,
And they lie lapped in rest,
The young head pillowed soft upon that indurate breast.
No, you are quiet,
And forever,
Tho for us the silence is so loud with tears,
Wherein we hear the dreadful-footed years
Echoing, but your quick laughter never,
Never your stumbling run, your sudden face
Thrust in bright scorn upon our solemn fears.
Now the dark mother holds you close.... O, you
We loved so,
How you lie,
So strangely still, unmoved so utterly
Dear yet, but oh a little alien too.