When Winter Comes to Main Street

by Grant M. Overton

But there is a different temper—or, if you like, tempering—to the verse in Translations from the Chinese. I quote “A National Frailty”:

The American people Were put into the world To assist foreign lecturers. When I visited them They filled crowded halls To hear me tell them Great Truths Which they might as well have read In their own prophet Thoreau. They paid me, for this, Three hundred dollars a night, And ten of their mandarins Invited me to visit at Newport. My agent told me If I would wear Chinese costume on the platform It would be five hundred.

In speaking of the late Joyce Kilmer, the temptation is inescapable to quote his “Trees”; after all, it is his best known and best loved poem—in certain moments it is his best poem! But instead, I will desert his volume, Trees and Other Poems, and from his other book, Main Street and Other Poems, I will quote the first two stanzas of Kilmer’s “Houses”—a poem written for his wife:

When you shall die and to the sky Serenely, delicately go, Saint Peter, when he sees you there, Will clash his keys and say: “Now talk to her, Sir Christopher! And hurry, Michelangelo! She wants to play at building, And you’ve got to help her play!” Every architect will help erect A palace on a lawn of cloud, With rainbow beams and a sunset roof, And a level star-tiled floor; And at your will you may use the skill Of this gay angelic crowd, When a house is made you will throw it down, And they’ll build you twenty more.

Mrs. Kilmer is the author of two volumes of verse which have sold rather more than John Masefield usually sells—at least, until the publication of Reynard the Fox. Candles That Burn created her audience and Vigils has been that audience’s renewed delight. From Vigils I take the poem “The Touch of Tears.” In it “Michael” is, of course, her own son:

Michael walks in autumn leaves, Rustling leaves and fading grasses, And his little music-box Tinkles faintly as he passes. It’s a gay and jaunty tune If the hands that play were clever: Michael plays it like a dirge, Moaning on and on forever. While his happy eyes grow big, Big and innocent and soulful, Wistful, halting little notes Rise, unutterably doleful, Telling of all childish griefs— Baffled babies sob forsaken, Birds fly off and bubbles burst, Kittens sleep and will not waken. Michael, it’s the touch of tears. Though you sing for very gladness, Others will not see your mirth; They will mourn your fancied sadness. Though you laugh at them in scorn, Show your happy heart for token, Michael, you’ll protest in vain— They will swear your heart is broken!

I think I have said elsewhere that J. C. Squire prefers his serious poems to those parodies of which he is such an admitted master. It seems only decent to defer, in this place, to the author’s own feeling in the matter. Mr. Squire is the author of The Birds and Other Poems and Poems: Second Series. My present choice is the beginning and the close of the poem, “Harlequin”—which is in both books:

Moonlit woodland, veils of green, Caves of empty dark between; Veils of green from rounded arms Drooping, that the moonlight charms: Tranced the trees, grass beneath Silent ... Like a stealthy breath, Mask and wand and silver skin Sudden enters Harlequin. Hist! Hist! Watch him go, Leaping limb and pointing toe, Slender arms that float and flow, Curving wand above, below; Flying, gliding, changing feet; Onset merging in retreat. Not a shadow of sound there is But his motion’s gentle hiss, Till one fluent arm and hand Suddenly circles, and the wand Taps a bough far overhead, “Crack,” and then all noise is dead. For he halts, and for a space Stands erect with upward face, Taut and tense to the white Message of the Moon’s light. He was listening; he was there; Flash! he went. To the air He a waiting ear had bent, Silent; but before he went Something somewhere else to seek, He moved his lips as though to speak. And we wait, and in vain, For he will not come again. Earth, grass, wood, and air, As we stare, and we stare, Which that fierce life did hold, Tired, dim, void, cold.

Milton Raison is a young writer, known especially to readers of The Bookman, whose verse has appeared in various magazines. A Russian, Milton Raison went to sea as a boy—he is scarcely more than a boy now. His first book of verse, Spindrift, carries a preface by William McFee. I quote: