The sun. [volume], April 28, 1918, Section 6 Books and the Book World, Page 7, Image 74

About The sun. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1916-1920

Image provided by: The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundation

                
i
The Best Verse of the Week
Spring Poems as to Season Though Not Always as to the Theme
Til 1-1 t-M'X. SliNltAY. AVU1T. 2. HMS.
The Arcady of an Infantryman
By Private Charles Divine.
I've walked so many winding roads
I love no more Hie straight.
I ivant a highway dipped in trees,
A little Loose, a gate.
A gale to lean lipon and look
Back where I fame along,
And, dreaming yes, a little brook
To set my dreams to song.
A gate to waieh the sunsets from,
And hear the winds go by,
And breathe the lilacs after rain
And, possibly, a sigh.
A gate to grip with friendly hands
When stare are overhead,
And feel it move, as if to say:
"You'd better go to bed."
The Poets
By Scudder Middleton.
We need you now, strong guardians of our hearts,
Now, when a darkness lies on sea and land,
When wc of weakening faith forget our parte
And bow before the falling of the sand.
Be with us now or we betray our trust,
And say, "There is no wisdom but in death"
Remembering lovely eyes now closed with dost
"There is no beauty that outlasts the breath."
For we are growing blind and cannot see
Beyond the clouds that stand like prison bars,
The changeless regions of our empery,
Where once we moved in friendship with the stars.
0 children of the light, now in our grief
Give us again the solace of belief.
From Contemporary Verse.
Woolworth Tower at Dawn
By Brian Padraic O'Seasnain.
In the dim half light of an early dawn
1 came across the wide and empty square
That fronts the City Hall, and all at once
The splendor of that shining tower loomed close
As spire on spire it soared to pierce the clouds.
It stood there all aglcam and tipt with gold,
Filling the dun square with a fairy 'gleam;
It made me think of a tall hauntress strayed
With sweet untiring limbs to alien shores,
Her very presence showing by its grace
The boorishness around that shames her face.
I stopped and stared at the transfigured stone,
The Tower and I in a void world alone
The great half conscious vision of our race
There lived and glowed amid the commonplace
Leaving memorial steel to mark the birth
Of deathless beauty springing from the earth.
I gazed, then slowly passed down to the sea,
Heartened anew by some high ministry
Within that soaring Tower that like u shrine
In a dark wood prefigures the divine.
From Star Drift The Four Seas Company.
War
By Sherwood Anderson.
Long lanes of fire, dead cornstalks burning,
Bun now head downward plunging and crying,
Bold hard the breath now,
Forward we run.
Out of Nebraska, on into Kansas, now the word runs,
Huns with the wind, runs with the news of war, crying
and screaming.
Now the word runs.
Out on low ridges, black 'gainst the night sky;
Farmer boys running, factory boys running;
Boys from Ohio
And my Illinois.
Questions and answers, over the land,
Questions that hurt, answers that hurt,
Questions of courage
That cannot but hurt.
Deep in the cornfields the gods come to life,
Gods that have waited, gods that wc know not.
Gods come to life
In America now.
From Mid-American Chants. John Lane Company.
Down in Old Virginia .
By Mary B. Ehrmann.
Down in old Virginia
Where the rhododendrons bloom
And the fragrant woods breathe ever forth"
A languorous perfume,
There it is that I would linger
Where all Nature is atune;
Down in old Virginia
Where the rhododendrons bloom.
From Melodies in Verse. Sletcarf 4 Kidd Company.
When Bugles Blow on the Campus
By Edward N. Teall.
Bright soldiers of the sun, the steady marching hours
Retreating, bivouac in the West,
And "up and over' swarm the minions of the powers
Of darkness. Sweetly from old Princeton's guardian
towers
Bells bid the battle rest
The long day's drills are done, the manual of arms
Is laid aside a little while,
With sketch books plotted full of village streets, and
farms;
The weary lads retire to dream of war's alarms,
Or dream of home, and smile.
i
Wpat weaving spell, soft borne upon the vesper breeze,
Now floods, a music-minute's lapse,
The cloisteredclose of Academe with melodies
Plaintively sweet, as though a harp hung in the trees?
Strange campus music: Taps!
Now wrapt about with soft investiture of night,
The campus gives itself to dreams
Wherein the shadow peopled years retrace their flight,
As phantom argosies, in the shivery moon's dim sight,
Drop down historic streams. f
The sentinel elms with purpling shadows paint the
8 ward,
Save where the moon rays, breaking through,
Night's fingers phosphor tipped, gild the old gun that
- roared
At Stony Brook when freemen -battled for the Lord
Within these old balls' view.
Old North draws close her cloak of ivied memories
Each tendril binds to her a life
And measuring the long hours with mother reveries
Waits for the tteps of her returning sons when these
Thinned ranks come home from stnte.
Nightlong, beneath the warm arch of the God-filled skies,
Lit by the selfsame stars that shone
Upon her brave American brood when battle dyes
Incarnadined 'ncr ancient soil, her prayers arise
For sons not hers alone. (
The night winds whisper in the ivy of her walls
(Each leaf a strong mans vow
Of loyalty) ; and over her and all her lialls
The sense of peace transcending knowledge falls,
Faith s chrism on her brow.
0 Nassau Hall! Thou rock of faith, firm citadel
Of learning armed for life! With rods
Of love we smite thy stone and, more than Israel
Of old, drink knowledge, as the living bt reams forth well,
Our cause, and thine is God's!
From the Princeton Alumni Weekly.
Woman's Love
By Lucy Buxton.
When you came with gleaming gold,
Resonant of worth and fame,
Showering treasures manifold,
When you came,
Nought would make me change my name;
If yeu deemed that love was sold,
Mine the scom and yours the shame! '
Yet my heart had scarce been cold
If, with baiting words and lame,
All your weakness you had told
When you came.
Ffpm Bay Harvest and Other Poems. Joint Lane Com
pany. The Root
By Edward F. Garesche.
In the dark and underground
The gnarled and sturdy roots arc found,
Holding, feeding sturdily
All the vigor of the tree.
Grumble not that thou canst know
Fame nor praise nor pride nor show.
Glory, for the flower and fmit,
To the dark, forgotten root !
From the World and the Waters. The Queen's Work
Press.
Prayer Before an Attack
By Woodbine Willie.
It ain't as I 'opes 'Ell keep me safe
y While the other blokes goes down,
It ain't as I .wants to leave this World
And wear an 'ero's crown.
It ain't for that as I says my prayers
When I goes to the attack,
But I pray that whatever comes my way
I may never turn me back.
I leaves the matter o' life and death
To the Father who knows what's best,
And I prays that I still may play the man
Whether I turns cast or west.
From Hough Ilhymes of a Padre. Gtorgt H. Voran
Company.
Mother Goose on Goose Creek
By William Aspenwall Bradley.
Sing a song of sixpence,
Pappy s in the pen,
Mammy's riding up the creek
To git him out agen.
Pappy drank some licker,
Killed a man named Brown.
Now they say he's helping Doc,
Down at Frankfort town.
Pappyll git good manners,
Lam to read an' write.
Soon he'll run for .county" elerk.
Won't that be a sight T
From Singing Cam Alfred A. Knopf.
The New Version
By Frank L. Stanton.
I mourn no more my children slain ; '
Their Country takes, them to her breast
From some dread, star still battle plain,
With unavailing swords at rest.
Theirs was the sacrifice supreme;
Dreaming they died for Freedom's dread.
The loneliness of Loss struck deep
When, crying to them from afar,
I felt the battle shadows creep
And saw the storm veil Life's last star.
Bat lo! a later light appears,
And shall I dim its gleam with tears T
I see, in visions of the Night,
No world upon its cringing knees,
But hosts of Liberty and Light,
God guided o'er the thunder seas,
Break Freedom's chains and prison bars
Uplift a banner, bright with stars.
I glimpse new glory in the strife;
A song of swords thrills earth and sky;
I see the dead lands leap to life
And hear a new world battle cry!
And Freedom's voice is in the guns;
God lights the swords of Freedom's sons.
Oh! I could kneel and kiss this sod
Where God's foes strangled Peace and Prayer
And trampled on the Cross of God,
Yet hailed the Christ as kinsman there!
This sod that echoes Freedom's tread
Where Freedom shall avenge my dead!
O mother hearts I never knew
0 Spartan mothers of the brave,
These arms across the world to you
To clasp you for the sons you gave!
Even all your great love had to give
For freedom that a world might live!
From the Atlanta Constitution.
Bird of the Night
By Benjamin de Caweres.
0 thou pinioned Thought, where wilt thou wing me
to-nightf
'Dug from the marl and silt of my soul,
Breath of my delicate dreams,
Bird with the eye of the circular fires sucked from the
suns we have grazed in our flight, (
Cleaver of lightnings, warbler in the zenith of my pas
sionate being,
Plumed and feathered for thy mystic spiral progressions,
Where wilt thou bear me this night f
From the Shadow-Eater. WUmarth Publishing Com
pany. Hugh Latimer
By Henry A. Beers.
His lips amid the flame outsent
A music strong and sweet,
Like some unearthly instrument
That's played upon by heat
As spice-wood tough, laid on the coal,
Sets all its perfume free,
The incense of his hardy soul
Rose up exceedingly.
"To open that great flower, too cold
Where sun and -vernal rain;
But fire has. forced it to unfold,
Nor will it shut again.
From the Two Twilights. Richard G. Badger.
The Journey
By David O'NeiL
The journey of life?
It is but the stepping from the valley,
That lies dark and dank in the mist,
To the hill-top,
Bright and dear in the sun.
And for the journey,
Be it one day or a thousand years,
A knapsack filled with love.
From a .Cabinet of Jade. The Font Seas Company.
'A