THE AMERICAN WOMAN IN POETRY: by Grace Knoche
Reading edition
CURRENT literature, from the freshly printed book to the literary columns of the daily press, affords certain unique opportunities for reviewing woman's work in the light of past achievement and future promise. Take, for instance, the single factor of woman in poetry—where past centuries number their woman poets by the twos and threes, as the last generation has done by little more than the threes and fours, the present finds them springing up thicker than clover in a fallow field and in many cases with a sweetness and fragrance in their songs as of clover blossoms themselves.
To the thinking mind this has a certain significance as relating to the inner unseen tides of that spiritual awakening now so seeming near for all mankind. For what holds poesy at its heart holds music there, and harmony and rhythm and something of that divine potency that lies in number; and with Theosophy at our doors we do not need Plato to tell us that
rhythm and harmony find their way into the secret places of the soul, on which they mightily fasten, bearing grace in their movements and making the soul graceful in him who is rightly educated.
The following are a handful of poems by women—most of them, significantly enough, by wholly or comparatively unknown writers—from among the last month's journals and papers, by no means a representative list, but just a few that found their way in the natural course to the study desk. Some compel attention because of the wholesomeness of sentiment and a certain honest openness in their delivery, others because of their musical lilt and flow, still others because of both. There are a few that may live, some that of a certainty will not and that yet have a value now. But that may be said of a hastily gathered handful of anything in its era.
They are typical of a surprisingly large class, while none of those whose poems are herewith quoted, with the exception of Edith M. Thomas, have so far written very much.
The first, by Angela Morgan in the Cosmopolitan, is a real Theosophical challenge, a veritable battle-cry, with something of the trenchant force and fire that flashes and thunders from out the lines of the old Beowulf:
Reined by an unseen tyrant's hand, Spurred by an unseen tyrant's will, Aquiver at the fierce command That goads you up the danger hill, You cry: "O Fate, O Life, be kind! Grant but an hour of respite—give One moment to my suffering mind; I cannot keep the pace and live." But Fate drives on and will not heed The lips that beg, the feet that bleed. Drives, while you faint upon the road, Drives, with a menace for a goad; With fiery reins of circumstance Urging his terrible advance The while you cry in your despair, "The pain is more than I can bear." Fear not the goad, fear not the pace, Plead not to fall from out the race— It is your own Self driving you, Your Self that you have never known, Seeing your little self alone, Your Self, high-seated charioteer, Master of cowardice and fear, Your Self that sees the shining length Of all the fearful road ahead; Knows that the terrors that you dread Are pigmies to your splendid strength; Strength you have never even guessed, Strength that has never needed rest. Your Self that holds the mastering rein, Seeing beyond the sweat and pain And anguish of your driven soul The patient beauty of the goal. Fighting upon the terror field Where man and Fate come breast to breast, Pressed by a thousand foes to yield, Tortured and wounded without rest, You cried, "Be merciful, O Life! The strongest spirit soon must break Before this all-unequal strife, This endless fight for failure's sake." But Fate, unheeding, lifted high His sword and thrust you through to die. And then there came one strong and great, Who towered high o'er Chance and Fate, Who bound your wound and eased your pain And bade you rise and fight again. And from some source you did not guess Gushed a great tide of happiness— A courage mightier than the sun— You rose and fought, and fighting, won. It was your own Self saving you, Your Self no man has ever known, Looking on flesh and blood alone; The Self that lives as close to God As roots that feed beneath the sod. That one who stands behind the screen, Looks through the window of your eyes— A being out of Paradise. The Self no human eye hath seen, The living one who never tires, Fed by the deep eternal fires. Your flaming star, with two-edged sword, Made in the likeness of the Lord. Angel and guardian at the gate, Master of Death and King of Fate.
Perhaps more musical and exquisite in its technic is the following (by Edith M. Thomas in the Century), yet one looks in vain for the note of positive assurance that sings and rings out of the poem just quoted. Now one expects in poetry something more than rhymed philosophy, of course, and sheer beauty of rhythm has more than once endowed paucity of thought with an almost immortality. But the content is important, none the less. In the preceding poem one feels a mighty conviction forcing its way through every limitation to the goal of expression. The work of the older and better known poetess is more clearly poetic—to those who know the path and know the way its Sphinx-like questionings evoke their own answer in the deeps of consciousness. To the many, however, the first poem must reveal more.
THE UNKNOWING
I know not where I am: Beneath my feet a whirling sphere, And overhead (and yet below) A crystal rampart cutting sheer— The traveling sun its oriflam. What do I know? I know not what I do: I wrought at that, I wrought at this, The shuttle still perforce I throw; But if aright or if amiss The web reveals not, held to view. What do I know? I know not what I think: My thoughts?—As in a shaft of light The dust-motes wander to and fro, And shimmer in their flight; Then, either way, in darkness sink. What do I know? I know not who am I: If now I enter on the Scheme, Or revenant from long ago; If but some World-Soul's moment-dream, Or, timeless, in Itself I lie. What do I know?
Here is a sweet touch from the Kansas City Star. The very name of the writer of it is so in keeping with tender dutifulness and so suggestive of clean-swept hearths and ministries to tiny, clinging hands, that one wonders if it be not a pseudonym. A miniature "psalm of daily duty" is it:
At morn I yearned a song to sing That would inspire and teach In words so true all men would hear In them their own soul's speech. But Duty stopped my pen and showed The day's dull round of care— The service to another's need— A burden I should share. At night the Day sung to the past Her record clear and strong, And richer, sweeter than I dreamed I heard complete my song. —Emily Householder
And from the same paper another ringing note on the sacredness of the day's duty—but this is no psalm, rather a trumpet call, gorgeous, full, and technically so splendid that it suggests the ancients:
TODAY
Voice, with what emulous fire thou singest free hearts of old fashion, English scorners of Spain sweeping the blue sea-way, Sing me the daring of life for life, the magnanimous passion Of man for man in the mean populous streets of Today. Hand, with what color and power thou couldst show, in the ring hot-sanded, Brown Bestiarius holding the lean, tawn tiger at bay, Paint me the wrestle of Toil with the wild-beast Want, bare-handed; Shadow me forth a soul steadily facing Today.—Helen Gray Cone
Will you have music? Then read these, so different in content, so unlike in the touch, for one is threaded through with compassion and tenderness while the other is just a little note of joy in life, which might rise out of self as well as unself in certain not yet conscious natures.
CANDLEMAS
O hearken, all ye little weeds That lie beneath the snow, (So low, dear hearts, in poverty so low!) The sun hath risen for royal deeds, A valiant wind the vanguard leads; Now quicken ye, lest unborn seeds Before ye rise and blow. O furry living things, adream On winter's drowsy breast, (How rest ye there, how softly, safely rest!) Arise and follow where a gleam Of wizard gold unbinds the stream, And all the woodland windings seem With sweet expectance blest. My birds, come back! the hollow sky Is weary for your note. (Sweet-throat, come back! O liquid, mellow throat!) Ere May's soft minions hereward fly, Shame on ye, laggards, to deny The brooding breast, the sun-bright eye, The tawny, shining coat!—Alice Brown
THE WAVES OF BREFFNY
The grand road from the mountain goes shining to the sea, And there is traffic on it and many a horse and cart; But the little roads of Cloonagh are dearer far to me And the little roads of Cloonagh go rambling through my heart. A great storm from the ocean goes shouting o'er the hill, And there is glory in it, and terror on the wind; But the haunted air of twilight is very strange and still, And the little winds of twilight are dearer to my mind. The great waves of the Atlantic sweep storming on their way, Shining green and silver with the hidden herring shoal; But the little waves of Breffny have drenched my heart in spray, And the little waves of Breffny go sweeping through my soul. —Eva Gore-Booth
The two following poems attack the same theme, a fruitful and varied one to lovers of Lomaland where the winter rains are the year's beneficence. But note the full rich lines of the work of the unknown writer, albeit the sonnet is of course the more difficult poetic form.
THE FOUNTAINS OF THE RAIN
The merchant clouds that cruise the sultry sky, As soon as they have spent their freight of rain, Plot how the cooling thrift they may regain: All night along the river-marsh they lie, And at their ghostly looms swift shuttles ply, To weave them nets wherewith the streams to drain; And often in the sea they cast a seine, And draw it, dripping, past some headland high. Many a slender naiad, with a sigh, Is in their arms uptaken from the plain; The trembling myrmidons of dew remain No longer than the flash of morning's eye, Then back unto their misty fountains fly: This is the source and journey of the rain. —Edith Matilda Thomas
RAIN
The patient rain at early summer dawn; The long, lone autumn drip; the damp, sweet hush Of springtime, when the glinting drops seem gone Into the first notes of the hidden thrush; The solemn, dreary beat Of winter rain and sleet; The mad, glad, passionate calling of the showers To the unblossomed hours; The driving, restless midnight sweep of rain; The fitful sobbing, and the smile again, Of spring's childhood; the fierce unpitying pour Of low-hung leaden clouds; the evermore Prophetic beauty of the sunset storm, Transfigured into color and to form Across the sky. O wondrous changing rain! Changeful and full of temper as man's life; Impetuous, fierce, unpitying, kind again, Prophetic, beauteous, soothing, full of strife: Through all thy changing passions hear not we Th' eternal note of the Unchanging Sea? —Laura Spencer Portor
Nothing is worse than bad poetry, unless it be bad art of every kind, of which the world today is having a surfeit. That we find a greater abundance of wretched verse, however, than of wretched painting and sculpture, and that there are still those who think that the poet's equipment need consist of little more than an unbalanced emotionalism, we may attribute perhaps to the fact that the pen and ink are readier to hand with the majority than palette and brush or calipers and modeling tool. Conceit and ignorance, working together, have made "to write poetry" almost a reproach.
The remedy would seem to be to diffuse a few simple truths, such as that true poetry has nothing to do with emotionalism, nor sentimentality, nor bad spelling, nor with metres that "interfere," like a clumsy horse's feet; and that where one in ten thousand who care for poetry may try to write it and succeed, the rest will fail and will neglect their proper duties besides. It is so in art, in literature generally, in music, in all things—the safe path is to drop the gleam and fire and fragrance of the soul-touch into one's life in the shape of a more courageous performance of the daily task, whatever it may be, and be content with that, which is the greatest thing in the world, anyway. If the Muse should decide to pick us out, willy nilly, she has ways of letting us know. Poesy has its technic, as has all art, and sentimental ignorance can never hope to pose as inspiration among those who know.
The real point to be emphasized is that this is part of a certain outreaching on idealistic lines of which the wholly remarkable work of the young women of the present generation in music, composition, painting, and sculpture, constitutes other parts. And this outreaching towards an art expression along various lines is so general, and is so differentiated in essence from the results of ordinary scholastic work or the general movement for the higher education of woman, that it cannot justly be ignored.
Few young women will, in the ordinary course, win a separate fame along the solitary path of pure art. Most of them, and most of those who come within the radius of the influence of their aspirations and their art work, will become wives, home-makers, mothers. Many more will become teachers, or are that now, wielding potent influence. It is these who will strike the keynote for the quality of atmosphere that is to shape, as it will surround, the generations yet unborn; and, because of that, the feeling and aspiration that many of the poems seen in our current journals disclose, is important and significant at this transitional time.