Editor-in-Chief Business Manager Assistant Editor Assistant Editor
LUTHER WELLS •
WESTHAMPTON COLLEGE
DOROTHY GWALTNEY
VIRGINIA BECK •
ELIZABETH GILL
JOHNNIE ADAMS Staff Artist
Editor-in-Chief
Business Manager Assistant Editor Assistant Editor
THE MESSENGER is published every month from October to June by the students of the University of Richmond. Contributions are welcomed from all members of the student body and from the alumni. Manuscripts not found available for publication will be returned. Subscription rates are Two Dollars per year; single copies Thirty-five Cents. All business communications should be addressed to the Business Managers. Entered as second-class matter in the postoffice at the University of Richmond.
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EDITORIALS
mHAT now with all th is outbursting of buds, green sprouts, the twittering of feather creatures in the fields and trees-"the instinct within that reaches and towers"-we have pearly gates about to be nestled on the near side of the worn pathway between Tower Hill and Richmond College.
This new found freedom of le printemps shakes its head sadly and mourns a doleful melody at such activity. To shut the girlies up in their mountain fastness thus is sinful. The ladies no doubt are shaking their heads and gazing off in the distance with a distinct yearning for dear old Sing Sing.
Slaves
0 ! The college poet advances, embued with multitudinous doctrines, creeds and isms. He sits at a littered desk, his fingers snatching at handfuls of hair, and wrestles manfully with
his imagination on the sheer precipice of inspiration. Someone has told him that poetry is a means of self-expression. He therefore relentlessly proceeds to invent for his endeavor an invalued emotionalism controlled by the electric button of necessity. Serenely complacent in his thinking, he collars his defenseless mind and conducts it into vague distances and unfamiliar channels. He struggles in the throes of that creative incompetence which so often results in the production of a brainchild somewhat groggy of expression and unstable of posture; whereupon his chest measure extends some several inches, and he proclaims in a v01ce of woe: "This have I felt and this experienced;
TABLE of CONTENTS
Pilgrimace, Paul Frederic Bowles
The Dark Tower, M. L. Dinwiddie
Ego, M. L. Dinwiddie
Two Quatrains, W, F. Fidler
Vision, J. Battiato
Reincarnation, Larry Hans on A Monologue Addressed to My Habel
Bacchante, Dorothy Gwaltney Soul, Hattie
Water Boy, M. L. Saunders and Ruth Hale
Fay Child, J. Adams •
High Heels, Elf-babe, E. Scliielinger
Chanson Plus Vraie, Leslie L. Jones
Two Translations, Elizabeth Gill
Edna St. Vincent Millay
This apparent crushing of social instinct most assuredly robs a university of what should be one of its proudest assets-a calm geniality, casual gentility, and an utterly delightful charm bred of freedom. Young women of college age should be able to take care of themselves All manner of restraint, faculty dictums, and other such quibble of this particular sort should be relegated to texts on the dim history of higher education. The time is past when the lassies must be held in tow for fear of them being carried off by great big bad men. Today is an era of open understanding, sexual equality, and taking-suchthings-for-granted. \Ve are striking out on a well worn theme, but one cannot resist when he sees pearly gates erected and hears of a vast order for individual straightjackets. -L. N. B.
' indeed I have lived and suffered." With the written proof before him, it is easy for him to believe.
But perhaps he yields to an impulse to "keep the bit of restraint within the teeth of wisdom." It is doubtless true that poetry is not of necessity a revelation of personalities-a dressing-up of the mind of the individual for the critical inspection of the hoi polloi. It may in fact be word-music; it may be a word-picture. But it is nevertheless of no greater importance to know one's self than to know one's subject.
-D.J.G.
Slaves
Babble of the voicesBeating of the tom-tomH urry of the ArabsShoving of the ArabsShouting of the ArabsHear the shouting and the quarreling of the Arabs! Fleet-foot horses, and swift-foot horses, And burdened camels, and panting camels. Hurry to the sale of the slave-girlsH urry to the auction sale!
Scream of the horsesCalm of the camels-Tension of the buyers-Calm of the buyersAllah ! What a show! Yonder is a chieftain, tall and broad, Fingering his moneybag, haughty as a lord. Yonder are the slave-girls, naked in the sun, Led to the auction, one by one.
What have I done, 0 Lord of my life, That thou shouldst sell me, once thy love? "I am tired of thee, There is one more fair" -
Master-mercy I -Than thou are now."
Beat of the tom-tom, Dance of the slave-girlFrenzy of the slave-girlTears of the slave-girlSold to a nigger for a bag of gold. Cries of the auctioneer, and eyes of the ArabsLittle eyes, black eyes, beady little black eyesAnd greedy eyes, grim eyesEyes of Men.
I am thy child, Lord, I am thy blood! How canst thou sell me, child of thy blood? "Thou wilt bring much gold, And the wealth of lands ; Thou wilt have rich gems For thy arms and hands."
Slave-girl dancing to the tom-tom's beat, Stamping on the platform with silken feet, Tapping with a toe and beating with a heelBuilding up; value with a crude appeal Moving to a slow and sensuous willMoving not at all, but sensuous still. Whipped to a flame by a slow, dry wind, Beat into stillness by the stealthy wind
Yelling of the voicesRattle of the moneyClinking of the gold thrown down for the saleN ow the show is over. Allah! How they hurry! Back to the East the shadows veil.
Hot sun boiling, Hot wind breathing, Hot tears falling, Silent-slow.
P
AUL FREDERIC BOWLES
Pi/grimace
(An explanatory vindication in major sevenths)
In the ravine of my silence This-no more than insolence It is choosing between losing And remaining unscathed ravine Of my silence unsuspecting this No more than insolenc~ shall the Ravine of my silence nurture this No more than insolence my dear the Insolent solstice of my silence the Ravine of my silence shall forever I Shall choose• between divulging shadow Of my madness and silence of my ravine The unsuspecting quietude of the ravine In the shadow of the boulder I shall say Here may I rave within the loathing shall Unscathed escape from windy shadows ravine This no more than any insolence of loathing Of silence or of silent solstices upward and Remaining unscathed ravine of my silence this No more than silence shall indict my raving in The ravine of my silence this no more than this No more than insolence shall the ravine choosing Between losing and remaining unscathed be silence
M. L. DINWIDDIE
The Dark Tower
The old, old castle on the hill Was robed in white; its voice still
The gargoyles on the wall, white wigged, Their frozen smile, their scowls now hid.
Only a flattened ermine plain Where yesterday a lake had been. I saw a red hind in the snow It seemed a blood red heart was there
Dropped at my feet, from long ago. The fallen fluttering of a prayer.
Ego
Your eyes are mirrors to my soul, That pierce my flesh-transparent glass.
Then ego cows and self peers out, And stares upon its life, aghast!
W. F. FIDLER
Two Quatrains
After-thought
Your lips were so inviting, dear, That mine sought them too soon; But now, 'neath glaring lights, I know That I but kissed the moon.
Vitiation
Many moths dance to the candle-flameAn old passionate lust new-begunAnd melt the pure crystal of their virgin wings Thinking it is the sun.
J. BATTIATO LARRY HANSON
Vision
My dreams are many, And yet-through the encircling web of contentment Comes the amber thread of memories of you. The quick disturbing passion, The fiery glow of love neglected. And then-
Fading as though the years had softened and dimmed, The langourous rose-colored completeness Of your surrender. And yetAs though countless centuries had faded I cannot recall your face !
Reincarnation
I know I loved you in some gorgeous past, And flung my prostrate form beneath your heel And cried aloud my love; you bound me fast, Bid slaves to twist me on the torture wheel. But how could you blame for so loving you, Oh, heartless one! That maze of tears and pam The sleep of centuries cannot undoThough racks are now extinct, we met again.
So you disdained my love in modern ways, And when I told you of my pain, you smiled; You cannot know the ache of empty days And nights-the former torture was but mild. This time you have no wheel to bend my back, Have mercy-your cruel indifference is now my rack.
A Monologue Addressed to My Soul
Do you know how I feel about you When you lie there so naked and bare, So constricted and small, So sensitive to pain? When you are like that, I hate you with a burning passion, Would take my long clutching fingers, Tear you out and stamp you with my feet. Oh, if I could only get at you then! To see you there so shrunken and fearful And not be able to crook one finger against you!
I turn you over again and again in my mind, Examining you with the most piercing of glances, And just when I think I know every line, Every turn and corner of you, You puff yourself up into an unseemly mass And cover your nakedness with the filmiest of veils.
I am, left in a maze, wandering . . .
DOROTHY GWALTNEY
Bacchante
Strong flame,
Weaving a valiant pattern
On the walls of my mind, Moving like a disheveled witch
Across the background of my fancy, You are the living torch I took from the pitiful ashes And lit with the upward surge of my questing heart.
I have a story to tell youA frail little story of the moth and the candle Of the pale dipped tallow, And wings.
Strong blade of fire, I would prick my fingers at your needle-point; I would warm my body with your breath's caress. I would fling off my clothes and dance before you In a wild frenzy of abandonDevotional, unclaimed.
Fresh from a new-opened, shiny store can A new paint brush, Stained to the color of the wine press.
SAUNDERS and HALE
M.L. RUTH
Water Boy
The white cold light came full upon her face
Blazoning the stark, bald darkness of her skin; Her eyes unseeing, yet profoundly deep, Dwelt lusterless upon the pane
Where billowing rain swirled heavily in the mist.
Thick in the trees the fog crouched low
Imprisoning the group, And chiselling out a rigid block of light
Wherein they sat, close on her, as she played. "Water boy, where are you hiding?
If you don't come, I'll tell yo' mammy."
The call resounded low within the room, Husky in its plaintive loneliness;
Glistening eyes, with hungry intent, covered greedily her hands,
Dark and languid as they moved with dreamful calm.
"There ain't no hammer upon dis mountain Dat rings like mine does, dat rings like mine; I'll bust dat rock, boys, from heah to Macon, Right back to de jail, boys, right back to de jail."
A restless ache pierced fleetly through' the shadow of her face,
Stirring from the potent longing hidden in her blood. Into the boating rhythm stole the figure, stooped, but proud,
Boasting, though in bondage, of the prowess and the skill
That swelled within his body, unsubmissive to the bonds.
Laughing yet with mocking lightness,
Swaying as he drove the blows.
"You Jack o' diamonds, you Jack o' diamonds, I've known him of old, boys, I've known him of old ; He robs my pockets, he robs my pockets,
Of silver and gold, boys, of silver and f!old."
Those pale, cool faces, watching her,
Yet seeing nothing of her race; The closeness of the light-
The fog that peered in through the pane; It stifled her, yet stolidly she sang,
"Water boy, where are you hiding?
If you don't come, I'll tell yo' mammy."
The last faint notes trailed drowsily away, Fading in the stillness of the room.
Straight and proud her body throbbed, unbound m unreality;
She felt the freedom in her blood,
The conquering freedom of the song.
Loud and sharp the clapping broke with harshness on her world,
Shattering the brittle dream-wall, waking her to herself
They could not know; they could not feel the aching of her race-
She stood, and bowing slowly,
Faced them with a laughless smile.
Fay Child
It's a glorious world with the s~n Gleaming down on the gold of your hair, And the green of the sky flashing back The lights that dance in your eyes.
It's a glorious world when you lie, The warm, ' soft earth at your back, And look up-and up-till your lashes of flamrSweep the chill, damp mists off the sky To cool the glow in your eyes.
It's a glorious world when you sit. The pulse and leap and throb of a tree Behind you, and press your mouth Against the cold silver of the moon To pale the red of your lips.
It's a glorious world when you stand. Your feet in the green, curling grasses, Your hands clasping the hands of angels, Your throat encircled with stars.
It's a glorious world when you feel The crimson heat of a scarlet cloud Touch your cheek, as you try to see What the sky looks like behind the sunGrey sea and broken twilight.
It's a glorious world when you raise Your fingers and press the shattered edge Of a cloud into shape, and artfully mix The purple greyness into the gold, Making a sea of brown.
Look up again, and see The mirrored darkness of trees Rain shadows like melted clouds Into your heart and mine.
E. SCHIELINGER
High Heels
High heels, high heels, Mowing down the hearts of men Mouth, a dashing blurb of color Sleek and slim, of lithesome grace Sloe-eyed courtesan.
Men have worshipped and adored you Women, wary, have ignored you. Still you flaunt your catlike grace Slender figure, painted face. High heels, high heels, Mowing down the hearts of men.
Elf-babe
I swung myself on a yellow bell My feet just almost touched the ground I twisted the petals in and out And spun in dizzy circles round.
I sat upon a clover blossom Whispering secrets to the bees I rolled down dew-drops on the worms And laughed to see them puff and wheeze.
Chanson Plus Vraie
Pour que la vie soit belle II ne me faut, aujourd'hui, Que mes souvenirs.
Le souvenir Des nuits inoubliables, Des jours etincelants, Des soirs dores.
Le souvenir
D'une riviere ... la lune ... Et toi.
Toi
Droite comme une fleche, Blanche comme un lis, Pure comme la nuit.
Le souvenir
D'un jardin des etoiles
Belle comme la Venus, Pale comme la lune, Douce comme une rose.
Pour que la vie soit belle II ne me faut, aujourd'hui, Que mes souvenirs.
ELIZABETH GILL
Two Translations L'Etoile
A hel H ermant
I am the Chaldean led by the star Toward an unknown goal that I cannot see.
No matter-I walk in the dark. The sight Of the naked day is too ugly far. What hand has kindled the light afar?
This torch, let it guide or betray, is light: What thing will the dawn reveal to me? The star, though a false one, is still a star.
Shall I see in his cradle, as in a nest, A child? Shall I kneel? Oh, what do I care.
I have gathered the myrrh and the balm is blessed : I breathe, as I walk, the perfumes I bear.
0 night, sweet summer night, who comes to us
Among the new-mown hay, under the moon, You make all lovers fall upon their knees And cool their foreheads with a zephyr, soon.
0 night, sweet summer night, who makes unfold The flowers in the trees and grass below, You make the tender hearts of women bold, And underneath the lindens white forms go.
Nuit D'Et/
Paul Bourget
0 night, sweet summer night, who on the seas Allays the sobbing of waves tempest-wrought, The bitterness of lonely souls you ease, And peace descends from heaven at their thought.
0 night, sweet summer night, who whispers low, Soft are your footsteps, and your voice is light, That you wake not the dead men to their woe Who can no longer love, 0 lovely night!
Edna St. Vincent Millay
Being a Collection of Data
NA ST. VINCENT
MILLAY was a typical tomboy. She was born at Rockland, Maine, February 22, 1892. Her early childhood was g iven mostly to the general forms of youthful diversion, climbing trees, playing in the surf, building castles in the sand, and dreaming dreams. She wa s in no way an exceptional child but for her early love of poetry. She actually began to write some verses while yet a stripling lass. This early existence on the Maine coast filled her impressionable mind with such thin gs a s "The sticky, salty sweetness of the strong wind and the shattered spray"; "the loud sound and the soft sound of the big surf that breaks all day." But yet it wasn't of these familiar scenes that Edna as a child wrote. It was only when she was older and looked back that she found her childhood so beautiful.
It was while she was still on the rockbound coast of Maine, during her seventeenth and eighteenth years, that she wrote that whimsical, fanciful, and one of the most strangely lovely lyrics of the English language, Renascence. It is said that a well-known poet wrote her a solemn congratulatory letter after this poem had been published in a prize poem contest. He was much puzzled by the irrelevant and frivolous missive he received in return-dealing chiefly with the elated purchase of a pair of red dancing slippers.
She then entered Va ssar and was recognized as a brilliant student and young litterateure. It was during her colle ge career that she wrote two plays, The Princess Marries the Page and Two Slatterns and a King. The former is not particularly well known, but the latter is a scintillating bit of humor and fancy. It is collected with two of her other plays, Aria de Capo, a one-act play and Lamp and the Bell, a drama in five acts. The latter was written on the occasion of the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Founding of the Vassar College Alumnae Association. As for the former, it is a bitter satire on war and is so keenly edged that it chops war into piece-meal with a few brilliant and shining coups. Whole volumes have been written on the abolition of war, but where can we find anyone else who has put it into such a minute nutshell? She graduated from Vassar in 1917 with an A. B. degree. At this time her first volume of poems, Renascence and Other Poems, appeared.
They were not influenced by any of the jazzy contemporary poetry; they were not in free verse and from their structure and content, one would have been led to believe that Miss Millay was not a modernist, but belonged to the period of the late Elizabethans. Her rhythms were classical and she was old fashioned enough to write sonnets. Besides the excellency of Renascence, her other poems and sonnets of this collection were not remarkable but showed a marked individual talent and promi se of greater things.
Edna came from college, ambitiously, to New York, rented a room on Waverly Place in Greenwich Village, where rents were low in those days. There occurred the usual story of the struggling writer, return slips from magazines overstocked with poetry, continual failures punctuated very occasionally with an acceptance and a small check. So remembering her theatrical experience at Vassar, she went to the theatrical agencies seeking a job. Finally she turned up at the Provincetown Playhouse on Macdougal Street. It is interesting to note that when Eugene O'Neill failed in everything else that his footsteps, too, led him to the Provincetown Playhouse, where he worked as playwright, actor, and director. Miss Millay acted in a number of comedies and some of her own plays. She was even given a part in one of the Theatre Guild production, but then the Theatre Guild in those days had not reached the proportions that it now enjoys.
But there were times when there were no parts in plays and Edna became very discouraged. She began to question why she should starve writing poetry if people didn't want it. · She thought of becoming a stenographer, but she balked at the final surrendering of her pride as a creator. She decided to stick it out and even the casual student of modern poetry is more than gratified at the results.
Miss Millay is a slim young person with chestnut brown hair shot with glints of bronze and copper, so that sometimes it seems auburn and sometimes golden; a slightly snub nose, and freckles; a child mouth; a cool, grave voice; and grey green eyes. She feeds, so to speak, chameleon-like on life. When she is reading her poetry, she will seem to the spectators a fragile girl with an apple blossom face. When she is picnicking in the country she will be, with her snub nose, freckles, and boyish
smile, an Irish newsboy. When she is meeting the bourgeoisie in its lairs, she is likely to be a highly artificial and very affected lady with an exaggerated Vassar accent. She is difficult to fathom. Her poetry especially leaves one stranded as to the real Edna Millay behind it all. She is clever, she's ironical, she's morbid, hopeless, sentimental; sometimes her poetry rings with a languid beauty, sometimes it is brilliantly ironical and clever, and at other times it is whimsical and entirely unsophisticated.
Her second book of poems was A Few Figs From Thistles, published in 1920 and revised since. The initial poem entitled First Fig is well known:
My candle burns at both ends; It will not last the night; But ah, my foes, and oh, my friendsIt gives a lovely light!
Louis Untermeyer says that Miss Millay, "in her Figs From Thistles exchanged her poetio birthright for a mess of cleverness." We can see Louis writhing at the works of Miss Parker and Hoffenstein. What is said of the latter two can be denied with perfect impunity for Miss Millay. For example, take her little poem entitled Thursday:
And if I loved you Wednesday, Well, what is that to you?
I do not love you ThursdaySo much is true.
And why you come complaining Is more than I can see.
I loved you Wednesday,-yes, but what Is that to me?
Here, what does she do in a few brief strokes but neatly upset the carefully built walls of convention which men have set up around their ideal woman? There are two other well-known poems in this collection which are much too long to print here; they are: The Singing-Woman From the Wood's Edge and The Penitent. She has four lesser but commendable sonnets at the end of the collection.
Second April was published i1111921 and is called her best piece of work. Two pieces in this collection are particularly noteworthy, The Blue Flag in the Bog, which is held to be one of the finest lyrics in the language, and The Poet and His Book, which is one of the most intense and finest pieces of simple imagery that Miss Millay has given us. The influence of her early child-
hood by the sea is shown m her poem, Inland; the last two stanzas of it follow:
People the waves have not awakened, Spanking the boats at the harbor's head, What do they long for, as I long' for,Starting up in my inland bed,
Beating the narrow walls, and finding Neither a window nor a door, Screaming to God for death by drowning,One salt taste of the sea once more?
And after printing these lines, one cannot help but remember the impertinent parody on them by no other than our good friend, Hoffenstein. In fact, it is hard to resist printing them here along with Miss Millay's lines:
I'm tired of standing still and staring Across the sea with my heels in dust; I want to live like the sober herring, And die as pickled when die, I must.
I want to drown in good-salt water, I want my body to bump the pier; Neptune is calling his wayward daughter, Crying, "Edna, come over here!"
One section of this book is given over to a Memorial to D. C., and here we find some of the finest of Miss Millay's lines. We try to reconstruct the image of D. C., of whom Miss Millay says in opening:
Oh, loveliest throat of all sweet throats, Where now no more the music is! With hands that wrote you little notes I wrote you little elegies!
The two poems Epitaph and Prayer to Persephone are unforgettable. And Elegy, also in this same section, is exquisite. But it is in her sonnets th.,it Miss Millay shines most brilliantly. She mocks, she is at loggerheads with life and love, half fearful of some, fatal trap. It is in no light vein as elsewhere she treats of this philosophy, but she deals with it in her sonnets, honestly, and more cruelly. As the sonnets are too long to print and since only one can be put into this space, the favorite one is being saved, but the last sonnet is Second April, in which the poet repudiates with anger, the lover's "mouth of clay, these mortal bones against my body set," and "all the puny fever and frail sweat of human love." If there is any
(Continued on Page 20)
In This Issue
PAUL FREDERICBOWLESwas introduced in the Contributors' column of our previous issue.
M. L. DINWIDDIEis a Westhampton freshman. She is inexplicably drawn by old taverns, the sea, and the loneliness of hills.
W. F. FIDLERbecomes noticeably ironic in the two Quatrains here published He informs us he is ontologically recapitulating the hi story of English poetry, and is now experiencing the Age of Pope.
J. BATIIATOin his poem of this issue brings a delicate sensitiveness to bear on an error in memory not wholly unfamiliar.
LARRYHANSONwith an Elizabethan directness here · laments his lady's sadism, mixing with this in deference to the Greeks, a metempsychotic nostalgia for an obscure age.
HATTIE HABEL here rewrites Whitman's Song of Myself with the subtlest humor The Monologue to Her Soul exhibits her spiritual conflict with the New Humanism. Its last line is a real masterpiece of entropy.
DOROTHYGWALTNEYis of a luxurious habit of mind. Her intensity leaveSI one quite bewildered.
SAUNDERSANDHALE have curiously collaborated. The editors find their Water Boy wholly pleasing.
J. ADAMSturns to verse form with felicity, a unique sight in Westhampton.
E. ScHIEUNGER here gives us an excellent fairy-phantasy after Michael Drayton.
LESLIE L. JONES here presents his Chanson Plus /lraie. We are always to hear from Friend Jones.
ELIZABETHGILL has faithfully caught the French Spirit and embalmed it with equal faith in her present translations.
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EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY
(Continued from Page 18)
single trait which runs through all of Miss Millay's work, it is the feeling of utter hopelessness with life as it is. Shd rebels against sex and dreams of a triumphant escape into a realm of art which is impersonal and resembles Heaven in that there is no marrying nor giving in marriage. We wonder how her husband takes this; she was married in 1923. John Erskine has summed this little idea up in a very nice short story published recently and entitled Minor Poetry.
The Harp Weaver and Other Poems was published in 1924. The general theme of this collection appears to be bitterness. The first and last stanzas of The Curse follow:
Oh, lay my ashes on the wind That blows across the sea. And I shall meet a fisherman Out of Capri, etc.
And fishermen and farmers May see me and forget But I'll be a bitter berry In your brewing yet.
The title poem of this collection The Harp Weaver won the Pulitzer prize for poetry in 1922. Mr. U ntermeyer reminds us that it barely saves itself from sentimentality. To us, it was one of the most fanciful ballads that we have ever read ; it has the lacelike charm of a fairy tale, and shows in a finely fashioned manner, the protective power of an all enveloping love. Despite this sentiment in The Harp Weaver, we find these ending lines in one of her best known sonnets :
This I have always known: Love is no more Than the wide blossom which the wind assails,
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Than the great tide that treads the shifting shore, Strewing fresh wrecka g e g athered in the gales; Pity me that the heart is slow to learn What the swift mind beholds at every turn.
And in another of her sonnets in this same collection we find this thought in the last two lines:
But that a dream can die, will be a thrust Between my ribs forever of hot pain.
The final selection of sonnets in The Harp Weaver 1s entitled Sonnets From An Ungrafted Tree, and is composed of seventeen of them. It is more or less a short drama spreading over all of the sonnets which are written chronologically.
The last volume of Miss Millay's poetry appeared just about a year ago; it is entitled The Buck in the Snow To me, it is the least interesting of Miss Millay's works. But for several flashes of brilliance, it does not seem to be the same person writing There are three pieces of work which stand out so far as I am concerned, The Cameo, Wine From These Grapes, a few lines of which , follow:
Stained with these grapes I shall lie down to die, Three women come to wash me clean, Shall not erase this stain. Nor leave me lying purely, Awaiting the black lover. Death, fumbling to uncover My body in his bed, Shall know There has been one Before him.
And finally there is the piece called When Caesar Fell. Here are a few lines of it:
The teeth of Caesar at the ignoble word were ground together in pride ; No sound came from his lips; the world has heard how Caesar died.
In the Roman dust the cry of Caesar's blood was heard and heard without wonder
Only by the fly that swam in the red blood till his head went under.
Miss Millay calls another of her poems Justice Denied in Massachusetts, which calls to mind the vigorous part taken by Miss Millay in the Sacco and Vanzetti affair which terminated some three years ago. She paraded up
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and down the streets of Boston, waving a red flag and succeeded in getting herself arrested. It is regrettable that so many artists have found it necessary to mix themselves up in politics and other matters of a similar nature. In every case, they, for the most part, accomplish nothing and succeed in appearing immensely ludicrous. John Powell and Paderewski arc two shining examples of this and Miss Millay about succeeded in doing the same for herself in her little flag waving escapade. If they feel a great truth that they must set forth, either write poetry, prose, or music about it and leave such banalities to the cops and the politicians. Miss Millay undoubtedly thought she was doing a great good, and if she did, all right. We'll try to forget it, but still contend that the extremely intelligent and personable Miss Millay made an ass of herself.
So, while the Buck in the Snow is far inferior to many of her other collections, it undoubtedly has some merit and the few things in it that are good, naturally add greatly to the joy of the more consistent readers of Miss Millay's work.
Finally we come to the largest of Miss Millay's work, The King's Henchman. Unfortunately it is, just large. Despite the indisputable beauty of many of the lines, there is an extremely harsh sound to the unending procession of -diddest, sightest, wouldst, canst, hast, swearest, treadest, oozest, and rathest. It was written as a libretto for an opera and failed miserably as such. One enjoys reading The King's Henchman for both its epic and lyric beauty, but one is also aware to an unbelievably large degree of the inefficiency of the English language as a text for operatic selections. And Miss Millay, instead of trying to remedy these faults or to tone them down as much as possible, she magnifies them, if anything. Musical authorities have been loud in their disapproval of Deems Taylor's score. They say that it assumed Wagnerian proportions in so far as utilizing every inch of brass and noise was concerned. It seems that 1 the only justice that could have been done Miss Millay's libretto was to have it sung to a low haunting rhythm. This, of course, was not the case. To illustrate 1 this point, here are a few lines which are hard to read and must be doubly hard to sing, note the swishing sound in these:
These whispering girls, A little fairish and a little foulish-
And the sound of "s" is sharpened considerably in these lines :
The wind that soughs in the edge at the edge of the pool Has seen the swan go by,-
-,
Aside from these defects in the piece, The King's Henchman, stands high in the efforts which have been made to create an American opera, but until some librettist understands, and writes with the defects of English securely covered, it is with grave apprehension that we can ever hope for a great American opera. To read the piece as a play alone, it is very enjoyable, but nothit;1g remarkable. One is too aware of the overuse of words and the desired effects of phrases. So we can easily see why The King's Henchman is not a great work either as an opera or as a play; the defects as an opera have already been mentioned, and as for a play one realizes too much that it is supposed to be sung and not just spoken. Miss Millay uses as her theme an early English legend in which Aethelwold, the King Eadgar's henchman, is sent on the traditional John Alden mission, finds himself in love with the girl that the King has chosen to marry and finally falls on his own sword out of remorse for his faithlessness. And it is onlr Miss Millay's love of the beautiful which she transposes into the lines of the play which make it any greater than the usual run of such things.
So we may have seen that Miss Millay was in no manner an out of the way young lady. Her life has been crowded with companions, friends, lovers; she has gone through college, earned her living at journalism, has traveled, acted, given readings, has known poverty and comparative ease-in short, she has taken the rough-andtumble of a modern American girl's life and has reached its usual climax, marriage. A young lady who was at Vassar with Vincent, she said that they never thought of calling her Edna, told me that Miss Millay was looked upon at college as a more or less exceptional person. She had written Renascence before she went to college and
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had earned something of a reputation for her poetry. It seems that her people did not have money enough to send her to Vassar, but that there seemed to be some sort of fairy godmother in the background who was footing the bills. This fact accounts therefore for the apparent lateness with which Miss Millay went to college. Vincent was nothing of a recluse; she formed many acquaintance s, but her two friends in particular no one could understand why she had chosen them, one Elaine Ralli, an , extremely athletic sort of person and the other, Caroline Simpson, a fluffy headed and apparently a fluffy minded individual. Vincent wrote for the Vassar magazine, Miscellany, but did not attain a high position on its staff for some reason or other. She was a member of Philalethis, the dramatic club, and took a very active interest in its efforts. One of Miss Millay's star roles at college was in Bernard Shaw's Candida. It is said that she had an exquisite voice and seemed to have mastered perfectly, stage technique, even in her undergraduate days. Near the end of her year, she went off on a little escapade to New York and there was talk of denying her diploma for infraction of the rules, but it is said that the Dean of Vassar was a broad minded individual and recognized that Miss Millay was different, so he stretched a point or so in her direction and she received her sheepskin in June along with the rest of the class of '17.
Beyond any doubt, hers is the most individual lyric gift discovering itself in American poetry; she is a lyricist with a winning humor and tenderness along with a certain jaunty na'ivette. She says neither the unexpected thing nor the daring thing, but she says precisely the exactly true thing.
None other than Carl Van Doren says: "What sets Miss Millay's poem's apart from all those written in English by women is the full pulse which beats through them. Rarely since Sappho has a woman written as beautifully and outspokenly as she."
To end this, there is one thing which so exemplifies Edna St. Vincent Millay as these six lines from one of her sonnets.
Wherefore I say: 0 love, as summer goes, I must be gone, steal forth with silent drums, That you may hail anew the bird and rose When I come back to you, as summer comes. Else will you seek, at some not distant time, Even your summer is another clime.
