BOOKS RECEIVED
The Iscariot, by Eden Phillpotts. John Lane. The Poems of Rosamund Marriott Watson. John Lane. Lyrical Poems, by Lucy Lyttelton. Thomas B. Mosher. The Silence of Amor, by Fiona Macleod, Thomas B. Mosher. Spring in Tuscany and Other Lyrics. Thomas B. Mosher. Interpretations: A Book of First Poems, by Zoë Akins. Mitchell Kennerley. A Round of Rimes, by Denis A. MacCarthy. Little, Brown & Co. Voices from Erin and Other Poems, by Denis A. MacCarthy. Little, Brown & Co. Love and The Year and Other Poems, by Grace Griswold. Duffield & Co. Songs and Sonnets, by Webster Ford. The Rooks Press, Chicago. The Quiet Courage and Other Songs of the Unafraid, by Everard Jack Appleton. Stewart and Kidd Co. In Cupid's Chains and Other Poems, by Benjamin F. Woodcox. Woodcox & Fanner. Maverick, by Hervey White. Maverick Press.
| Vol. I No. 3 | |
| DECEMBER, 1912 | |
| ———— |
THE MOUNTAIN TOMB
Pour wine and dance, if manhood still have pride, Bring roses, if the rose be yet in bloom; The cataract smokes on the mountain side. Our Father Rosicross is in his tomb.
Pull down the blinds, bring fiddle and clarionet, Let there be no foot silent in the room, Nor mouth with kissing nor the wine unwet. Our Father Rosicross is in his tomb.
In vain, in vain; the cataract still cries, The everlasting taper lights the gloom, All wisdom shut into its onyx eyes. Our Father Rosicross sleeps in his tomb.
William Butler Yeats
TO A CHILD DANCING UPON THE SHORE
Dance there upon the shore; What need have you to care For wind or water's roar? And tumble out your hair That the salt drops have wet; Being young you have not known The fool's triumph, nor yet Love lost as soon as won. And he, the best warrior, dead And all the sheaves to bind! What need that you should dread The monstrous crying of wind?
William Butler Yeats
FALLEN MAJESTY
Although crowds gathered once if she but showed her face And even old men's eyes grew dim, this hand alone, Like some last courtier at a gipsy camping place Babbling of fallen majesty, records what's gone. The lineaments, the heart that laughter has made sweet, These, these remain, but I record what's gone. A crowd Will gather and not know that through its very street Once walked a thing that seemed, as it were, a burning cloud.
William Butler Yeats
LOVE AND THE BIRD
The moments passed as at a play, I had the wisdom love can bring, I had my share of mother wit; And yet for all that I could say, And though I had her praise for it, And she seemed happy as a king, Love's moon was withering away.
Believing every word I said I praised her body and her mind, Till pride had made her eyes grow bright, And pleasure made her cheeks grow red, And vanity her footfall light; Yet we, for all that praise, could find Nothing but darkness overhead.
I sat as silent as a stone And knew, though she'd not said a word, That even the best of love must die, And had been savagely undone Were it not that love, upon the cry Of a most ridiculous little bird, Threw up in the air his marvellous moon.
William Butler Yeats
THE REALISTS
Hope that you may understand. What can books, of men that wive In a dragon-guarded land; Paintings of the dolphin drawn; Sea nymphs, in their pearly waggons, Do but wake the hope to live That had gone With the dragons.
William Butler Yeats
SANGAR TO LINCOLN STEFFENS
Somewhere I read a strange, old, rusty tale Smelling of war; most curiously named "The Mad Recreant Knight of the West." Once, you have read, the round world brimmed with hate, Stirred and revolted, flashed unceasingly Facets of cruel splendor. And the strong Harried the weak ... Long past, long past, praise God In these fair, peaceful, happy days. The Tale: Eastward the Huns break border, Surf on a rotten dyke; They have murdered the Eastern Warder (His head on a pike). "Arm thee, arm thee, my father! "Swift rides the Goddes-bane, "And the high nobles gather "On the plain!"
"O blind world-wrath!" cried Sangar, "Greatly I killed in youth, "I dreamed men had done with anger "Through Goddes truth!" Smiled the boy then in faint scorn, Hard with the battle-thrill; "Arm thee, loud calls the war-horn "And shrill!"
He has bowed to the voice stentorian, Sick with thought of the grave— He has called for his battered morion And his scarred glaive. On the boy's helm a glove Of the Duke's daughter— In his eyes splendor of love And slaughter.
Hideous the Hun advances Like a sea-tide on sand; Unyielding, the haughty lances Make dauntless stand. And ever amid the clangor, Butchering Hun and Hun, With sorrowful face rides Sangar And his son....
Broken is the wild invader (Sullied, the whole world's fountains); They have penned the murderous raider With his back to the mountains. Yet tho' what had been mead Is now a bloody lake, Still drink swords where men bleed, Nor slake.
Now leaps one into the press— The Hell 'twixt front and front— Sangar, bloody and torn of dress (He has borne the brunt). "Hold!" cries "Peace! God's Peace! "Heed ye what Christus says—" And the wild battle gave surcease In amaze.
"When will ye cast out hate? "Brothers—my mad, mad brothers— "Mercy, ere it be too late, "These are sons of your mothers. "For sake of Him who died on Tree, "Who of all Creatures, loved the Least,"— "Blasphemer! God of Battles, He!" Cried a priest.
"Peace!" and with his two hands Has broken in twain his glaive. Weaponless, smiling he stands (Coward or brave?) "Traitor!" howls one rank, "Think ye "The Hun be our brother?" And "Fear we to die, craven, think ye?" The other.
Then sprang his son to his side, His lips with slaver were wet, For he had felt how men died And was lustful yet; (On his bent helm a glove Of the Duke's daughter, In his eyes splendor of love And slaughter)—
Shouting, "Father no more of mine! "Shameful old man—abhorr'd, "First traitor of all our line!" Up the two-handed sword. He smote—fell Sangar—and then Screaming, red, the boy ran Straight at the foe, and again Hell began ...
Oh, there was joy in Heaven when Sangar came. Sweet Mary wept, and bathed and bound his wounds, And God the Father healed him of despair, And Jesus gripped his hand, and laughed and laughed ...
John Reed
A LEGEND OF THE DOVE
Soft from the linden's bough, Unmoved against the tranquil afternoon, Eve's dove laments her now: "Ah, gone! long gone! shall not I find thee soon?"
That yearning in his voice Told not to Paradise a sorrow's tale: As other birds rejoice He sang, a brother to the nightingale.
By twilight on her breast He saw the flower sleep, the star awake; And calling her from rest, Made all the dawn melodious for her sake.
And then the Tempter's breath, The sword of exile and the mortal chain— The heritage of death That gave her heart to dust, his own to pain ...
In Eden desolate The seraph heard his lonely music swoon, As now, reiterate; "Ah gone! long gone! shall not I find thee soon?"
George Sterling
AT THE GRAND CAÑON
Thou settest splendors in my sight, O Lord! It seems as tho' a deep-hued sunset falls Forever on these Cyclopean walls— These battlements where Titan hosts have warred, And hewn the world with devastating sword, And shook with trumpets the eternal halls Where seraphim lay hid by bloody palls And only Hell and Silence were adored.
Lo! the abyss wherein great Satan's wings Might gender tempests, and his dragons' breath Fume up in pestilence. Beneath the sun Or starry outposts on terrestrial things, Is no such testimony unto Death Nor altars builded to Oblivion.
George Sterling
KINDRED
Musing, between the sunset and the dark, As Twilight in unhesitating hands Bore from the faint horizon's underlands, Silvern and chill, the moon's phantasmal ark, I heard the sea, and far away could mark Where that unalterable waste expands In sevenfold sapphire from the mournful sands, And saw beyond the deep a vibrant spark.
There sank the sun Arcturus, and I thought: Star, by an ocean on a world of thine, May not a being, born like me to die, Confront a little the eternal Naught And watch our isolated sun decline— Sad for his evanescence, even as I?
George Sterling
REMEMBERED LIGHT
The years are a falling of snow, Slow, but without cessation, On hills and mountains and flowers and worlds that were; But snow and the crawling night in which it fell May be washed away in one swifter hour of flame. Thus it was that some slant of sunset In the chasms of piled cloud— Transient mountains that made a new horizon, Uplifting the west to fantastic pinnacles— Smote warm in a buried realm of the spirit, Till the snows of forgetfulness were gone.
Clear in the vistas of memory, The peaks of a world long unremembered, Soared further than clouds, but fell not, Based on hills that shook not nor melted With that burden enormous, hardly to be believed. Rent with stupendous chasms, Full of an umber twilight, I beheld that larger world.
Bright was the twilight, sharp like ethereal wine Above, but low in the clefts it thickened, Dull as with duskier tincture. Like whimsical wings outspread but unstirring, Flowers that seemed spirits of the twilight, That must pass with its passing— Too fragile for day or for darkness, Fed the dusk with more delicate hues than its own. Stars that were nearer, more radiant than ours, Quivered and pulsed in the clear thin gold of the sky.
These things I beheld, Till the gold was shaken with flight Of fantastical wings like broken shadows, Forerunning the darkness; Till the twilight shivered with outcry of eldritch voices, Like pain's last cry ere oblivion.
Clark Ashton Smith
SORROWING OF WINDS
O winds that pass uncomforted Through all the peacefulness of spring, And tell the trees your sorrowing, That they must moan till ye are fled!
Think ye the Tyrian distance holds The crystal of unquestioned sleep? That those forgetful purples keep No veiled, contentious greens and golds?
Half with communicated grief, Half that they are not free to pass With you across the flickering grass, Mourns each vibrating bough and leaf.
And I, with soul disquieted, Shall find within the haunted spring No peace, till your strange sorrowing Is down the Tyrian distance fled.
Clark Ashton Smith
AMERICA
I hear America singing ... And the great prophet passed, Serene, clear and untroubled Into the silence vast.
When will the master-poet Rise, with vision strong, To mold her manifold music Into a living song?
I hear America singing ... Beyond the beat and stress, The chant of her shrill, unjaded, Empiric loveliness.
Laughter, beyond mere scorning, Wisdom surpassing wit, Love, and the unscathed spirit, These shall encompass it.
Alice Corbin
SYMBOLS
Who was it built the cradle of wrought gold? A druid, chanting by the waters old. Who was it kept the sword of vision bright? A warrior, falling darkly in the fight. Who was it put the crown upon the dove? A woman, paling in the arms of love. Oh, who but these, since Adam ceased to be, Have kept their ancient guard about the Tree?
Alice Corbin
THE STAR
I saw a star fall in the night, And a grey moth touched my cheek; Such majesty immortals have, Such pity for the weak.
Alice Corbin
NODES
The endless, foolish merriment of stars Beside the pale cold sorrow of the moon, Is like the wayward noises of the world Beside my heart's uplifted silent tune.
The little broken glitter of the waves Beside the golden sun's intense white blaze, Is like the idle chatter of the crowd Beside my heart's unwearied song of praise.
The sun and all the planets in the sky Beside the sacred wonder of dim space, Are notes upon a broken, tarnished lute That God will someday mend and put in place.
And space, beside the little secret joy Of God that sings forever in the clay, Is smaller than the dust we can not see, That yet dies not, till time and space decay.
And as the foolish merriment of stars Beside the cold pale sorrow of the moon, My little song, my little joy, my praise, Beside God's ancient, everlasting rune.
Alice Corbin