Roy Helton
Reading edition
Roy Helton was born at Washington, D. C., in 1886. He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1908. He studied art—and found he was color-blind. He spent two years at inventions—and found he had no business sense. After a few more experiments, he became a schoolmaster in West Philadelphia.
Helton’s first volume, Youth’s Pilgrimage (1915), is a strange, mystical affair, full of vague symbolism with a few purple patches. Outcasts in Beulah Land (1918) is entirely different in theme and treatment. This is a much starker verse; a poetry of city streets, direct and sharp.
346
IN PASSING
Through the dim window, I could see
The little room—a sordid square
Of helter-skelter penury:
Piano, whatnot, splintered chair....
It is so small a room that I
Seem almost at the woman’s side:
Galled jade—too fat for vanity,
And far too frankly old for pride.
Her greasy apron ’round her waist;
The dish cloth by her on the chair;
As if in some wild headlong haste,
She has come in and settled there.
Grimly she bends her back and tries
To stab the keys, with heavy hand;
A child’s first finger exercise
Before her on the music stand.