I. MEDITATION AND THE SEARCHING SPIRIT
II. LOCAL COLOR
III. PORTRAITS AND PERSONALITIES
IV. CITIES
Lands-James
E. Warren, Junior
Letter to Many (Fragment) -James E. Warren,
Junior
April at Chateau-Thierry-Daniel Whitehead Hicky
An Italian Donkey-Agnes Kendrick Gray
Cape Cod-Martha Hodgson Ellis
Moonlight and Maya Ruins-Arthur Crew Inman
Sunrise Over Chester-Agnes Kendrick Gray
Off the Creek Coast-Daniel Whitehead Hicky
Amber from Egypt-Agnes Kendrick Gray
Assyria-James Edward Routh
Music of the Orient-James E. Warren, Junior
VI. NATURE
Someday I'll go to Africa-someday when winds are from the West;
To jungle glooms where moons are gold and ivory blossoms are,
And watch the leering warriors dance, white tremors in each
plumy crest,
And all the purple waves that foam in song on purple Zanzibar.
Someday I'll go where China burns-someday when winds are
from the East-
Hot China in a yellow haze of incense and of satin flames,
And where old gods grown faint and gray walk loud at night
when winds have ceased
To call from temples dark as sin the music of their ancient names.
Someday I'll go through empty seas from shores where winds
have never blown,
And I shall find no sacred fires, no dancers, and no moaning
drum;
For only silent clouds shall move where broken men and gods
have gone,
And even song shall never break on hearts to whom such dreams
have come.
-JAMES E. WARREN, JUNIOR.
Britain is what you dream and something more;
It is a land piled high of story books;
Green meadows and white sheep; tumultuous bells
That chime in sermons; towers that must have made
Imprisonment glorious; rivers of great name;
And rusty heather turning to purple now;
Bookstalls in crooked streets; and curious maps
Behind a dingy glass; abbeys that crumbled
To rosy stone like some forgotten monks.
Fallen to sleep upon their weary knees
Because their prayers had been too long; and walls
Crested with flowers in centuries of sand
The wind had lifted there for gardens brighter
Than Van Gogh could have painted. Things more real:
Bacon and marmalade and toast and tea;
And red-cheeked English boys with cricket bats;
The sunshine flooding over Soutra Hill;
And buttered scones; and Edinburgh at night...
-JAMES E. WARREN, JUNIOR.
Tread lightly, April, this is hallowed ground;
Tread lightly as your lyric feet can pass,
And sprinkle, with no shadow of a sound,
Bright crocuses along the tender grass.
Let lilacs softly burst in bloom again,
And spread a carpeting of violets
For silver sandals of the quiet rain
That glitters like the flash of bayonets.
Light up the hills with tulips', wind-blown flame
As acolytes would light an altar-stone;
Twine poppies far too lovely for a name
Around the lonely crosses, one by one.
Tread lightly, April, soft and crystal-clear . . .
[A generation's April slumbers here.]
-DANIEL WHITEHEAD HICKY.
No larger than a sheep-dog,
On little fawn-like feet,
He pulls a painted wine-cart
Along the cobbled street.
With fringed ears gravely flapping
And light unhurried tread,
He minds me of brave Bottom
With roses on his head!
And when I hear the wine-cart
I run to watch him pass-
As though I were Titania
Enamoured of an ass!
-AGNES KENDRICK GRAY.
Wind-swept on the ever dipping prow I stand,
Swung into wild waters, then up to bead-blue sky.
Arching against the mast with outflung hand
I draw breath for a never uttered cry.
So must the cedar-carven angel feel
Who bares her breast and stretches back her wings,
Borne on, exulting, by the plunging keel,
With salt in the open mouth that never sings.
-MARTHA HODGSON ELLIS.
Moonlight and Maya ruins,
Alone in the jungle's heart:
Dim shades that silent come
And silently depart:
Faint secret cries that rise
From out the scented night:
Huge bats that flit and sway
Athwart the white moon's light:
Weird carven gods of stone
That loom grotesque and dim:
Warm stars that shake and swirl
Across the heaven's rim:
All,-pulsing loneliness,
Translucent, half-guessed gloom,
And the changeless aura of time,
Are wrapped in shadow doom.
What has been is linked
For aye with what may be,-
Moonlight and Maya ruins,-
Perchance,-infinity.
-ARTHUR CREW INMAN.
The River Dee runs brighter at the shore,
Pale in the dawn fades out the starry Plough,
And now the little English skylarks soar
Above the meadows out from Chester; now
Laburnam thickets glow with deepening gold
Where still the towers and walls of Caesar frown-
The Roman walls of Chester that enfold
The ancient timbered houses of the town.
The music of the morning breathes and breaks
Into a thousand songs; the sun is up!
My body rouses and my soul awakes
To drink the day from Cheshire's brimming cup.
A bell above the old Cathedral rings
And larks go up on light and rushing wings!
-AGNES KENDRICK GRAY.
Like quiet words upon a quiet mind
The fishing trawlers drift against the sun,
Their smoldering sails unrippled by the wind,
Their bright nets glittering till the tides are done.
Asleep, or nearly so, the fishermen drowse
Unmindful of the amethyst and gold
The sun has wrapped, like laurels, about their brows,
Of all the burning jewels their hands can hold.
The great bronze shoulder and the hairy chest,
The naked thigh, save for a tunic there,
Turn golden with the sunset as the west
Simmers to ashes in the darkened air.
They sleep, nor know beneath this rain of fire
They are the gods come back, of Troy and Tyre.
-DANIEL WHITEHEAD HICKY.
Caught in this chain of amber lies
The sunlight of Egyptian skies!
The polished globes as warmly shine
As spiced and honey-colored wine,
Or circlet of Saharan stars
Bartered for dawn in night's bazaars.
A hoarded flash of Pharaoh's gold
These threaded moons of amber hold;
And as I lift the precious strand,
I grasp all Cairo in my hand!
Bead against bead, clear tinkling, tells
A distant tale of camel-bells
And click of donkeys' tiny feet
On the low-arched and latticed street.
Caught in this chain of amber lies
The sunlight of Egyptian skies!
-AGNES KENDRICK GRAY.
Sunlight and splendor, glory and power,
Barbaric magnificence bred for the hour,
Lust and brutality, poetry, hate,
Love like the furnace, dim fiery fate,
Somewhere hovering awful and grim,
Visions that peeped o'er the uttermost rim
Of the earth to see heaven, and check up its dream,
Of splendor the greatest, of glory supreme,
Wild warriors canny rejoicing in might,
Wild beauties at home for as wild a respite
From the labours of killing to return and be killed.
And over it all the parched sunlight that spilled
Like gold hot coined from the minter's hands.
Most splendid and ever refulgent of lands.
And now all that splendor that Heaven forsook
Is become but a page in a child's story-book.
-JAMES EDWARD ROUTH.
Always the music of the Orient
Burns somewhere in me, sharp as Asian suns:
Thick temples standing in green wonderment
Loud with their hidden nameless bells of bronze;
Dull tinkling water languid as the lutes
That urge the voices of the garden singers;
The slender wail of nervous little flutes
Whining beneath the dance of dreamy fingers.
And there are tones of gongs forever thundering
Down corridors of gloom to moan and throng
Great rooms with ceaseless sound, thin cymbals
plundering
The soul's cold citadels, and weird and long
The warning bellow of Mongolian horns
On cruel mountains like snow-crusted thorns.
-JAMES E. WARREN, JUNIOR.