The Second Book of Modern Verse

Title: The Second Book of Modern Verse

Editor: Jessie Belle Rittenhouse

Release date: January 1, 1998 [eBook #1166] Most recently updated: April 2, 2015

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1166

Credits: This etext was prepared by Alan R. Light

This etext was prepared by Alan R. Light ([email protected], formerly

[email protected], etc.). To assure a high quality text, the original was typed in (manually) twice and electronically compared.

The Second Book of Modern Verse Ed. Jessie B. Rittenhouse

[Note on text: Italicized lines or stanzas are marked by tildes (~). Other italicized words are capitalized. Lines longer than 78 characters are broken and the continuation is indented two spaces. Some obvious errors may have been corrected.]

The Second Book of Modern Verse

A Selection from the work of contemporaneous American poets Edited by Jessie B. Rittenhouse Editor of The Little Book of Modern Verse [Selections made in 1919.]

Foreword

It was my intention, when preparing `The Little Book of Modern Verse', published in 1913, to continue the series by a volume once in five years, but as it seemed inadvisable to issue one during the war, it is now six years since the publication of the first volume.

In the meantime, that the series might cover the period of American poetry from the beginning, `The Little Book of American Poets' was edited, confined chiefly to work of the nineteenth century, but ending with a group of living poets whose work has fallen equally within our own period. This group, including Edwin Markham, Bliss Carman, Edith Thomas, Louise Imogen Guiney, Lizette Woodworth Reese, and many others whose work has enriched both periods, was fully represented also in `The Little Book of Modern Verse'; and it has seemed necessary, therefore keenly as I regret the necessity, which limits of space impose, to omit the work of all poets who have been represented in both of my former collections.

Indeed the period covered by the present volume has been so prolific that it became necessary, if one would represent it with even approximate adequacy, to forego including many poets from `The Little Book of Modern Verse' itself, and but twenty-eight are repeated from that collection.

Even with these necessary eliminations in the interest of space for newer poets, the general scheme of the series — that of small, intimate volumes that shall be typical of the period, rather than exhaustive — has made it impossible to include all whose work I should otherwise have been glad to represent.

While I have not hesitated, where a poet's earlier work seemed finer and more characteristic than his later, to draw upon such earlier work, in the main `The Second Book of Modern Verse' has been selected from poetry published since 1913, the date of my first anthology.

Jessie B. Rittenhouse New York September 23, 1919

Contents

Abraham Lincoln walks at Midnight. [Vachel Lindsay] Acceptance. [Willard Wattles] Ad Matrem Amantissimam et Carissimam Filii in Aeternum Fidelitas. [John Myers O'Hara] After Apple-Picking. [Robert Frost] After Sunset. [Grace Hazard Conkling] Afternoon on a Hill. [Edna St. Vincent Millay] Afterwards. [Mahlon Leonard Fisher] Ambition. [Aline Kilmer] The Ancient Beautiful Things. [Fannie Stearns Davis] Apology. [Amy Lowell] April on the Battlefields. [Leonora Speyer] April — North Carolina. [Harriet Monroe] Atropos. [John Myers O'Hara] Autumn. [Jean Starr Untermeyer] Autumn Movement. [Carl Sandburg]

Ballad of a Child. [John G. Neihardt] Behind the House is the Millet Plot. [Muna Lee] Berkshires in April. [Clement Wood] Beyond Rathkelly. [Francis Carlin] Birches. [Robert Frost] The Bitter Herb. [Jeanne Robert Foster] Blind. [Harry Kemp] Blue Squills. [Sara Teasdale] The Breaking. [Margaret Steele Anderson]

Chanson of the Bells of Oseney. [Cale Young Rice] The Chant of the Colorado. [Cale Young Rice] The Child in Me. [May Riley Smith] The Chinese Nightingale. [Vachel Lindsay] Choice. [Angela Morgan] Cinquains. [Adelaide Crapsey] The City. [Charles Hanson Towne] City Roofs. [Charles Hanson Towne] Compensation. [William Ellery Leonard] Convention. [Agnes Lee] Cradle Song. [Josephine Preston Peabody]

The Dark Cavalier. [Margaret Widdemer] The Day before April. [Mary Carolyn Davies] Days. [Karle Wilson Baker] Death — Divination. [Charles Wharton Stork] Dialogue. [Walter Conrad Arensberg] Dilemma. [Orrick Johns] Doors. [Hermann Hagedorn] Dream. [Anna Hempstead Branch] The Dream of Aengus Og. [Eleanor Rogers Cox] Dusk at Sea. [Thomas S. Jones, Jr.]

Earth. [John Hall Wheelock] Earth's Easter. [Robert Haven Schauffler] Ellis Park. [Helen Hoyt] The Enchanted Sheepfold. [Josephine Preston Peabody] Envoi. [Josephine Preston Peabody] Evening Song of Senlin. [Conrad Aiken] Exile from God. [John Hall Wheelock] Eye-Witness. [Ridgely Torrence]

The Falconer of God. [William Rose Benet] "Feuerzauber". [Louis Untermeyer] The Fields. [Witter Bynner] Fifty Years Spent. [Maxwell Struthers Burt] The First Food. [George Sterling] Flammonde. [Edwin Arlington Robinson] The Flower of Mending. [Vachel Lindsay] Four Sonnets. [Thomas S. Jones, Jr.] Francis Ledwidge. [Grace Hazard Conkling]

General William Booth Enters into Heaven. [Vachel Lindsay] The Gift. [Louis V. Ledoux] A Girl's Songs. [Mary Carolyn Davies] God's Acre. [Witter Bynner] God's World. [Edna St. Vincent Millay] Good-Bye. [Norreys Jephson O'Conor] Good Company. [Karle Wilson Baker] The Great Hunt. [Carl Sandburg]

Harbury. [Louise Driscoll] Have you an Eye. [Edwin Ford Piper] Heat. [H. D.] The Hill Wife. [Robert Frost] Hills of Home. [Witter Bynner] The Homeland. [Dana Burnet] How much of Godhood. [Louis Untermeyer] Hrolf's Thrall, His Song. [Willard Wattles]

"I am in Love with High Far-Seeing Places". [Arthur Davison Ficke] I have a Rendezvous with Death. [Alan Seeger] "I Pass a Lighted Window". [Clement Wood] Idealists. [Alfred Kreymborg] The Idol-Maker prays. [Arthur Guiterman] "If you should tire of loving me". [Margaret Widdemer] In Excelsis. [Thomas S. Jones, Jr.] In Patris Mei Memoriam. [John Myers O'Hara] In Spite of War. [Angela Morgan] In the Hospital. [Arthur Guiterman] In the Monastery. [Norreys Jephson O'Conor] In the Mushroom Meadows. [Thomas Walsh] Indian Summer. [William Ellery Leonard] Interlude. [Scudder Middleton] The Interpreter. [Orrick Johns] Invocation. [Clara Shanafelt] Irish Love Song. [Margaret Widdemer]

Jerico. [Willard Wattles]

The Kings are passing Deathward. [David Morton]

A Lady. [Amy Lowell] The Last Piper. [Edward J. O'Brien] Lincoln. [John Gould Fletcher] Little Things. [Orrick Johns] Loam. [Carl Sandburg] Lonely Burial. [Stephen Vincent Benet] The Lonely Death. [Adelaide Crapsey] Love is a Terrible Thing. [Grace Fallow Norton] A Love Song. [Theodosia Garrison] Love Songs. [Sara Teasdale] The Lover envies an Old Man. [Shaemas O Sheel] A Lynmouth Widow. [Amelia Josephine Burr]

Mad Blake. [William Rose Benet] Madonna of the Evening Flowers. [Amy Lowell] Mater Dolorosa. [Louis V. Ledoux] Men of Harlan. [William Aspinwall Bradley] The Monk in the Kitchen. [Anna Hempstead Branch] Morning Song of Senlin. [Conrad Aiken] The Most-Sacred Mountain. [Eunice Tietjens] Moth-Terror. [Benjamin De Casseres] The Mould. [Gladys Cromwell] Music I heard. [Conrad Aiken] Muy Vieja Mexicana. [Alice Corbin]

The Name. [Anna Hempstead Branch] The Narrow Doors. [Fannie Stearns Davis] New Dreams for Old. [Cale Young Rice] The New God. [James Oppenheim] Nirvana. [John Hall Wheelock] A Note from the Pipes. [Leonora Speyer] A Nun. [Odell Shepard]

Of One Self-Slain. [Charles Hanson Towne] Old Age. [Cale Young Rice] Old Amaze. [Mahlon Leonard Fisher] Old King Cole. [Edwin Arlington Robinson] Old Manuscript. [Alfred Kreymborg] Old Ships. [David Morton] Omnium Exeunt in Mysterium. [George Sterling] Open Windows. [Sara Teasdale] Orchard. [H. D.] Our Little House. [Thomas Walsh] Overnight, a Rose. [Caroline Giltinan] Overtones. [William Alexander Percy]

Path Flower. [Olive Tilford Dargan] The Path that leads to Nowhere. [Corinne Roosevelt Robinson] Patterns. [Amy Lowell] Peace. [Agnes Lee] Pierrette in Memory. [William Griffith] Poets. [Joyce Kilmer] Prayer during Battle. [Hermann Hagedorn] Prayer of a Soldier in France. [Joyce Kilmer] Prevision. [Aline Kilmer] The Provinces. [Francis Carlin]

Reveille. [Louis Untermeyer] Richard Cory. [Edwin Arlington Robinson] The Road not taken. [Robert Frost] Romance. [Scudder Middleton] Rouge Bouquet. [Joyce Kilmer] The Runner in the Skies. [James Oppenheim]

A Saint's Hours. [Sarah N. Cleghorn] Silence. [Edgar Lee Masters] The Silent Folk. [Charles Wharton Stork] Slumber Song. [Louis V. Ledoux] Smith, of the Third Oregon, dies. [Mary Carolyn Davies] The Son. [Ridgely Torrence] Song. [Margaret Steele Anderson] Song. [Adelaide Crapsey] Song. [Edward J. O'Brien] Song. [Margaret Widdemer] A Song of Two Wanderers. [Marguerite Wilkinson] Songs of an Empty House. [Marguerite Wilkinson] Spoon River Anthology. [Edgar Lee Masters] Spring. [John Gould Fletcher] Spring in Carmel. [George Sterling] Spring Song. [William Griffith] Students. [Florence Wilkinson] Symbol. [David Morton]

Tampico. [Grace Hazard Conkling] "There will come Soft Rain". [Sara Teasdale] The Three Sisters. [Arthur Davison Ficke] A Thrush in the Moonlight. [Witter Bynner] To a Portrait of Whistler in the Brooklyn Art Museum. [Eleanor Rogers Cox] To Any one. [Witter Bynner] Trees. [Joyce Kilmer]

The Unknown Beloved. [John Hall Wheelock]

Valley Song. [Carl Sandburg] Venus Transiens. [Amy Lowell] Voyage a l'Infini. [Walter Conrad Arensberg]

The Wanderer. [Zoe Akins] The Water Ouzel. [Harriet Monroe] When the Year grows Old. [Edna St. Vincent Millay] Where Love is. [Amelia Josephine Burr] Where Love once was. [James Oppenheim] Which. [Corinne Roosevelt Robinson] The White Comrade. [Robert Haven Schauffler] Wide Haven. [Clement Wood] "A Wind Rose in the Night". [Aline Kilmer]

Yellow Warblers. [Katharine Lee Bates] You. [Ruth Guthrie Harding]

Biographical Notes

The Second Book of Modern Verse

The Road not taken. [Robert Frost]

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair, And having perhaps the better claim, Because it was grassy and wanted wear; Though as for that the passing there Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay In leaves no step had trodden black. Oh, I kept the first for another day! Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I — I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.

Symbol. [David Morton]

My faith is all a doubtful thing, Wove on a doubtful loom, — Until there comes, each showery spring, A cherry-tree in bloom; And Christ who died upon a tree That death had stricken bare, Comes beautifully back to me, In blossoms, everywhere.

Spring. [John Gould Fletcher]

At the first hour, it was as if one said, "Arise." At the second hour, it was as if one said, "Go forth." And the winter constellations that are like patient ox-eyes Sank below the white horizon at the north.

At the third hour, it was as if one said, "I thirst"; At the fourth hour, all the earth was still: Then the clouds suddenly swung over, stooped, and burst; And the rain flooded valley, plain and hill.

At the fifth hour, darkness took the throne; At the sixth hour, the earth shook and the wind cried; At the seventh hour, the hidden seed was sown; At the eighth hour, it gave up the ghost and died.

At the ninth hour, they sealed up the tomb; And the earth was then silent for the space of three hours. But at the twelfth hour, a single lily from the gloom Shot forth, and was followed by a whole host of flowers.

"There will come Soft Rain". [Sara Teasdale]

There will come soft rain and the smell of the ground, And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;

And frogs in the pools singing at night, And wild plum-trees in tremulous white;

Robins will wear their feathery fire Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire.

And not one will know of the war, not one Will care at last when it is done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree, If mankind perished utterly.

And Spring herself when she woke at dawn, Would scarcely know that we were gone.

Spring Song. [William Griffith]

Softly at dawn a whisper stole Down from the Green House on the Hill, Enchanting many a ghostly bole And wood-song with the ancient thrill.

Gossiping on the country-side, Spring and the wandering breezes say, God has thrown Heaven open wide And let the thrushes out to-day.

The Day before April. [Mary Carolyn Davies]

The day before April Alone, alone, I walked in the woods And I sat on a stone.

I sat on a broad stone And sang to the birds. The tune was God's making But I made the words.

Berkshires in April. [Clement Wood]

It is not Spring — not yet — But at East Schaghticoke I saw an ivory birch Lifting a filmy red mantle of knotted buds Above the rain-washed whiteness of her arms.

It is not Spring — not yet — But at Hoosick Falls I saw a robin strutting, Thin, still, and fidgety, Not like the puffed, complacent ball of feathers That dawdles over the cidery Autumn loam.

It is not Spring — not yet — But up the stocky Pownal hills Some springy shrub, a scarlet gash on the grayness, Climbs, flaming, over the melting snows.

It is not Spring — not yet — But at Williamstown the willows are young and golden, Their tall tips flinging the sun's rays back at him; And as the sun drags over the Berkshire crests, The willows glow, the scarlet bushes burn, The high hill birches shine like purple plumes, A royal headdress for the brow of Spring. It is the doubtful, unquiet end of Winter, And Spring is pulsing out of the wakening soil.

In Excelsis. [Thomas S. Jones, Jr.]

Spring! And all our valleys turning into green, Remembering — As I remember! So my heart turns glad For so much youth and joy — this to have had When in my veins the tide of living fire Was at its flow; This to know, When now the miracle of young desire Burns on the hills, and Spring's sweet choristers again Chant from each tree and every bush aflame Love's wondrous name; This under youth's glad reign, With all the valleys turning into green — This to have heard and seen!

And Song! Once to have known what every wakened bird Has heard; Once to have entered into that great harmony Of love's creation, and to feel The pulsing waves of wonder steal Through all my being; once to be In that same sea Of wakened joy that stirs in every tree And every bird; and then to sing — To sing aloud the endless Song of Spring!

Waiting, I turn to Thee, Expectant, humble, and on bended knee; Youth's radiant fire Only to burn at Thy unknown desire — For this alone has Song been granted me. Upon Thy altar burn me at Thy will; All wonders fill My cup, and it is Thine; Life's precious wine For this alone: for Thee. Yet never can be paid The debt long laid Upon my heart, because my lips did press In youth's glad Spring the Cup of Loveliness!

Blue Squills. [Sara Teasdale]

How many million Aprils came Before I ever knew How white a cherry bough could be, A bed of squills, how blue.

And many a dancing April When life is done with me, Will lift the blue flame of the flower And the white flame of the tree.

Oh, burn me with your beauty, then, Oh, hurt me, tree and flower, Lest in the end death try to take Even this glistening hour.

O shaken flowers, O shimmering trees, O sunlit white and blue, Wound me, that I through endless sleep May bear the scar of you.

Earth. [John Hall Wheelock]

Grasshopper, your fairy song And my poem alike belong To the dark and silent earth From which all poetry has birth; All we say and all we sing Is but as the murmuring Of that drowsy heart of hers When from her deep dream she stirs: If we sorrow, or rejoice, You and I are but her voice.

Deftly does the dust express In mind her hidden loveliness, And from her cool silence stream The cricket's cry and Dante's dream; For the earth that breeds the trees Breeds cities too, and symphonies. Equally her beauty flows Into a savior, or a rose — Looks down in dream, and from above Smiles at herself in Jesus' love. Christ's love and Homer's art Are but the workings of her heart; Through Leonardo's hand she seeks Herself, and through Beethoven speaks In holy thunderings around The awful message of the ground.

The serene and humble mold Does in herself all selves enfold — Kingdoms, destinies, and creeds, Great dreams, and dauntless deeds, Science that metes the firmament, The high, inflexible intent Of one for many sacrificed — Plato's brain, the heart of Christ: All love, all legend, and all lore Are in the dust forevermore.

Even as the growing grass Up from the soil religions pass, And the field that bears the rye Bears parables and prophecy. Out of the earth the poem grows Like the lily, or the rose; And all man is, or yet may be, Is but herself in agony Toiling up the steep ascent Toward the complete accomplishment When all dust shall be, the whole Universe, one conscious soul. Yea, the quiet and cool sod Bears in her breast the dream of God.

If you would know what earth is, scan The intricate, proud heart of man, Which is the earth articulate, And learn how holy and how great, How limitless and how profound Is the nature of the ground — How without terror or demur We may entrust ourselves to her When we are wearied out, and lay Our faces in the common clay.

For she is pity, she is love, All wisdom she, all thoughts that move About her everlasting breast Till she gathers them to rest: All tenderness of all the ages, Seraphic secrets of the sages, Vision and hope of all the seers, All prayer, all anguish, and all tears Are but the dust, that from her dream Awakes, and knows herself supreme — Are but earth when she reveals All that her secret heart conceals Down in the dark and silent loam, Which is ourselves, asleep, at home.

Yea, and this, my poem, too, Is part of her as dust and dew, Wherein herself she doth declare Through my lips, and say her prayer.

Trees. [Joyce Kilmer]

I think that I shall never see A poem lovely as a tree.

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest Against the earth's sweet flowing breast;

A tree that looks at God all day, And lifts her leafy arms to pray;

A tree that may in summer wear A nest of robins in her hair;

Upon whose bosom snow has lain; Who intimately lives with rain.

Poems are made by fools like me, But only God can make a tree.

Idealists. [Alfred Kreymborg]

Brother Tree: Why do you reach and reach? Do you dream some day to touch the sky? Brother Stream: Why do you run and run? Do you dream some day to fill the sea? Brother Bird: Why do you sing and sing? Do you dream — ~Young Man: Why do you talk and talk and talk?~

Blind. [Harry Kemp]

The Spring blew trumpets of color; Her Green sang in my brain — I heard a blind man groping "Tap — tap" with his cane;

I pitied him in his blindness; But can I boast, "I see"? Perhaps there walks a spirit Close by, who pities me, —

A spirit who hears me tapping The five-sensed cane of mind Amid such unguessed glories — That I am worse than blind.

Yellow Warblers. [Katharine Lee Bates]

The first faint dawn was flushing up the skies When, dreamland still bewildering mine eyes, I looked out to the oak that, winter-long, — a winter wild with war and woe and wrong — Beyond my casement had been void of song.

And lo! with golden buds the twigs were set, Live buds that warbled like a rivulet Beneath a veil of willows. Then I knew Those tiny voices, clear as drops of dew, Those flying daffodils that fleck the blue,

Those sparkling visitants from myrtle isles, Wee pilgrims of the sun, that measure miles Innumerable over land and sea With wings of shining inches. Flakes of glee, They filled that dark old oak with jubilee,