TREES *

I think that I shall never see

A poem lovely as a tree.

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the sweet earth's 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.

Joyce Kilmer (1886-1918)

No living American poet has written better nature poetry than John Hall Wheelock. "Earth," which we quote, contains some of the best lines to be found in contemporary poetry; his "Storm and Sun" and "Golden Noon" are almost if not quite as beautifully done. Wheelock's last volume, Dust and Light,-no poet ever gave a happier title to a book,-contains also some of the best of contemporary love poems. It will be noted that in "Trees" and "Earth" poets have found a way to harmonize the poetic and the scientific views of nature.

* From Joyce Kilmer: Poems, Essays and Letters, copyright, 1918 George H. Doran Company, Publishers.

EARTH

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 the 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.

John Hall Wheelock (1886- )

It is a curious and notable fact that until recently the great majority of poets neglected the city as though only the country supplied suitable material for poetry. After a visit to a cotton mill, Goethe said that it was the most poetical sight he had ever witnessed; but has Goethe or any other poet ever written a great poem about a cotton mill? Novelists and dramatists learned long ago how to handle modern city types and backgrounds; but while the Victorian novelists were describing life in London, Tennyson was writing about Lincolnshire wolds or Camelot. Poetry is the most conservative of the arts, and the last, in some respects, to come in touch with the actual life of the author's own time. Its language tends to be archaic, its themes traditional. For over a hundred years poets generally echoed Cowper's line, "God made the country

and man made the town." The continued neglect of the city seems absurd when we remember that during this very period practically all of the poets and most of their readers lived in cities. Today over one-half of the population of the United States is urban, and England has been an industrial nation for over a century. Contemporary poets rebel against the notion that only woods, lakes, and mountains offer suitable material for poetry.

Older poems which deal with the city generally describe the romantic cities of Europe, Venice, Rome, or Athens. One recalls Poe's "The Coliseum" and the descriptions of Rome in Byron's Manfred and Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. We quote part of the famous passage in the fourth canto of the latter poem:

Oh Rome! my country! City of the soul!
The orphans of the heart must turn to thee,
Lone mother of dead empires! and control

In their shut breasts their petty misery.

What are our woes and sufferance? Come and see
The cypress, hear the owl, and plod your way

O'er steps of broken thrones and temples, Ye!
Whose agonies are evils of a day-

A world is at our feet as fragile as our clay.

The Niobe of nations! there she stands
Childless and crownless, in her voiceless woe;
An empty urn within her withered hands,
Whose holy dust was scattered long ago;
The Scipios' tomb contains no ashes now;
The very sepulchers lie tenantless

Of their heroic dwellers; dost thou flow,
Old Tiber! through a marble wilderness?

Rise, with thy yellow waves, and mantle her distress.