WHEN I AM DEAD
When I am dead and nervous hands have thrust
My body downward into careless dust;
I think the grave cannot suffice to hold
My spirit ’prisoned in the sunless mould!
Some subtle memory of you shall be
A resurrection of the life of me.
Yea, I shall be, because I love you so,
The speechless spirit of all things that grow.
You shall not touch a flower but it shall be
Like a caress upon the cheek of me.
I shall be patient in the common grass
That I may feel your footfall when you pass.
I shall be kind as rain and pure as dew,
A loving spirit ’round the life of you.
When your soft cheeks by perfumed winds are fanned,
’Twill be my kiss—and you will understand.
But when some sultry, storm-bleared sun has set,
I will be lightning if you dare forget!
CRY OF THE PEOPLE[[38]]
Tremble before thy chattels,
Lords of the scheme of things!
Fighters of all earth’s battles,
Ours is the might of kings!
Guided by seers and sages,
The world’s heart-beat for a drum,
Snapping the chains of ages,
Out of the night we come!
Lend us no ear that pities!
Offer no almoner’s hand!
Alms for the builders of cities!
When will you understand?
Down with your pride of birth
And your golden gods of trade!
A man is worth to his mother, Earth,
All that a man has made!
We are the workers and makers.
We are no longer dumb!
Tremble, O Shirkers and Takers!
Sweeping the earth—we come!
Ranked in the world-wide dawn,
Marching into the day!
The night is gone and the sword is drawn
And the scabbard is thrown away!
LET ME LIVE OUT MY YEARS[[39]]
Let me live out my years in heat of blood!
Let me die drunken with the dreamer’s wine!
Let me not see this soul-house built of mud
Go toppling to the dust—a vacant shrine.
Let me go quickly, like a candle light
Snuffed out just at the heyday of its glow.
Give me high noon—and let it then be night!
Thus would I go.
And grant that when I face the grisly Thing,
My song may trumpet down the gray Perhaps.
Let me be as a tune-swept fiddlestring
That feels the Master Melody—and snaps!
Witter Bynner
Witter Bynner was born at Brooklyn, New York, August 10, 1881. He was graduated from Harvard in 1902 and has been assistant editor of various periodicals as well as adviser to publishers. Recently, he has spent much of his time lecturing on poetry and travelling in the Orient.
Young Harvard (1907), the first of Bynner’s volumes, was, as the name implies, a celebration of his alma mater. The New World (1915) is a much riper and far more ambitious effort. In this extended poem, Bynner sought—almost too determinedly—to translate the ideals of democracy into verse. Neither of these volumes displays its author’s gifts at their best, for Bynner is, first of all, a lyric poet. Grenstone Poems (1917) and A Canticle of Pan (1920) reveal a more natural singing voice. Bynner harmonizes in many keys; transposing, modulating and shifting from one tonality to another. This very ease is his chief defect, for Bynner’s facility leads him not only to write too much but in too many different styles. Many of his poems seem like sounding-boards that echo the tones of every poet except the composer of them. Instead of a fusion of gifts we have, too often, a disintegration.
When Bynner is least dexterous he is most ingratiating. When he does not try to sound the whole gamut of modern poetry from the lyrics of A. E. Housman to the attenuated epigrams of Ezra Pound, he can strike his own note with clarity and precision. Even in The Beloved Stranger (1919), where the borrowed accents of his alter ego are only too apparent, one is arrested by lines of musical charm and fluency.
Under the pseudonym “Emanuel Morgan,” Bynner was coauthor with Arthur Davison Ficke (writing under the name of “Anne Knish”) of Spectra (1916). Spectra was a serious burlesque of some of the extreme manifestations of modern poetic tendencies—a remarkable hoax that deceived many of the radical propagandists as well as most of the conservative critics.